Rockstar Games Co-Founder Dan Houser has recently weighted in on Sony‘s decision to stop production of physical discs from 2028 which could very well lead to the demise of all physical media in the near future. In a recent interview with IGN at San Diego Comic-Con, Houser said that he feels companies should provide the choice to players between buying physical and digital releases and although he personally loves physical media, he’s aware of the consistent updates and fixes that’s possible with digital copies of games.
“I don’t know that I care, but if people want that, I think companies should provide it. But I don’t know that I personally care,” he stated. “I also think that the ability to update games, as critical as people are of digital releases, the ability to update and fix problems in games is really useful for the quality of games.“
The most concerning fact regarding the entire digital vs physical landscape of videogames is the total absence of player choices and when that is removed completely, the industry feels more like an authoritarian regime where huge corporations and publishers have far more control and authority over the games we own than ourselves, which is inherently wrong. By removing their rights to buy discs or digital, players are slowly reduced into consumers who can only choose what games to buy or not, while corporations get more rights and controls over those titles in every way.
While it’s certainly true that most players in the recent few years have come to prefer digital versions of videogames than physical so it’s unlikely that Sony’s pivot could actually change a lot of what we already see in most players’ libraries. However, what’s actually saddening is the end of a long era of physical media, which were an embodiment of many gamers’ emotion for their favorite hobby as well as a symbol of ownership which will be sorely and dishearteningly missed as gaming continues to evolve throughout the next few years and beyond.
