When you purchase a physical game, you are purchasing that game, it is yours and you own it. When you purchase a digital game, you are purchasing a license from whoever you bought it from to essentially borrow it while you're online.
Thus brings up my talking point for this discussion. What happens when companies no longer own something themselves and are thus unable to continue to provide it to you.
I bring this up because we know of the tragic destruction of Tell Tale Games and for all the bad we heard come out of that disaster, what about their legacy, the games that will remain well past the demise of the company. WELLLLLLLL...............it's looking like those games to maintain that legacy, to showcase what hard work those employees put into crafting some of the best stories (or bland ones there were a few misses), will be gone forever because of licensing issues. With the company closed, all of the licenses they borrowed will be reverting to their original owners. The Walking Dead already has reverted back to creator Robert Kirkman's Skybound Entertainment, Tales from the Borderlands set to return to Gearbox & 2K, Batman to DC Comics, Minecraft: Story Mode to Mojang & Microsoft, Wolf Among Us to Vertigo Comics, Guardians of the Galaxy to Marvel, and so on. All of these properties will be returned to their owners and withdrawn from the stores. Because if you were to purchase them now it goes to a defunct company. The only way the games will continue to exist is if those companies take over and allow the sale on the stores. Which considering the work is highly unlikely.
A case in point is what happened to Marvel pulling all the Spider Man games from digital stores, so Sony wouldn't profit, and pulling the Deadpool game from digital stores so FOX wouldn't profit. The LEGO series, which is nothing but borrowed licenses has also recently seen this happen with the Tolkien estate retaking the rights to both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, thus both games can not be digitally downloaded. EVEN if you own it.
This is something that shouldn't happen, if you paid for it you should own it, but again since it is a digital purchase......you don't own it. Just like what these companies are doing, you too are buying a license to use something, thus when that license is revoked by the company for any reason the agreement is terminated. One of the true downsides to digital games, it's not even something people who only buy digitally can argue with, there's no denying that it's something that is just nonsense to happen; you lose everything when that company loses the rights to a property. Despite how much you paid for it. One of the few times that you can say the old way is the best way to go, to buy it physically, it's unfortunate that none of this will truly be able to be preserved though.
SO MAKE SURE TO DOWNLOAD ALL THOSE GREAT TELLTALE GAMES NOW, AND LEAVE EM ON YOUR SYSTEM, BECAUSE YOU'LL NEVER GET THE CHANCE TO RE-DOWNLOAD ONCE THOSE LICENSES ARE GONE LADIES AND GENTS.