PlayStation to end physical disc production for new games from January 2028
Statement from VGHF director Frank Cifaldi on the discontinuation of physical PlayStation media, and the closure of the PS3 and PSP digital storefronts.
Video Game History Foundation478Apologies, we for got the alt text! Here it is.
A Clump Of Mutant Bacteria74"what baffles us is what the industries expect us to do about it" they expect you to stop trying to preserve things and record history it makes it harder for them to push trash when you show what they used to make it makes it harder to destroy things when you have records
TAHK042Tbh half my opinions on this for the last however many years has come from y’all posting stuff like this, keep up the good work!!
bigzmily2001.bsky.social15This is why i hate this entire situation. For me it's not that not owning physical media is the stinker, it's the fact we make it harder and harder to preserve video game media. The issue is almost EVERYONE is talking and seeing video games as a product. But it's not. It's a form of digital art.
star ⭐14Not to be that person, but isn't it the Vita storefront, not the PSP? Also really good breakdown on the actual issues facing preservation. No discs sucks on an emotional level, but having a disc doesn't ensure having a game anymore, and I appreciate that distinction here.
Ronin12They expect us to piss off and take it.
Ela Bambust 🏳️⚧️ (alleged transsexual)67If you told me there are people are work trying very hard to bring down the AAA games market from within like a kind of Video Game Palpatine I'd probably believe you at this point
Retro Blast48The future of gaming if the suits and shareholders have their way is that you'll own nothing and ask for even less. Don't support that bullshit. Speak with your wallet. It's the only voice they can hear.
ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories36our friends @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social comin' in hot on what the the ESA should be doing as the game preservation crisis accelerates: "Everyone agrees this is a serious problem but the ESA has repeatedly opposed the efforts of cultural heritage institutions to reform digital copy protection laws."
Joseph Knoop3Proud to always support @gamehistoryorg.bsky.social and their stance adds important nuance and call-to-action for preservation efforts. If any media have additional inquiries, you can reach me at VGHF at oneprstudio dot com.
HerpDerpWolfBlitzer3Time to jailbreak my PS4 Pro before that gets left in the dust
effervescent empathy🏳️🌈stochastic solipsism🏴Free Palestine leftoid2media made unavailable should legally enter the public domain
Sal2"asking museums to download a copy of Grand Theft Auto VI and hope it'll run in 50 years is not a preservation solution."
Chels2Not even a week ago, PlayStation announced if you purchased certain films through their VOD service they’ll be removed. You do not own anything that is purely digital. bsky.app/profile/cult...
Teuvz2The truth is, the industry doesn't believe video game is an art form. To the bosses, games are just products that make money for a while and are then scrapped. Why bother preserving them?
Sony has announced it will stop making physical PlayStation games in 2028 Response from the gaming community:
Caleb Webb62Because games are no longer about ownership, it is "leasing a license". They can fuck off with "it's cheaper than physical media", that's a scapegoat. They just don't want you to own anything
Stig & The Grumble25Think I will stick with physical media. Guess PS5 is my last console.
Luke17When ownership becomes impossible, piracy becomes moral.
🌙 𝕹𝖎𝖙𝖊-𝕺𝖜𝖑🦉15The end of ownership. No matter what corporations say, you do not own digital downloads. They can be removed in the blink of an eye. Your continued access relies on a lifetime subscription the price of which altered at their convenience. This is technological feudalism.
tabofsunshine.bsky.social13Good luck trying to play your digital games when the Internet goes down or slows to a crawl. It's always been about control and the ability to control the money. This will be a nightmare in Japan.
OtakuNoRico 🇺🇦🇵🇸13Like they say, if buying something means I don't actually own it, then Piracy is completely justified.
Ivy J🪬🏳️⚧️6This is actually the broad plan for all consumer goods. Why give the consumer any form of ownership when you can just bleed them forever?
Cassie Grace2I’m gonna send a white lady email, just watch me
Jeremy Duffy2What would ever be the point of buying a PlayStation if I don't have physical media? I can just play on a computer instead.
rory o uo2guess i'm done buying playstation games period then! i won't buy a console without a physical drive uwu
Sony: We're taking away digital movies you bought. No refunds. We're not making physical PlayStation games anymore. We're killing digital games on PS3 and Vita. ...why should I get a PS6 when it comes out then? If you want an expensive digital only gaming device, get a PC!
linuxnerd48Ever since the PS3 and 360, consoles have been trying to be PCs, but with a tightly controlled ecosystem and no non-curated customization. The PS3 was the last console worth more than a bucket of spit, but Sony blew it when they removed the Linux desktop and backwards compatibility.
