the physical media only containing some of the game files, requiring a download to play
Fallout 4 did this like a decade ago (and probably wasn’t the first). It came with a DVD that had like 5GB of data. The rest had to be downloaded.
It was a fucky situation because those of us who bought the Pip-Boy Edition but had slow Internet couldn’t play the game on day one, we had to download the whole game when we got the game in the mail. People who paid far less for the digital version were able to preload it and play on day one. I found a torrent for the preload (not the game and not cracked!) and put it on my computer. So when I put the DVD in and entered my code, it went to download it, found the preload, and just signed off on all of it, and I was off to the races. But that wasn’t how Bethesda intended for me to play. They intended for me to have to wait for several hours or the next day to play the game I paid for.
Fallout 4 did this like a decade ago (and probably wasn’t the first). It came with a DVD that had like 5GB of data. The rest had to be downloaded.
It was a fucky situation because those of us who bought the Pip-Boy Edition but had slow Internet couldn’t play the game on day one, we had to download the whole game when we got the game in the mail. People who paid far less for the digital version were able to preload it and play on day one. I found a torrent for the preload (not the game and not cracked!) and put it on my computer. So when I put the DVD in and entered my code, it went to download it, found the preload, and just signed off on all of it, and I was off to the races. But that wasn’t how Bethesda intended for me to play. They intended for me to have to wait for several hours or the next day to play the game I paid for.
So yeah, nothing new there.