PlayStation will no longer be offering games on disc
https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/physical-disc-production-ending-in-january-2028-for-new-games-releasing-on-playstation-consoles/Open linkView original on piefed.worldSyndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
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142 replies
They are gonna remove games in future like they did with the movies
They already have lol.
Licensed titles are different. Unless they’ve done that for non-licensed titles.
Kindle literally removed 1984 from people's devices
That was a case where the seller literally didn’t have the rights to the book. If you search for the title today you’ll find a version that is listed as the Authorized Orwell Edition.
Not the same as what I was referring to. Video games based on licensed IPs, often get taken down from digital game stores because the publisher’s license has ended. What you described with 1984 is someone who shouldn’t be selling the media, having sold it. Sure, it sucks if the title disappeared from your device but maybe that was the only legal resolution?
The proper legal resolution would be refunding the customer and then settle it between Amazon and the author that didn't have the rights to sell what they sold. If I buy some food at the grocery store and there's a recall due to for example contamination, I can go back to the store and get a refund. I can even go to any store selling the same item without an invoice and get a refund (for their list price I think). This is at least the deal in Denmark. This should be the same if something was sold with a missing license or improper license (if it is sold as a product but the license the seller has expires and is not renewed)
Conveying something to someone in perpetuity (i.e. "selling" it to them) when you don't have the right to do so is fraud. Just because Amazon or whoever's right to continue offering the thing ended doesn't mean their customers' property rights somehow end with it.
It's exactly as absurd as a car dealer stealing back all the cars they previously sold just because they ended their agreement with the manufacturer.
There is absolutely no sane world in which stealing your customers' property could ever be the "only legal resolution!"
Sometimes the license for the music in games expires and developers/publishers just remove it from the games.
That, by itself, is absolutely outrageous and absurd. The game developer's failure to license the music appropriately is between them and the music copyright holder; nothing gives them the right to steal the content back from the third parties they conveyed it to in perpetuity.
Agreed, licensing for anything like that in game should be required to be permanent. Only exception I can possibly think of is live service games where the content cycles out of availability.
I wouldn't argue just that it should be; I would argue that it is and we have a massive problem with the FTC failing to enforce existing law.
I think it will no longer be available as an option.
I will be buying no more PlayStations then.
Same.
Xbox is pushing the same thing with gamepass, Nintendo lowered their digital games pricing to match/go lower than physical media. Everything is going that way.
If buying is not owning, piracy is not stealing
This is such a great quote.
But if you read the fine print, you are not buying these games, you are entering into a subscription to them. Paying a one-time fee to subscribe to the games indefinitely. That's why it feels like buying.
That's how they getcha.
So it’s almost like buying is not owning?
Almost, but not exactly.
And look, I'm not saying its defensible, I'm just saying that they technically trick us into subscribing, and thus we can't technically say we're buying these games. So, GOG ❤️
The fact that it's legal to have a purchase flow that looks like you're buying things without the seller being legally obliged to have a disclaimer in big fat letters that says something like "THIS IS NOT A PURCHASE, IT'S A LICENSING AGREEMENT. LICENSING AGREEMENTS CAN BE REVOKED AT ANY TIME AND YOU WILL LOSE ACCESS TO THIS MEDIA YOU ARE LICENSING" is the actual problem.
IMHO, Corruption amongst Lawmakers and Regulators is the actual problem.
People should be avoiding like the plague any stores whose media they can't actually download and keep in an open DRM-free format in their own devices, but they don't because they're not aware of it as the whole thing is one big bloody mess of expert legal domain and the fraud of misportraying a sale to be one things whilst it is a different thing being totally legal when it comes to digital media.
Can't blame people for not understanding this and thus not navigating it in an informed way, but I sure can blame Politicians and Regulators for not doing their jobs which is to make sure that sales are fair and the consumer can make an informed choice when evaluating a potential a purchase.
I mean... They ask you to agree to the Steam subscriber agreement for each purchase. Pretty sure Epic has a similar disclaimer on each purchase as well.
People just don't read. 🤷♂️ But yeah, it should be like a TikTok format video for all the inattentive people I guess. More people deserve to be aware of it.
