I cannot find any traces of boxed copies of BL3 for pc in any store. Is it going to be digital only?
Its digital only. Even things like the Diamond Loot chest the game itself will be a product code so your physical copy is still actually digital.
It’s rare for pc games get an actual physical release. The last one I got GTAV. That came on like 6 discs.
I know that boxed versions could be bulky and annoying by the installation point of view, but… maybe I’m old and outdated, but I still love all my boxed games I can install when I want on my pc, without the need of an online account. I love my collection, with Half-Life 2 boxed version, Borderlands 1 and 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. call of Pripyat and Clear skies, the Darkness 2, Bioshock 1, 2 and Infinite, the Witcher 1,2, 3, Skyrim, Crysis, F.E.A.R., Shadow warrior and so on.
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This would be massively preferable to a purely digital copy for I too am old fashioned.
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Yeah I was hoping for a box version as I live rural and a download would take over 24 hours. Worried epic will work over a couple of nights.
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If I recall correctly, the size of games are getting to be too large for CD’s. Still, a boxed version with perhaps a USB drive would have been a nice idea.
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They’ve been too big for CDs for a while! Just poking around my collection:
- Red Dead Redemption 2 (base game) - 93.1 GB
- Assassin’s Creed Origins - 49 GB
- HALO Wars 2 - 42 GB
- Fallout 4 (base game) - 35.8 GB
- Borderlands GOTY Remaster - 14.6 GB
- Red Dead Redemption - 7.4 GB
- Subnautica - 7 GB
- Oblivion - 6.4 GB
- HALO Wars (base game) 6.2 GB
- Fallout 3 base game - 6.1 GB
- Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy - 2.1 GB
Well the installers are generally smaller than the game directory after install. However it’s getting to the realm of needing to use Blu-Ray or a USB drive to distribute media and most PC’s don’t have Blu-Ray.
CD was something like 650-700MB
DVD around 4.7GB
Blu-Ray can hold close to 50gb if it’s dual layer otherwise we’re looking at about 25GB. Cant recall which is used for current gen consoles.
However I think another part of the reason for migration from physical data storage on PC was the situations in the past where you install the game… then wait 4hours for patches and updates to download and install. With the digital distribution its possible to update the actual installer so that the game installed either at it’s latest version or close to it.
Um, yeah, that’s why nearly 20 years ago, they switched to DVDs for distribution of physical copies! And once we got into the modern era of game code being dozens of GB, they switched to Blu-Ray for distribution! 
Look, it’s pretty simple. There is STILL a big Digital Divide in America, with lots of folks in more rural states still lacking access to adequate broadband internet services, because “there aren’t enough potential subscribers to make the deployment costs worth it”. 
For that reason, PC and console games must ALWAYS be released with the option to buy the game on an actual optical disc format that contains the ENTIRE game code on disc with NO large downloads necessary. There are still a great many people that need that option. The fact that Gearbox and 2K aren’t offering that option for PC players is absolutely inexcusable.
It isn’t really inexcusable. That’s just your opinion on it.
Modern games have frequent updates and patches. Sometimes ranging into full on large content additions offered for free.
Part of what you probably aren’t realizing is that when games hit shelves on retail the developer frequently already had a large update to download because they shipped the physical copies using a version of software that could easily be over 1 month old by the time the crate’s left the factory and during that time the dev’s were working fixing bugs or tuning features that seemed off during their beta’s. And there isn’t a way to pre-update the boxed copy after it shipped from the factory to let the people on dial up skip having to download after installing it in the first place from the media.
The problem is deeper than everyone thinks … deleting physical copies of the games and forcing us to use launchers with online connection game producers are slowly taking away from us every bit of control over the games we have purchased. It’s only a matter of time and we, as a gamer community are losing our rights to play games when we want. Think about that.