This is the end, the beautiful end my friend of AAA games for AAAspro.  I can no longer be the gamer I want to be. I have not been able to play Call of Duty for three years now due to the large downloads. Bethesda is on my banned list, and their first person shooters and RPG's have been an important part of my gaming life.  But Doom 2 (2020) was a complete cluster when it came to actually trying to play the game.

A couple of days ago I bought Rage 2 from Amazon, because I like games that didn't quite make it into the cool kids bus.  As reflected in the forums, I then realized it's a Bethesda game, so the physical copy I just bought, which used to mean I owned the game and could play it off the disc, but now means I essentially bought the right to download the game, and then patch it.  This is not an optional patch, nor is it small, it's 27 gigabytes and the game will not start without it.  Forget the fact that I'll never use it's online features.  If I just wanted to play it on my console (which I think I still own, I have not read the EULA updates from Microsoft) and enjoy the game with the launch glitches or other foibles I can't.

In no other medium would this be acceptable. Imagine buying a Blu Ray disc and it not allowing you watch it until it patched.  If not for the demise of physical media, I'm sure we would get to that point the other day.

My daughter was holding a wooden block the other day as if it were a Gameboy.  I asked her waht she was doing, she said she was playing a "bideo game" which prompted me to ask, "Which one?" She replied, "Rocket League, but it's still uptaking (updating)". I hope they figure it out by the time she wants to be a gamer, because for me right now, other than indy games and games from Japan (which somehow amazingly can be made well enough the first time that they don;t need constant updates) are my only choice.