Summary
Digital gaming has dominated the market, as many of us are skipping physical releases altogether. Despite this,physical releases are necessary for game preservation, since digital-only titles can be lost forever if they’re delisted, orthe store that they’re hosted on is taken offline.
But increasingly, we’re seeing that even these physical releases are useless. Many major titles release on a disc (or in Nintendo’s case, a cartridge) but don’t include all of the data, meaning you need an internet connection to download the rest, so the game could be rendered unplayable eventually.
Now, we have another example withDoom: The Dark Ages. Those who have already nabbed physical copies are reporting that only 85 MB of the game is on thePS5disc, whereas the full game size is 85 GB. A PS5 game disc should be able to hold this, but for whatever reason, players will still need to ensure they have an internet connection to start playing.
Doom: The Dark Ages Physical Copy Appears To Only Include 85MB Of Data
Claims have started circulating online that the disc has very little data on it. One person whoshared a photoof them downloading Doom: The Dark Ages shows that the download size was just 328 MB onXbox Series X/S.
Ironically, Xbox claimed to haveset up a team focused on game preservation last year.
Some are also sharing what they claim to be official game cases, showing a warning that the game requires an internet connection. Polish news outletPPEsays that this has been verified (as spotted over onr/GamingLeaksAndRumours). While some stores do not have this warning, Best Buy does contain a disclaimer that an internet connection is required.
At the very least,the game is reviewing well. It currently sits at a score of 86 over on OpenCritic, making it one of the best-performing games in the series.
