After almost a week of no updates, the PlayStation social media accounts have become active again, and fans have leapt at the chance to yell about Sony’s physical media plans. On July 1, Sony announced it will stop releasing physical games after 2027 and is shutting down the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita digital stores. That decision is widely seen as the death knell for physical media, not just in gaming, and online reactions have been overwhelmingly negative.
Silence broken by a fight stick promotion
The PlayStation accounts were completely silent for nearly six days, only becoming active again not to address the backlash or acknowledge concerns, but to promote a wireless fight stick. The post consists of a 28-second video that doesn’t even show the stick in action, only how easy it is to swap out parts. The FlexStrike wireless fight stick costs £179.99 and launches on August 6, coinciding with Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, Sony’s exclusive new fighting game developed by Guilty Gear studio Arc System Works.
Not that the flaccid marketing matters, since none of the reactions online are about the stick. Instead, people are bombarding whoever runs the accounts with their continued frustrations over Sony’s abandoning of physical media.
Fans mock Sony with edited images and slogans
Reactions on X are full of edited screengrabs meant to mock Sony and show the issue hasn’t blown over. One person used their collection of PlayStation games to spell ‘F*** Sony,’ and several users shared the ‘Greed has no limits’ edit of the ‘Play has no limits’ slogan. Given how quickly they appeared, it seems people had been working on these for days, waiting for any sign of life from Sony’s accounts before sharing them.
‘After days of silence, after your post got more views in a few days than PlayStation 2 units sold, after players started looking for ways to push back against your terrible decision to kill physical games… your big response is a video about a peripheral? You’re watching your own legacy burn in real time, and somehow still pretending this is fine,’ reads one baffled message by user MagisterMaster.
Jokes and potshots on multiple platforms
Others have joked about whether the fight stick is physical or digital, and the official Domino’s account took a cheeky potshot with ‘Did someone order a digital pizza?’ On Bluesky, a handful of people have unsubtly posted pictures of elephants that they demand Sony address.
While the frustration from fans is certainly warranted and it’s not a good look for Sony to not address any of it, there’s really nothing the company can do or say to resolve this. The writing has been on the wall regarding the future of physical games for years, with digital sales greatly outselling physical sales, so Sony’s decision, while upsetting, was arguably inevitable. Plus, Sony has reportedly already begun repurposing its primary disc manufacturer into something else, making this a decision the company was committed to regardless of public response.
