This comic is factually incorrect.  The game doesn't "become real", so to speak, when the physical games arrive at stores, but rather when the stores are allowed to sell them.  Release dates aren't a concession digital media has made to brick-and-mortar retail.  It's simply a concept that has been around for a long time, admittedly due to physical distribution methods, that instead of stores selling them whenever the delivery arrives, they should all wait until a set date when hopefully every store has them, so that no stores (or customers) are disadvantaged or confused by a ragged release. 

The point is, if you want to blame something you'd have to blame the entire concept of a "release date" that isn't "when the game goes gold".  (i.e. when the game is done.  For physical games this is when they can start pressing discs).  I would argue that "going gold" is more theory than fact for computer games anyway, regardless of the distribution method.  What Penny Arcade is arguing for, IMO, is essentially the Minecraft system, where there is no functional separation between the beta and the "real game".  I don't know whether that would be a good thing or not, but in any case, it's certainly not the simple "OMG retail dinosaurs holding our games hostage" that it's made out to be.  Especially when I am 100% sure they will have done patches in the interim. 

And yes, I'm aware it's a comic.  But -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- they often do genuine rants in them, especially when accompanied as this one was by Tycho's text in the News section, included below. 

"It’s entirely true for me, and for Gabriel, and perhaps even for you; there’s seven point six gigs worth of wholly inert Diablo 3 dormant on one of our fixed disks.

Clearly, it’s not the most important thing in the universe.  I imagine we’ll continue to respirate, performing gas exchange and generally maintaining consciousness.  It is dumb, though, and weird; not the respiration, that’s something you should all be doing.  I support that part one hundred percent.

No, it’s the idea that we have to go through all these gyrations even though scarcity and its crude attendant necessities have been (for a not insignificant portion of the gaming public) relegated to history.  If anybody could break this thing, it would be Blizzard, right?  If anyone could just say, “Hey, it’s 2012 alright, and nobody can play our game offline anyway because we won’t let them, and boxes are made of cardboard and are not in any way magical, so go ahead and install your game” it would be them.

It is certainly the case that there are crevices, holes in the earth, where one may not feel the light of the healing Web upon their skin-flesh.  Those people are welcome to purchase physical objects.  People of the Console must certainly remain People of the Disc, at least for the time being.  But there’s no console version of Diablo, and there’s no secondary market to war with on PC games.  There is no fiefdom to sustain, short of an ancient retail edifice the future will rapidly transform into a chain of mall-bound mausoleums.

For my part, to the extent I even have the opportunity to do so, I don’t have any intention of purchasing PC software at retail again.  It’s animism, all this box worship; it’s down home and it’s hokey.  But we’re still governed by this nonsense, even when its clearly a holdover from some prior phase of evolution, like “being afraid of cats.”"

What do you think? 

Hm, good point.

It is true that traditional retail puts a lot of limits on emerging digital retail, but I hadn't considered that traditional retailers have been putting limits on each other for quite some time.

Still, there's a much wider gulf between Steam and Wal-mart than there is between Wal-mart and some rural local reseller. And the limitations often show up not just in availability, but also pricing and sometimes content. It's frustrating when the full potential of a new technology can't be tapped for fear that it will usurp the old ways.

Especially when the new technology already comes with its own limitations. Digital is already limited by its lack of a physical artifact and its non-transferable license, why should it also be hobbled by physical retail's pricing and availability? Nobody has (yet) locked game discs to a single user account because doing otherwise would be unfair to digital retailers.