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Pretty soon we’re going to have to stop using the term ‘physical copy’ to refer to the boxes you buy at the store with pictures of video games on the front. When you pick up a plastic case with a PS5 logo and the title of a video game on the front, pay Gamestop $70, and take it home, you may think what you just did was buy a physical copy of a video game. When you crack open the case and pop out the disc, you likely think you’re holding a video game that you now own - a tangible, permanent copy of a game pressed onto a Blu-ray disc that now belongs to you forever. Unfortunately, if the disc you’re holding says Star Wars Jedi: Survivor on it, you’d be dead wrong.

It turns out the physical version of Jedi: Survivor does not actually contain the game - at least not all of it. Early copies of the game hit store shelves in New Zealand last weekend, and fans on Reddit noticed some tiny, easy to miss fine print on the front of the box that says Download Required. Apparently, after you insert the disc and install it to your system, you can only play through the intro mission before you’re prompted to download the rest of the game. If for whatever reason you’re unable to do that, then the disc disguised as a video game you just bought is useless.

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Jedi: Survivor isn’t the first game to pull this crap, it's just another example in a worrying trend over the last few years. As Kotaku points out, Hogwarts Legacy also locked physical copy owners out after the tutorial until they downloaded the rest of the game, Halo Infinite’s disc was similarly incomplete, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 didn’t have any game data on the disc at all. The physical versions of all these games are not “copies” of the game, they’re just keys you have to insert into your console to get access to a digital copy.

I want to distinguish this trend from Day Zero or Day One patches, because I’ve seen a lot of people misconstruing the Jedi: Survivor situation as just a typical patch. EA is largely responsible for the confusion here, since it calls this mandatory download a Day One patch on its website, but this is just a lie on top of a lie. Day One patches are meant to be updates that further polish the game after the point in which the physical copies are pressed, shipped, and sold in stores. While I have plenty of reservations about how often this practice is used to rush out unfinished games to customers, it’s important to recognize that Day One patches are a very different thing than selling people a blank disc and pretending there’s a game on it.

This kind of thing is a nightmare for game preservation. Owning a physical copy of a game used to be a guarantee that it would continue to exist no matter what happens in the future, but we have no such guarantee with games like Jedi: Survivor. When Sony and Microsoft end support for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in 20 years, will it even be possible to download this mandatory update? We have no way to know, but given how little respect these companies have for their own histories, they certainly haven’t earned the benefit of the doubt here.

Preservation and a distrust for digital games aren’t the only reason to buy physical. You might want to give the box to someone as a gift, or have the option to resell it later on when you’re done playing it. You may even just enjoy having a shelf full of plastic cases, regardless of what’s inside them. I have no problem with the physical boxes for Fortnite codes, because they’re clearly labeled and upfront about what they are. Jedi: Survivor and games like it are dishonest about what you’re buying.

A microscopic disclaimer that reads “download required” is meant to be overlooked, and even worse, online listings for the game - which releases in less than a week, mind you - don’t even have this disclaimer. If you order a physical copy from Amazon, GameStop, or Best Buy, there is no indication on the box or anywhere in the product description that states the disc itself does not contain the game. We cannot let this become the norm, because if we ignore it for too long, every publisher will think this is an acceptable thing to do.

If the game doesn’t fit on a Blu-ray, then it should come with as many discs as it needs to to make it fit. That’s how it worked for every game from the original Final Fantasy 7 to Red Dead Redemption 2. I understand why EA wants to save money on this, but so what? This doesn’t benefit players, and we shouldn’t put up with it.

Games are going to keep getting bigger, and it seems unlikely physical media will be able to keep up at this point. In a perfect world every physical copy would be a true copy of the game, but as someone that remembers installing all ten CD’s of Everquest 2 on my PC, I’m aware that at a certain point that just won’t be realistic anymore. When a publisher can’t or won’t include the full game on the disc, as is the case with Jedi: Survivor, the box needs to be clearly labeled and the product descriptions need to explain in no uncertain terms that the disc inside only unlocks a digital copy of the game. Anything short of that, including a teeny tiny “download required” stamp in the corner, is false advertising and should be illegal.

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