Software vendors have been increasingly moving away from selling products in physical retail stores. Instead, many valuable and useful of computer software products are now found online in the form of downloads direct from the manufacturer’s website or in large repositories for software downloads. This saves the manufacturer from overhead, the consumer from hassle and the environment from the needless waste that product manufacturing and packaging can produce. Unfortunately, due to malicious programs and some deceptive software practices one must be knowledgeable and vigilant about computer security in order to take advantage of online software. In addition to this, keeping backups of your files and data becomes more important than ever as the software that you purchase and install will have no hard copy.

Digital distribution has become particularly popular in the case of games. By digitally distributing software such as games, companies can focus more on development time and testing rather than physically creating and distributing their products. This leads to a better end product for the consumer. While complex programs such as games and development kits traditionally necessitated a hard copy medium due to their large sizes, high speed internet access has made transfers of these types more feasible.