NightSkye27 🏳️⚧️42So your games can disappear without compensation and the planned PS6 and next Xbox will be a paperweight by 2050.
𝓔𝓻𝓲𝓷∘₊✧˚ 🌺 🌱🦋24Yeah as it stands I will not be getting a PS6 and I’ve been here since PS1
Han22Don’t forget, you actually own your game on PC. GOG and abandonware games will stay at your hard drive. Your internet’s down and the world is ending? Well you still can play those games.
Sarkis Zaroukian18They used to make fun of Microsoft for this kind of thing. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSI...
Dan 🔵🌊🇺🇸12I've been a PC gamer my entire life, owning a smattering of consoles here and there, but PC has always been my jam. And it always feels like the right choice to me.
David And the Cube4Yeah good luck to sony on that plan
Visions of Hope3Babe, wake up. A Steam Machine use case finally dropped.
Hot,Rod-642This is why i stop buying new gaming consoles due to feeling burned out, i can't wait to get my pc back from being modded to play pc games so i can play games again, so the hell with the ps5.
Grunt2Time to save for a pc. Thanks for the push @sonyplaystation.bsky.social
Leumas (Sam)2Yeah, Sony is apparently speedrunning a “destroy the customer’s faith in your brand” challenge
Shaggy Rodgers2Never trust Sony, they'll fuck you every single time
Imagine the sales pitch Sony PlayStation 6 Digital only, $1000, no more backwards compatibility with your old discs, ultra lengthy cross-gen period, slow first-party release cadence...what a steal! Is this some sort of challenge? Anger your fanbase as much as possible and see what you can sell?
Nekot54I feel like $1000 is an optimistic price
Mark Casey39With no used game sales competing with digital purchases means their digital store prices will be significantly more and "sales" will be a joke. I think the PS5 will be my last playstation.
Joel Zico22I’m so confused by the state of gaming at the moment. Every company is actively testing how bad they want to push people away from this hobby.
Johan Lindros15And then add insanely high regional pricing on PS Store.
Mia Serena Official15All this news is certainly accelerating my plans to build a PC
SG-1712I wonder if this is part of why they pulled back from PC. For someone like me, if I can't bring my library forward and I can't keep buying games the way I want to, why not switch fully to PC if I could still get Sony games on PC eventually and for likely cheaper than PS Store?
Get in the barrel Diddy5tbf this is exactly what happened with ps5. like a third of the market is still on ps4. trying to position ps6 as an ultraluxury, super ps5 pro that doesn't even play some of the games you own feels like an insane proposition
Azzurra Iris Lea Monde 🍔🍟🍻🇬🇪🇮🇹🇪🇺🏳️⚧️♾️5Make it more like 1699 € because fuck us europeans as usual.
Alistair2Yeah if price increases weren’t bad enough, any chance I had of buying a new PlayStation is out the window
There's a lot of reasons why Playstation no longer putting games on discs is bad but I think it has to be said that even if you don't mind digital gaming, Playstation is consistently the most annoying platform to actually gift digital games to someone, in that there's no way to do it at all
Lady Emily ☄️301Not only is there no Steam like gifting system on PSN, Playstation stopped listing digital codes a few years ago for no reason whatsoever. With Switch or Xbox, you can go on Best Buy or Amazon and buy a game code to send a friend. Your only option with PSN is to send them money to buy it themselves
Jay9Trying to turn gaming into a streaming service like everything else. Buy physical, fuck digital everything
Amy From Iacon.8On the same day they announced the end of discs, they also announced ps3 and vita store closures. blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/a... They will do the same thing for the ps4 and ps5 in time. This is what sony do, again and again and again.
Sean G.4I suspected this would happen when the ps5 pro had no disc drive and you had to buy one separately. I have 0 plans to buy anymore PlayStation consoles as it stands. I am not a fan of their psn store and always struggle with it.
Vikas | Performance Engineer @vSourceCode.com4Businesses don't lose customers because of one decision. They lose them when enough small decisions make customers feel less valued.
Lolly4I used to be a PlayStation purist but they’ve really been screwing us over the last few years. Steam continues winning just by not being PS or Xbox
Mysterious Z [SSZ D3T2 PART 2 OUT NOW)5The one flaw Steam Gifting has is pretty much trying to gift a game to someone who literally lives in a different country that's RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO YOU simply because of currency bullshit. But other than that, this and that whole Nintendo Gold Point thing should be a thing all storefronts have
That Geo Guy2Actual fair enough criticism I do wish Playstation actually had a system for gifting games The closest thing you can even do is buy a pre-paid card and that's unintuitive for several reasons
Share a photo of your physical video game collection to scare a PlayStation executive 👇
Tyler Crumrine29All my Wii and PS3 stuff is packed away, but here are my shelves at the moment
DripnX19its not much, but its better than nothing
16bitWolf16Not everything, but just enough.
