Rockstar Games and Sony are betting entirely on digital distribution, with GTA VI launching without physical discs and PlayStation planning to end disc sales by 2028. Sony reports 85 per cent of its games were downloaded last quarter, while physical copies represent just 5 per cent of industry revenue. Yet the data suggests consumers remain omnivorous: hardcover books still command nearly three-quarters of sales despite ebooks peaking at 20 per cent share in the 2010s, and vinyl records have rebounded from under 1 million units annually in the 2000s to 46mn, capturing roughly 10 per cent of music revenue. Even 4K Blu-ray disc sales rose 12 per cent in the US last year.

The shift to digital licences strips consumers of ownership rights — no resale, donation, or guaranteed access. Ubisoft's 2024 shutdown of The Crew sparked a 1.3mn-signature petition to Brussels, while California now bars sellers from using "buy" or "purchase" for digital goods without disclosing licence-only terms. Amazon's 2009 removal of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four from Kindles remains a cautionary precedent.

Centralising cultural archives on a handful of corporate servers creates systemic preservation risk. As University of Michigan professor Aaron Perzanowski notes, preservation "is just not their business model." The market is signalling that physical media serves distinct consumer needs — quality, permanence, offline access — that streaming cannot replicate. Companies writing off physical buyers may find the second-hand market they kill was also a discovery engine for new releases.