Video Games Plus, a gaming retailer based out of Canada, and an independent gaming retailer known as Loot Box Gaming have both stated that they won’t be selling GTA 6.
Not huge retailers in the grand scheme of things, but interesting to see at least some taking a stand especially when they are almost certainly losing out on money by doing so.
The lack of a disc version is ridiculous.
But not as ridiculous as the lack of online multiplayer at launch. I’m ancient enough to remember the GTA V release. The pre-release trailer specifically said, “Complete heists with your friends!” or something very close to that. Then the game launched and you couldnt do anything with your friends. Once online was finally added, it was broken for a month or two. And heists weren’t added for 2 years.
Maybe I’ll buy GTA VI in 2 years, because $80 for a single-player-only game without a disc is 100% not happening for me.
Also, for extra GTA-doomer content, I still expect them to put online mode’s in-game currency on their own blockchain to prevent exploits, better enabling their bullshit monetization schemes.
Most sales are already digital I don’t like what they are doing but this will not affect them at all.
Buying only a download code is essentially a gift card.
Sorry, I don’t see an issue here. Everyone is perfectly happy giving Steam loads of money for games they’ll never physically own, but when it comes to consoles, suddenly we’re supposed to make a stand?
No. The overwhelming majority of game sales are digital downloads.
If you think having a disc somehow solves this, try playing Gran Turismo on the PlayStation 4. Sure, you get a disc, but you still have to sit through roughly six hours of downloads and installation before the game is actually playable.
The lack of a disc isn’t the issue.
You also don’t own your games digitally on Steam.
I take your point about Steam’s licensing, but at least those games go on some impressive sales from time to time. A physical disk can be resold on the used market for a discount after some time. Can GTA VI’s code in the box?
“Security measure to not leak the game”
Entirely BS. How has the entire games industry existed before then?
Can we also talk about how they’re locking full on content behind the ultimate edition? Not just some cosmetics, but the actual shops you’d go to in game to customize your character. In a single player game. That’s fucked.
It’s enough that I’m not getting the game. I can wait for PC and we’ll see if they release it as a full game rather tham carve it up. This is just an excuse not to have a $100 base price so they avoid that backlash while they effectively have it for the full game.
Remember when you bought a game and it was yours?
Remember when you unlocked things in game through completion and achievement?
Remember when you bought a game you got the whole game, not 70% and access to a storefront?
Fuck AAA gaming man. I feel sorry for the devs and artists who work so hard on a game only for executives to slice it up and smear the goodwill the game had by attempting to be predatory and parasitic capitalists.
Fuck the billionaires.
The game costs $100, the “lite” bullshit is just a poor deception.
But the code leads to a download, right? Which is you owning it, just like all other digital media you’ve downloaded.
Until you can’t download it anymore.
The “retro” gaming market is going to absolutely suck in 30 years because you don’t “own” anything.
“Ownership” should not imply the DRM you purchased it through can revoke said “ownership” whenever it becomes convenient. If you still have to ask permission to play something you “own”, I don’t call that ownership.
I feel like devs and artists should know about this already since this shit keeps happening and that they’re enabling this behaviour. Please correct me if you think Im saying some dumbass shit but I think at this point I can’t excuse them.
They’re people who followed their passions, learned the skills, and were able to join those companies and have secured an income, which we have tied to our very survival.
Can we blame them for being used by corporations when the alternative could be homelessness and societal outcast? Especially in this current fascist regime with less and less social protections? Even more so if they have families to provide for.
I’m sure they’re aware. But we’ve yet to achieve class consciousness. They’re made to believe they have no choice. Corporations union bust and threaten that you’re replaceable and that there are no jobs.
Devs aren’t the enemy. They’re working class just like us. Executives psychologically, financially, and physically manipulate and abuse us. They’re the enemy we need to focus on.
You can’t correct an opinion, own it or shut up
Not selling the most hotly anticipated game of the decade is certainly a choice. I guess they hate money.
[for consoles] if it doesn’t have a disc, i won’t pay more than $5 for it.
unless it’s stardew. then i’ll buy it for every system.
I have only bought stardew valley once, because I only game on PC, but I definitely would buy it for multiple systems if I used them; it’s already such good value that I feel like I’m stealing. I do love a passion project.
I wonder if ConcernedApe has a proper desk yet
He does!
This is a tough one because on one hand I’m old school I like to own physical things. Going to the music store and looking at, and then buying, CDs was my favorite. I like my CD and BluRay collection
On the other hand, it’s a waste of money and material to make a physical copy of something you can sell digitally. Plus you got to package it, ship it, etc…
It’s better for the environment if we don’t make physical products
Retailers should know that selling this is a poison pill. If no disc launches become the norm, then retailers will no longer serve a purpose in the industry.
