Just want to add that the world reached a milestone a few years ago, when urban residents outnumbered rural residents for the first time in human history. This was the world's population, but I'm sure the same was true in the US. More people living in urban areas means more people have fast, reliable Internet.

Regarding the physical disc situation, maybe the game industry could copy what the movie industry has been doing. Movie studios have been making less money from physical discs than from digital downloads (and streaming), just like in the gaming industry. But movie studios make ON-DEMAND physical movie discs, which are burned DVDs sold in limited quantities to those who need discs. Warner and Universal are the two notable studios that do this. These discs are readily available at Amazon and other online retailers, but it seems that only "low-demand" items are made, such as old and/or little-known movies. I'm guessing it's because piracy would be of little concern for these item. Games like Fallout 4 are high-demand items, so this probably won't happen. But if enough people demand physical discs, you never know.

@cwy

imo, the issue is less with how beth can help players without a stable/uncapped connection.

it's more of how they can give players a heads-up that the game they are about the purchase actually requires a 25gb download in order to play.

baby steps.

this way, if players without a stable/uncapped data connection do decide to purchase it anyway, they do it with the knowledge that they may have to pay more for their data usage, or it may take a week or whatnot.

no one will be complaining anymore. and all it takes is a little disclaimer on the box itself. it should take a designer no more than 5 minutes to figure out how to stick it in the box layout.

Should have just shipped MGSV on floppy disk

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All the things you mentioned would've been easily, expeditiously, and effectively done if digital sales hadn't taken so much out of physical sales. I had been following Fallout 4 release info myself, and only read about the disc situation in Amazon reviews also. If physical disc had been a primary concern for most people, we would surely have heard a much bigger announcement from Bethesda, and widespread Internet pvssyr to boot. Alas, it wasn't, so the publisher felt justified to cut cost there. I understand the frustration, but I'm telling you what to expect. The way the industry is going, those who keep relying on physical discs will continue to get the shaft in one way or another.

=/

i don't think you get my stand.

it's ok to cut cost on physical sales by not including multiple disks in the box, making it necessary for players who buy the game to download it from the interwebs.

however, it's NOT ok to NOT mention anywhere on the box that it's not the full game. the closest thing to a disclaimer on the box is that the game "requires a free Steam acount to play."

it should have said "To play Fallout 4, the game has to be downloaded vis Steam. This download may be in excess of 25gb. To setup your free Steam account, follow the instructions loacted on the downloader located on the disk within."

or something.

beth wouldn't cut any significant printing, material or manpower costs by shaving off 1 line of copy on the box.

what they WOULD lose would be players with lousy internet connections buying their game expecting to be able to install it directly from the box. in other words, beth deliberately withheld information from its customer base in order to sell more copies of the game.

if developers are required to tell consumers the hardware specs required to run their games at lowest settings, there's no excuse why they shouldn't have to state that their games require a large-ass download.

They didn't do it because they didn't care. Anything they cared about would cost them something. Whether it was a deliberate act or an oversight, it doesn't matter. I bet the designer who made the box wasn't even told what was actually on the disc. You made it sound like a tremendously easy thing to do. But sometimes small tasks are just as hard to carry out as any (and much easier to miss). Info would have to be relayed, personel to be notified and instructed, coordination to be carried out, directors have to sign off on it, etc., just like in any other task. This is not some indie outfit, but a big corporation where every little thing on a product has to be discussed, approved, etc. As to whether they did this deliberately to increase sales, I would say they did this precisely because they didn't expect to sell a lot of physical discs. So they cared less, and put less effort to it.

That was very helpful, with this I have grounds to ask for compensation. I rarely read EULA's because I don't comprehend legalese.

I only read the first page of this thread but I got the general gist of the discussion.

Steam is the reason I ditched PC gaming and went to a console.

The last game I bought for PC was Half Life. It was a complete game with something like 7 DVD's if I remember correctly. It took for ever to install. I finally get it installed and it said I had to create a free Steam account. No big deal, I create the account, and it said I had to do a manditory update or I couldn't register the game. At the time I was on dial up out in the middle of bum blank Iowa. Seriously. I could look out my window across the corn fields and see some tiny lights on the horizon of the nearest town.

I say, ok, no big deal. How big could it be? Well, it turns out that it forced me to download the entire game even though I had just bought the box set with the DVD's and spent 5 hours installing the bloody thing. I never was able to play it and when I tried to return it the store said tough turds, you opened it and there is a 0 return policy no matter what on software.

I waited for months for a hack to come out so I could hack my own damn game to play it and it never came. Steam has their stuff locked down pretty tight.

I swore never again and I didn't. And I miss it. I could not be stopped with a mouse and keyboard. To this day I still can't get used to the controllers on my Playstation. I am horrible with aiming and moving.

Fast forward to last week ....

Fallout 4 was released and I was excited to have a reason to buy a PS4. The cheapest one I could find was the Uncharted Collection bundle on Amazon. If you have a prime account you get it for $329. I read the description and it said, "Includes Uncharted Collection". Nowhere did it say it was download only. UPS comes and I get my PS4 and low and behold, there is a card in the box with a voucher to download it. I was livid. Nowhere on the box does it say download.

