anyone who has the disk can download the patches and extra content. there is no way to block a specific copy or prevent transfers like with a digital purchase. the point of physical media is sharing and resale, not the piece of plastic sitting on your shelf.

i agree that mandatory downloads are a big problem (thats why willitplay is a thing) but offline installs from disk are the biggest change that made ps5 games load so much faster than ps4 and opened up a lot of new options for devs. reading data from ssd will always be faster than a blu ray. the only downside is you have to manage space a bit more but its worth it. if you want straight from disk get ready for slower uglier harder to develop games.

You’re certainly right, especially for the AAA games coming off the presses, but it’s not always true with certain indie games, especially if they’re doing a physical print run long after publishing.

You can occasionally get one where a very final version copies straight off a PS5 disc.

You know sorta feels to me like some new physical tech would be warranted here. Something with a good amount of storage, very quick I/O, and read/writable. More like a fancy thumb drive than a disk. Let the version on it be updated by the system to stay current, gain add on content, etc.