Tell Sony to leave our Physical Media alone!
The Issue
I think the truth of the reality is, Sony controls what the games we own do and how they stay in our library but if we take the fight to them and we continue to apply pressure in ways that force Sony's hand or at least causes them to think about how their decision affect gamers we can win. Earlier this year we had a PSBlackout and I have quoted some of the petition page below. I think if we continue with more such as a global wide boycott of Digital products from Sony we can fight back.
As Stated in Jade Pierce's protest page as followed - "On July 1, 2026, Sony announced it will end production of physical discs for all new PlayStation games starting January 2028. New games will be sold digitally, or as a box containing only a download code, with no disc inside. Days earlier, Grand Theft Auto VI confirmed it will launch with no disc at all. When the market leader ends the disc, the rest of the industry follows.
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.
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."
And this was a wonderful idea, it brought light to the idea that losing physical media would hurt more people than it would benefit as over more than 350,000 users have the signed the petition they hosted which I will be providing a link to right here - https://www.change.org/p/don-t-kill-the-disc-tell-sony-to-keep-physical-playstation-games - I think the week was a start but we can take it longer and hurt them even further but let's thank and be appreciative that someone took the initiative to start. Thank you.
Since then, there has been an uproar in the community about how much PlayStation doesn't listen to the community anymore. They just see us as money bags instead of their consumer that we are. I think it's time we make them listen and here's how.
Here's the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How.
The Who: Sony, PlayStation, PS or whatever you wanna call it.
The What? Sony is planning to remove Physical Media in January of 2028, we are fighting to keep that from happening.
The When? From September 10th til the end of December.
The Where? Everywhere that we can do so
The Why? By Removing the Physical Media of games and quote on quote saying we just use the license instead of own Digital Media, removes the ownership that came with Physical Media.
The How? We take the fight to them by rejecting their online store, avoiding any purchases or pre-ordered through them and focusing on retailers and independent sellers for the rest of the year. We can bring attention to this by avoiding buying any games digital games through the PSN Store and by Unsubscribing from PS+, Downgrading it or just avoiding getting it all together, we can force their hand to bring to bring down Digital Media prices, to Keep Physical Media in stores.
Even if you can't participate in the boycott fully just try as long as you can to not purchase anything from the PSN store or pre-ordering any new digital games from them. That way we can keep them from earning money from us on Digital Purchases alone, if we are able to focus our efforts on the Physical Media versions of the games we want to play we can take back the fight and we can hopefully at least open a channel with the head of Sony, or even the CFO, I'm looking to get myself a seat with them to explain how this action effects gamers globally and not just certain parts of the world.
Below are the core's of this Boycott, the things I think we need to focus on the most in order to get the better bang for our bucks.
Core 1: No Game Purchases - Unless Physical Media. What this means; is that any current digital pre-orders you have you should cancel or any you want in the future just focus on getting the physical edition using means such as GameStop or just shopping around the physical medias instead of purchasing or preordering that game through the PSN store this way they don't get the money from our pre-orders.
Core 2: Unsubscribe from PS+, Downgrade your PS+ or Skip PS+ Subscriptions What this means is; if you haven't used your PlayStation in awhile and can go ahead with removing the subscription entirely do so. Also avoid games that require one and play games that let you play without being subscribed. Another point is to not upgrade at all, stay on the basic plan if you can, drop down to the lowest one if you can, it would help us drop the numbers of the PS+ subscribers or the number of premium plans which would make them lose money
Core 3: Do Not Purchase In-Game Credits, Battlepasses or Skins. What this means is; if you can avoid purchasing battlepasses through the PS store and avoid getting any type of game credits through the PS store or any anything through the store. If you can get them through other means such as getting Overwatch credits through the BattleNet or getting Fortnite bucks through an actual store. This way, we don't spend time in the PS store, getting things from them at all.
Final Core: Support Physical by Buying In Person through Retailers and Not Digitally from PSN. This is the whole point of the boycott. We are boycotting or attempting to so we can keep disc going past 2028.
Join #PSBoycott for the rest of the year. Let's show them that we can stick together.
