Winnipeg petition against Sony’s decision to scrap game discs garners hundreds of thousands of signatures

A petition calling on Sony to reserve its decisions to stop making physical copies of games in 2028 has received over 330,000 signatures.

A petition started by a Winnipeg video game business asking Sony to reverse a controversial decision regarding physical copies of their games has garnered significant interest and response.

PNP Games in Winnipeg launched a petition against Sony’s decision to cease selling physical discs for video games in 2028. As of July 20, the petition has received more than 333,000 signatures on Change.org.

Dan Boissoneault, business and community development representative for PNP Games, said the petition has grown bigger than they anticipated.

“That number is big enough to make waves within the industry, and that’s what we’re hoping,” he said. “If not only Sony recognizes that they may have made a misstep and they need to course correct, that the rest of the industry sees that physical media should not go away. It shouldn’t be an all-digital future for this type of media.”

On July 1, Sony announced it will be ceasing production of physical game discs for its PlayStation consoles starting in January 2028, with all games going forward being released in digital formats only.

In a statement announcing the change, Sony said the decision was due to changing consumer preferences.

“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,” the company said. “This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.”

While not opposed to digital games, Boissoneault said not having physical copies hurts the ability for people to share games with others.

“In 30 years, if I want to share a game with, say, a grandchild or something like that, I may not have the ability to do that at all, purely because of a company decision,” he said. “Because I don’t specifically own that item, it’s licensed and it doesn’t belong to me.”

He said they want people to have the choice between physical or digital copies, rather than one single choice.

Boissoneault noted in 2013, Microsoft attempted a similar change, restricting the trade of pre-owned games for their Xbox One console, but reversed its decision due to consumer backlash. That same year, Sony said PlayStation titles would not be subject to the same thing.

Boissoneault claims Sony released the news on Canada Day and close to the Fourth of July long weekend in the United States, hoping it would be ignored. Instead, he said the opposite happened.

“We don’t see a current end to the petition; it’s just going to keep rolling on,” he said.