The Grand Theft Auto 6 physical edition is overpriced DRM in a box
If you spend $80 of your hard-earned income on a physical edition of Grand Theft Auto VI, you'll receive a box with a code inside
If you spend $80 of your hard-earned income on a physical edition of Grand Theft Auto VI, you'll receive a box with a code inside. The box is your standard rectangular, disc-holding shape, but the game itself doesn't come on a disc — or two — at all. Perhaps the physical part is the warm feeling you get when you manually type the code into your PS5 or Xbox Series X? It surely can't just be referencing the box, right? Anyway, at least the physical edition doesn't cost any more than the digital version, which is already raising eyebrows at $80. This isn't an unheard-of price point in today's market, but it is a shock to players who are still getting used to the $70 standard for AAA games. Nintendo has been at the forefront of the more-than-$70 movement, pricing Mario Kart World at $80 in 2025 and following that up with Elden Ring heading to Switch 2 this August. Xbox also teased an increase to $80 for its first-party games in 2025, but it backtracked just a few months later. (Classic Xbox). The writing has been on the wall for a while now, but Rockstar pricing the standard edition of GTA VI at $80 feels like a turning point. The doors were cracked, but now they're wide open, and the wave of $80 AAA games can start flooding in.
This matters because it affects players' budgets at a time when the cost of living is rising at a torturous rate — but don't worry, if you look at it from a holistic perspective, it gets worse. On a grand scale, the $80 price point matters because we're simply spending more to own nothing. The GTA VI physical edition is the clearest, most tangible example of this trend. I've said it before, but about 10 years ago, it feels like we all kind of forgot that DRM sucked. Digital rights management drew heavy consumer ire in the 2000s, as publishers started adding always-on authentication requirements to major new releases like BioShock, Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed 2 in the name of fighting piracy. Some publishers even developed their own stores to ensure every copy of Half-Life 2 was activated and official. Many titles had to regularly connect with the publisher's servers while in use, a feature that generated major glitches and sometimes rendered games unplayable. Players felt like they didn't actually own their purchased games, and there was broad pushback against DRM with awareness campaigns, petitions and lawsuits. But then broadband and wireless infrastructure expanded, downloads became more common than discs, and the number of games coming out each week skyrocketed, particularly on Steam. Players needed places to purchase and store their growing backlogs, download speeds increased, and the market leaned into convenience.
The BriefWire