Anyone paying vague attention to the PC games market has long known that it's a space dominated by downloadable titles. Still, it's a bit astounding to hear a report estimating that a full 92 percent of PC game sales in 2013 came from digital downloads, as DFC Intelligence recently told British tech site PCR.

That may sound high, even to people who haven't bought a PC game on a disc for years, but it lines up with other numbers reported throughout the industry. Last year, Payday 2 publisher Starbreeze announced that 80 percent of its 1.58 million first-month sales came from downloads, for instance. And let's not forget the scores of PC games that are totally ignoring retail sales for 100 percent downloadable releases these days, from Dota 2 to Day Z.

Download-dominated PC gaming is a newer phenomenon than some gamers might realize. As recently as 2010, analyst firm NPD was estimating that downloads made up only 48 percent of all PC game sales.

One possible reason for the sharp increase over the last four years is money brought in from newly ascendant free-to-play and microtransaction-driven PC games. In April, a DFC report on the PC games market found that free-to-play games, especially MOBAs like League of Legends and Dota 2, were driving heavy increases in overall PC game spending, pushing it above overall console game spending for the first time in recent memory.

The market for game downloads looks very different in the console space, where analyst firm EEDAR estimates that downloads make up less than 20 percent of game sales (though the group sees that proportion growing to 50 percent by 2018). Last month, EA revealed that "full game downloads" make up only 10 to 15 percent of its console game business.

Despite the download's victory on PC, few gamers seem to have given up disc-based games entirely across the industry. An NPD survey earlier this year found that only 16 percent of US gamers played downloadable games exclusively across consoles, PC, and mobile.