TheDarKn1ght11Just moved so I'm using temp shelving, currently working on building some better ones
Capybara Supremacy9This picture was taken before Switch 2, so I have even more now
pinko-slime.bsky.social8Some pics from before I moved, I'm still setting stuff up and buying new shelves
Jeff Grubb223All these loose game cards give me anxiety
oceaned man13Notice the lack of Switch 2 game cards, wonder why that is
Endless Mike7These pics are a few years old (this was only half of it at the time and it’s grown since then) and I need to clean up a bit before I take new ones but yes, you could say I am very invested in physical copies of games
Myles 🔞 Gogash’s dad5Not even just games but here’s my films, music and books all on physical. Maybe it’s just me but part of why I love physical is I love being in my room with My Things
Pierdeer 🏳️🌈🦌4PlayStation and Xbox executives now. 😓 I can still play these games, despite some of these companies having gone bust or having their licenses expire. I've had some consoles die on me over the decades and they'll still run on a replacement console too. Ancient knowledge, crazy I know.
therealWokeKong4Showed a Sony executive my humble budding collection of physical games and he killed himself???
Pete Skerritt4Share a photo of your physical video game collection to scare a PlayStation executive? Okay. I own all of these. If publishers are gonna play the “limited license” card, they’re gonna have to send someone to my house (in which case, I’ll have the police summarily remove them from my property).
🍁Maple Syruphox🍁3The Dragonborn who just spawned a bunch of cheese with the console:
rae 💕3this is a cursed image
Ochan45AfterDark 🏳️🌈🔜CLAW 26🔜IML 262Share a photo of your physical video game collection to scare a PlayStation executive 👇
Sony makes it official. No more physical Playstation games as of 2028. This is, no exaggeration, likely to be the single most anti-consumer, choice-limiting, destructive-to-the-medium decision in the entire history of videogames. A tragedy bordering on a crime. kotaku.com/sony-ending-...
Bob Chipman ("MovieBob")172Playstation ending physical games will be permission structure for other platforms to do the same. It will only lead to less in what you can own, companies controling it forever after purchase, further destroy more retail and job infrastructure, everything will get worse. I'm so mad I could scream ☹️
largestandusbsky.bsky.social37And since they own the Blu-ray format, movies are next. Removing physical media in the middle of a manufactured storage cartel crisis, how do these idiots keep shooting themselves in the foot. Is gonna be heartbreaking saying goodbye to Playstation, but they brought it on themselves.
Pattern Repeater36Announcing this the same week you announced that you're pulling 550 movies from people's libraries that they thought they "purchased" is a bold choice. This is going to hurt game sales overall because people are not going to be willing to spend $100+ only to have the rug pulled 5 years down the road
Bolthorn21Looks like I'm dropping out of console gaming then. At least new stuff moving forward. Everything will just be an extended rental no matter what they actually call it.
.308s and Heartbreak17Article should be titled, "Sony Kills Itself, Takes Videogame Industry With It."
Liam McPoyle17This is pretty much the end of owning games. Some fine print will soon make all digital purchases "leases" or similar. You'll have to disconnect PlayStation from the network and enclose it in Faraday cage so Sony Smart TV doesn't erase your expired - now illegal - purchases from PS.
Andrew Lawrence199this should be illegal, easy layup for any new party taking a branch of government in the midterms imo
Mat Brunet (AniMat)96Looks like it's time I get back to saying "Fuck Sony", but this time, it's for a completely different reason.
Donryu51so after deleting a bunch of people's digital libraries they expect any iota of trust... let alone money? Thats... bold. Anyway buy physical media!
elia ayoub50They’re all moving towards us no longer owning anything we pay for.
Joyce J Liu30This is genuinely upsetting. I want physical discs with actual data on it. I want to be able to dust off a 20 year old console and be able to revisit the thing I paid for. 🏴☠️if we go full digital, media preservation is the correct response
Maddie Wagon29Thousand-Year Door became one of my favorite games because my girlfriend's kid sister had it and didn't like it so she let me keep it when I asked if I could borrow it. Sony wants to ensure that avenues like that for discovering games are permanently closed.
