For many gamers (myself included), a video game collection used to be something you could see. Shelves filled with cartridges, discs, and colorful cases could document years, sometimes decades, of purchases. Today, that same collection may exist almost entirely behind a username and password.
As the video game industry moves away from physical media, the consequences extend beyond how consumers purchase and play games. The shift from possessing physical copies to accessing digitally licensed content raises questions about what rights consumers retain, whether they can resell or transfer their purchases, and what happens to their collections after they die. These questions implicate copyright law, consumer protection, and estate planning, and they extend well beyond video games.
For PC gamers, this is hardly a new reality. Digital storefronts have dominated PC game distribution for years, and many players have grown accustomed to libraries that exist almost entirely online. Physical media has remained a more familiar part of console gaming, but that is changing, too.
In July 2026, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced that it will discontinue production of physical discs for new PlayStation games beginning in January 2028, citing the continued shift in consumer preference toward digital media.
There are plenty of reasons to prefer digital games: They can be purchased from home and downloaded without a trip to a store or waiting for a delivery; they take up no shelf space; and switching between games can be as easy as selecting one from a menu.
There may also be economic questions worth watching. Physical games require manufacturing, packaging, shipping, and retail distribution in ways that digital copies do not. As those costs disappear, consumers may reasonably wonder whether some of those savings will eventually be reflected in the prices they pay.
But convenience is only one side of the equation.
More Than a Way to Play
Collecting is part of the hobby for many players. Games can be displayed, organized, shared, and enjoyed beyond simply playing them. Collectors may seek out special editions, preserve games from older consoles, or simply enjoy looking at a collection they spent years building.
Physical media can also provide some independence from the infrastructure behind a digital storefront. A downloaded game may often be played offline, but purchasing or downloading it, and sometimes accessing it later, can depend on an internet connection, functioning servers, and continued platform support.
And then there is ownership.
A physical copy can generally be lent, resold, given away, or passed to someone else. Digital purchases work differently. PlayStation’s Terms of Service state that content purchased through the PlayStation Store is a personal license, not ownership of the product, and generally cannot be transferred. Steam similarly treats accounts as personal and generally prohibits transfers of accounts and subscriptions.
That distinction may make little difference while a player is actively using an account. It becomes considerably more important when the player wants to give those games to someone else, or when someone must deal with their property after they die.
The difference also implicates a longstanding principle of copyright law: the first-sale doctrine. Under 17 U.S.C. § 109(a), the owner of a particular lawfully made copy can generally resell or give away that copy without the copyright owner’s permission.
Applying that principle to digital files is more complicated. In Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc., the Second Circuit considered a service that allowed consumers to resell digital music files. The court held that the service’s transfer process created new copies of the music, infringing the copyright owner’s reproduction rights. Because the first-sale doctrine does not excuse unauthorized reproduction, it did not protect those transfers.
The case illustrates how rights traditionally associated with physical ownership do not always translate neatly to digital purchases.
When ‘Buy’ Does Not Mean Own
The issue is not unique to video games.
In re Amazon Prime Video Litigation, consumers alleged that Amazon misled them by offering digital movies and television shows through a “Buy” button even though the transactions were governed by licensing agreements and access to purchased content could potentially be lost.
In 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington declined to dismiss consumer-protection claims based on that theory. At the motion-to-dismiss stage, the court concluded that the plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged that the word “buy,” regarding digital content, could be materially misleading to a reasonable consumer.
Legislatures have begun addressing the same issue. California enacted AB 2426, now codified at Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17500.6. Effective Jan. 1, 2025, the law restricts sellers from using terms such as “buy” or “purchase” for certain digital goods, expressly including digital games, unless the seller provides the disclosures or obtains the acknowledgment required by the statute.
For lawyers, that raises questions across copyright, contracts, advertising, consumer protection, and estate planning. What does a consumer reasonably understand when clicking “buy”? What rights can a license restrict? And what happens to a digital collection when its account holder dies?
What Happens to a Digital Collection?
Washington’s Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, codified in Chapter 11.120 RCW, provides a framework governing fiduciary access to digital assets.
But access is not necessarily ownership.
Under the statute, a fiduciary’s authority over a digital asset generally remains subject to applicable terms of service and other law, including copyright law. Access therefore does not necessarily turn a personal, non-transferable game license into property that can simply be passed to an heir.
The act also does not give a fiduciary new or expanded rights beyond those held by the user.
A box of old cartridges can survive its collector and be handed from one generation to another. A digital library containing hundreds of games and decades of purchases may not travel quite so easily.
Convenience and Consumer Choice
Digital distribution offers real benefits, and many consumers understandably prefer it. The concern is not that digital distribution exists, but what happens when it becomes the only option.
Maintaining physical and digital formats allows players to decide what matters to them. One may value convenience and a clutter-free library. Another may value the ability to hold, display, resell, lend, preserve, or eventually pass along the games they purchase.
As the industry continues moving toward digital distribution, the conversation should be about more than how we access the next game we want to play. It should also include what rights, choices, and traditions may disappear along with the disc. As physical media becomes less common, the question is not simply how we will buy our games, but how much control we will have over what becomes of them.
