Electronic Arts, one of the giants of the game world, has come to the fore with claims that it will be bought by Amazon in the past months. Later, he announced that he wanted to radically change the game world with the “design your own game” system. The company also replaced the Origin application, which has infuriated players for many years, with the EA application that it has been testing for a while.
Today, he shared information that will deeply upset the users who buy physical copies of the games and collect them by collecting them. According to the statement, EA will no longer sell physical games in most of Europe.
Saying goodbye to game CDs
According to EA’s statement, the company will completely and permanently terminate physical game sales in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Scandinavia, which have the largest game markets in Europe. In the statement, it was stated that all games are included in this new system and games such as FIFA and Battlefield will only be sold digitally. It was stated that this digitalization, which started in certain countries in the first place, will soon spread to the whole of Europe and then to the whole world.
Although EA has stated that the standard games will not be sold in boxes, it has not made any statement about the fate of the collector’s editions. Many collectors, on the other hand, are aware that the days of boxed games are slowly over.
So why will the games only be sold digitally?
When we look at the best-selling games in recent years, we see that almost 80% of all games are purchased from digital platforms. While the game world is slowly turning to digital platforms such as Steam, EA, Game Pass and Epic Games, boxed game sales are decreasing day by day. Digital game purchases, which peaked during the pandemic, became more attractive to both users and game companies alongside physical purchases. In particular, the purchase rates of physical games do not even come close to covering CD, box and printing and distribution costs.
After this move of EA, the eyes were turned to the game industry. We may see similar statements from other companies in the near future. It seems that the days of buying, collecting and displaying boxed games for many players who have been playing games for a long time are slowly getting behind.
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