With physical media, piracy still happens... but there is intrinsic value for many collectors to have the actual "thing".
With digital only content, there is nothing to own, so you are trusting entirely on people feeling morally obliged to pay for content; once that's not even an option, it becomes really hard to argue against straight up piracy. Nobody is going to pay a premium on the second hand market to get a hard drive with pre-downloaded content tied to someone else's account.
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I bought a game-related thing today: a brand new 8-Bit Link amiibo!
This will go perfectly with my 8-Bit Mario amiibo, and be a great replacement for my "pee stick" Link. (That one was a gift, but is kind of an ugly sculpt. Ok, this one is kind of ugly too... but in a nostalgic and humorous way.)
My daughter said that Link's big nose reminds her of Jughead.