‘Don’t Kill the Disc’ Petition to Sony Hits 100,000 Signatures in Four Days

If you’ve been living under a rather large and obstructive rock, you might not have seen the news that Sony is shutting down the production of discs for new PlayStation games, effective January 2028. The change, which was announced recently by the company, took the gaming world by storm, and not in a good way. It has proven to be something extremely disruptive for the wider community.

This action, which was not a decision made lightly, has resulted in boycotts, social media campaigns, and now a petition, which has racked up 100,000 signatures in just four days. The number of those picking up and having their voice heard within the petition is skyrocketing, and it’s only a matter of time before Sony responds.

Sony Maintains Radio Silence After Damning Discs

On July 1st, the official PlayStation profile on X posted a couple of links, which took users to pages explaining the damning news that, as of 2028, no new PlayStation games will be printed on disc. This raised obvious and instant concerns with the community at large, with the leading issues being centered around the loss of control, the monopolization of sales, and the disparity in pricing.

In the day that followed, one impacted gamer, a representative of a Canadian retail platform called PnP Games, took it upon themselves to kick-start a petition on Change.org, the number-one platform for social action in situations such as this.

The petition, titled ‘Don’t Kill the Disc,’ has amassed 100,00 signatures, and almost five percent of supporters have left some kind of comment or video backing the effort.

In the bio for the petition, it states:

A disc is a real game you own. You can lend it, trade it, resell it, gift it, collect it, or pass it down to your kids. A box with only a download code is not the same thing. It is a digital license in plastic packaging. You do not own it. You are renting access that can be revoked, and people have already had purchased movies deleted from their libraries and games pulled from sale weeks after launch.

The petition states that this isn’t just about the preservation of games, but about jobs, as physical media supports multiple avenues across a massive industry. But as it states, those signing the petition might not be against digital as a choice, but they are against having that choice made for them, with Sony scrapping discs for new games launched after January 2028.

In the latest update on the petition, a promise made by Sony in 2013 was brought up. The team said all those years ago that players on their platform would be able ot keep their games forever, but that promise appears to be diminishing with the irrevocable rise of digital gaming.

Ultimately, the petition might end up going nowhere, as this was likely a move made following months of planning, evaluation, and preparedness. Sony Interactive Entertainment would have weighed everything up, looked at the market, the trends, and bedded in and braced for the inevitable backlash.

Have you signed the Don’t Kill the Disc petition yet? Let us know your thoughts about this situation on the Insider Gaming Discord server.

For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that Hideo Kojima has addressed the end of disc-based gaming,