'Don’t kill the disc,' 200,000+ gamers tell Sony

It’s been one week since Sony announced that they’d be ceasing physical disc production of new games releasing for its PlayStation consoles from January 2028. And it wouldn’t be the least bit hyperbolic to say that the news has gone down as well as if the company announced that its bosses would be sneaking into your house and turning your fridge-freezer off in the night.

Gamers have raised concerns about what the end of disc copies means for game ownership. Without a physical copy of the game, we’re beholden to digital libraries whose platform holders are free to revoke access whenever they choose.

It also has obvious repercussions on high street retail businesses, and on the used game market, which would essentially cease to exist.

Back in 2013 PlayStation scored a huge marketing win against the Xbox One when it released this tongue-in-cheek ‘tutorial’ video on how to share your used games on PlayStation 4, in which former SIE boss simply hands over a boxed copy to former VP of third-party relations Adam Boyes. 13 years later, that video takes on a new significance. It isn’t Xbox Yoshida and Boyes are mocking anymore, but the modern PlayStation business.

A petition titled ‘Don't Kill the Disc: Tell Sony to Keep Physical PlayStation Games’ arrived on change.org shortly after, and it’s already ticked past 200,000 signatures.

“When the market leader ends the disc, the rest of the industry follows,” reads the petition. 

“A disc is a real game you own. You can lend it, trade it, resell it, gift it, collect it, or pass it down to your kids. A box with only a download code is not the same thing. It is a digital license in plastic packaging.

“You do not own it. You are renting access that can be revoked, and people have already had purchased movies deleted from their libraries and games pulled from sale weeks after launch.”

The petition’s creator Jade Pearce also highlights the potential impact on jobs within retailers, distributors, manufacturers, warehousing and logistics, and warns many small businesses  would be negatively affected.

For Sony’s part, the PlayStation manufacturer says it’s simply responding to “shifting trends in consumer preference”. Over the last decade digital sales have exceeded physical, and some estimates place the ratio at about 80:20 in digital sales’ favour, though some gamers have pointed out that the way Sony reports sales skews towards digital anyway, since all DLC and microtransaction revenue count as digital sales, not just copies of games.

Recently a Nintendo financial report revealed that for the first time in the company’s history, digital sales had overtaken physical.

Sony does have a basis for claiming that consumers have a preference for digital games, then, but has perhaps overlooked the importance of the two existing in parallel.

It’s unlikely that a petition will stop a multinational’s business plans in their tracks, but the volume of signatures does show what a big issue this is to gamers, and it puts pressure on Sony and its business contemporaries to reflect consumer demand.

Just a few days before Sony’s bombshell, Rockstar announced that the boxed copies of Grand Theft Auto VI would not contain a disc, but simply a download code for a digital copy of the game. That didn’t go down well either.

Those two announcements happening in quick succession have brought about a line in the sand moment, with gamers hoping that if they can dissuade arguably the two biggest players in the market from ditching discs, the rest of the industry will follow suit and true ownership of their games will remain intact.

Get the popcorn out – this one’s going to roll on for a while.