PS5 Fans Furious As Microsoft Ships DOOM: The Dark Ages with Just 85MB on the Disc

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before

Image: Push SquareUpdate [Sat 10th May 2025, 9:15am]:

As was the case with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle earlier in the year, Microsoft and Bethesda have short changed PS5 fans yet again by shipping physical copies of DOOM: The Dark Ages with virtually nothing on the disc.

Confirmation comes courtesy of Does It Play, who were contacted by a supporter with screenshots of the upcoming first-person shooter. Insultingly, just 85MB of data is included on the Blu-ray, with fans forced to download the rest of the game. Needless to say, you cannot play the title at all without a hefty download.

This situation is actually reminiscent of the Game Key Cards that have been causing controversy on Nintendo Switch 2, although at least the nature of those is made clear and obvious by the box art. Here we just get a small ‘Internet Required’ disclaimer on the cover.

Personally, we’d like Sony to prevent publishers from doing this. While we can understand there’s a cost associated with cartridges, Blu-rays cost pennies, and if publishers want to release a physical edition, they should be forced to put the entirety of their v1.0 game code on the disc.

Original Story: DOOM: The Dark Ages, the upcoming medieval shooter from maker id Software, may be the latest Bethesda outing to enforce a download on its boxed copies.

You may recall Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s physical edition also required a significant download, with just 20GB of data included on the disc.

Well, early copies of the new DOOM game include an ‘Internet Required’ disclaimer on the box, and while there’s conflicting information at the moment, some are stating that the title simply won’t boot without a download.

This situation is different to a day one patch, by the way: typically, Blu-rays include a fully playable version of a game, so you can at least insert it into your PS5 and play it without ever connecting to the Internet. In this instance, only a small portion of the game’s data has been burned onto the disc, with the rest requiring a download.

It’s obviously not massively dissimilar to Nintendo Switch 2’s Game Key Card situation, which sees you purchasing a physical cartridge which merely acts as a gateway to download the game. The difference here is that cartridges do genuinely have sizeable costs associated with them, while Blu-rays cost pennies.

All in all, we’re really dissatisfied with Microsoft’s support of physical on the PS5. Games like Forza Horizon 5 haven’t received boxed releases at all, and assuming DOOM: The Dark Ages is the same as Indiana Jones, then Bethesda may as well have not bothered either.

None of this is good for future game preservation.

[source x.com, via resetera.com]