A month later, Sony still hasn't spoken to players directly. Join #PSBlackout this week.

We're at 370,000+ verified signatures and climbing. 
Thank you. That's why Sony can no longer pretend this isn't happening.

Join #PSBlackout this week (details below).

In the last month, Sony hasn't put out a single direct statement to players. What we've gotten instead is smaller and colder: answers only when cornered, a sticker, and a copy of the terms nobody asked to see again.

They answered a question, once, when an analyst made them. At Sony's July 31 earnings call, CFO Lin Tao confirmed Sony sees no negative impact on sales and will "cautiously move forward" with ending discs in January 2028 regardless. Not a message to the community. A line item at an investor meeting.

They put the confession on the box. New PS5 consoles now ship with a warning sticker: after January 2028, new PlayStation games will be sold in digital format only. No announcement. Just a label, quietly added.

Then they reminded everyone why this fight matters. Sony emailed users a copy of their Terms of Service, highlighting that the games you buy are "licensed to you, not sold." The timing made our argument for us. This was never just about the disc. It's about control, and about profit over the people who built this platform.

One more thing worth knowing. Headlines this year have claimed physical is basically dead. This summer we've seen real growth in physical sales ourselves, not decline. And it's not just us. By Sony's own numbers, roughly a quarter of all PS4 and PS5 games sold worldwide last year, out of 303 million total, were physical copies. That's tens of millions of people choosing physical in a single year. Nintendo's own financial results show an even larger share: physical still made up 38.5% of their software sales worldwide this spring. Neither of those is a format on its way out.

If physical media has a future, independent and specialty retailers are where it survives first. This fight is about making sure those stores are still standing.

This week also happens to be Gamescom, the biggest gaming industry event of the year, running in Cologne through August 30. Every major publisher and platform holder will be there, and press coverage will be nonstop. Let's make sure this stays part of that conversation all week, loud enough that it's impossible to miss.

That's exactly what PSBlackout is standing up for. Organized by the game preservation community DoesItPlay and now backed by creators across the industry, the protest runs from tonight, August 23 at 7 PM local time, through August 30 at 7 PM local time. Players worldwide are logging off, not playing, not spending a dollar on PlayStation. We're standing behind them.

Here's what we need from you:

If you own a PlayStation, join PSBlackout tonight. Power down, log out, don't spend, from 7 PM local time tonight through 7 PM local time on August 30.

Share this update. You've already signed. The next 100,000 people need to hear from you, not from us.
Sony has told us, in a sticker and a legal disclaimer, exactly what this fight is about. Let's make sure they hear us just as clearly.

Jade