Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain PC retail disc only has a Steam installer

You read right. Konami used a Blu-ray disc to burn an 8.78 MB Steam installer for the PC retail version of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain.

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Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is releasing this week on the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. But it appears PC gamers are getting the short end of the stick as its physical retail version only has a Steam installer burned onto the Blu-ray disc.

Twitter users graphure tweeted out their findings yesterday that shows the Blu-ray disc containing nothing more than a Steam installer weighing in at 8.78 MB. This means those who were hoping to have the game fully installed shortly after they pop in their retail disc will have to wait to download all 28 gigs.

While those with fast and reliable broadband connections may see this as a minor inconvenience, those with less-reliable Internet connections, or have tiered Internet, should be rightfully upset by Konami’s offering. A Blu-ray disc can hold 50GB of data, so Konami could have easily included all of the files for MGS5: TPP on the disc. Why it decided to burn a Steam installer on a Blu-ray disc is beyond us.

We’ve reached out to Konami to learn more about it’s decision to include a Steam installer on the PC version of the game and will proceed to update this story accordingly.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    August 31, 2015 7:37 AM

    Daniel Perez posted a new article, Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain PC retail disc only has a Steam installer

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      August 31, 2015 7:40 AM

      That's kind of hilarious. There's almost zero reason to not go digital anyway, and shit like this practically seals the deal. Do they even included printed manuals these days?

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        August 31, 2015 7:43 AM

        Insult to injury now that I see the thread about no pre-load, either. WTF Konami?

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          August 31, 2015 8:14 AM

          Additionally, I don't think blu-ray drives are that common on PCs. They could at least have put it on a DVD if they were going to need less than 10 MB...

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            August 31, 2015 8:48 AM

            As other pointed out, it's a blu-ray drive, but the disc is more likely a DVD.

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      August 31, 2015 7:43 AM

      I think this is really funny, but it also blows for the folks who have shit Internet. :(

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      August 31, 2015 8:22 AM

      Wait they seriously shipped a 50GB BD-ROM with a 9MB installer on it? What in the hell happened that they didn't do like a CD-ROM or something?

      Also has anyone verified that it literally downloads the thing off of Steam? Could it be that the game is in a separate partition/session on the disc and this is some bizarre antipiracy move?

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        August 31, 2015 8:23 AM

        I think it's just the guys drive that is BD-ROM, not the disc.

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        August 31, 2015 8:29 AM

        It's just a DVD (or maybe CD). We're back to the same issue when DVDs were "new" and publishers were afraid to sell games on them and instead elected to put them on 5 CDs. Bluray drive penetration is pretty low so a bluray disc would not be ideal, and it would probably take 4-5 DVDs just for this game. Now there's a third option: just have them download the whole thing! I feel really bad for people with poor internet connections. I wonder if the console versions are the same way.

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          August 31, 2015 8:49 AM

          Well we've already seen some games do the thing where they just ship a key on a card in a case. The recent C&C collection did this. You can buy Blizzard games on cards in GameStop. PC gaming has been decimated at retail by Steam so it makes sense that going forward a lot of games at retail will essentially be key cards.

          But shipping a disc with an 8MB installer on it is just comedy. I have to wonder what cross section there exists between people who would buy this game and people who would buy a game on disc to save on bandwidth.

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        August 31, 2015 8:31 AM

        i think Daniel made that up based on a misunderstanding of the screenshot. there's no way they're shipping a bluray disc for PC.

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      August 31, 2015 8:28 AM

      I mentioned this in the other thread but I think the fact they are even making a disc at all is funny. They didn't make one for Metal Gear Rising: Revengence.

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        August 31, 2015 8:52 AM

        Did they release that one as retail for the PC? Like, just a key card? Because if so this almost sounds like they heard people complaining that the game wasn't on disc and just hilariously misunderstood the intent.

        Sort of like the old joke where a woman sends her programmer husband to the store and says "Go get a loaf of bread. And if they have eggs, get a dozen." and he comes home with twelve loaves of bread.

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      August 31, 2015 9:15 AM

      [deleted]

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        August 31, 2015 9:21 AM

        If you've purchased a retail PC game in the past 5 years you'll know that is basically impossible. They are completely bare bones, no instruction manual outside of a card with your activation key on it.

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          August 31, 2015 9:30 AM

          [deleted]

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            August 31, 2015 9:33 AM

            Oh, it would be cool, but no company would ever pay staff to make something like that. Just take one look at the PC Games section at your Gamestop and you'll see why. America is 99% digital on PC at this point.

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              August 31, 2015 9:34 AM

              99%? where did you get that number?

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                August 31, 2015 9:48 AM

                99% is overstating it a lot but it is sort of true that a large % of gamers either buy everything through Steam or they're not PC gamers (i.e., consoles, mobile, etc.)

                I mean, once Steamworks retail games became a thing you basically bought a game that included a client that allowed you to purchase pretty much any game you wanted and never leave the house again. At one point I went into a GameStop and their "PC Gaming" section mostly consisted of Steam cards and a 3-ring binder of games you could buy - you told the clerk which game you wanted and they took your money and gave you a receipt with a Steam key on it.

                Not to defend Konami here but it could be that there's a contingent of people who only buy PC games retail because they do things in cash or they gave gift cards to burn or something. How many of those people have unlimited internet bandwidth I don't know but it's possible our bafflement and outrage at this is limited to us and the average person has no idea anything is wrong/different.

                And maybe there's some context missing. Maybe the box clearly states the game is download-only and the installer on the disc is just to assist those confused by Steam's website.

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              August 31, 2015 1:09 PM

              [deleted]

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