“I love physical media.”
That’s Dan Houser interrupting his own colleague at San Diego Comic-Con 2026, moments after spending an entire answer insisting he doesn’t have strong feelings on the subject. Which tells you something about how tangled this argument has gotten, even for the people who built the games at the center of it.
The answer he gave before he changed the subject
The Rockstar Games co-founder was asked by IGN at SDCC 2026 whether he personally cares about physical versus digital releases. He didn’t really. What he cares about is that the people who do want discs get them.
“I don’t know that I care, but if people want that, I think companies should provide it,” Houser said. “But I don’t know that I personally care.
“I also think that, as critical as people are of digital releases, the ability to update and fix problems in games has been really useful for the quality of games.”
That second half is the part most people skip past when this fight flares up. Patching is the thing digital gave the industry, and Houser isn’t pretending otherwise.
Why anyone’s asking him this at all
The timing isn’t an accident. PlayStation has been stuck in headlines for weeks after confirming it will stop producing new physical games starting in January 2028.
And Rockstar is right in the middle of it too. Grand Theft Auto fans are still processing the confirmation that GTA 6 won’t ship on a disc when it launches this November.
So the guy who co-created Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption gets asked about discs. Fair enough.
The airport argument
Lazlow Jones was there too. He worked with Houser at Rockstar before leaving to join him at Absurd Ventures, and his answer landed somewhere in the middle, which is probably where most of us actually live.
“We all have that sort of feeling when you get that copy, and you put the disc in the console, but I also have to say I really like being at the airport and going, ‘Oh, cool. I can download some quick games to my Steam Deck for this 12-hour flight.’
“That’s what’s been interesting. We’ve worked in digital together for a lot of years, and then making a physical product of a comic book is a different creative process but also just really fulfilling to have a physical thing you can say, ‘Look. We made a thing.'”
Then Houser cut in with his four words about loving physical media, and the shrug he’d opened with stopped looking quite so convincing.
He’s got company
Houser isn’t the first developer to weigh in here. Nier creator Yoko Taro, Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima and Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot have all offered thoughts recently.
Houser, for his part, is now at Absurd Ventures, the company he founded and officially announced in 2023. Comic books included.
