Personally, while I am slightly nostalgic for those old discs, I would really choose DRM-free digital downloads every time. Offline installers, like the ones provided by GOG, are just a better way of preserving your game collection in the long run. It takes much less space and you can make backups much more easily.

That's just me though. What about you all? Let me know.

Logic says DRM-free digital. But screw logic, opening a box and popping a disc into the drive makes me happy.

DRM free download. No need to look for discs

DRM-free digital downloads.

I would rather buy a DRM-free digital PC game than buy a old physical disc PC game with SafeDisc or StarForce DRM that doesn't work on modern computers, (or worse, break your computer)

And i would rather buy a digital only game that is 100% DRM-free with no content tied to a company online server, than buy a physical game that has most of the content tied to company online servers without LAN support (goodbye my PS3 physical disc of Battlefield 3 where most of the content is now unplayable after EA shutdown the servers this year)

These physical copies do come with nice aesthetics though. Looking at my old physical copies in a shelf feels better than looking at my GOG library or looking at GOG offline installers on my external hard drive.

For movies though, it's sad there's no legitmate DRM-free digital downloads and even on the biggest digital movie stores they have worse video/audio quality than a 4K Blu-Ray Disc. I find it weird how physical movie discs sells much less than physical game and music discs even though there's no good digital movie stores. I cannot find find a 4K Blu-Ray disc in my country but i have seen many physical console games and physical music CDs.

It's always been a mix:-

Digital:-
+ More convenient, take up less space
+ No "NoCD's" patches need applying
+ You can always burn offline installers to optical media anyway if you wanted a DVD-R / BD-R version.

Discs:-
+ Immune to GOG's unfortunate habit of arbitrarily deleting DOS game's original.exe's if they pre-package a game with ScummVM which is the last thing "game preservation" is about.
+ Immune to unwanted post-purchase content changes by publishers such as forced removal of expired soundtracks.
+ They'll always give you a "clean base" to work from when applying potential future tweaks / mods without them clashing with whatever the store pre-modded them with. No unwanted middle-man "pre-tweaks" like GOG's recent DAO mess.
+ You can usually rip them to an .iso / zip up the game folder if you wanted a "digital" version.
+ You can always find original versions on Ebay years / decades later without fear of the publisher forcibly removing them from digital stores and trying to erase them from history due to remakeitus.
+ You get to enjoy the thousands of classic games which aren't (and possibly never will be) available "digitally" like No One Lives Forever, Dune, Lemmings, Freelancer, Prey (2006), etc.

Digital DRM-free

I simply don't have the space anymore for hundreds of euroboxes and installing from a digital backup is also much more convenient than juggling (multiple) disks/CDs/DVDs. And with uncapped broadband connections I personally no longer have a need for physical distribution.

That is for my regular day-to-day usage. Of course DRM-free physical media has obvious benefits regarding availability after end of distribution. Blizzard can pull Warcraft from digital stores but not from physical second-hand marketplaces...

I grew up with physical media, so - naturally - I prefer those.

However, since games don't come with any goodies anymore (besides: "pay premium for what we gave you 'for free' once" - Collector's Editions), I really don't need the big boxes anymore, that the old games came with.
So, physical media in DVD/BR cases would absolutely suffice.

But all this is doesn't matter, because in reality, I don't drive to a game shop/electronics shop anymore, to buy my games.

I buy only digital downloads.
Quick and easy. And dirt cheap.

One might say: nowadays, my HDDs are my physical media.

Pretty much the same for me.
I've never been a fan of "stuff", in an ideal world where everything is available without strings attached I'd say digital 100%, but these are all more than valid points you just can't ignore.

Digital DRM-free!

I used to prefer retail, but then the boxes started to come with warnings like: online connection required, Steam account, Steam account, Steam account, Ubisoft account, Ubisoft account, Steam, Steam, Steam... so there really was no point in buying physical anymore. What's the point of physical? if CDs install a client/or DRM malware. To overpay for a collectable box that only wastes space?

This 100%. I hated buying a game at flea market just to find out all it had was steam.exe for the game. Also, whatever happened to people saying games would be cheaper once physical Media disappears

When the music CD conquered the market, it was more expensive than the LP record.
People said: "wait til the CD has pushed the old system from the market - then it will become cheaper."
Well, the record went away for a while...but new CDs still cost way more than a new record did cost.
Then the record had a revival - and it costs now even more than the CDs.

I will always love a physical item no question about it, but when it comes to music and games specifically, I go digital only as those are things I can see taking up the most room in my collection if I owned physical copies. and games always evolve now with updates which make the original obsolete within months thus the GOG options I find to be more superior over physical boxed versions unless its just for display purpose.

I only do Physical on movies and episode stuff. blu-ray is my go to and dvd if no other option is available. some reason I find owning a movie on physical is much more rewarding in my mind for some reason :P


My go to for digital games and music as of now is GOG, Zoomplatform for very specifics that GOG does not have or ever will I think. and for music is Itunes stores and Beatport which allow you to buy the actual music file and save it to your storage of choice and no DRM :)

With regard to a non-rational attachment to physical media: a number of years ago, there had been a relatively brief period of transition within my mind.

Ultimately, I had been able to convince myself that a digital copy (free of so-called 'Digital Rights Management') of a given game (mirrored across three or more mechanical hard disk drives) had been a fair compromise. Afterwards, I had been able to figuratively 'let go' of the inborn inclination to acquire such (game-related) objects within the physical realm.

Now, the only remaining sought-after physical media are as follows:

1) Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray film discs -- So that I may perform a one-to-one back-up (with encryption removed) via MakeMKV, for the purpose of losslessly extracting content, preserving the data, and, in the long-term, reducing reliance upon my optical drives.

2) Compact discs (CDs) -- As desired audio tracks are, at times, unavailable on sites such as Bandcamp, it is necessary to rip audio files, even if error-correction may be less than ideal.

DRM-free downloads all the way for me. Even at the time of CD/DVD, I rather used them only once to copy an image on my hard drive and play from that image.

The only exception is big collector boxes full of stuff, but I tend to buy something like 2 of these every 10 years, not more than that. And even then I would rather use a downloaded copy of the game than the shipped disc (but for some not really logical reason, I still like the disc to be included in such boxes).

Always used CDs and DVDs in the past, even to backup roms, games, emulators, setups, downloaded backups, etc.
After I started playing more games on PC than on consoles, I mostly use digital downloads.

If we are talking about games I bought before learning about DRM-Free, "I made them DRM-Free for personal use" with community tools, tutorials, and so on, then backd them up. :)

Talking about DRM-Free setups, I tend to always extract them, organize the game files and 7z'p them with higher compression for backup.

That's why today I prefer DRM-Free digital downloads. It saves a lot of time.
Also its easier to backup mods, modding tools, modding tutorials and files this way for me.