It's going to vary by game (Gaming)

by CyberKN , Oh no, Destiny 2 is bad, Thursday, March 13, 2025, 18:43 (12 hours, 32 minutes ago) @ Cody Miller

There's always a day one patch, so what's on the disc is never the game you can or want to play. What can I do with my Destiny and Des2ny discs? Nothing. Nothing at all. Except listen to the music on the main menu.

It's true, always-online games don't have any way for you to preserve them via physical media, but that's just their nature. There are still a lot of other games (that don't ship broken on day one) that I can feel good about buying physical.

Also, I've been burned by digital purchases too many times; My preference now is to at least have a thing I can resell or gift if I don't like it.