Kyle Graham (Kyle Rodimus Prime Graham) 🇨🇦20This is an outrage! They deleted their digital movies, and now they wanna get rid of their physical discs? This is gonna lead to a lot of backlash! #BoycottSony #SupportPhysicalMedia
Channeleven15Just think, one of these days the PlayStation will literally have no games.
Bl3iz-Du (OKAMI SEQUEL!!!!)13“Please buy our console for only $1000, each game will be a meagre $100 with in-game purchase and 10 min long ending as a DLC for $50 that we will cancel after 3 months. Our games are 90% made by AI it’s so good! Thank you for giving us your income, from the bottom of our gamer loving hearts” /s
Captain Revo9Sony, not so kindly, fuck off with this.
does it even matter if playstation stops printing new physical video games if all the AAA studios get shut down and there there are no new video games to print haha ha ha 🙃
Jon Cartwright44How did we get here
XCanadianRamboX11I guess now we really can say Playstation has no games >.>
Azi10Sony has given up on video games. Now all they do is insurance fraud.
conor7that’s been an underlying element of all the Bad News to me. these companies were already making few games, even fewer that interested me enough to buy their console and now they are proudly announcing “things are getting worse!”
Vincent Becherer (BOARD ARTIST AVAILABLE FOR WORK!)3I mean, kinda. Cause now they can just say "Oh, Sly 2 was $20 in 2026 digitally on PS6, but now it $100 in 2028" with no way to fight it.
sozcog.bsky.social1That's the funny part. I don't buy Triple A games. I pirate them. Piracy is the consumer's weapon.
Remember when digital was cheaper than physical because it cost less to make? Then they made them the same price anyway. Now suddenly physical is “too expensive” to keep making. You didn’t solve a cost problem, you engineered one. This is just an excuse to kill ownership by PlayStation.
KaiboStudios💫9I'm literally about to just become a Nintendo girly after this gen.
Fish Lady Abs6See also : BluRay is TOTALLY gonna be worth paying double for all your favourite movies again because it’s SO much better than DVD. And now : DVD is like 5 bucks cheaper than the BluRay, which has set the new standard price.
🥀 Briar Beller 🔔 (🔞/20s)5WHERE is Stop Killing Games? 😭 When are the anti-consumer lawsuits coming in to kick these people in the pants? Never buying a sony movie ticket again.
Jack 🔞 COMMS OPEN3“You will own nothing and be happy” They are really forcing towards. This is plenty of encouragement to start pirating even more. The multibillion dollar corporations aren’t your friends.
NeubodyWhoMatters1Yeah a lot of us saw this coming oh... over fifteen years ago? But it happened anyway because nobody respects the games industry because games are "toys". Corpos saw an easy target for exploitation and chance to abuse employees all they wanted.
This is a grim moment for the gaming community. Sony PlayStation announced today that it will cease all physical games production in 2028. This will essentially erase legal game preservation and ownership on their platform. The ESA lied to lawmakers to bring down the POG Act ...
Stop Killing Games32More on reddit: www.reddit.com/r/StopKillin... Engage!
The_Stressed_GM8Lobby groups and lobbyists need to be criminalized across the board. This shit is destroying everything we love, not just gaming.
President Mudkip6I usually never comment my thoughts on social media, but I cannot, in good faith remain silent on this issue. We have arrived at a turning point in history, our rights as consumers is being violated and the decisions and actions taken next will determine the fate of the industry.
Lady Noriko ⚔️🖤6It would be less upsetting if we figured out digital ownership. Now there is a literal deadline it seems.
Blackstar ☆ [ Kyle ]4I hope you and everyone else begin to fight back now.
TAGAP2Yeah, with the end of physical games - by the last platform still doing that which was more powerful than a cellphone - I'm out of this hobby. As a game collector type, there's nothing to for me to fight for at this point. Thank you for everything regardless. 🫡
Like many others, Sony ditching discs reminded me of that E3 2013 moment when two now-former PlayStation execs made a mockery of Xbox's convoluted digital gaming rights Xbox One plans by showing that you could share a PS4 game by simply handing it to someone But I'd forgotten about this...
TyrantⅡ7They have since shit canned the people involved in this. Shu Yoshida, Adam Boyes, and Shawn Layden were all pushed out. Arguably the people on the ground that saved the PS3 disaster, and launched the hugely successful PS4 under CEO Andrew House.
PSA*̥˚✧2It is crazy to think about how much power retailers had over the industry back in the days. Soon they might be begging publishers and console manufacturers for the ability to stock a piece of paper.
Tampache (they/he)1youtu.be/kWSIFh8ICaA the internet never forgets.
