The recent news delivered by Sid Shuman from Sony Interactive about the digital future of the company’s consoles has had the gaming community in an uproar. Sony’s announcement sparked widespread debate across social media, mostly from fans of gaming in general. However, the gaming industry itself has now started to respond to the news about the radical change now looming over the gaming ecosystem. Companies like Atari, Iam8bit, Lost in Cult, and Silver Lining Interactive have put out official statements on the situation, and most of them do not look good.

These four companies, as well as many others that have made statements, have some stake in the release and retailing of physical media, game discs included. For example, Iam8bit is a publisher, distributor, and creative production company that produces premium collector’s editions for many games, including things like collectables and unique art for both game covers & discs. In a statement sent to GameIndustry.biz, the co-owners and co-creative directors of Iam8bit, Jon Gibson and Amanda White, said:

“We are profoundly disappointed by Sony’s decision to suspend physical games production in 2028. Physical games are vital to games preservation, ownership, and consumer choice, values that have guided iam8bit since our first physical release in 2016. Our commitment to these values remains unchanged. Long live physical media.”

Companies like Atari, Silver Lining Interactive, Lost in Cult, Limited Run Games, and Strictly Limited, all of which produce collector’s editions for games, shared similar sentiments about the situation. In a similar vein, most of these statements share a lot of theming, mostly about the preservation of games, the right of ownership offered to gamers by physical media, and an overall disappointment with the decision, even if they will still continue to work with Sony for as long as possible. The speed with which these statements come out, with additional responses likely as the industry continues to assess Sony’s decision, just goes to show how radical of a change Sony’s move to stop producing physical PlayStation game discs for future releases will be, even if it is still a noticeable amount of time away.

The Video Game History Foundation also offered an interesting perspective as it concerns non-consumer game preservation. According to them, Sony’s all-digital decision “doesn’t have as much of an impact as you might expect.” According to Frank Cifaldi, the director of the foundation, physical media has not been the norm for the past two decades: not only have games not been pressed to receive physical copies by the industry and the majority of fans, but the frequency of day-one patches means that even untouched discs will not contain the game most people played at launch. The foundation still shared grievances about the situation, mostly concerning new ways to preserve games. According to them, if the industry decides to eliminate physical games as a whole, and they continue to deactivate older digital storefronts, then new solutions to preserve these games should also exist, lest they become lost media. However, the Entertainment Software Association, a trade association that lobbies on behalf of game publishers and developers, has continuously fought against DMCA changes that would make preservation of this nature easier. As Cifaldi put it, “The industry needs to meaningfully come to the table on this issue, because asking museums to download a copy of Grand Theft Auto 6 and hope that it’ll run in 50 years is not a preservation solution.”