3
The Issue
I think the truth of the reality is, Sony controls what the games we own do and how they stay in our library but if we take the fight to them and we continue to apply pressure in ways that force Sony's hand or at least causes them to think about how their decision affect gamers we can win. Earlier this year we had a PSBlackout and I have quoted some of the petition page below. I think if we continue with more such as a global wide boycott of Digital products from Sony we can fight back.
As Stated in Jade Pierce's protest page as followed - "On July 1, 2026, Sony announced it will end production of physical discs for all new PlayStation games starting January 2028. New games will be sold digitally, or as a box containing only a download code, with no disc inside. Days earlier, Grand Theft Auto VI confirmed it will launch with no disc at all. When the market leader ends the disc, the rest of the industry follows.
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.
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."
And this was a wonderful idea, it brought light to the idea that losing physical media would hurt more people than it would benefit as over more than 350,000 users have the signed the petition they hosted which I will be providing a link to right here - https://www.change.org/p/don-t-kill-the-disc-tell-sony-to-keep-physical-playstation-games - I think the week was a start but we can take it longer and hurt them even further but let's thank and be appreciative that someone took the initiative to start. Thank you.
Since then, there has been an uproar in the community about how much PlayStation doesn't listen to the community anymore. They just see us as money bags instead of their consumer that we are. I think it's time we make them listen and here's how.
Here's the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How.
The Who: Sony, PlayStation, PS or whatever you wanna call it.
The What? Sony is planning to remove Physical Media in January of 2028, we are fighting to keep that from happening.
The When? From September 10th til the end of December.
The Where? Everywhere that we can do so
The Why? By Removing the Physical Media of games and quote on quote saying we just use the license instead of own Digital Media, removes the ownership that came with Physical Media.
The How? We take the fight to them by rejecting their online store, avoiding any purchases or pre-ordered through them and focusing on retailers and independent sellers for the rest of the year. We can bring attention to this by avoiding buying any games digital games through the PSN Store and by Unsubscribing from PS+, Downgrading it or just avoiding getting it all together, we can force their hand to bring to bring down Digital Media prices, to Keep Physical Media in stores.
Even if you can't participate in the boycott fully just try as long as you can to not purchase anything from the PSN store or pre-ordering any new digital games from them. That way we can keep them from earning money from us on Digital Purchases alone, if we are able to focus our efforts on the Physical Media versions of the games we want to play we can take back the fight and we can hopefully at least open a channel with the head of Sony, or even the CFO, I'm looking to get myself a seat with them to explain how this action effects gamers globally and not just certain parts of the world.
Below are the core's of this Boycott, the things I think we need to focus on the most in order to get the better bang for our bucks.
Core 1: No Game Purchases - Unless Physical Media. What this means; is that any current digital pre-orders you have you should cancel or any you want in the future just focus on getting the physical edition using means such as GameStop or just shopping around the physical medias instead of purchasing or preordering that game through the PSN store this way they don't get the money from our pre-orders.
Core 2: Unsubscribe from PS+, Downgrade your PS+ or Skip PS+ Subscriptions What this means is; if you haven't used your PlayStation in awhile and can go ahead with removing the subscription entirely do so. Also avoid games that require one and play games that let you play without being subscribed. Another point is to not upgrade at all, stay on the basic plan if you can, drop down to the lowest one if you can, it would help us drop the numbers of the PS+ subscribers or the number of premium plans which would make them lose money
Core 3: Do Not Purchase In-Game Credits, Battlepasses or Skins. What this means is; if you can avoid purchasing battlepasses through the PS store and avoid getting any type of game credits through the PS store or any anything through the store. If you can get them through other means such as getting Overwatch credits through the BattleNet or getting Fortnite bucks through an actual store. This way, we don't spend time in the PS store, getting things from them at all.
Final Core: Support Physical by Buying In Person through Retailers and Not Digitally from PSN. This is the whole point of the boycott. We are boycotting or attempting to so we can keep disc going past 2028.
Join #PSBoycott for the rest of the year. Let's show them that we can stick together.
Petition Updates
Share this petition
Petition created on September 10, 2026