This means you can't pass the game around to your friends or sell it afterwards, which completely ruins the purpose of physical media imo. I mostly play PC these days so this doesn't affect me, but it's a disappointing direction for console games. At least they could've used an empty disc that has proof of ownership.
EDIT: Bethesda has confirmed that only the PC version won't include a disc. Physical versions of Xbox will include a disc. Whew.
We don't own media anymore
I never thought I'd write something like this but by pirating it and downloading it on our hard drives, we come closest to what we used to know as 'own'
That's the main reason I pirate games. I sent this picture to some of my friends and they all replied with "yeah, they're right, physical copies are a waste of resources"