Stop Killing Games Says Physical Discs Are the "Last Barrier" Against Total Publisher Control
- Sagar Mankar
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
Physical game discs are on their way out, and that has sparked a real fight over who actually owns the games we pay for. Sony recently announced it will stop producing physical discs for new PlayStation games starting in 2028. Take-Two confirmed something similar for GTA6. Neither move sat well with gamers or preservationists, and the backlash has been loud ever since.
The group leading the charge is Stop Killing Games, and they are not holding back. According to the movement, discs are one of the "last barrier" stopping publishers from having total control over games people have already bought. Once that barrier disappears, there is not much left standing between a player and a publisher's decision to just switch a game off for good.
Executives have mostly framed the disc removal as simple progress. Digital downloads are the "norm" now, manufacturing costs money, and physical media feels like a relic to some in the industry. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has said discs "don't really make sense" for big releases anymore. That logic makes sense from a business standpoint. But Stop Killing Games sees a much bigger problem hiding underneath it.
The movement, started by YouTuber Ross Scott under his channel Accursed Farms, kicked off after Ubisoft shut down The Crew back in 2024. That shutdown made an entire game unplayable overnight, even for people who had already paid for it. Since then, SKG has been digging into just how common this practice really is, and the numbers are not pretty.
In April 2026, Ross Scott spoke at a public hearing of the European Parliament on the European Citizens’ Initiative “Stop Destroying Videogames.” There he delivered one of the clearest public accounts of how the process works. Scott defined a “destroyed” game as one in which “a publisher has permanently disabled all copies of it that have been sold so no one can ever play them again.” He compared the outcome to “removing every single copy of a book or film in existence, effectively erasing it from the culture.” He then walked through the typical sequence:
The publisher sells a copy of the video game.
The game is designed so that it must connect to the publisher in order to function—this acts as a potential "kill switch".
The customer is given no information at the time of purchase about when the game will stop working.
After an undisclosed period, the publisher disables all existing copies.
The publisher keeps all the money from sales.
Countermeasures are put in place that make repairing the game nearly impossible, even for experienced software professionals.
The data backs him up too. An internal SKG study looked at more than 1,100 games requiring a publisher connection. Out of the 400+ titles that got discontinued, 93.5% left players with a completely unusable purchase.
This is exactly why physical discs still matter to so many people. A disc lets you play without needing a server to say yes first. It allows resale, lending, and long-term preservation, things that pure digital licenses rarely allow.
Fans are not staying quiet either. A Change.org petition calling on Sony to reverse its decision has already crossed 350,000 signatures in a month. Gamers have also organized a PS Blackout Week running from August 23, where players plan to avoid the PlayStation Store entirely. Several streamers have already pledged to skip PlayStation content altogether during that stretch, showing just how much this issue has struck a nerve across the community.
