// KOTAKU — GAMING
Game Collectors Mourn The Death Of The PlayStation Disc: ‘It Will Feel Like I’m Starting Over From Scratch’
PlayStation’s plan to cease production of game discs by 2028 will have wide-ranging ramifications. Players are losing one of the only reliable ways to preserve games, retailers are losing a core product they put on their shelves to bring in customers and create community, and collectors are losing a major pillar of what makes video games so special. In the end, the only party that truly stands to gain anything from this is Sony, which will now require players to buy games solely through its digital storefront.
For some, a physical game collection is just that, a bunch of discs and cartridges we put in consoles to unlock access to the experiences inside them. For others, they transcend their mere utility and become something much more symbolic. Saurav, an HR employee for a multinational corporation in India, has been collecting games since high school during what he considers to be a golden era for PlayStation, specifically citing The Last of Us Part II and its steelcase edition as one of his prized collection pieces.
I know physical media is a losing battle. I'm fighting it anyway. Long live the shelf. byu/SauryReddit inps5collectors
“I remember going to my friend’s house and seeing his wall filled with the books he had read,” Saurav tells Kotaku. “I found it romantic in a way. Just a wall full of books that meant something to you. For me, games were that so I moved completely to have a physical copy of the games I played.”
Carsten, a web developer in Belgium, recalls starting his collection in earnest a decade ago after getting his first full-time job. It has since become a centerpiece in his home.
“There have been several occasions when we had friends over that they just walked over to the collection and were checking out all the games there,” he says. “And then you know you’re going to be talking about games for the next hour or so. That is something you can’t do with digital games, nobody ever boots up your PS to go through your library to see what kind of games you like.”
Matt Welsh, a content creator and father of two budding gamers in Pennsylvania, has been collecting games since the ‘90s, and has plenty of core memories of buying them from local stores, including during midnight releases.
“I remember Halo 2 having a Limited Collector’s Edition that really felt special,” Welsh says. “The drive home from the store that night felt like I really had a premium item that I could not wait to get home and play.”
Most people who have been collecting physical games over the years have stories like this. Attending a Mass Effect 3 midnight party and being handed a special edition the second the clock struck 12:00 a.m. is still a memory I cherish, and that copy remains on my shelf 14 years later, even if I haven’t turned that passion into a broader collection.
As a New Yorker with limited space, I haven’t been buying quite as many physical copies, especially after moving to a city with decent internet after decades of living in the boonies. In the past, physical games were often the only way I was able to play new releases in a reasonable time frame since it would take me days to download a AAA game. Now, my physical collection only grows maybe once or twice a year when a series I really love puts out a new game. But I’ve lived in a place where physical games were more than just a means to an end, they were the only viable way for people to play, trade, and sell games. So I get it.