Dan Houser Says Companies Should Offer Physical Games If Players Want Them

A Simple Enough Idea

Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar Games and the creative force behind the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption series, has a fairly straightforward take on the ongoing physical versus digital media debate: give people what they want.

“I don’t know that I care, but if people want that, I think companies should provide it,” Houser told IGN at San Diego Comic-Con 2026. “But I don’t know that I personally care.”

The comments are modest, almost diplomatic, but they land in the middle of a genuinely heated moment for the industry. PlayStation made headlines recently after confirming it will cease production of new physical games starting in January 2028. Meanwhile, Rockstar itself has confirmed that Grand Theft Auto 6 will not ship on a disc when it launches this November, a decision that has not gone over quietly with portions of the fanbase.

Houser did acknowledge one genuine advantage of the digital shift. “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,” he said. That is a fair point, even if it does not do much to comfort anyone who prefers a shelf full of cases.

Lazlow Jones Sees Both Sides

Also at SDCC was Lazlow Jones, who worked alongside Houser at Rockstar for years before following him to his new studio, Absurd Ventures. Jones gave a more personal answer, one that probably resonates with a lot of players who grew up putting discs in consoles but now travel with a Steam Deck.

“We all have that sort of feeling when you get that copy, and you put the disc in the console,” Jones said, “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.’”

Jones also brought up a different dimension of the physical media question: actually making something tangible. Absurd Ventures has been working on a comic book, and Jones noted that the process of creating a physical product felt meaningfully different from purely digital work. “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.’”

Houser jumped in at that point with a four-word summary: “I love physical media.”

A Conversation That Is Not Going Away

Houser and Jones are not the only developers who have stepped into this conversation lately. As reported by IGN, Nier creator Yoko Taro, Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima, and Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot have all weighed in with their own perspectives on the shift away from discs and cartridges.

What makes Houser’s comments interesting is their source. This is someone who helped build one of the most commercially successful game franchises in history, a franchise whose next entry will arrive digitally only, and his response is essentially: if your customers want something, make it available to them. There is no grand statement there, but it is a notably consumer-friendly position from someone whose former employer is currently contributing to the very trend being debated.

Houser founded Absurd Ventures and officially announced the company in 2023. Whatever the studio is building, it is operating in an industry mid-argument about what it even means to own a game.