Most games these days are tied to things like Steam accounts or something like that, you have to be logged into one of those services to play, in BF4's case it would be Origin. PC games haven't had disc checks for years, as they proved to be pretty ineffective in preventing copying, as they could be easily circumvented. These days, if you do get a physical copy, you just install the game from the disc, take the disc out and let it collect dust on your shelf for the rest of eternity.