Long document full of legal language than can only be truly comprehended by those with Legal Training isn't at all the same as BIG FAT TEXT INDICATING IN A SIMPLE WAY THAT THIS IS NOT A PURCHASE.
Absolutely, in the absence of actual Pro-Consumer Regulatory Obligations, the whole "Agreement" is a valid way for sellers of digital media such as Steam to legally cover their asses and not actually saying to prospective buyers the true nature of what they're buying.
It is, however, not a means to help a purchaser make an informed purchase, rather it's a way for Steam and other such stores to, in the current legal and regulatory environment, legally get away with doing the very opposite and obfuscate the true nature of what the purchaser is purchasing.
Think about it this way: if the intention of Steam was to be honest and make sure purchasers were making informed purchases, then why not inform purchasers upfront in the product page in a simple way that what they would be buying was a REVOCABLE LICENSE rather than ownership of a PRODUCT, and even explain the difference, rather than hide it in a long document that requires Law training to fully understand?
But yeah, I definitely agree with you in general. You have perfectly valid points.
Honestly, if I have to go digital, my money is going to Valve
Valve and GOG.
GOG - the ones who recently sent out a newsletter ad with Nazi symbols on it? That GOG?
This is FUD, stop spreading this. Read their statement and chill the fuck out.
It's a big, fat, nothingburger.
Can you think logically instead of making misinformed emotional statements?
You know they're polish right? The ones that were attacked by the nazis?
Context is everything.
Yeah, Nazis in Eastern Europe, who could imagine!
Yes they were using AI assisted headers for their emails because they were short staffed for a bank holiday in their country.
Which is Poland btw. Famously extremely anti Nazi.
They apologized and explained what happened so I am not going to hold it against them. Now had they not apologized or had an explanation, that would be different.
If anything its a good case study on why AI is only good for very limited use cases and almost never to replace an actual human being
Did not hear that. Do u have a link?
Read their statement instead, it's all a big nothingburger.
Better to Gog, atleast you own what you buy
Fun fact: Some Steam games are also DRM-free
Stop spreading this lie.
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User-Agreement?product=gog
This refers to downloading, after you donwload the DRM Free Game from Gog there is no license or online check forever, the game is just yours.
You can also do that on Steam, that doesn't make it any less piracy.
Not that there is anything wrong with that, but let's stop pretending that GOG is somehow better than Steam.
Nobody is saying you cannot do on Steam, the big difference is that you can do that on 100% of Gog games, on Steam only on a very small percentage.
And there are other noticeable difference, on Steam you have to go through the file and backup them, on Gog you get the drm free installer for the last version of the game and any previous version that you want.
Is clear to me that on this regard Gog is much better than Steam, would be crazy to say otherwise.
Actually, FYI, you can do that for a large percentage of Steam games, maybe even most, if you use the Goldberg Emulator that replaces the steamapi DLL.
Steam DRM is one of the easiest to bypass around, and I like to think that's very much a purposeful choice.
However, the entire thing is designed for it not to be easy to do for somebody with the technical know-how of the average gamer, plus it's not reliably possible and there's no way to know upfront if it will work or not when making a purchasing decision on a game in Steam.
Meanwhile "No DRM and with downloadable Offline Installers" is literally the Unique Value Proposition of GOG as a games store - access to download offline installers is there in the games page after purchase and that installer is guaranteed to work forever and ever if you still have the hardware and OS version supported by the game.
Yeah there are ways of course, but if we insert in the discourse unofficial tool and methods to remove DRM whats the point of the discussion?
What's even the point of complaining about denuvo if we think like this? There are methods to remove that too. Any type of DRM is bad for consumer and should not be justified, doesn't really matter how hard is to bypass.
citation needed
Not reliably as in Steam there is no contractual limitation on games having their own phone-home DRM plus some games are tightly integrated with Steam features (which Steam incentivizes) and don't work well offline, plus you need to known were the installers are cached as you can't just download them to a location of your choice and how to use stuff like the Goldberg Emulator otherwise only games which have ZERO integration with Steam will fully install and run offline.
