The service allowed Atari 2600 owners to use a specialized cartridge to connect through a phone line to a central server and rent a video game for 5–10 days. One of the first examples of digital distribution in video games was GameLine, which operated during the early 1980s. History 1980s īefore Internet connections became widespread, there were few services for digital distribution of games, and physical media was the dominant method of delivering video games. According to study conducted by SuperData Research, the volume of digital distribution of video games worldwide was $6.2 billion per month in February 2016, and reached $7.7 billion per month in April 2017. Some platforms may also serve as digital rights management systems, limiting the use of purchased items to one account.ĭigital distribution of video games is becoming increasingly common, with major publishers and retailers paying more attention to digital sales, including Steam, PlayStation Store,, GAME, GameStop, and others. These platforms, such as Steam, Origin, and Xbox Live Marketplace, provide centralized services to purchase and download digital content for either specific video game consoles or personal computers. To facilitate the sale of games, various video game publishers and console manufacturers have created their own platforms for digital distribution.

Currently, the process is dominated by online distribution over broadband Internet. This process has existed since the early 1980s, but it was only with network advancements in bandwidth capabilities in the early 2000s that digital distribution became more prominent as a method of selling games. In the video game industry, digital distribution is the process of delivering video game content as digital information, without the exchange or purchase of new physical media such as ROM cartridges, magnetic storage, optical discs and flash memory cards.

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