Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is unplayable without a day-one patch

In this ever-increasing world of digital media, it feels as though no one truly owns what they buy. One of the few ways to ensure your games will remain available to you in perpetuity is to buy physical discs. Unfortunately, even physical media is beginning to become unreliable in this respect – with the upcoming Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora being literally unplayable without downloading a day-one patch.

Reddit user ‘Interesting-Squash81’ managed to get their hands on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora ahead of its global release date. Despite being a physical disc for PS5, the game launched to an impassable splash screen merely showing the game’s title and its 7th of December release date.

Even upon changing the console’s date and going offline, the title refused to launch, suggesting that it will require some form of day-one patch in order to be unlocked. While a highly common tactic for digital pre-orders, it is not often that we see a similar situation with physical media.

While it is true that nearly all games nowadays arrive with a day-one patch, players are typically able to still play whatever version of the game comes on the disc itself. What this also means is that anyone who purchases Avatar even physically will need to ensure that they have a working internet connection in order to play. Though most console owners do, there still exists a good number of players who rely entirely on offline access.

As such, it is disappointing to see physical media being co-opted more and more by game publishers, making their titles less accessible – especially in the long run.

KitGuru says: What do you think of this latest move from Ubisoft? Is it a big deal? Will all disc-based media move towards this direction? Let us know down below

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