I used the loose term “aggressive DRM” to mean any kind of DRM that can at some point in the future prevent you from playing the game.

In any case what I mean is that when you buy a digital game, if it is DRM free you own the game, and if it employs some of these DRMs you don’t. And by “you don’t own physical games any more than you own digital games” I mean that the same is true for physical games. If they have such DRM then you don’t own them.

I bring the The Crew example because it is not so obvious to the casual person, once the servers were shut down you could not play the single player portions of the game either. And it’s something I’ve even encountered IRL, when I chatted with friends about that fiasco, some were disappointed to learn that their disc was worthless. Of course none were expecting to be able to do multiplayer activities, but not even being able to play the single player campaign was unexpected to some.

I made the statement about DRM being the only deciding factor because I do think it is. And the examples you provided are examples of that, either straight up requiring a connection to play or requiring a download from the servers to get the content. That’s what separates a game you own and a game that has been licensed to you.

In any case my initial comment was made because when these kinds of news are shared there is always the “that’s why I buy physical” comment. Which IMHO is a false sense of security. Even while buying physical it is important to check what kinds of DRM are implemented in the game, because you might not actually own it either. And physical is not an airtight solution, specially since there is nothing stopping publishers from implementing such online only requirements in physical games (and some already do).

It doesn’t apply to any situation with these kinds of aggressive DRM, like other games such as the latest Gran Turismo. Or games that don’t come full on disc, the OG release of the Spyro trilogy comes to mind (thankfully that’s been fixed).

In any case my point was for people to check each case before assuming physical is safe from publisher meddling. Since in many cases you don’t own much more than a fancy installer in a pretty box.

Another problem is that physical is a red herring. You don’t own modern physical games any more than you own digital ones, as the famous The Crew shitshow has demonstrated. It doesn’t matter if you still have the fancy disc, if you can’t even go past the main menu when the publisher decides to shut down the game. In the end DRM is the only deciding factor, not if the game is digital or physical.