Took almost 4 days to get it running 24/7. Apparently it's one of, if not the, biggest game to download. 47GB.

Would I have bought it knowing it was download only? Absolutely not. I do not support this whole download thing that's going on. I hate it. If I buy something, I want something physical in my hands. That's why I ditched Adobe. They can take this 'cloud' crap and stuff it.

And I have to say I'm not all too happy about the 506MB Fallout 4 download I was forced to do before I could play it when the disc finally arrived in the mail.

If I were the OP I would contact Bethesda and try to get reimbursed.

I may have to look into the immigration policies of Finland, the U.S.A. is going down the drain anyway. (But that is another rant altogether and does not belong in this forum. )

Just be sure to contact Zenimax, not Bethesda.

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About the Uncharted Collection; that is just BS, I feel your pain. I purchased it, I already have a PS4 but it died last week, and the whole thing came on Blu-Ray.

it actually IS a tremendously easy thing to do.

the writing is the job for the copywriter, who has to sign off on the final artwork before it goes into production (together with the designer, art director, creative director etc).

in other words, the bigger the corporation, the more pairs of eyes had looked through the box cover and gave it the go ahead for printing and no one caught that issue.

that's impossible. the system is made so that stuff like that never goes out if it's a mistake or an oversight.

as an advertising copywriter myself, if my brief was to write something in that little box that's supposed to say how "people need steam to play this game", one of the first things i would have asked would be "why do they need steam? this copy is on the cover of the game's box right? the one with the game in it? wait, are they supposed to install it and verify it on steam or something? can someone clarify because this doesn't make sense? "

if the writer beth used never bothered asking that question, and just decided to "herp derp ill jus write dis as you says it", he/she should be fired.

if the writer DID ask and the end result was fo4's box, then that information was left out on purpose, and everyone working on it knew about the download requirement and chose not to let the consumer know.

the former is easy to rectify. the second is grounds for a class action lawsuit.

This is a bunch of bull. If it was solely about curbing piracy, then they would be requiring us to download only 1 or 2 GB not about 20 GB. This is all about reducing packaging costs. How difficult is it to swap between multiple DVDs to install a game?

Skyrim did the same thing, most PC games today do not even HAVE a disk release.

Boo hoo, nothing is going to change, and disks are going away. the fact they even HAD a disk of any sort is kind of a surprise.

Look at all the experts with their opinions, wonder how many are actually true.

Cant believe people are also getting in the Law in regards to this, just a damn big joke now.

If you hate the idea of digital downloads, get the idea that you will eventually be a much smaller minority. That should save some crying in the future

Why do I have the feeling OP exactly knew what he was buying? Even if you're based in Alaska, I simply do not believe the OP wasn't capable of figuring there's not enough room on one DVD for ~30GB. I also don't believe he wasn't capable of getting decent information before release. He probably also knew about Steam, and how software is saled these days. I believe this is more of a general yell of frustration, because the OP deliberately and against his better judgement, bought something that isn't the way he wanted it, in believe it would be like he wanted it.

It is how it is...move on, have fun, enjoy the game and join in to complain about the stupid key binding and barebone UI development...

Unlikely, if he's like me then he buys games rarely. I use Steam mostly and haven't bought a hard copy of a game since Neverwinter Nights 1. I had no idea games were being sold on disk and could be stored on 2 or 3 floppy disks.

how can you figure out that the package only consists of one CD before purchasing it and opening it?

x-ray vision? or super heightened senses that makes you able to differentiate the weight of what the package should be if it had multiple cds within compared to one?

or from the forums after some other poor sod had already done it and warned someone about it?

oh wait. is it time travel? please tell me you know the secret to reversing time. cos i want that.

what a strawman.

it's not the digital download that people are getting upset about. it's the lack of information anywhere other than this thread that lets you know that the CD in the CD box you bought doesn't actually contain the game.

The game was available in a stable pirated form before it was released in the US. My co-worker had beaten the story before my purchase was playable. That same co-worker had beaten Skyrim's main story and finished the civil war a week before my purchased copy was released. It's a joke that these companies do anything to prevent piracy. What you quoted seems a flat out lie. "We're doing something weird because pirates." /meanwhile pirates had already beaten the game.

But as said, the problem is not that the game is download-only. It's that Bethesda offers what appears to be a full physical release, which does not say a hefty dowload is required. It only says a free Steam account is required to play. People buy physical releases either because they don't want to, have trouble with, or can't, download full games from Steam. Bethesda offered a physical release that gives no indication that the game isn't in the box, thus causing said people to buy a game they had no way of knowing they couldn't use (or would be required to pay more to their ISP for going over their bandwidth limits to download what was supposed to be in the box).

If Bethesda didn't want to offer a disc release for PC, they could have simply not offered one (seriously, what's the point in offering a "physical release" that requires the game to be downloaded anyway? or is the idea to svcker people in that didn't want to download, but once they got home and discovered the disc was incomplete would do it anyway because they've already got themselves invested into playing the game?). At the very least, it should be clearly marked on the box that the game needs to be downloaded and may incur extra data/bandwidth charges.