Dan Houser shrugs at physical media — then admits he loves it

“I love physical media.”That’s Dan Houser cutting across his own colleague at San Diego Comic-Con 2026, seconds after having just spent a whole answer explaining that he holds no particularly strong view on the matter. Which says plenty about how knotted this debate has become, even for the people who made the games sitting at the heart of it.The answer he gave before he changed the subjectIGN put the question to the Rockstar Games co-founder at SDCC 2026: does he, personally, have a stake in the physical-versus-digital divide? Not especially. His concern is that the people who do want a disc are able to buy one.”I don’t know that I care, but if people want that, I think companies should provide it,” Houser said. “But I don’t know that I personally care.”I also think that, as critical as people are of digital releases, the ability to update and fix problems in games has been really useful for the quality of games.”That second point tends to get glossed over whenever the row reignites. Patching is what digital handed the industry, and Houser isn’t going to pretend it didn’t.Why anyone’s asking him this at allThe timing is hardly coincidental. PlayStation has spent weeks in the news cycle since confirming it will halt production of new physical games from January 2028.Rockstar is squarely in the frame as well. Grand Theft Auto fans are still absorbing the news that GTA 6 will not arrive on a disc when it launches this November.So the man who co-created Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption fields a question about discs. Reasonable enough.The airport argumentLazlow Jones was on the panel too. He spent years alongside Houser at Rockstar before departing to join him at Absurd Ventures, and his take split the difference — which is likely where most of us genuinely sit.”We all have that sort of feeling when you get that copy, and you put the disc in the console, but I also have to say I really like being at the airport and going, ‘Oh, cool. I can download some quick games to my Steam Deck for this 12-hour flight.'”That’s what’s been interesting. We’ve worked in digital together for a lot of years, and then making a physical product of a comic book is a different creative process but also just really fulfilling to have a physical thing you can say, ‘Look. We made a thing.'”That’s when Houser broke in with his four words about loving physical media, and the indifference he’d led with suddenly rang a lot less true.He’s got companyHouser is far from the only developer to have spoken up on this. Nier creator Yoko Taro, Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima and Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot have all shared views recently.As for Houser, he now runs Absurd Ventures, the studio he set up and formally unveiled in 2023. Comic books very much included.