Maybe there’s a middle ground, where instead of just letting a flood of people all download your game on day one, the publisher like pre-downloads it onto some sort of physical media, and then sell copies of that physical media. That way people could get into the game immediately when they receive their copy without having to wait on the same 6 hour download that a million other people are also waiting on, that download activity doesn’t interfere with the bandwidth of people trying to play the game, and the physical availability puts a sort of temporary artificial limit on how many people can play at once.
People can already get into the game immediately when they receive their copy, just with a vastly simplified distribution mechanism called “download”. You might not remember all the issues physical distribution mechanisms had back in the day.
Maybe there’s a middle ground, where instead of just letting a flood of people all download your game on day one, the publisher like pre-downloads it onto some sort of physical media, and then sell copies of that physical media. That way people could get into the game immediately when they receive their copy without having to wait on the same 6 hour download that a million other people are also waiting on, that download activity doesn’t interfere with the bandwidth of people trying to play the game, and the physical availability puts a sort of temporary artificial limit on how many people can play at once.
People can already get into the game immediately when they receive their copy, just with a vastly simplified distribution mechanism called “download”. You might not remember all the issues physical distribution mechanisms had back in the day.