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> The inability to resell or lend something is priced in

Why are the physical versions of games the exact same price as the digital version? Shouldn't the digital version be much cheaper because you can't copy, lend, or resell it?

Ditto for all forms of media

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Probably due to pricing parity agreed upon by physical retailers. You're right in that they should be cheaper, but Walmart/Gamestop et al. were smart enough to negotiate that early on in digital distribution. For the same reason, many early Steam releases was not beholden to this and thus cheaper.

Nowadays, there's enough market capture that they can simply charge the same amount due to greed, though. But there are early reasons for that.

The digital version is also substantially more convenient than the physical version.

> copy

Crucially, most retail physical media is not copyable (by most people). If it were, the market landscape would look very different.

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