I still remember the long ritual of installing World of Warcraft to my parents’ laptop as a young’un, mystified by the sheer number of discs it took to squeeze the game onto a hard drive.
The more discs a game took to install, the better it must be, I figured—child me would be aghast at the contemporary world, where game boxes come with mere codes inside and PlayStation is killing off disc production. That last factoid has triggered commentary all over the industry and beyond, with everyone from Ubisoft’s Yves Guillemot and French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon weighing in.
Speaking to IGN, Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser gave his own commentary on the physical vs. digital debate with a multifaceted answer. “I don’t know that I care. If people want that, I think companies should provide it,” he said.
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“But I don’t know that I personally care. And I also think the ability to update games, as critical as people are of digital releases, the ability to update and fix problems in games has been really useful for the quality of games.” Notably, both physical and downloadable patches existed before digital distribution became the rule. Magazines like the superlative PC Gamer would even help distribute them!
Grand Theft Auto writer Jeffrey Crawford “Lazlow” Jones, who was with Houser for the interview, weighed in as well. “I mean, we all have that sort of feeling of when you get that copy and you put the disc on the console, but I also have to say, I really like being at the airport and going, ‘oh cool, I can download some quick games to my Steam Deck for this 12-hour flight.”
Jones went on to talk about how tangibility still has its perks even as a creator: “[It’s] just really fulfilling to have a physical thing you can say, ‘Look, we made a thing.'” Houser followed up, “I love physical media. I think everyone does, you know.” It’s worth noting that Grand Theft Auto 6 will be both a digital-only game and console-exclusive at launch.
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