The apocalypse has arrived, and it comes not with a bang but a slow, buffering circle of death. Rockstar Games, those merry pranksters who have kept us all waiting a decade for a new Grand Theft Auto, have finally dropped the hammer. And that hammer is made of pure, unadulterated digital ones and zeroes. Yes, gentle readers, GTA 6 will be download-only. No disc. No manual. No satisfying plastic clatter as you pop it into your console. Just a cold, digital transaction that leaves your shelf as empty as the soul of a used car salesman.
This, apparently, is progress. The UK games industry, already wobbling like a drunk on a unicycle, is now expected to pivot. Pivot to what? To the great cloud in the sky where all our data fugitives live? This is the same industry that gave us the joy of peeling the shrink-wrap off a new game, the thrill of the manual's smell (yes, smell, you digital heathens), and the satisfaction of trading in a rubbish title for a fiver at CEX. Now we are to bow before the altar of the download queue, praying to the broadband gods that R* doesn't decide to patch in a mandatory microtransaction for the ability to carjack properly.
Let us examine the absurdity. Rockstar, a company that has made billions from a franchise about stealing cars and committing crimes, is now telling us that we cannot even own the physical object that contains the crime. It is like going to a brothel and being told you can only watch a livestream. The cognitive dissonance is enough to make a Tory MP blush – and they blush at everything except tax evasion.
Meanwhile, the UK games industry is expected to pivot. Pivot is the new buzzword, the new 'synergy', the new 'blue sky thinking' that middle managers use when they have no idea what the hell is happening. Pivot to what, exactly? To a subscription model where you pay monthly for the privilege of potentially losing access to your entire library when your card declines? Or to a streaming service where every gunshot has a 200ms delay because the servers are hosted in someone's shed in Slough?
Let us also consider the environmental impact. Oh, they will tell you digital is green. No plastic, no packaging, no delivery trucks. But who do you think powers those data centres? Pixie dust and good intentions? No, my friends. They are powered by the tears of retro gamers and the fossil fuels we were supposed to have left in the ground. Every gigabyte downloaded is a ghost of a coal plant whimpering its last. But never mind that, because you can now steal a virtual car in 4K at 60 frames per second. The future is here, and it has a buffering icon.
The real tragedy is for the collectors, the hoarders, the people whose living rooms look like HMV's bargain bin. What of them? Their grandchildren will inherit a hard drive password-protected by a dead hand. There will be no more rummaging in charity shops for a hidden gem, no more finding a copy of 'Dog's Life' and wondering what the hell you just bought. The tactile joy of game ownership is being mugged by a polite email from PlayStation: 'Thank you for your purchase.' Thank you for your soul, more like.
So raise a glass, dear reader. A glass of the cheapest gin you can find, preferably one with a label that looks like a ransom note. Drink to the disc. Drink to the manual. Drink to the days when you could snap a disc in half if it angered you. And then queue up your download, because GTA 6 will be good, and you will buy it, and you will hate yourself for it. But that is the world we live in now: a world where the only thing more permanent than a cloud save is a hangover.