J. Isaac Gadient (they/them)6Oh, how the turns have tabled
kv5corporations do not care about you, to them we are all called "the consumer" and we share one, big grey body that powers a money machine by reacting to different slides someone will make another slide like this and we'll clap and cheer for it all over again
this is sharpie? sharpie! this is sharpie.5people forget that this was basically a last minute change in sony's plans because of how catastrophically bad the xbox one reveal went
Very cool that I paid extra for the PS5 version that came with a disc drive... just for PlayStation to stop putting its games on discs.
ByMatthewPorter30And such good timing, the same week that Sony announces they will be disappearing movies that people have paid for. Why exactly would I trust them with digital purchases going forward?
The stoner formerly known as HighTweetsInc17Discs were the entire reason I own a console. no discs, may as well get a gaming laptop and hook it to the TV
Peter Marzano11I collect physical games, CDs and vinyl and this just sucks so much. Outside of Nintendo I'm just done with consoles, if I'm not gonna own the shit ever anyways I'll just play it on my PC.
Zoe M7To be fair, you still have access to all six disk era PS5 exclusives if you happened to buy them
Neil Degrassi Highson6If I can't buy physical games anymore then I might as well fully move over to only playing on PC.
Citizen Michael5There are so many games that are no long listed because of of rights issues. The publisher didn't want to renew rights to a character or piece of music and so the entire game is shut down. Imagine if other mediums were like this? "I'd love to watch Saturday Night Fever, but the rights ran out."
Just to make Sony Playstation execs wake up in a cold sweat: I still have all the cables, devices, and my physical games for: PS1 PS2 PS3 PS4 Sega Genesis Dreamcast SNES N64 Gamecube Wii Switch So, yes, hundreds of games And a huge library of DVDs and BluRays. F@#$ companies taking our property.
DD Ward ..."Sapphic Dr. DOOM"6They would confiscate those if they could.
Ron Lewis3Pssst. Hey buddy… wanna buy a gameshark?
Damian Santos1Got my PS but sadly, it stopped working. My PS2 works. Also have my Xbox one S and my son has my 360. If this happens, I might just buy a series X as my final console or PS5. My wife still has her 4 and OG Xbox which still work and won't get anything new
💀 Mel 👻1Same here. I have a lifetime of games to play, or even replay on all the previous generation of consoles. I can live without the next gen consoles.
Old Man Dog1That's also known as hoarding but I only say that because I'm jealous. 😁
Justin Stenberg1"But we'll happily rent those systems' games to you again!... for a new fee every generation"
PlayStation says starting January 2028, they will no longer make physical game discs for new games 🎮 New games will only be available in digital formats
Vman2939771the market needs another crash to get the industry's head out of its ass
Lauren38Guess that’s the end of PlayStation for me 🫤
Trixx😈🔞21Not to be a doomer but RIP video games
Joshua Carpenter11This photo has aged so poorly. Them gloating about sharing your games to this. Feel like now they are just flipping us off. Not a great look. I'm not buying a PS6 because it being over 1k and is digital only. No, thank you.
JCDenton2056"If buying is ownning than piracy isn't stealing" is becoming a more truer statement everyday
Akinorus 🍷5I think the 5 games they'll make that I'll actually be interested in will be worth skipping... Was a nice couple of years Sony. Thanks for cool IPs, even though you completely forgot about them.
Morgana Ignis245The death of physical media is dystopian. It means, at the whim of a random executive, art can just be deleted forever with unauthorized copies made illegal. I did a 20 episode Henson series for Disney+ called Earth to Ned. Over a year of beautiful artistry: deleted. Gone. This SUCKS.
The Garlisto Protocol 🌕9Been thinking about this all day and @playstation.com, this sucks, don't do it.
Autistic Shadow Fan8Well, we all knew this day was coming. Better start buying physical copies of my favorite media to help preserve it.
Anna🐱7This is so sad. Feels like physical media is dying out which as a collector sucks. Hoping other companies don’t do this.
DiMo5George Orwell’s 1984: gaming edition
Lain Kaplan, Mouthy Jewess 🏳️🌈💗🏳️⚧️4I am a broke ass girl who gets games from the public library. Sony doesn’t want me to do that anymore, even though the library is buying those games. For shame!
Ash SUMMER COMM SALE4While I personally buy digital (I have the digital only PS5 as when I bought it it was the cheaper option and I was on a tight budget as well as just not having room for physical games) taking away physical games is a mistake that they're going to learn really fucking quick.
Justin Eddins4This makes me so angry!
LizzTen3So no more PlayStation for me
Sebastian 🐉2This is bullshit I’m not doing any digital that’s so fucking stupid