I'm a big fan of physical media... but to clear it up, you can't always see disc rot by looking at a disc. For sure, if you can see it, your disc is screwed, but it can be minor enough that it is unnoticeable until the machine tries to read that specific part of the disc.
That said, reasonably cared for disc should last many years. I still have CDs from 25+ years ago that play fine. And lordy... I took good care of my CDs in school, but for sure did not treat them like hospital tools.
The irony of any physical vs digital debate is that all digital relies on the physical. Be it company keeping physical servers operating or us players keeping a physical console working (Do any 360s still work without aftermarket parts? 🤣). Meanwhile, the physical side of things is so easily damaged, digital copies with backups and archival copies is the only sure-fire way to preserve this stuff.
All things considered, the video game media is a relatively new art form and it's astonishing how many games are "lost".
https://lostmediawiki.com/Category:Lost_video_gamesKeep in mind, we can't even agree on the date that Super Mario Bros. released in the US. I applaud efforts by actual preservationists and hope to see laws introduced that still protect the rights holder while protecting the art as well.
On an aside, how many shitty ROM hacks of Famicom games have probably been lost to the void. That would be an amazing archival project, dumping and cataloging all of those 7,000,000 in one Famicom-on-a-chip units. Rerez would lose his mind.