Sony knew its decision to kill PlayStation 5 discs would spark outrage, and reportedly issued staff with the “strictest” social media guidelines to stop them from publicly commenting on the controversy.
That’s according to God of War Laufey writer Alanah Pearce, who alleged in a new YouTube video that the restrictions were the most stringent that PlayStation staff had seen — as Sony anticipated its announcement to cause significant blowback.
Earlier this month, Sony stunned fans by announcing that it would stop launching PlayStation 5 games on physical discs from January 2026 onwards. While the move follows a gradual shift in video game sales from boxed copies to digital downloads over the past decade, gamers who prefer to own a physical edition, or who are concerned by the impact this will have on game preservation, have been vocal in their opposition.
Sony’s rationale for ditching discs is that it’s simply following consumer trends. “In response to shifting trends in consumer preference, new games will be released on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only,” Sid Shuman, Senior Director, Sony Interactive Entertainment Content Communications, said in a post on PlayStation Blog.
“As consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital, physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028. Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. This transition has no impact on games that already released, or will be releasing, prior to January 2028 in disc format.
“This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs. This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.”
Despite a high-profile petition and a constant stream of comments on Sony’s subsequent livestreams and social media posts — even overshadowing the release of new games that have nothing to do with the controversy — there’s been no sign that the PlayStation maker will change its mind. For now, Sony simply hasn’t commented further — and is unlikely to do so, Pearce suggested.
“Sony already knew everyone would be pissed off,” Pearce began. “They knew this. People working at PlayStation first-party studios told me that Sony had the strictest social media guidelines for this particular thing that they’ve ever seen issued.
“Sony does somewhat regularly tell employees what they can or can’t say about certain things,” she explained. “I was under a lot of guidelines when I was working on God of War Laufey. I still am, and they did send me guidelines regarding what I could say on the day that the game was announced. But in this instance, it is apparently the strictest the employees I spoke to have sever seen regarding public communications. They would only have done this if they knew it was going to be an enormous PR issue. This is no surprise to them.”
For Sony, going all-digital for new game releases will earn it more money from every sale at a time when console sales are expected to plummet due to their rising costs. For a first-party PlayStation game such as The Last of Us, Sony will only keep around 65% of the money from a physical copy, with around 30% going to the retailer and roughly another 5% on manufacturing costs. Meanwhile, for a physical copy of a third-party game such as the Activision-published Call of Duty, Sony will get a licensing fee, likely around 15%. For digital sales, Sony keeps 100% of first-party game revenue, and a far better cut from third-party titles.
More than 335,000 people have now signed the Change.org petition calling on Sony to U-turn on its decision, though Pearce said that this would not prompt Sony to change its mind. Speaking to IGN, analysts have all said similar. Dr. Serkan Toto, CEO of Japanese game industry consultancy firm Kantan Games, suggested that even if half a million people cancelled their PlayStation Plus subscription in protest, it would be just a drop in the ocean for Sony.
“I sympathize with physical media fans, but Sony will not reverse this decision,” Toto told IGN. “They of course knew what the online reaction would look like, and they now wait for this storm to pass.
“Sony has over 120 million active PlayStation users,” he continued. “Around 50 million people subscribe to PlayStation Plus. As a thought experiment, let’s say 500,000 cancel in protest, that would be just 1% of that business gone — of course not enough for Sony to start rethinking. Digital is just too lucrative.”
Image credit: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
