There aren’t many physical releases for short games anymore. Any game in the 2 to 8 range probably costs $15 to $30 and is digital only. Physical releases are l

There aren’t many physical releases for short games anymore. Any game in the 2 to 8 range probably costs $15 to $30 and is digital only. Physical releases are largely reserved for full priced titles where the overheard of manufacturing, distribution, and middle-man cut make it still worth while. eBay has plenty of games if you want them. But as a percentage of the industry it’s not a big deal. GameStop is unique in that it was one of the top sellers of games AND their business was predicated on selling recent games as used. The incentives are perverse. Honestly I think digital solves pricing relatively well. Everyone knows a brand new $60 game will be $30 in a few months and $20 in a year. Anyone can buy in at the price they deem appropriate. For PC if there’s a DRM-free version either at launch or after a year there’s no major concern about a game disappearing from the world. There’s a lot of ways you can drawn the line. But they’re all arbitrary and based on what you want to min/max rather than natural or obvious laws. Digital is weird because we make copies every time we install! Even game discs make a full copy on HDD. Afterwards the only thing a disc does is provide DRM. The game is fully installed and played from a copy on the HDD! (Because reading data from a DVD is slow as shit). And modern games have so many patches the content on a disc is worthless. The disc literally provides no value except DRM. FWIW I would also change copyright law such that it doesn’t last 50+ years. More content should become public domain far faster. You can dig into my comment history for some recent discussion about that. I’d like to think I’m pro-consumer and pro-creator. There is a tension there. Tricky balance. But I’m anti-middle men. Especially those who have a moat and use it to extract value while providing little to nothing in return.