In GOG, access to download the offline installers is right there in the product page in your library and contractually the games can't have any DRM as "No DRM" is GOG's unique value proposition as a games store.
Steam doesn't make it too hard to go around the phone-home DRM they put in place (making it better than just about all other phone-home DRM out there) but that's not at all the same as "here are the installers for you to use whenever you want online or offline and they're guaranteed to have no DRM".
I will no longer be offering money to receive playstation games. 🤷♂️
Fair
Sony I already didn't intend to buy the next game console, you don't have to keep trying to push me away.
"It will be over $1000."
"Ew, no thanks!"
"But wait, there's more! You also won't be able to buy games used or trade them with friends!"
If they could be trusted to treat digital copies as actual ownership, this wouldn't be such a big deal.
My main problem with this is I can’t sell or trade a digital game after I’m done with it. This needs to be
feltdelt with legally.I like being able to share a disc with friends. Or get one from the library. They kill that, they're making a hell of lot of enemies.
I feel you but I'm no lawyer.
For real, every jurisdiction needs to extend the first sale doctrine to digital media
At this rate why sell hardware to people anymore? Might as well rip the bandaid and make it a cloud-gaming device.
Many people will tolerate digitally distributed games, but not subscriptions
So. They have chosen death.
The majority of people do not care.
Then the majority of people will get shafted. Nothing new under the sun, I guess.
Unfortunately. The market chose convenience over consumer rights. We no longer own anything and can have it taken away at any time.
They were already getting shafted, by your definition, as they were already buying digital only games.
Well exactly.
Oh no! Anyway...
EDIT: Just to be clear, I am not dismissing OP. I'm saying "fuck Sony" and "this would be a good time to convert to PCmasterrace or go retro"
The concept that not everyone has big internet or even good enough might be super strange for these C-level people.
I don't think they care about those markets (even though they could make a lot of money out of them)
So is that market the last $1 billion still buying physical? A graph was passed around showing sales are down from an $11 billion peak in 2009 nearly 20 years ago.
I wonder how much of that last billion is Switch. I assume physical sales are higher there. But I might be way off.
Even with physical media you have to download large packages of data to start playing the game
Cool. If thats the case I will no longer be offering Playstation my money for games.
So don't buy a fucking Playstation.
This isn't that hard to sort out.
I already have one because they were the best platform when it came to actually owning your games.
At least the digital-only playstations will be really cheap... Right?
And the games, too, since there are no shipping or packaging costs!
I’d feel more strongly about this if I’d actually bought a game on a physical disc anytime in the last 3 years.
They're often cheaper on disc. Random sales here and there nearly always undercut the PSN price.
The real reason I've not bought many this gen was PS Plus. There's a lot of games I'd have been vaguely interested in picking up on a decent sale, only they've never been on one, and then went on PS Plus so now aren't worth buying at all.
Realistically the loss of physical discs means we need far more robust digital rights. The right to trade games to other accounts. The right to continue playing them if the store closes, loading games and licence keys from USB etc. That last one is going to need some thought to prevent abuse, but I think it's essential if we're going to live in a digital future. On PC that last one could be done by transferring licenses to another store maybe.
It should still matter to you, unless you don't mind paying $80 for every game. The competition of physical game pricing and the secondhand market helps keep digital prices lower as well.
Yeah, but why not? I enjoy having access to the game within the same 10 minutes I buy it...
Now downloading, that's a different story.
How many modern 3d games are there that fit on a reasonable amount of disks? Don't you usually have to download shit either way?
When was the last time you bought a game on some physical storage and did not have to download etc. things anyway?
OK, but you can sell the disc after using it or share it with friends...
That is the big ticket. We need to be able to sell digital items.
3 years? About 15 years for me. Whenever civ 5 was released.
Am not surprised given how large games today can be. You can have a disk to launch the game when you first get it, but chances are the Playstation will still have to "update" it with the full resources..
I don't have a playstation, but FFS, I can't even get the full Halo: Master Chief Collection onto my gaming PC - I just don't have the drive space. Some game packages are huge today.
