Just because a game is on disc doesn’t mean it will work in the future

Ars Technica details a growing gap between “physical” releases and true offline playability: a disc or cartridge may still ship, but the build on it often isn’t enough to finish the job. DoesItPlay has been testing thousands of releases and found that 27% of the physical games it checked needed downloads for bug fixes or core content.

The split gets sharper on current-gen hardware. Among the tested releases, 34% of PS5 games and 50% of Xbox Series X games required some kind of online download to function as intended. That means the box on the shelf can be more of a license container than a complete archival copy, which matters for players, collectors, and anyone thinking about long-tail access.

For developers, this is a practical production and preservation problem. If the shipped disc omits essential content or depends on a server-side patch to become stable, the game’s future usability becomes tied to platform policy, storefront availability, and server uptime rather than the physical medium itself. That’s especially relevant as Sony’s move away from physical PlayStation production renews pressure on publishers to justify disc releases beyond retail presence.

DoesItPlay owner Clemens Itsel argues the trend reflects how larger companies increasingly treat physical releases with indifference. The broader takeaway is simple: “physical” no longer automatically means self-contained, and teams that care about preservation need to plan for offline completeness much earlier in the ship process.