The digital illusion and the death of the disc.
So, Sony decided to stop selling physical editions of games by 2028, and everyone proceeded to lose their minds.
But this didn’t come out of nowhere.
There has been a slow and insidious move to have everything digitalised for several years now. This is merely the needle that broke the camel’s back.
On paper, digital media makes a lot of sense. It’s usually cheaper and it’s also environmentally friendly. There are many pros to this and we have all enjoyed being able to download a game almost instantly when it releases from the comfort of our own homes.
So why are millions of gamers in an uproar over an ecosystem they already use?
For me, the answer boils down to two fundamental principles: transparency and choice.
Let me break that down.
I grew up in the Blockbuster generation. On a Friday night, you would go out and rent a movie or a game for a specific price, keep it for the weekend, and return it. Everyone understood the assignment. All parties agreed to a temporary loan.
Sometimes, if you really loved that movie or game, you went down to HMV to buy it.
That physical disc went onto your shelf, and it became yours. All parties agreed to a set price and you owning the game. I have a mammoth physical collection spanning years from the PS1 to the PS5. The PlayStation One is twenty years old, so I have twenty years of collecting games, and I still own the games I paid for.
Let me reiterate, we still own the games we paid for after over twenty years.
Why the switch to purely digital is dangerous: we pay for games and movies online. We agree to a specific price, the game or movie now belongs to us. But does it?
Consider the recent statement released by the PlayStation Store regarding its video library:
They will be deleting content that was paid for. In essence, they are reneging on the previously agreed-upon terms; you buy something and you own it. But in one fell swoop, they are making a unilateral decision and revoking that agreement and there is nothing you can do about it.
It is the corporate equivalent of HMV coming around to my house one day and picking up all the DVDs and games I have spent years collecting stuffing it in a bag and walking out of the door.
Personally, I don’t think there is enough outrage for such a frightening concept and flagrant disregard for our own autonomy. We really need to stop saying that players are buying games when, in reality, they are just renting a license to play them for an unknown time frame until the studio decides for us that we can no longer have it. There is not enough transparency from these studios, which is leading to so much mistrust.
Which brings me to my second point choice.
Yes, I have a lot of physical media, but I also have a lot of digital media. I am fond of indie games and I like to support devs, who rely on digital storefronts. My Steam library is packed, all digital, of course. I also have some digital games on my consoles. Because I like the option of both.
With what PlayStation has announced, it has taken away our agency, our right to choose which one we want and in doing so, has created a Monopoly which will have a ripple effect.
When a single platform controls the marketplace, they control the price point. With no physical discs to create a competitive second-hand market, no CEX, no GAME, no HMV, platform holders can dictate whatever arbitrary price they want. If you want to play, you will have no choice but to comply.
The ripple effect of this can and will have lasting consequences for years to come.
In my previous article: Player vs Dev – Who controls the game? I spoke about the data proving how gaming is slowly becoming unaffordable, priced far out of reach for working-class demographics. When digital monopolies artificially inflate the cost of gaming, entire demographics will be priced out of the hobby entirely.
The follow-on effect for this is that if working-class families cannot afford the barrier to entry to play games, the industry loses its most diverse future pipeline.
We risk losing an entire generation of working-class developers simply because they were priced out of a formative childhood experience.
As you can see, one decision can and will create a myriad of problems for our present, future, but it also affects the past. That is the preservation of a rich and important history of gaming that will be lost. Games deserve the same preservation frameworks that we currently give to the music and film industry.
As more and more titles rely entirely on backend servers, they become completely unplayable the moment a publisher decides to switch them off. Take for example, Anthem! Campaigns like Stop Killing Games have brought this crisis into the spotlight, and the solution requires a serious look at technical and commercial realities.
For multiplayer titles, there aren’t any easy or straightforward fixes. I read a lot of outlandish suggestions when I was conducting research for this article, and one of the suggestions that I saw on a Reddit post stood out to me: publishers should be obligated to release the server-side source code to the public upon sunsetting a game, giving the community the tools to host, mod, and preserve the project. This may of course call into question licensing issues and ownership but there has been workable paths to community preservation with projects like Destination Home and City of Heroes: Homecoming.
We need to explore practical, balanced frameworks and more than anything we need transparency. If we are buying a game, then that game should belong to us forever, and not left to the whims as to when it will be deleted by a corporate juggernaut like PlayStation. That uncertainty breeds mistrust and currently is splitting the gaming industry in two. What’s more, it is bad for business, the gaming industry as I have always maintained, is like the youngest sibling, looking up at the older siblings like the film and music industry.
What gaming has that other industries struggle to replicate is community. A community is the ultimate driving force that keeps a game alive. It is the driving force that has meant some games have been created in the first place. Publishers shouldn’t fear that passion; they should embrace it and work with the very people who care enough to ensure your game’s survival. A transparent lifecycle policy isn’t just an ethical duty, it’s a smart business decision that builds the trust required to keep players investing in the future.
I am Annabel or creativelyanzy as I’m known online! I am the founder of Melanin Gamers: a gaming community that promotes diversity and inclusivity in the video games industry, with a special focus on content creators; whiles also providing a safe space for people of colour to come together and game
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