I dont think so. Some games are so broken that you need to download a patch in order to play it, but people have been bitching about that for a long time(and rightfully so)

PC has been more or less a digital primary and then digital-only platform for decades. 

The PC-ization of consoles has been the trend since 2013 - initiated by Sony and Microsoft, and arguably as early as the original Xbox. 

GKC probably will be a moot issue in ten years because Nintendo, like everyone else, will be full digital. 

That's simply because (1) back then physical was a bigger share of sales and digital was smaller, while sales have shifted to digital since, and (b) cos a game card is more expensive to manufacture than a disc.

It's not "almost all" Switch 2 games that are key cards either, as being a modern system many titles are actually just digital anyway, like say Silksong.

Now that I think about it there has been small amount of data on the physical release and you had to download a large portion of the games....on Switch 1.

You can look it up on Does It Play, a lot of last gen games require a download to be played at all. 

It wasn't as prevalent back then as it is now, but it's not a new concept. Heck, a ton of Switch 1 games only have part of the game on the cart with the rest having to be downloaded, going as far back as Doom in 2017.

I agree the whole thing is a mountain-out-of-a-molehill. There's a certain apocalyptic energy that runs through the discourse on GKCs that is not helpful. I imagine it's just a lot of collectors (myself included) sensing the beginning of the end of physical media and trying, in vain, to fight back.

But I also think it should be obvious why no one wants these things. If I buy a game digitally, it's there at my fingertips 24/7. If I buy a game physically, I can admire it on the shelf and find comfort in its permanence (yes, it will decay over time, but so will all of us). If I invest in a GKC, I have chained myself to a piece of plastic (the downside of physical) and have to deal with download speeds and storage space (the downside of digital).

It blew up on Switch 2 because MOST "physical" games don't have the data stored in the cart/disc. This is exacerbated by Nintendo gamers being more physical biased, and Switch 2's storage being too small.

Microsoft received notably more criticism than Sony for having more Xbox games not being stored in the disc. And now Nintendo is getting a lot more criticism than either of them for obvious and uncomplicated reasons.

Awareness was boosted hugely by it being official and having a name though, something for people to focus their anger on.

If they'd been an official thing called "game key discs" on Xbox/PS, guarantee there would have been much more controversy and pushback before. As things were, it was mostly on the downlow on those systems.

Just to clarify the above, I'm not disagreeing with any of this, it's true, I just think one of the key factors in this issue gaining widespread awareness was that it became something that was done openly and officially, as opposed to something publishers did on the sly.

It requires having good points to balance the bads to something to be controversial, that is not the case, it's just plain bad all over.

You'll own nothing and you'll be happy with it.