Game key cards (and discs for update-reliant or online-focused games) are in a weird place. The main reasons people claim to care about physical games are “preservation” and “used games” and those don’t actually overlap.

From the preservation standpoint, GCKs and discs that don’t have the whole game are both pretty shit. There’s an argument that buggy broken v1.0 is better than nothing and that’s objectively true, but neither of these things provide actual software preservation in the face of (for example) storefront closure or account banning. GCKs and all discs are useless for preservation of online games, of course: what are you doing with that Highguard or Concord disc? A further argument is that even a complete game burned to a disc that relies on DRM isn’t truly preserved as it won’t outlive the death of the DRM boxes themselves, when every Nintendo 3DS dies you’re not going to be able to play that pristine physical copy of Pokémon Moon. Used physical games themselves are also a physical product that can decay or be damaged or lost - you can’t say that a game with a million extant discs being traded around between various people is a “preserved game”.

A completely different appeal for physical games is simply the ability to resell. Your gaming budget goes a longer way if instead of spending $60 three times to play three games, you’re spending $45 three times and also selling the games for $30 after you’re done with them. You could play ten first-party single player Nintendo games legally on the Switch for $0 if you always bought used and sold the used copies for the same price you bought them for. Game-Key cards and discs for incomplete/online-only games do facilitate this perfectly, though GCKs lose all value when the CDN of the storefront closes and discs only lose most value in this situation.

That assumes every single disc buyer becomes a person that doesn’t ever buy capcom games. Given the margins lost on each physical sale (licensing fees, manufacturing, shipping, the retailer’s own markup), as long as half of those disc enjoyers become digital purchasers Capcom has already lost nothing.

Additionally, how many millions per year are spent on used Capcom game discs? If literally every used Capcom buyer stopped ever buying Capcom products, Capcom loses $0. If any percent of those used game buyers becomes willing to pay full price (or hell, digital on-sale price), that’s more money in Capcom’s pocket to offset losing true physical media diehards.

For a console storefront operator like Sony, there’s more nuance because “Sony games” and “exclusives” aren’t direct value generators. The value they generate is in getting “give sony money for monthly subs and non-sony games machines” in customer’s living rooms. Taking the losses inherent in physical/used copies makes financial sense if it drives platform dominance. For Capcom, who doesn’t operate a storefront or platform, it’s just about how many sales, how much money per sale (changed by platform fees, disc manufacturing costs, and DLC postpurchases). A used game without DLC is $0 for capcom but is a sale. That’s worse than a pirate being $0 for capcom but would maybe have been a sale.

“Voting with one’s wallet” isn’t an action you take. “Gamers as a whole” have been voting with their wallets against disc games for over a decade. On PC, there was barely an outcry as brick and mortar stores stopped being part of the games experience. On consoles, people have been installing the games on HDDs since the Xbox 360 since actually running the game off a disc incurs atrocious load times. Gamers have accepted and paid for DLC. Gamers have accepted and dealt with day-one patches that render the data on the physical disc obsolete.

Hell, gamers as a whole chose to purchase the discless PS5. Gamers as a whole subscribe to PS+, Switch Online, Xbox Live, Gamepass, etc enough that it’s shifted the value model of the medium. “Not buying a product” isn’t nearly as much of a political statement as the wallet-vote drumbeaters think. Not buying the product is the default. Am I “boycotting” ubisoft when I haven’t purchased a Ubi game since Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time on the Gamecube? Sony’s Playstation 4 and 5 never appealed to me as a platform or product. There might be a shakeup or protest where people that do regularly give Sony (or whoever) money stop doing so, but that’s always going to be a drop in the bucket. Hell, the customers that buy physical (especially used) games for PS5, don’t buy digital and don’t pay for Plus are the least valuable customers for Sony anyway. Sony makes $0 a year off that guy where they make hundreds a year from a dude that literally just pays for ps+ and the newest COD.

The “wallets have voted” and the result for Sony is overwhelmingly “yeah, you’re gonna do just fine without disc diehards”. Games preservation purists already aren’t console customers because modern consoles are designed exclusively as anti-preservation ecosystems. The remaining reason to care about discs is the used copy trade, and that’s the same as piracy when it comes to the company. Worse, even, since there’s an entire industry and market surrounding “how to play zelda without paying nintendo” legally.

“Wallet voting” overwhelmingly rewards those that buy. Say you’re selling a $100/yr subscription service to a million people. You announce that you’re doubling the price to $200 a year. The internet gets mad. As long as less than five hundred thousand active subscribers get mad enough to cancel, you made the “right decision”. The opinion of anyone other than those subscribers doesn’t matter. The entertainment industry has reached a point of market saturation that getting more customers isn’t a feasible growth mechanism, so instead you have to squeeze the ones you have harder.

Aside from attaching DLC to the purchase, a used-game buyer is “supporting” Capcom as much as a pirate is. It’s even worse than a pirate because a lot of pirates would have never bought the game anyway but a used game buyer clearly signals a willingness to spend money on the product. Just, yknow, less money. Turning a dude who would pay $40 for your thing into a dude who’d pay $60 is a lot easier than turning a dude who’d never pay a dime above $0.

I voted with my wallet hard enough years ago that I’m no longer part of this “wallet vote”. I haven’t purchased a console game since Animal Crossing on the Switch, and haven’t purchased a physical one since Mario Odyssey - the only reason I did that was to dodge updating the console, so that I could do things Nintendo very much does not want a user doing on their console. I’ve never owned a Sony console except for a ps2, and never Xbox since the 360. My preferred platform, PC, has been used-games-free and physical-copies-free (CD keyed installers are not physical copies for any definition other than “is pretty on a shelf”) for decades, and it’s better than a walled console garden could ever be. DRM-free purchases and piracy exist on PC and gasp people still buy PC games.

If the glorified DRM key for accessing the digital game (in the form of day 1 patches and postlaunch content) finally dying is what raises awareness of consoles being a hostageware platform, so be it.

Margins exist on physical games, especially as a third party. Capcom probably takes home some ~$25 per $60 disc game for PS5, less for a $60 Nintendo cartridge, and $42 per $60 digital game on PS or Steam. Lose a full half of those 10% of players but turn the other half into digital buyers, you’re barely short of breaking even. Then consider how many used game buyers you turned into people that actually pay Capcom for Capcom games.

Plenty of customers buy physical because hey, at the same price why not? That doesn’t mean they’ll stop buying Zelda or GTA or Resident Evil when Capcom/Sony takes the option away or Nintendo makes the download cheaper than the physical object (as it always should have been).