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Sony recently gave us one of the worst news for the video game industry. And the company will stop manufacturing physical disks for all new PlayStation games starting in January 2028. The company justifies as “a natural evolution towards current consumer preferences”, in which the demand for the digital format has prevailed over the physical medium. From that date on, any title you want to purchase will only exist in the PlayStation Store cloud or in digital versions from partner stores. What we have to do now is ask ourselves what this change really means for those who pay for a game. Why does it matter? When you buy a record, that object is yours. You can lend it, resell it, keep it on a shelf for years and it continues to work even if the company responsible goes bankrupt. There are nuances to this, since each company manages the licenses of its content in different ways, but the important thing is that the physical medium has that added value that, in most cases, allows you to own the content. When you buy a digital game, on the other hand, you do not acquire the software, but rather a license to use it subject to a contract that almost no one reads. Steam leaves it in writing in your subscriber agreement, as the content is licensed, not sold. This legal distinction, which is usually a fine print that many of us ignore, becomes the general rule of the PlayStation ecosystem as soon as the disc disappears completely. And yes, we can talk about that today, even buying in physical format, nothing guarantees that all the content is on the disk. Also, in terms of preservation, although a disk can last for many years if well preserved, it is not an eternal medium and can also deteriorate over time. What is at stake here is a company’s total control over what you buy, and that, even minimally, should matter to us. Anti-consumer practices. Companies have a thousand reasons to abandon the physical format, and over the last few years we have seen examples of anti-consumer practices beyond the abandonment of this format. In 2024, Ubisoft shut down the servers of The Crew, a driving game that required permanent connection even to play alone. The title stopped working completely for all its buyers, without any patch that would allow you to continue playing offline. That was the spark that ignited the movement. Stop Killing Gameswhich gathered more than 1.3 million verified signatures to ask the European Union to force publishers to leave their games in a playable state when they withdraw support. This month, the European Commission refused to impose that obligation by lawalleging that the studios’ intellectual property rights outweigh the player’s continued access, although they did commit to promoting a voluntary code of conduct by the end of the year. The fine print is now the norm. That same debate has forced distributors themselves to be more honest about what they sell. In the United States, a California law (the AB 2426) prohibits digital stores from using words like “buy” if they do not offer real ownership of the product. As a consequence, Steam started showing a notice in the payment process that clarifies that you are only acquiring a license for the game, not its ownership. PlayStation Store is not subject to that law outside of California, but the principle is identical. Legal front. In addition to the pulse in Europe, Sony faces in the United Kingdom a class action lawsuit valued at nearly $2.7 billion for alleged abuse of a dominant position in the sale of digital games. In parallel, Ubisoft is already being sued in France and California for the closure of The Crew, accused of making consumers believe that they were purchasing a game permanently when, in practice, their access ended up being temporary. They are different disputes, but they all point to the same question. What legal protection does someone have who has paid 70, 80 or 90 euros for something that can disappear due to the decision of a company? Impotence. There’s no magic solution really, but if you value preservation, there are cases like GOGwho sell installers without DRM that can be downloaded and saved permanently, the closest thing today to real ownership of a video game. But of course, that doesn’t solve the problem of someone buying physical games in the PlayStation ecosystem. It may be that we are doomed to abandon the physical format. But not this way, or at least not having to give up our possession to a company. And the problem is that we have been convinced for all these years that the convenience and comfort of the digital format had to strictly go through a company’s total control over what you buy. Regarding PlayStation, games already published on disc before 2028 will continue to exist in that format, so anyone who values ​​this format still has a year and a half to continue buying. And it is worth remembering that not even the label “physical” guarantees anything anymore. The clearest example we had it a few days ago with GTA VIwhich its physical edition will include only a download code inside the box, without any disc. They are anti-consumer measures. Cover image | Mahtab Mashuq Tonmoy In Xataka | “We have never seen the price of a component rise so much and so quickly”: The thing about Apple, Microsoft and Valve is only the tip of the iceberg