They’ve been trying to kill the second hand market for decades and this release is the biggest threat to it yet.
I still can’t find Ultra HD discs in the shops either - it’s easier to find low res DVDs in 2026 than 4k discs even though most TVs sold now are 4k.
I have become convinced that Sony are deliberately sabotaging their own format because Sony Pictures ran the numbers and concluded they’d make more money if everyone had to stream.
Barnes and Noble is the only reliable place left for ultra discs
A perpetual subscription is obviously a more stable source of income for corporations than a one-time purchase of a software package.
Adobe figured that out more than a decade ago. I’m surprised that it has taken the legacy media companies this long to hop on that particular bandwagon.
Yep. Nevermind the fact that the second hand market is fantastic advertising for the companies and the quality of their games, and a surefire way to manufacture future customers.
I cant tell you how many brand new games I bought over the years, because I picked up a previous release used.
Hell, Final Fantasy is a fine example… I got FF4 used from a garage sale… which lead to me buying 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15… some of those games multiple times for new platforms.
One used game, translated into additional sales of almost every game that followed.
They don’t want the secondhand market. There’s no tangible profit there. They don’t want you to buy games. There’s tangible profit there only once. They want you to subscribe. They want recurring payments whether you use it or not. They want you to feel obliged to play certain games because you’re already automatically sending the money. They do not give a shit if you finish a title. Eyes on the screen in their ecosystem is all they want. It doesn’t matter if it’s the console manufacturer or the game developer. GTA(#) has been hyped for decades, they don’t need a physical GTAV to float around to convince a handful of people to buy GTAVI. GTA is not in the same market as FF
Hence GTA Online, where whales can keep spending hundreds of dollars for shark cards because they cant hope to play the game enough to stay infront of FOMO with all the new cars and other shit they constantly release.
they should want the secondhand market for exactly the reasons @[email protected] described. a secondhand sale leading to future sales leads to subscriptions. the secondhand market isn’t cutting into their profits, it’s free advertising.
free advertising that they’ve been paid to make, cause that second hand game wouldnt exist if they hadnt already gotten their pay from someone buying it.
Used games are basically the companies getting paid, to advertise their games to others, who then… as long as they are a half decent company, would more than likely pick up more customers in the future than they would have had otherwise.
I don’t understand why ive been seeing so many people say this, that ship sailed long ago. Not only did the switch have games with download only codes, (not to mention that with switch 2 they have the “Game Key Card”), but PC games did this for years (maybe still do?) before moving away from physical discs entirely.
The solution is blockchain tokenization that is transferable to a new owner for the secondary market.
Will they ever implement something like that? Of course not.
It’s interesting to watch the cycle of bullshit that happens around every hyped game.
Years up to the release, people are full of wild speculation, impossible expectations, and excitement.
Months up to the release, suddenly every piece of news is blown massively out of proportion. People are now extremely overreacting to every minor piece of news like it’s going to end this game.
The internet is so boring when it comes to video games. Reviews have become useless because nothing is ever good enough. Online discourse is worthless because people are always focused on the weird parts of a game or it’s release.
It’s like anything… Think about how many people ride bicycles. Now go to ANY online community where people talk about cycling; it will likely be the most insufferably pedantic assholes you can imagine.
99% of people who buy video games don’t identify as “gamers”, they don’t read gaming media, and they certainly don’t interact with gaming discussion online.
As both an industry professional (former), and a self-identified gamer, I stopped giving a shit what “core gamers” had to say 10 years ago.
Its such a weird thing to watch from a PC gamer perspective. The game won’t release on PC for another year or longer after consoles. I’m really not feeling like I’m missing out or anything, if anything it’s like I’m standing back and watching a potential train wreck from afar.
Rockstar has been hyping this game up like it’s the next coming of Christ and there’s just no way it lives up to that much hype. People complaining about the lack of physical media, or the confusion surrounding paid DLC. I’ll just sit back and watch what happens. If it releases flawlessly with zero issues, then I’ll look forward to the PC release. If it crashes and burns, well they have a year to fix it and to convince me it’s worth it.
Exactly what I am doing as well.
I don’t think this is an overreaction. As a PC gamer, this completely ruins my plans for playing the game. I was planning to buy a used console and the physical edition of the game, so I could resell both when the game came out on PC. This is another entry into “you will own nothing and be happy.”
i’m fortunate to have some friends who are close enough we trust each other to lend consoles. we tend to swap the nintendo/playstation for about a month a year so we can catch up on whatever we missed the most (and we’ve bought each other games just so we can play them, it’s cute)
Games like that don’t really fit on discs anymore when they are probably over 100GB. So you get a disc and put it in the console and then it downloads 150GB more content onto the console, that means the disc is just a license key anyway.
