The End of Video Games As We Know Them?

Published 24th June 2026

by Jamie Syder

Okay, maybe that title is a bit of a stretch. But the point of it still remains. What happens when a multi-million games company like Rockstar decides to drop the disc from their physical release of arguably the biggest game of the decade? And what happens when that same company decide to lock single player content behind a paywall?

This is the reality facing us as we head closer to the release of Grand Theft Auto VI. Earlier today (the 24th of June, for you future people), Rockstar announced that they would be releasing a physical edition of GTA 6 on launch. Good news! Not exactly. Becuase the line that followed it made it very clear the new age we are entering into: "[the physical edition] will feature a downloadable code in a box." Yes, that's right. You read that perfectly, and no I haven't spelt "multi-layer blu-ray disc" wrong. A downloadable code in a box, and an estimated £70 for the priviledge. This is fine, if you think about it. Nintendo and the PC publishers have been doing this for quite some time now. But ignore the rather petty-sounding complaints of "oh, I won't have a disc to look at", and "oh, where's my two-disc install and play set", and "oh, why don't my children want to see me anymore" and instead think of the wider picture. Rockstar have always been a precedent-creating company. This is one of the worst possible changes to the market they could create. Because the publishers will see the killing that Rockstar make off of the thirteen-year wait for GTA 6, assume that it's applicable to all games, even the depths of games like "Watching Paint Dry 2 Online Game Of The Year Edition", and introduce this code-in-a-box system to all console physical copies. If the publishers follow suit, and it's more than likely that they will, we will witness the death of the second-hand games market before the next console generation. A world in which you can no longer pop round to Dave's, and borrow his copy of Virtua Racing. Because Dave's game won't be on a cartridge, or a disc, anymore. Dave's game is stuck on his LIVE account, and as a result, he can't let you borrow it, nor can he sell it. But what he can do is weep in despair, when, five years from now, licensing issues force the original publishers to rip the game off of the marketplace and directly off of his hard drive. And yes, I've heard the rebuttal many times before, "physical copies are just a licence too". But the difference is that if my 360 is kept offline for its entire life, how will Microsoft know that the licences for Project Gotham Racing expired 10 years ago? If the publishers follow suit and give us the code in the box, there will no longer be a market for second-hand games. There will no longer be the concept of shared copies. We will all be at the mercy of the publishers, and we will all be happy about it. Or at least, that's the plan, anyway.

But, even after all of that: we both know we're all still going to buy it anyway.

Grand Theft Auto VI launches on Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 on November 19th.