Current process is very simple and direct, and you can go from seeing a game on Steam to installing it in under a minute. That is a huge win for customers and publishers both. I do wish there was still a way to replicate it, and I do laud the few game developers who do put their manuals on Steam, as the service definitely offers it.
Now it's one standard dvd-case sized box with one sheet of paper and a cd... or not even a cd, but just a download code.
The good thing about CDs is, that you can archive them and use them even after 10, 20, 30 years, you cannot do so with steam, if they decide to remove that game or when eventually steam disappears. On the other hand, many games don't even work anymore without an internet connection and some backend service (that'll disappear soon), even single player ones.
I am not aware of any case in which the game was removed from Steam and made unavailable to those who purchased it.
I have several games in my Steam library where they stopped offering for sale and I can still download and play.
I also have one game I can download but not play since the publisher took the backend servers offline. Steam is still hosting the installer.
Physical games or a model like Gog ensure you will be able to play the games in the future. Digital games where you can't transfer the offline installer to any platform you want is trading convenience today for a guarantee you will buy or pirate it in the future.
Also, fundamentally the issue of copyright is a government enforced artificial monopoly. It's ultimately up to to the governments whether you can "own" any digital media in the future. Hypothetically, the governments could come to take your physical media, and the only thing you can do to defend your rights is with arms, hence the US's fixation on their Second Amendment.
They could be acquired or go under just as well and I doubt that most people are keeping backups of all the installers.
But unlike a disc or cartridge you can have it backed up in multiple places, more similar to family photos.
For those that buy games on Gog, what has been your strategy for backing up the installers? It seems they only make the last few patches available for download. Do you download every patch, or just the installers?
Of the two, which is a greater impact? I know of many games with bugs, some even showstopping ones and can't think of any game that I want to play "as released" because the patch makes things worse.
Speedrunners, for instance, often prefer very specific releases of games, because they rely on glitches that have since been fixed.
Sometimes the latest rev a dev shipped before falling off the planet has game-changing behaviors, like stripping all the licensed music because you lost the license.
We live in an era of extremes now. You either get an all-digital experience, an anemic cartridge/disc only experience, or a lavish, $100+ omake box from someone like Limited Run Games with a crapton of extras that the vast majority of people never actually see or use in-person, because paradoxically the people who can afford the lavish deluxe boxes are also the people who will never open them out of fear of ruining the "collectible" value.
I miss the era of the middle-ground, in which a Standard Edition came with a physical game, case, and manual, and the Collector's Edition maybe contained a metal tin instead of the standard plastic case.
Even for games I really like, where I might be encouraged to get a collector's edition--I don't think a freaking card game included with my videogame to extract more dollars from me[0].
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Unicorn-Overlord-Collectors-Monarch-P...
Most people will play the game when they buy it, for some time... in modernish times, the cd/dvd will be used only once (no one expects you to keep the cd in the drive anymore when playing), so the disc should be good for a decade+, much more than most of the modern game services stay online, and requiring them even for single player games is a scam.
Where have you been living? Big-box releases of PC games have been dead for at least 10-15 years now since digital downloads like Steam took over and people stopped queuing en-mass for midnight launches of physical copies.
Only special editions still come in boxes now but those are mostly for AAA games and for enthusiasts and collectors of the franchises as they come with a hefty markup.
Ironically, I don't have my Half-Life 1 Anthology box, because it was huge.