The China Mail - 'End of an era': Players lament decline of the disc at Gamescom

"It's a bad decision," British developer Chris Bastin, 34, told AFP. "It's the end of an era. I wish it wasn't."

While Sony's announcement in early July to stop releasing games on discs came as a bombshell for gamers, the economics of the industry meant the decision was long in the making, Joost van Dreunen, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, told AFP.

"Digital distribution has been a replacement very much of physical carriers for the last 10 years," he said, with online stores replacing the discs once associated with the Xbox and PlayStation or the cartridges for some of Nintendo's consoles.

"Retail usually historically costs 20 to 30 percent of total margin on the sale of a single disc," Dreunen said, as stores take a cut of any sale. "By distributing it digitally through their own network and their own servers, they save a huge amount of margin."

Digital downloads accounted for nearly 82 percent of game sales on the PS4 and PS5 at the start of 2026, Sony said in late July.

The Japanese giant helped popularise console discs in the 1990s after launching its first PlayStation.

- 'Sentimental value' -

The shift has caused uproar among some who fear that losing access to a physical copy makes gamers dependent on the goodwill of service providers, who may or may not maintain players' digital accounts into the future.

"They don't go digital to pass on savings to the consumer," Clemens Istel, a spokesman calling for the boycott, told AFP.

"They go digital to make more profit. And there is zero indication that the customer will benefit from this."

In its 2025 report, French industry gaming group SELL found that while physical sales had fallen to 11 percent of the country's market, big titles like "EA Sports FC 26" and "Assassin's Creed Shadows" nevertheless sold hundreds of thousands of physical copies.

Thomas Bachellerie, who used to manage a games shop in Lyon, warned that second-hand sales sometimes made up almost a third of stores' turnover -- a problem since digital games "cannot be resold or lent".

For some, simple nostalgia plays a role.

"I have the 'Oblivion Collector's Edition' that I bought when I was a teenager, early teenager," Australian civil servant Scott Whiting told AFP at the fair, referring to the critically acclaimed fourth instalment in the best-selling "The Elder Scrolls" role-playing franchise.

"I still, I've moved 10 times since I bought it and I still carry that case around," he said.

"It still means something to me," he added. "There's emotional value in it, sentimental value, and I still look at games that I bought 20 years ago."

- Monopoly? -

Due for release on November 19, the highly anticipated "Grand Theft Auto VI" has also drawn criticism because its physical game box contains only a download code.

"That's a very bad sign," Bachellerie said. "GTA is a game that is supposed to keep us going for 10 years. For a shop, there is almost no point in selling it anymore."

But whatever some gamers might think, Geoffray Brunaux, a lawyer specialising in digital law, told AFP that holders of a physical game did not own it any more than those with a digital copy.

"Whether it is physical or digital, you never actually own the game," he said.

Gamers buy licences to play the game -- licences that can be withdrawn.

Consumer movements have sought to stop publishers pulling the plug on games they decide are no longer worth keeping online.

In January, the European Commission took receipt of the "Stop Destroying Videogames" petition, signed by almost 1.3 million people, after high-profile instances of games being switched off.

But anti-trust law can come in handy for gamers, Brunaux said.

The Dutch Stichting Massaschade & Consument consumer group is suing Sony for forcing PlayStation owners to buy from the PlayStation Store, alleging monopolistic practices that drive up the price of digital goods.

W.Tam--ThChM