The bloating of the PC/Console game store

[WarLocke]

Guild Wars is establishing, I think, a bridgehead in the land of "it's all online, even buying the game.  Who needs a damned disc?"  Didn't Half Life 2 do something like that as well, with their Steam download schme?  Or do I have that wrong?
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On the one hand, this whole 'sell it over teh intarweb' scheme is good because it means I can actually get a game if/when I want it. The Babbages in my local mall has been slowly but surely shrinking its PC section in order to cram more console crap into the store, and I can easily see a day when they eliminate their PC section entirely.

On the other hand, what happens if I buy a game online and then have to reformat? Or my hard drive just dies? Having a physical disk with the data is a nice thing, too. Argh. :(