What is a bigger issue is that they want to charge $80+ for a game. I’m not going to pay that much for any game.
Games came on multiple disks back in the day. Why not now?
They do now, not just in the past. FF7 Rebirth shipped on multiple discs.
Why even? I stopped using discs when CDs were the thing. Skipped DVD and bluray completely. Don’t even had a drive for over a decade now.
So you can own your game.
You own the games you downloaded, they’re on your machine.
If you buy DRM-free, then you own the games you downloaded. But if your downloaded game has to phone home to ask if it’s OK to run or install, you don’t own jack. You’re renting.
Are you a time traveler lost from 1993?
To what end? The reason games came on multiple disks back in the day is because Internet speeds were slow (if they were there at all.) it was way faster to load via disk, and companies couldn’t even count on users to have a stable Internet connection anyway.
That’s not true anymore. The only reason physical disks exist at all now is more out of tradition than anything practical.
I don’t know how to make you understand the value of owning your own things.
Do you think you don’t own a digital copy of every piece of downloaded digital media?
No. You don’t. A copy that can be remotely deactivated is not something you own. If you can’t use it if the company were to go bankrupt, then you don’t own it.
They could do that, but it would cost them more money to provide that convenience to the customer. Since they are high AF on their own hype for that release, they have no motivation to do that.
Two discs. You put in one, it installs half the game, you put in the other, it installs the rest of the way. Or three or even more discs if the game is THAT big.
The PS4 can handle this, a couple PS5-era games we got for PS4 came on two discs.
What’s wrong with the disk being a license key? That’d work just fine for my plan of reselling the game and console when it comes out on PC.
When the studio stops hosting the game to download, the license key is worthless.
I suppose I should clarify that I’m not advocating for it, but it’d be better than a digital key that’ll be tied to your account forever.
Nothing wrong with that, except that it’s weird. Reselling games is not important to me though, I just keep what I get and add to the collection. Still have a physical boxed copy of Halo for Mac OS X in my attic even.
Being able to share the game with family or friends would be a plus. I can do that with my Steam library without discs too.
or the reviews are in lines of “brings nothing new, 9/10”
What disc will this game fit on? I’d like to buy a stack of them to backup my media library.
The disc also acts as a DRM check and allows you to download the full game from there. No disc means no resell. You can’t get a pre-owned copy. You can’t lend it to a friend. If you lose access to your console account, you lose the game. Fork over another $100 to continue playing.
I didn’t expect that you would be able to reuse games these days anyway. That surprises me that you can still do that. Thanks for explaining what the actual problem with this is.
A few games, like certain Battlefields, have tried making it so you can resell the disc for single player content but won’t be allowed to access multiplayer content
People didnt like that, so I think they stopped doing that for recent Battlefields… not 100% sure
Lots of games have shipped on multiple discs over the decades. As recently as FF7 Rebirth which was shipped on two or three, iirc.
I was familiar with PS1 games doing it but hadn’t seen it since then. Admittedly I haven’t owned a console since the Xbox 360 and even that I only played a few games on. I was under the impression that most discs these days basically amounted to a cd key and then the actual game downloaded to the console when you tried to play it.
Blueray if the game is under 128 GBs.
GTA5 on Steam says it requires 105GB. It’s not unreasonable to think that GTA6 would take more than 128GB.
Of course with compression (at the cost of longer load times) and/or lower quality textures, I would bet you could make it fit.
I also seem to recall some disk based games in the past containing a subset of the full game. Although at that point you don’t really “win” by having it on disk of isn’t the full game.
Or you could do multiple disks.
GTA5 has gone through a decade and more of storage requirement bloat thanks to rockstar, I wouldnt be surprised if GTA6 is at laucnher smaller than GTA5 currently
Rockstar marketing exec: “It must be at least 1TB”
Even if the disk was in the box, it wouldnt matter.
It’d just be some basic files that an installer transfers over. You’d still have to download a bunch online and use the code in the box to activate it because theres no way they’d put the whole game on a disk.
So, while I applaud giving the finger to rockstars exploitative bullshit, this seems more performative than anything.
Ok, but you can still physically take that disk with those minimal files and trade them in for at least some credit or cash somewhere.
If it’s digital, you can’t do that at all. Hell, if you download or play the game and do not like it then it can’t even be returned for a refund on many systems. A physical disk gets you something. Something…
except no you cant, because the download keys already been used and registered and permanantly tied to an account. Making the disk worse less than nothing.
