I was in a GameStop a few months ago—one of the last, sad, half-empty locations still limping along—and something hit me. I wasn’t really there to buy anything. I was just… visiting. Like an old haunt from a past life.
There was a time when walking into a game store meant something. Stacks of physical copies everywhere, walls lined with new releases and pre-owned treasures, a display case full of steelbooks, collector’s editions, and the occasional weird import.
Now? The shelves are half-barren, packed with Funko Pops and clearance-bin junk nobody wants. Most of the store is just gift cards for digital currency—PlayStation Store, Xbox Live, Nintendo eShop. Because that’s where gaming is now.
Everything is digital. Physical games are dying. And at this point, we might as well admit that we don’t actually own our games anymore.
When Did We All Just… Give Up on Owning Games?
I still remember lining up at midnight to grab a new release. That feeling of tearing the plastic off a fresh game case, flipping through the manual (remember manuals?), and slotting the disc in for the first time.
Now? A new game comes out, and I don’t even think about buying a physical copy. Hell, I don’t even pre-order anymore—because what’s the point?
- Physical games aren’t really physical anymore—most discs just install a launcher that downloads the actual game.
- Half the time, the game you buy isn’t even complete—you still need a 50GB day-one patch just to make it playable.
- And thanks to always-online DRM, even single-player games can get taken away at any time.
So what am I actually buying? A plastic case with a disc that’s basically just a glorified unlock key?
And honestly? That’s if you can even find a physical copy at all. Because good luck walking into a store in 2025 and buying a disc for anything that isn’t Call of Duty, FIFA, or some Nintendo title that never drops in price.
Publishers Don’t Want You to Own Anything
The gaming industry figured out a long time ago that letting players actually own games was bad for business.
- Physical copies can be resold. That’s money they don’t get.
- You can let a friend borrow a disc. That’s money they don’t get.
- You don’t have to be online to play a physical game. That’s control they lose.
So they started quietly killing off physical games, shifting everything to digital downloads, streaming, and subscriptions.
And now we’re at the point where game ownership is basically an illusion.
- You don’t own your digital games—you own a license to access them.
- If a publisher pulls a game from a store, you can’t buy it anymore.
- If a company shuts down a server, even your single-player games can become unplayable.
- If your account gets banned? Poof. Your entire library is gone.
This isn’t paranoia. It’s already happening.
Just look at what happened with The Crew—Ubisoft shut down the servers for a racing game people paid full price for, and now it’s just… gone. You literally can’t play it anymore.
Or Overwatch 1—a game that existed for six years, and Blizzard just deleted it to force people into Overwatch 2. Imagine if a movie studio erased The Empire Strikes Back because they wanted you to watch a new, worse version instead.
That’s where we are now.
The Future of Gaming Is Just… Renting Access to Content
Look at where everything’s heading. Subscription services. Cloud gaming. Always-online DRM. This is the slow shift toward a future where we never actually own anything again.
- Game Pass and PlayStation Plus? They’re great now, but they’re also training us to accept temporary access instead of ownership.
- Cloud gaming? Seems convenient, but it also kills the idea of local game ownership entirely.
- Digital storefronts? The second a publisher decides they don’t want to support a game anymore, it’s gone.
And the wildest part? People are okay with this.
When Xbox announced they were shutting down hundreds of old digital games in 2024, most people just shrugged. “Who cares? Nobody plays those anyway.”
But that’s the point. They’re testing the waters. Seeing how much control they can take away before we push back.
So What Can We Do?
Honestly? We probably can’t stop this. The shift to digital and subscriptions is already too far gone. Physical games will keep fading out, and eventually, they’ll just… stop making them.
But if you still care about game ownership?
- Buy physical copies while they still exist. Even if they’re not perfect, they’re still better than nothing.
- Support companies that don’t force always-online DRM. They’re rare, but they exist.
- Be loud when publishers try to pull shady moves. Because if they think nobody cares, they’ll keep taking things away.
Otherwise? We’re just going to keep losing more and more control over the games we buy.
And one day, when every game is a subscription, every save file is stored on a cloud server, and nothing works unless you’re connected to the internet, we’re going to realize we let it happen.