It's this or go back to multi disc installs. Modern discs have 100GB capacity so Halo MCC would be on two. The largest games, like the modern Call of Duty amalgamation-launcher-thing and ARK, would push over 3 discs. I for one wouldn't mind -- it at least keeps the fantasy of owning game media alive, just a little bit -- and I wish updates and patches weren't so damn mandatory.
The disc doesn't have to have the full data on it..in fact most don't nowadays and they require downloading the additional data from the store...so there shouldn't be any issue here in terms of storage... essentially what a Switch 2 game key card is.
It's for a physical license and entitlement of ownership
This is Sony wrestling away the last bits physical ownership they can take away to force the middleman out and make used games history. This is going to result in higher prices and significantly fewer sales
I know you mean "sales" as in games being temporarily cheaper, but I think the other definition will be true too. Less people buying at all.
Yep. Most you'll see is 10% discount for shit nobody wanted anyway
But then you don’t fully own it when the server is taken down. Doesn’t sound like the solution people in this thread want.
Having the full game isn't possible anymore for most AAA games This is the only compromise...and they're taking that away now too
So that's a console game setup, yes?
I use an older PC so everything is backed up on a storage drive but currently right now I'm stuck with a 500 GB SSD to run the games I'm actively playing. It's nowhere near enough space for what I want to do. Ugh. Am waiting to see when I can get my mitts on a 4TB WD Gold drive (I have two on my MacPro systems) and slap that into the PC for the storage and then get a similar sized SSD (or an NVME drive in an adapter) to use.
I think when I get that sorted I'm also going to switch up to running Bazzite for the games and bail on the Win 10 Pro..
Patiently waiting for the bubble to burst.
So am I...
Personally I've got a mix - I have most Call of Duty games on Xbox, buying on the same platform as the ones I had in childhood, but have largely dropped the console for my PC running EndeavourOS. My biggest game is a bit of a cheat - Clone Hero - 550GB aha!
Good luck with the upgrade! I have a 4TB HDD, a WD Blue from 2017, and am hoping to upgrade to an NVME SSD before the drive dies of old age. looks at the component market Before I do.
I recommend Seagate Ironwolf Pro or any CMR/HAMR storage for the best balance of capacity, price and lifespan.
Ack! No one has the 4TB Ironwolf Pro drives!
This is bullshit.
F'ckin' datacenter pricks.
Yeah I feel you. It's hurting all of us, seeing parts at over double the price they're worth or simply out of stock. I heard that after taking all the DDR5 RAM they went after HDDs.
These are my notes on components I was looking at, dated
Motherboard
ASRock Phantom Gaming X870E Nova WiFi (1.3x base)
CPU
AMD Ryzen Zen 6 10700X3D?
AMD Ryzen 7 9700X (1.1x base)
RAM
Corsair Vengeance / LPX - DDR5, 6800MT/s, CL32, 2x32GB (4.6x base)
Depressing compromise RAM
Corsair Vengeance DDR5, 5600MT/s, CL40, 2x16GB
Note: RAM in current build was £170 for 2x16GB in Feb 2017, equivalent to £230 in Jan 2026
Games SSD
WD Black SN850X 8TB (2.4x base)
OR Samsung 9100 Pro 8TB
OS & Program SSD
Samsung 990 Pro 4TB (1.7x base)
Fans
Noctua 140mm x 8
Case
NZXT H6 Flow (1.1x base)
PSU
Corsair HX1200i Platinum (2025) (1.2x base)
GPU (1.3x base)
Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XT 20GB (1.3x base)
Hypothetical:
High Capacity HDD
Seagate Ironwolf Pro 20TB, 7200RPM, CMR (1.3x base)
Seagate Ironwolf Pro 24TB
Xbox Expansion SSD
Notes
base = ~Sep/Oct 2025, just before hell
RAM eBay Sellers ~ 2x base
This is very close to my exact PC build. I bought in December of 2024 because I was sure Trump with fuck everything up with his tariffs. While that ended up being true, AI bullshit made it far worse.
Stop being suckered into the system that has no respect for you or the money they steal from you.
Play station will no longer be offering games- Yup still no games
Do not worry, Sony is not at all known for taking away from people digital media which they keep in their servers for those people
/s (just in case)
I've been a PlayStation guy since 1998. Looks like the PS5 is my last PlayStation console.
