Sony is winding down disc production for new titles as of 2028. The signs were on the wall. Digital-only storefronts. Disc-less consoles. Competitors who went digital years ago, or are still trying to. However, the announcement was ill-received. It was seen as contempt for consumers’ rights. For archival efforts of video games. For anyone who wanted physical media. Sony’s true motive behind the decision is irrelevant. The disc was never engineered to protect those rights.

Nintendo, another video game giant from Japan, had a similar calling for the new console generation. Traditionally, Nintendo’s portable and hybrid consoles had cartridges. And with increasing file sizes on the latest titles, the cost of the large cartridge itself became a burden for the ecosystem. Their solution is the Game-Key Card, a key on the cartridge. The game lives online; the key only grants access. It can be traded afterward, loaned to a friend, if one wishes so. However, the online requirement, coupled with Nintendo’s past digital storefront closures, only gave ammunition to the opponents.

Then we have a silent player who went disc-less decades ago, Valve’s Steam. It is possible to buy Steam games from a retailer, but they may not be traded after they are redeemed on your account. Not even in death. Steam Customer Support had famously answered that the transfer of ownership of a deceased user’s account is not possible. The suggested workaround from the community is to leave credentials in writing. Valve may not know if the account holder is alive, but the practice is still in breach of the Steam ToS. With policies that would otherwise be labeled as anti-consumer, Steam, oddly enough, is recognized as a consumer-friendly ecosystem. The irony does not escape me.

Other industries have found solutions that have come to define the market with digital delivery. Both music and movies are now being distributed with subscription. The model erases the question of digital ownership entirely, while leaving physical media as an exotic hobby. The same principle applies to video games. The data on the disc is no longer the game. The game has transitioned from a product to a service. Launch-day discs are not the gateway to the same experience the player will actually have after the day-one patch. Collecting the physical media is not the engineered solution to the problem. The answer isn’t hidden in the disc. The modern game simply does not fit on the traditional medium. The answer is in the reshaping of the industry itself. And like it or not, it will be the new norm for video games.