We have unfortunately been barrelling towards a digitised future for some time now, but Sony's latest news that PlayStation will be fully digital by 2028 has heightened fears that players have about ownership and the inability to preserve art. The fear is so palpable that even Hideo Kojima has commented on the situation now.
"Eventually, even digital data will no longer be owned by individuals on their own initiative," Kojima says in a social media post. "Whenever there is a major change or accident in the world, in a country, in a government, in an idea, in a trend, access to it may suddenly be cut off."
1/2Eventually, even digital data will no longer be owned by individuals on their own initiative. Whenever there is a major change or accident in the world, in a country, in a government, in an idea, in a trend, access to it may suddenly be cut off.August 5, 2021
This has been a very real fear for quite some time now, with the Stop Killing Games being one group to lead the charge against a lack of consumer protections, although its latest bid for rule changes unfortunately fell flat in front of the European Commission:
"The Commission considers that at this stage it cannot propose a legal obligation to keep videogames playable after they stop being provided commercially. This is due, also, to existing intellectual property rights. Under EU copyright law, rights holders enjoy exclusive rights over their creations."
Players are (quite rightly) worried that without physical media their beloved games, or any kind of art, can be ripped away from them at a moment's notice. "We will not be able to freely access the movies, books, and music that we have loved," Kojima adds. "I would be a have-not. That's what I'm afraid of. This is not greed."
Unfortunately, it's not uncommon nowadays for a fairly popular game to go the way of the dodo and kick the bucket while still having somewhat of a dedicated fanbase. Late last year Amazon cancelled MMO New World despite it having concurrent player peaks of 60,000 strong.
More recently, we've watched that sad demise of Destiny 2, as Bungie announced its decade-long story would be wrapped up in its biggest ever quality-of-life update which was released at the start of last month. Servers are still up, but with no future updates, the cheating and matchmaking will only get worse from here.
We're certainly walking into unstable and under-legislated ground, and PlayStation's latest decision furthers that uncertainty by removing the choice of physical games players used to have. Perhaps the Video Game History Foundation is right, maybe the only way forward for true ownership and preservation of videogames is piracy.
