not making the full game available for digital download just cuts off so much of your playerbase. That's actually ridiculous behavior. All this is gonna do is make people wait for the dump of the file and play it that way.
It’s seems so far, after seeing how it’s being handled, that it’s in the Modretro marketing conditions that the devs can’t make a digital version available. It’s been this way with almost – if not all – games in the Modretro catalog.
Although I’m also voting for a digital release, it seems it’s very unlikely to happen as far as Modretro’s distribution practices are concerned.
The publisher seems to think that a digital release will irremediably result in a huge drop in sales, since it can ease sharing and thus piracy to their eyes. They want to control the flux of money, hence why the keep the games at a high price, physical only, and don’t shy to adamantly strike any site that dare post dumps of "their" games. In that regard, since releasing digital equals no sales, it’s not surprising (although unfortunate) that they do what they do.