News - Analysts: 92 per cent of all PC games sales are now digital

[Jedibeeftrix]

At the risk of sounding a positive note, Origin is now where near as downright obnoxious as it used to be. Heck, I accidentally bought SimCity for someone (thinking I could gift it) and EA ecommerce support were very friendly and helpful in returning the payment. I've done two purchases since and both were pretty straightforward.

No way though that I'd buy anything via Ubisoft's uPlay service - if I want their titles then I'll wait for it to appear on Steam. Had two experiences with uPlay purchasing and both were a nightmare.

ah, Uplay!

still have 'fond' memories of buying Farcry3, creating a Uplay account against which i registered my shiny new game, only to forget the password and realise that i had mispelt my email on the Uplay registration.

they did not verify the email address before they accepted the account!

were they willing to help, in any way at all? no.

[The Hand]

Yes,I last bought a physical disc game in 2010 - Civ4 Complete/Beyond the sword edition. All other games since (nearly 100), have been through Steam and I've also been picking up free games like BF3 through Origin.

[crossy]

ah, Uplay! still have 'fond' memories of buying Farcry3, creating a Uplay account against which i registered my shiny new game, only to forget the password and realise that i had mispelt my email on the Uplay registration. they did not verify the email address before they accepted the account! were they willing to help, in any way at all? no.

That's pretty much my experience too - last time I tried to get a game it was one I got a "free" game code for. uPlay then decided that I needed to supply credit card details to pay the £0.00 I owed them, but wouldn't accept my credit cards. uPlay "support" then declared that this was because all of my credit cards and debit card were invalid - certainly not down to a bug in their website, oh no.
Idiots!
(Bought Ace Combat on Steam the other day with one of the "invalid" cards. And I never got my "free" game)

Actually there's a good point (in addition to the poor broadband angle) - with digital downloads you're at the mercy of the seller, who in a couple of cases (Origin, uPlay) are the publisher themselves. At least with boxed copies you can go into a store and yell at a shop assistant (or make use of Amazon's return policy if that appeals).

[Output]

For those games which require Steam/Origin/uPlay, do the bought discs even get counted as physical copies?

[Kumagawa]

For those games which require Steam/Origin/uPlay, do the bought discs even get counted as physical copies?

Yeah exactly when you install a 'physical copy' which then requires a multi gigabyte download it's not a 'physical copy' it's an activation key on a disk.

[Chanfron]

I always try to buy the physical version and will only get digital downloads where I have no choice or it is on sale.
Last physical was Fallout New Vegas Game of the Year, bought it approx Feb this year, only other games I bought this were in the Steam sale, out of the four I bought only 1 had a physical version available.

[abychristy]

I still buy games in disk well mainly because I just love seeing the box art front and back but I have digital copies too but they are FTPs from and "On the House" from Origin.

[ET3D]

Just as an example this is why I always buy retail - For a boxed physical copy of "Thief" from amazon - Cost £9 approx.

Same game from Steam which costs them a small amout of virtual storage space and some bandwidth to deliver to me - £20

That's why people wait for sales, which are pretty common on digital. The game was £6.79 on Green Man Gaming three weeks ago, probably with a 10%-20% coupon off that.

[MrComputerSaint]

I use steam a lot as it offers more choice than my Grainger Games or local games shop. It makes sense to me.

[ddg4005]

I could be wrong here but I don't believe this report. Just last year it was reported on Gamespot that most games were still purchased on physical media and that digital sales made roughly half of all sales. And no, I don't think digital downloads will ever replace physical media completely.

[masonkian]

last physical disk i bought was half life 2

[hoppusdelonge]

Not a surprise really. It's a shame Microsoft and/or Sony can't sort out a deal to bring Steam to consoles, their digital pricing is ridiculous.

I'm a sucker for collectors editions though, so I'll never go fully digital

[jim]

The last time I bought a physical disk, the first thing I did was open the box, remove the serial key, and activate it on Steam.

[kalniel]

last physical disk i bought was half life 2

ironic

[dfour]

I prefer physical disks and the only reason I got bf4 on digital is because it was 'free' with my 290x gpu.

[MrCaptainA]

Well, I've still got an optical drive in my machine, and will continue to have one until such time that they disappear into obscurity. I haven't bought a hard copy game in about a year now, but when I'm in town, I usually swing by a videogame store to see what they've got available. I'll usually grab something from the 2 for £10 or 3 for £15 offerings if there are titles I missed previously, or otherwise didn't see value in getting at full price (AC series being a prime example - £40 for 3-4 days of gameplay? I'll pass on that nonsense)