The outrage over Sony’s plans to ditch physical games refuses to go away as people target the new summer sale, old Instagram posts, and every YouTube video PlayStation publishes.
Sony is running another summer sale on the PlayStation Store at the moment, with hundreds of PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 games up to 75% off until August 12.
However, the online response has been anything but enthusiastic and, as you can guess, it’s because people are still mad about Sony’s decision to abandon physical games.
One of the central complaints about this is that buying digitally technically only nets you a licence to play the game rather than the game itself, so people are describing Sony’s sale as an opportunity to merely rent games, rather than actually buy them.
‘Why is it called ‘sale’ when you’re only renting stuff to people instead of selling it?’ reads the top comment on X. ‘Stop deceiving people! If you want to kill physical media, be honest. Tell people you will strip things from their library whenever you feel like it.’
‘‘Sale’… Funny – that sounds like a promotion for buying things, not renting them,’ agrees another comment, while one says, ‘Another sale? You’ve already saved me $999 by convincing me to not buy a PS6.’
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Other responses stick to either hurling obscenities at Sony, demanding a return to discs or vowing to not spend any more money on PlayStation games.
Things are no better on the PlayStation Blog post about the sale. Scroll down to the comments and it’s nothing but similar complaints: ‘How long until the next game is deleted from your digital library? You don’t own digital material even if you buy it. No disc no Sony. Play has limits.’
The outrage over this not only refuses to die down, but fans are taking any avenue they can find to make their complaints known. Weeks old posts on the PlayStation Instagram account, for example, have seen recent comments filled with disc emojis and repeated shouts of ‘No disc, no buy.’
It’s the same story on the PlayStation YouTube channel, where it seems no recent uploads, regardless of the game or whether it has anything to do with Sony, are safe from being overwhelmingly disliked.
For example, Sony has been sharing character guides for its upcoming Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls fighting game and the comments on them are people talking about physical games rather than the characters.
‘With Great Power Comes Great Physical Games,’ reads one under the Spider-Man video, while the Star-Lord video has people highlighting how he carries around an old Sony Walkman and thus would be a supporter of physical media himself.
Even the comments under trailers for niche releases from studios unaffiliated with Sony, like this one for management game Farming Camp, focus entirely on the physical games controversy, with one comment reading, ‘Sony: Not Farming Money anymore.’
The same goes for trailers for Bus Simulator 27, BlazBlue Entropy Effect X, and Teeto. That last one has even been highlighted by the game’s developer Eat Pant Games on Bluesky.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
