13 September,2026 09:04 AM IST | Mumbai | Tanisha Banerjee
Abhinav Roy started playing on CDs at eight, back when digital downloads were not an option. Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi
There was a time when buying a video game came with a satisfying little ritual. You tear open the plastic, pull out the disc, admire the artwork on the box, and slide the game onto your shelf. You could point at a game and say "mine". Quite romantic. Now, that feeling is becoming harder to hold on to.
As gaming moves further into an all-digital future, the idea of owning a game is beginning to look less straightforward. GTA VI, one of the most anticipated games in history, is set to arrive on November 19, but its "physical" edition will initially come as a box containing a download code rather than a disc. Sony, meanwhile, has reminded PlayStation users that digital games are licensed to them, rather than technically owned by them.
A lot of passionate fans and gamers are left asking, what does it mean to own something you cannot physically hold? A digital library may be faster, cheaper and infinitely more convenient. But a physical copy can be collected, lent, traded, resold, and preserved. It can survive long after a server goes offline or a game disappears from a digital storefront.
So, when gamers say, "I bought it," do they still get to say, "I own it"? Not anymore.
For Abhinav Roy, 30, gaming has been around since childhood. He started playing on CDs at eight, back when digital downloads were not an option, and over the years, gaming grew from a pastime into a personal space where he could switch off. Today, he mainly games on his PC but still owns physical discs, and the attachment is not merely nostalgic.
"Physical copies of games are nice. It's like how you open a photo book," Roy says. For him, a game sitting on a shelf can become a marker of a particular period in his life. "It is a reminder of my history or past or a memory," he says. Much like old posters from his childhood that he has kept despite no longer having them on his walls, physical games carry an emotional value that goes beyond their practical use.
There is also a question of trust. Roy says his preference for physical copies, particularly when it comes to Sony, is partly shaped by concerns about whether a digital purchase will remain accessible indefinitely. Sony's current terms explicitly state that software is licensed rather than sold, meaning a digital purchase does not amount to ownership of the software itself.
That distinction has made the physical copy more important to Roy. And when it comes to GTA VI, the difference is enough to affect how he plans to play the game. He says he would have gone out of his way to buy a disc because of the game's cultural significance. Instead, with the physical edition initially coming without a disc, he plans to play it on PC rather than buy a PS5 specifically for the release. "I would have probably gone out of my way and gotten a disc if GTA VI was coming out in physical copies," he says, "It's a trend-setting game. Even if it's a massive fail, it would still be a major moment in industry history."
Hiraj Lajjani's relationship with physical games is different. He began gaming with a Nintendo console and later built a gaming PC, during an era when piracy and pirated CDs were commonplace. Yet, for games he particularly loved, he would still buy the original physical copies.
Today, he plays on an Xbox Series S, which has no disc drive, meaning his gaming has largely shifted online. The convenience has its advantages, but Lajjani compares buying a game to buying a book. A book can be returned to years later, kept on a shelf or lent to someone. Digital games, he argues, take away much of that permanence. "If I really love it, if I want to lend it to someone and be like, âThis is a very good game, you should definitely give it a shot,' that is something that we are no longer able to do," he says.
The larger concern is what happens when the company controlling the digital storefront decides a game should no longer be available. Lajjani believes gamers have traditionally understood a purchase as permanent, but digital licensing complicates that assumption. Jonathan Braganza takes the argument further.
A long-time gamer who has moved from Nintendo to PlayStation and PC, he sees physical media as an important safeguard against both corporate control and rising costs. "Today is just a bad time to be a gamer," he says, pointing to the rising cost of hardware and games. Physical copies, he argues, at least give players an aftermarket - a game can be bought second-hand or sold once it has been played. A digital-only ecosystem removes that option and leaves consumers dependent on the platform's pricing.
Braganza is also a collector of physical media, from books to vinyl records, and still has games from the PlayStation 2 era. "I like owning physical books. I collect vinyl records. I've had old games from the PS2 era. I love having a physical connection. I can actually interact with this."
The debate is not about whether a disc is more convenient than a download. It is about whether paying for something should give you the right to keep it and do whatever you wish with it. As gaming moves towards a digital-only future, and a more capitalistic regime, that old-fashioned idea of ownership may become one of the things gamers miss most.
[popcorn number="Nov19" desc="The date set for the longest awaited game GTA VI to arrive for which there will be no physical discs available much to the disappointment of the entire gaming community" class="Default"]
