Welcome to the latest episode of my blog series Breaking Up with Big Tech. This is a painful one. I have been a dedicated fan of the Sony PlayStation since its glorious release in 1995. I have owned every version up to the PS5 and loved them all. They are my go-to gaming hubs and physical media players.

But recently, Sony did something truly baffling. They announced, to enormous fan backlash, that they would stop releasing physical copies of games. All new games would be digital-only. No more discs, only downloads.

Um … what? That’s like Hasbro announcing that they’re only making digital board games.

I was part of that enormous fan backlash. In response, I vowed that my PS5 would be my last PlayStation. No amount of sleekness and polish can ever justify a gaming product that refuses to let you own the games you purchase.

To any non-gamers out there, this decision was utter sacrilege.

Gamers are a notoriously loyal bunch. They will happily support any company who respects their desires. And when they don’t, players flee like rats from a sinking ship, never to return. Entire companies have gone belly up because the boardroom couldn’t be bothered to learn what their customers actually value.

Think eras like Classic NES and peak-WoW Blizzard. Regardless of hardware, the experience was largely the same. You purchased a physical copy of a game and played it on your device. You then owned a handy piece of physical media that retained value. It was a fair transaction that benefited everyone, much like buying a CD. Love it? Keep it. Hate it? Resell it.

And then the streaming wars began, which launched a new era of enshittification.

You can blame Netflix and Adobe for the subscription nightmare that we endure today. It started off well enough, because digital libraries can be super convenient. The problem was, companies were criminally opaque with their rules and conditions. Buying digital media does not adhere to the same ownership rules of buying physical media. All you have is a temporary license to use the content, something that companies can (and do) take away at any time.

Imagine buying a digital AAA game at $100, which requires a console and internet connection, only for the company to decide that the servers aren’t profitable. They cancel the project, shut down the servers, and remove the game from your digital library. No refund. Sounds horribly unfair, right? Unfortunately, it happens all the time. So often, in fact, that it spawned the Stop Killing Games movement.

For the longest time, it was an isolated problem with a reasonable solution. As long as you owned a physical copy of a game and the necessary hardware, it didn’t matter. You could play it whenever you liked, regardless of support. Some games required an internet connection, like MMOs, but most were self-contained enough to play offline.

And now Sony is taking that away.

To which I say, F#%K SONY!

That’s over 30 years of my gaming life tied to a single console. And it all ended with a single, devastating, monumentally stupid decision. The most infuriating part is that Sony anticipated the backlash, but did it anyway. I’m sure some random suit in accounting said that sales would remain strong and that the hardware savings would make up the difference.

Guys, have you ever met a gamer?

We will go back to reading books before we let you take away our physical games. There are always those who don’t care and will continue to purchase digital content without hesitation. It’s the same people who say “everything’s fine” when the Titanic is sinking. They are a slim minority, and I don’t think Sony is prepared for the tsunami of hate that is going to plague them over the next decade. Loyalty gone.

So in the wake of this decision, PS gamers are rightly asking, “What now?” Physical games will continue to work, but what about new games? One option is to abandon consoles for PC. You don’t even need Microsoft anymore because most games work great on Linux. Many gamers swear by Steam, the giant distribution platform that installs games locally, allowing for offline play. You still don’t have physical copies, but you do have the ability to fill external hard drives with anything you purchase. That’s a good middle-ground.

Another option is going back in time. I have started to reacquire retro consoles and emulators, which you can find at local gaming shops. I recently found an NES Mini, which lets me play all the classic games from my childhood. Yes, I love the visual richness of modern gaming, but I also love the pixelated charm of Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda. They remain perfect games because they needed to be in order to release the cartridge.

Older gamers remember when DLC (downloadable content) wasn’t a thing. We had a physical game, a physical console, and no internet. And it was glorious.

So that’s what I do now. When I want a rich gaming experience, I boot up the PS5 and insert my copy of Elden Ring. When I want a retro experience, I boot up the NES Mini and play Castlevania. And when Sony implements their digital-only hellscape, I plan to not notice.

As a closing note, there is another option. It has been gaining a lot of momentum and won’t be slowing down any time soon. To quote every disgruntled gamer over the last decade, “If buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing.”