Can you give an example of which games do this? I’ve never had issues with using pre-owned discs.
Battlefield… 4? did it to a limited extent - the code was required for online multiplayer, but not singleplayer.
By Battlefield 6, and enough people absolutely loathing their existence, EA took the hint and didnt repeat that model. Though BF6’s campaign is apparently online-only, so they apparently pivoted to a different insane design choice.
That is not how disks that don’t have data on them have worked in the past. The disk works as the game key, allowing you to install and play the game, even if there is no data on the disk.
yeah, the disk is essentially the
DLCDRM key for the consoleedit more coffee
Exactly like a Switch 2 Game Key Card.
You can still share and trade those.
Weird. I’ve been able to play many used games, including GTA in the past. Is this something new with 5 and beyond? I would think the GAME was playable, but any exclusives or anything extra from an order would not be.
I’ve lent friends PS5 games, so you tell me
Are blu-ray drives even standard on gaming pcs anymore? I have no idea. They sure aren’t on laptops, you’re lucky to get an rj45 port on a laptop.
I had one to install windows 7 and play a few games at the time, but got rid of it last year to fit my PC into a smaller case because I hadn’t used it in about a decade.
Well, GTA 6 isn’t launching on PC any time soon so that’s not particularly relevant right now.
On PC the majority of “physical” games is just a steam code in a cheap plastic box. One of the reasons no retailers are selling PC games
Haven’t had an optical drive anywhere in my home since 2012, don’t miss it. Most new PCs do not have them
I got an external one so I could access the various discs I burnt over the years. Been slowly (though not very consistently lol) ripping the data off of the older CDs and DVDs with the intent of writing some m-disc blurays. Been surprised at the lack of errors on the older discs, but the new discs should eliminate that worry. Even if they don’t last the promised 1000+ years, it’ll be a problem for future generations to deal with.
Though the quality of my former prized files is kinda shit to the point where I’m already wondering if I even really care about losing most of it. I mean I did fine without any optical drive for like a decade or more.
Video Game Plus pointed to its policy of not selling games that only offer digital codes, and as a result, it will not sell the biggest game of 2026. The retailer noted that this isn’t a reflection of Rockstar Games or the game itself, but argued that it’s part of their goal of preserving physical media.
Based
It is a reflection though. A box with a piece of paper in it is a direct reflection of fucking idiocy.
“The biggest game of 2026”
Is it a terabyte or something?
300GB apparently. So not far off. Especially with SSD prices these days.
Fifteen times the size of the smallest PS3.
Man, they should offer disc anyway so gen-z can experience the “please insert disc 2 and press continue” while installing.
It’ll be the Windows 95 14-disk floppy set all over again, but this time with 18 DVDs
I see you were also traumatized by the floppy release. Lol
I had pre-ordered the CD release from Babbage’s, and went to pick that up. Being that I was only 15, I had to get a ride, and it was also 45 min each way, so this wasn’t exactly easy for me.
When I got home, I still hadn’t realized they gave me the wrong one and cracked it open to see the horror. Said screw it, I wasn’t going to be able to go back anytime soon and installed it for the next hour or more.
Luckily, because this was pre-activation key (we remember those days, right? … right??), when I took it back, they apologized and gave me the right one without much problem.
Only installed once from 14 floppies, but it still was terrible.
There are already games with dedicated install discs like that.
WTF…so much for optimization.
Blame the people wanting to be able to see every flies asshole. Textures get huge fast.
That’s such a weird example
It is. But I don’t think it’s any more weird than photo realistic horse balls that seem to have been all the rage a short while ago.
Shot in the dark: is this about getting the white stallion in red dead redemption?
We don’t frequent the same internet circles apparently
Not surprised they’re large, mostly because the asset sizes are dictated by what screen resolution people play (yeah, 1440p fomo) and how big their monitors are (27" or bust), and how often they stream or make screenshots.
Isn’t a series S as low as 256gb?
That tells me the game needs to be under that
I have a Series S and the usable storage is around the 360GB mark.
I’m not going to buy GTA6 but imagine having to dedicate your whole console to 1 game :(
Lol, soon we will be buying games on game consoles instead of disks.
Fuck… I’d have to delete at least 5 other games to make room…
5? In a closet behind me I have a physical disk containing 4 full games, including their scanned manuals, on one CD. That’s right, a CD, not a DVD.
No, but the packaging is a refrigerator box.
Fragile…it’s italian!
the keycode is laser-etched onto one of the nails holding it together.
That looks like a major award!
back when star field came out,i bought(for$85)what i thought was the deluxe edition dvd disc but when it arrived all it had was a code to download the 125GB data from their store page.
