I wanted to ask people on this site why physical disk drives matter so much to some gamers to the point they would literally give up gaming entertainment due to the format the game is on.

A bit about myself. I grew up around physical media, I am quite a huge collector, was gaming during the NES/Atari days, my house is literally cluttered with physical media. I understand there is an attachment to physical media, it's nice looking at a box and booklet when buying a video game.. back in the bronze age of gaming. However, physical media today? I don't understand the attachment. Physical media today offers literally no benefits to the consumer outside of a plastic case, and the booklets are no longer included, just a disk inside the case which requires a day one patch and an online console to play the games. Its not the same anymore. 

During the late 90s, I started gaming on a Windows PC and when Steam arrived in the early 2000s, (No body liked it at the time) become one of my favorite platforms. Not because the games were better but how easily accessible the games are on Steam. Easy to buy games, manage games, update games, store games, no more placing hundreds of Gaming Apps on your desktop. The moment Valve improved the quality-of-life issues with Steam, there was no turning back. Majority of companies have followed Valves approach with digital media which has now become the more popular choice for games today.

So, my question is why physical media is that important to gamers today when the benefits of digital media is far superior to physical media. So, based on the below examples, why is physical important? If you are someone who likes selling your games, I can completely understand your views, however for those who love their games, you won't be selling them. As for the case and disk, video games today are now sold with bare bones effort of offering little to nothing to the consumer, no booklets or any inside goodies outside of a disk which requires a working laser to read and most require an online connection and some physical media don't even store the full game on the disks. 

Benefits of Physical

- Own the Game Case/Disk

- Resale Value

- Game Sharing

Benefits of Digital 

- Takes up zero room in your house

- Does not deteriorate over time of use

- Does not rely on a working Disk Drive to play

- Cannot be lost or stolen

- Cannot be damaged

- Zero Maintenace on the condition of the game

- Universally played on multiple devices (Disk or Diskless systems)

So, based on the above, why is physical important, to the point you will quit gaming due to a format which offers no onscreen advantages to the player? 

Gee, what a not-biased and short-sighted opening post.

Some people are all about physical. Personally, I am not. Most of my purchases are Steam, via digital. Digital is amazing. Only place I am physical is Nintendo because their ability to handle digital is subpar at best.

Digital is also amazing for retro games.  Like Terranenigma was never released in the States...  however, thanks to digital I can play it.  

Edit

I'll add the industry is going full digital.  Just a matter of time.  I will shocked if the ps6 has a disk drive.  Physical is dying, albeit slowly.  

That's a bold statement, can you back that up? According to this site, most physical games do not require online or downloads to be fully played: https://www.doesitplay.org/

I agree that physical has lost some of the benefits it used to have, indeed some games do require downloads or internet, and you anyway need to install all the content on the console. When you could just play off the disk, you saved a lot of hard drive space. Still today, with physical games you get the ownership. Digital DRM is still a nightmare, and what happens if Steam ceases to exist or Sony shots down the PS4 servers?
I think GOG is the only one who actually offers a digital alternative that is superior to physical.

You also missed another benefit of a disc drive. It can play other physical media, such as movies. The digital market place for movies is an even bigger nightmare than for games, a 4K UHD Blu-ray does not require any internet or installation and offers better quality than the digital alternatives.

I bought a PS5 with a Disk-drive since I wanted to be able to watch 4K movies on the system as well as play games.

For gaming I think digital is fine. I buy most of my switch games digital. But I still buy a few games on physical media for PS5 and switch, the reason being that they often are cheaper for the consumer as well as the resell aspect. Games that keep their value long like first party Nintendo games and special editions I still buy physical and games that I'm not sure I will enjoy so I try them out and sell them if I don't like them.
But digital should be cheaper, the cost of creating the games and distribute them is much lower for digital versions if that was shown in the price I would go all in digital because of the convince. But higher initial price and no resell make digital a much worse economic option.

Another plus for physical media for people with friends: you can borrow a game from them/ lend one to them.

I wonder if these physical-only people are also buying music CDs and Blu-rays instead of using Netflix or Spotify.

Never used Spotify but I do have a lot of DVDs/Blurays. A lot of CDs esp for gaming OSTs. A small portion came from CE's but a bunch I also bought. Most recent was Xenoblade 3 4 disc set. It's kinda fun to play modern CDs on a SEGA Saturn. New music old console.

I also still support physical media but see even the main advantage of ownership go away. The other day Microsoft had an issue here in Europe and Xbox services were offline. I wasn't even able to play an installed game with the disc in. My Xbox Series was a useless brick for 24 hours. Yes, if it had been set to "my home xbox" prior it would have worked, but it just shows you that in this day and age, even with physical media you are at the mercy of the console maker. And what reselling value will a disc have if the console it was supposed to play on does not work anymore because the company which made it dropped out of the console business and doesn't uphold the servers anymore which are required for check-in. In that scenario your physical games are just as useless as the digital ones.

It seems that it partially depends on the region. For example, in my region the majority prefer digital media. First, the majority of people in my region are playing on PC (moreover, my region creates one of the biggest PC gaming traffics according to Steam statistics). But even if talk about console gaming people who play consoles they also tend to buy digital games. One of the biggest reasons is the thing that there aren't many physical copies of games in my region. There're a lot of discs of new AAA games and so on but it's hard to find smaller stuff for the last 7-8 years (something like F1 games, LEGO games, some popular indies which have physical Media). Moreover, people there don't often resell discs. There isn't a big market of used games. So, many gamers in my region have already gone full-digital in tearms of buying.

Nevertheless It's understandable why in some other regions people try to avoid going full-digital. Especially somewhere in North America. Many gamers in NA collect physical media for years and they have big libraries of PS4 and XO video games and therefore they can use them on current PS5 and XS. Besides some gamers are scared of losing digital media in case of some launchers like Riot Games app, Epic Store, Steam or MS Store in the long term might be shut down.
Also there's a rumor going out that PS5P will not have a disc drive and some people don't like this decision. But if we look at the video games roadmap then it's obvious that it would happen. 30 years ago there were 99% of games on physical media. Then Steam and Xbox Live appeared, then some MMOs went full-digital, then there were digital exclusive indie games, later there were early access games in Steam, then first cloud gaming services, then some smaller games from publishers lost physical media, and then something like AW2 or BG3 didn't have physical stuff on day one. It was predictable where it all went. Even physical single-player video games today need patches to download for a comfortable walkthrough (Days Gone is obvious example of such project).

So, going full-digital in a short perspective is a nightmare for some people but this thing is coming.