Steam being all digital is fine because I'm buying games for 75-90% off.. If I got told I was losing access to a game I played $2.50 for 6 years ago and played for 40 hours I would.. actually I'd still be annoyed but less annoyed than losing hundreds of dollars.
Steam lets you play games that you bought, even if they've been delisted in the meantime.
Steam is the good guy (for now). GOG is even better though, since they let you save offline installers with no DRM.
Yep, Love GOG
Also, if they delist a game you had, you can just sail the high seas easily, and there are even revival projects for always-online games that reverse engineer servers.
Buy GameStop everyone! /s
They make most of their money from trading cards now.
I stopped when they fucked me on my PS3, update and lose linux ability or don't update and lose netflix and any online purchased games.
And that's were i left console for PC
At least you can jailbreak a PS3 and add back the Other OS feature.
I played it till it red-ringed. my last sony purchase.
So, having a PC is better again, because there is not subscription for online services there...?
I might get a used PS5 to play some exclusives when it can be had for cheap. But I reckon people will cling to theirs.
I think most of those games will still require a big chunk of the game to be downloaded from their servers, which who knows how long will be available.
Happy cake day!
Hadn't realized it. Thanks!
😘
It sucks as I love having physical media, but I hardly pay for physical games. I generally find a better deal for digital than physical (steam summer/winter sales). Last game I got on cart a few months ago was MHR.
Didn’t Nintendo already start doing this with the switch two?
The opposite, with Switch1 there were a bunch of games where third parties cheaped out and just put a code in a box.
Switch2 added game-key cards to replace the code-in-a-box with a license dongle in the shape of a cart.
It still requires the eshop to download the game, but it's not tied to an account, it's tied to the card, which can be resold or lent out.
Solves a few of the issues with digital while doing nothing for preservation.
There are still code in a box games, I have one
It really sucks, but unless someone was to come up with a way to cram massive amounts of a game onto single discs, or no more than two, it was inevitable. That's not why they're doing it, but still
PS1 discs contained 700mb per disc.
Blurays I think are 25gb, but with different burning options should be able to store up to 75gb per disc.
This means a game would need to exceed 225gb to go beyond 3 discs.
Why would that be an issue? Most games can fit on 1 disc. Maybe 2. Rarely 3. I can't think of a game that would need 4.
A 128GB blu ray should be sufficient for basically any game
Up to 256GB over two disks should be more than enough
Hey now, I was fine with my 7 disc copy of Wing Commander 4. I'll be good with it again.
The technology exists but it's not available to consumers.
They could just use a flash drive to distribute the game. Copy the game to the local drive...and wait, that's how PC gaming works.
The appeal of CDs, or game cartridges, was the ability to load a game and immediately start playing (well after the loading screen as everything loaded into ram) and you could play the game on other consoles (bring game to friend or resell it). To recreate that, most games would have to be shipped on a 256gb ssd so the game can just load from that on any computer. I have a feeling that's not the best business strategy right now
Flash has a limited data retention time. With high capacity QLC flash, that time can be very short.
Yeah, flash certainly wouldn't work for actually running the game, but it would work great for a 1 time distribution/transfer method to the game to a pic/console's drive.
The main reason for wanting a physical copy is so you can sell it when you are done with it. If the data degrades after a couple of years, it doesn't do much good. A pressed disc will last for decades when taken care of.
I want to be mad about this, but I own a PS5 with a disc drive and dozens of games, and none of them are physical. I can't run the game off the disc and still need the available storage space to run it (and often doesn't contain a full/completed version of the game), so the disc is just an extra step that gets in the way.
The disc is a physical license you have the right to resell.
People should have had huge campaigns to allow for reselling digital licenses many years ago. Focusing on talking about wanting discs wasn’t enough.
In fact, wasn’t there a judgement about Steam libraries?
It's a moot point when the disc, alone, does not guarantee a playable game.
That's more of a long term game preservation issue than anything else right now. Losing the disc means you lose the right to resell the license.
Makes sense (kinda)