Some Call of Duty discs contain basically no data at all.

>Game disc only contains 1GB of data (In some regions it has even less data on disc) forcing you to download a 40+GB patch (at launch) and another 40GB of data packs in order to play the game.

https://www.doesitplay.org/game/Call%20Of%20Duty%3A%20Modern...

That is a nice site. I was first made aware of this issue with Switch games. Some publishers will cut content on the memory card and force a download to stop their game requiring a card with larger capacity which costs more.

These aren't even new games that it is reasonable to expect to be patched. Re-releases like "Spyro Reignited Trilogy" require a download which is just a cost saving exercise.

It’s also an plausible anti-leaks measure - if the gamecard contains everything needed to play the game, the game can easily leak early when the cards are going to retail.

If a day1 patch is required, then it can’t leak until that patch is available?

day -1, not day 1

Actually it’s called day one patches. Similar to zero day vulnerabilities (in the name sake only) these patches are usually required to play day 1 of the game…

example: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/why-you-should-want-d... (Only linking this article for it’s referencing them as day one patches)

another example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_video_game_terms#d...

I wonder how many publishers use S3 for this. Because, at current retail (quantity 1) prices, a bigger card looks like it will pay for itself after a whopping two downloads.

I assume that the game downloading ecosystem uses something that’s actually cost-effective. At AWS prices, it seems like it would be basically impossible to be a profitable publisher of multi-gigabyte games at any scale.

Each of the console manufacturers operates their own CDNs, typically. Valve do too on PC.

They often have some kind of proof-of-ownership (like a license ticket) required to download game data or updates, too.

That also has the effect of preventing pre-release leaks, though as we've seen some of Nintendo's own games shared on the internet weeks before release I don't imagine it's a big part of the reason for requiring a download.

Tears of the Kingdom leaked a week or so early from the cart, full game.

Yes, that's one of the games I'm referring to.

if the cart/d isn’t playable as-is, you only bought a license, and eventually the game itself won’t be available.

but that’s ok, the next console will likely have a re-re-release.