July headlines have been dominated by the announcement from Sony that PlayStation is going to stop producing physical game discs at the start of 2028. This has easily proven to be the biggest controversy for PlayStation of the PS5 generation, and one of the biggest controversies in PlayStation history. Despite substantial pushback, Sony has not retreated from the announcement, and we do not expect this to change. In the resulting discussions is a post on the PS5 Reddit page that highlights how this makes a major PSN issue worse.
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As the post notes, PlayStation — unlike Nintendo, Steam, and Xbox — does not allow PS5 users to change the region on their PSN accounts. This has been the case with all PlayStation consoles, and will presumably be the case with the PS6 as well. This in itself is a major issue for many PlayStation issues, and now it’s an even bigger issue with this PS5 disc announcement
Losing All of Your PS5 Games
Sony’s official policy guidance on this is that PlayStation users should simply make a new account if they move. The problem with this is that it means starting over from scratch. This means all of your legacy data — Trophies, Friends List, etc — is wiped. You will also lose access to every PlayStation Plus game ever downloaded. The even bigger problem is that you are technically violating PlayStation’s terms of service. Using an account in a different country is technically a breach of the ToS. Right now, Sony doesn’t enforce this, but what if that changes? Well, if that changes and your account is nuked from orbit, there go all your games. With physical games, you still own your library and can transfer it. If all your games are digital, well then, your entire library is at the mercy of corporate policy. Speaking of which, Sony recently added the ability to its ToS to permanently delete your PSN over inactivity.
Why is this Sony’s policy position? Of course, in the modern world, people are constantly moving all over the globe, which makes this policy archaic. It’s so archaic that even Nintendo doesn’t hold it, and Nintendo is notorious for being slow to adapt. So, why is Sony holding on to this? Well, it is a complicated issue involving licensing, legal compliance, and more. In other words, it’s going to cost Sony money to implement. It also wants to prevent users from exploiting systems to buy games in other regions where they are cheaper. Of course, most users wouldn’t even try this, and there are ways to limit this, but that also requires resources.
With this physical games change, we suspect Sony is going to finally budge on this position and get with the times like its competitors. That said, the fact that it’s held onto this position for so longer, stubbornly, may suggest otherwise. Whatever the case, in the meantime, it has left some PlayStation users worried about the future of their accounts.
All of that said, and as always, feel free to leave a comment or two letting us know what you think, or join the video game conversations happening over on the ComicBook Forum.
