MIAMI, June 28 -- When pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI opened on June 25, Rockstar Games settled a question fans had been quietly dreading since the game was announced. The physical edition of the most anticipated release of the decade ships in a box. Inside that box: a slip of paper with a download code. No disc, not at launch, and according to sources cited by the Hollywood Reporter, not ever.

For the person lining up at a store on November 19 with $80 in hand, what they are buying is a container for something that could have been delivered by email. That gap between the ritual of physical ownership and the reality of what the product now contains is not a Rockstar invention. The company is simply the first to apply it to a game the...