No, Half-Life 2 came out as physical media. The controversy was that you had to have a Steam account to activate the copy. Which, when you think about it, is not a whole heck of a lot different than what’s going on here. But Steam has basically institutionalized the use of a platform to access games rather than simply having a physical copy for yourself. Which is why I’m glad companies like GOG exists.
The major difference here is that this game is a console only game. And typically with major console releases you would be able to take your physical copy and put it on a different machine and play on that instead if you liked. Whereas you can’t do that now. You download this game to your console and that is your copy. It is tied directly to your account. Which is essentially how steam works. Which is why I find it absolutely hilarious that Rockstar is locking out platforms like Steam because of their concerns over people hacking the game and distributing it.
I sincerely hope somebody finds a way to crack it in less than a year. These fucking companies need to get kicked in the balls a couple times.
Except BYD cars. One of the reasons the US government is so furiously keeping them out is because their technological superiority to all American cars, including Tesla, would destroy the current American car market. All that and they are ridiculously cheaper.