Hacker News Reader

I've read somewhere that it wasn't always the case that something worked flawlessly on physical media.

Things are way different now.

Indeed. The old MacAddict magazine shipped a CD with every issue. The CD contained loads of shareware/games/utilities/productivity software etc.

The CD also had a folder named "updates and patches" where you could find installers for the latest bug fixes of the most popular MacOS software.

CDs bundled with monthly magazines was a valid conduit for getting patches to users at the time.

Some 360 games shipped with console updates as well. Required to be applied before you could play the game.