Sony’s decision to stop manufacturing discs from 2028 has attracted massive player backlash for the last few months, which has now prompted the company to introduce a new customer harassment policy that has been posted on their official website yesterday. The policy has outlined multiple examples of harassment and has requested all customers for honoring these guidelines:
“Our company strives to provide honest service so that our customers can use our products and services with peace of mind, and we value customer feedback to improve our services,” the company wrote.
“On the other hand, the dignity and safety of our employees must not be threatened by customer harassment, such as words or demands from customers that exceed what is considered reasonable according to social norms.”
Sony has also clarified that they’re going to maintain a “firm stance” against behavior including “persistent and repeated, or prolonged, demands, excessive or unreasonable demands for compensation or apologies, and abusive language, threats, slander, and other similar behaviors.”
The company has listed several other examples of “forcing someone to prostrate themselves” and “visiting our offices or related facilities without permission.” And if such actions from players or customers happen, Sony has confirmed that they may “restrict or suspend customer service” in order to protect their employees — and, if absolutely necessary, can even contact “police, lawyers, etc.” to take legal action or begin criminal proceedings against them.
It’s clear that Sony has been on the receiving end of an unprecedented player anger and disgust ever since they confirmed their decision of stop manufacturing discs which can very well lead to the end of the physical media as we know it.
However, the company has confirmed to support all of the currently available physical games beyond that point, stating that publishers can still get existing physical media printed after January 2028.
One of the problems of the complete loss of physical media is that it’ll give players far less control over their owned videogames and can essentially remove all sense of ownership and rights which in turn leaves all of that in the hands of the publishers. This also takes away all sense of freedom of playing that gamers have towards their owned copies which is damning in more ways than one, making the industry move one step closer to a centralized, authoritarian model where huge corporations have all the control while the players have almost none.
