Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s Physical Copies Require an Internet Connection

Looking forward to playing the new Ubisoft open-world game the moment you have it in hand? Then you’ll have to wait because it turns out that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora requires a downloadable patch to play. And, as discovered by one would-be player, that download won’t be available until launch.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has joined an ever-increasing line-up of games that can’t be played directly from disk. Like Halo Infinite, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Hogwarts Legacy, and several other titles, only a chunk of the game is on the disc.

Try to play the game, and at some point, either immediately or shortly into the game, you’ll be informed that a download is required. And that’s it. You can’t go any further till you download the rest of the game.

The current cover for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora states that a download is required, but as Reddit user Interesting-Squash81 discovered, even with the disc legally in their hands (we’ve had games arrive early), the game refused to download the new content.

“What’s the problem?” you might be wondering. “Don’t all games have Day One patches these days?” Yes, but that’s not the same thing. Day One patches, meaty as they can be, usually contain bug fixes, tweaks, and so on. But they’re not compulsory. Take your console offline, and you can play most titles straight from the disc, but that’s not the case with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

So, the game Interesting-Squash81 paid $60+ to own is essentially useless until Ubisoft flicks a switch at their end. It could be that the game is too large to fit on the disc, as has been the case with some recent releases. But in an age when games get delisted, and a physical copy can be the only way of preserving them, it’s not a great look.