With the rapid development of the digital economy, the Chinese game industry has become the world’s largest game market in recent years, overtaking the US. According to the 2021 China Game Industry Report, the actual sales revenue of the Chinese game market reached 296 billion yuan, with a 6.4% year-on-year increase. Game products are typical representatives of digital and physical product forms. Given the popularity of the platform economy, the match between distribution strategies and sales modes of game products has received increasing concern. Distribution and sales strategies of different game products are often distinct. In reality, publishers decide the distribution versions of games (boxed vs. digital vs. mixed versions), and retail platforms choose the contract modes matching the game products (reselling vs. agency contracts). Thus, an important issue for publishers is choosing the type of distribution strategy (i.e., single distribution or mixed version). For retail platforms, when publishers choose to distribute the single version of game products, a meaningful endeavour is to determine the type of contract mode that will be markedly beneficial. For the mixed version of game products, retail platforms must decide whether the same contract or different contracts should be reached between them and publishers. This study focuses on the preceding research issues and constructs a four-stage game model to explore and reveal the matching strategy between the game distribution version and contract mode.By taking a supply chain, composed of a publisher, a retailer and consumers, and focusing on the field of game products, this study chooses game product distribution version as a decision-making issue. Specifically, the current research considers the single version product distribution (i.e., digital and boxed versions) and mixed version product distribution (i.e., digital and boxed versions are distributed simultaneously) and deeply explores the interaction between the publisher’s game product distribution version and the retailer’s contract mode selection on the supply chain. It includes the discussion of the same contract of the mixed version products and also that of the different contracts of the mixed version products and the comparison between the two. Firstly, we investigate the retailer’s optimal contract mode strategy that considers three scenarios: the publisher 1) only distributes digital game products, 2) only distributes boxed game products or 3) simultaneously distributes digital and boxed game products. Secondly, we use the prediction of retailer’s contract strategy and comparison between the possible distribution-contract matching combinations as bases to examine the product distribution strategy most beneficial for the publisher. Lastly, we utilize numerical simulation to analyze the matching equilibrium consequences of game product version and sales contracts between the publisher and the retailer on the supply chain.According to the sequential decision-making order of the model, this study uses the reverse derivation method to solve and discuss the model. Results indicate that in most cases, the publisher will considerably benefit to simultaneously distribute boxed and digital game products. Particularly, when the commission rate is relatively high, the optimal action for publisher is to only distribute digital game products. When the publisher only distributes digital versions of game products, retailer will take the agency contract to match it. The reason is that for the publisher, by distributing only digital game products can he controls the retail price of game products based on the agency contract. Doing so prevents the overall demand from falling sharply when he distributes the mixed version of game products and retailer adopts reselling and agency contracts for digital and boxed games, respectively. Lastly, when the publisher simultaneously distributes two versions of game products, the four matching strategies of retailer may become the system equilibrium strategy. This strategy is affected by the commission rate, additional value and cost of boxed game products and the proportion of consumers who own the boxed game equipment.