GTI Racer: When Physical Media… isn’t.

I drive a VW GTI. My son drives a VW GTI. I have owned many VWs over the years. I bought GTI Racer for the PC. The box is in good condition. The disk is in good condition. But even though I have a physical copy of the game with all the bits, I don’t actually have the game.

GTI Racer outsmarted me good.

GTI Racer, complete in the original packaging

I found this at the Retro Game Shop down in Newington (Connecticut, for those of you with inferior Newingtons). With games this old (it was originally published in 2006), I wouldn’t have been entirely shocked if I’d gotten it home and it just… didn’t run. With all the GTI love in the family, it was going to be worth the chance that it would run.

But check this out… this should have been my first clue.

Disk and “manual”

That serial number. Sure looks like a digital download code, doesn’t it?

The disk contains nothing but an installer for Steam. That’s it. That’s all that is on the disk.

What happens when you try to install.

There’s a couple of other installers — “instmsi.exe” attempts to install it for Windows 95, and “instmsiw.exe” attempts to install it for a version of Windows meant for Europe, I believe. I couldn’t get either to work, even in compatibility mode.

GTI Racer doesn’t actually exist in the US version of Steam, anymore. Old comments documented a history of it coming and going from the Steam store — almost certainly because it is (was) a licensed game, and their license ran out.

So, all those people who bought the game legit — that game is gone. They have the disks, the game is gone. I have the disks, I never got to play it.

The game is available on pirate sites, but even I have enough sense to stay far, far away from those.

So, that’s the story. I like buying games on physical media because I can share them, I can sell them, I can just admire them on my shelf. I can do what I want. But GTI Racer broke that contract by selling a useless disk, and a one-use-only Steam code.

Thanks, GTI Racer. I just wishlisted Forza Horizon 5. I have confirmed the presence of many GTIs. It coulda been you, GTI Racer. It coulda been you.

2 thoughts on “GTI Racer: When Physical Media… isn’t.”

  1. I have a “Boxed Copy” of the first Guild Wars 2 expansion, Heart of Thorns. All that’s inside it is a slip of paper like the one in your illustration with a code for the game. It doesn’t even have the faux disc. I bought it on pre-order from Amazon knowing full well what would be in it because I wanted the box to go on my shelf. I would buy all my digital downloads for games I want to remember I played in that format if companies would make them. I wish my Amazon pre-order of New World was going to come through the mail in an empty box instead of as a Steam code by email.

    I wouldn’t try to sell it on to someone else after I’d used the code, though, or after the game had closed down. That’s just fraud.

    • Buying games from retro game shops, especially PC games, is always going to be a crap shoot. But this one just hurts somehow.

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