PlayStation Reportedly Polling Game Developers After Decision to Kill Discs Sparks Backlash

PlayStation is reportedly sending a lengthy survey to game developers with a question about how they sell physical games after their decision to stop producing physical game discs prompted intense backlash.

The death of physical discs will not happen quietly; fans are making their voices heard as loudly as possible, to the point where PlayStation itself is reportedly reaching out to game developers asking for their thoughts on the divisive subject.

Speaking on the Broken Silicon Podcast, content creator, writer, and showrunner Tom claimed that he’d been made aware of a survey making the rounds among game developers from Sony. His sources claimed that it was possibly the longest survey that Sony has ever distributed.

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“There is a survey Sony sent out to developers that is, what I was told by my contacts, a bigger survey than they’ve sent almost ever before, if not ever before. And there was a question in it basically trying to ask in a not-direct way, ‘Is there an issue with how we sell games physically?’ or something, like asking developers for feedback on killing discs.

“Wolverine is still selling plenty of physical copies, and you’ve also got Sony starting to ask devs if they are worried about killing physical [discs], suggesting they realize that if they got a bunch of feedback, maybe they would consider some sort of mea culpa on it. We’ll see.”

As noted by Destructoid, this claim comes on the heels of multiple reports from gamescom that developers at the event were expressing severe displeasure at Sony’s choice to forgo physical games. While it’s best to take Tom’s specific claims of a survey with a grain of salt for now, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if Sony were really testing the waters after hearing such strong feedback.

However, executives at the company have made it clear that they don’t plan on pulling back from their all-digital future; in a July investor Q&A, chief financial officer Lin Tao confirmed that Sony is going to proceed in spite of the backlash.

“We have received various opinions and people have strong views, and we understand that the community has put forth those views to us. Games are loved by many people. It’s a form of entertainment that’s loved by people, and it’s connected to people’s fond memories in many cases,” she said through a translator.

“And so we understand those emotions. We want to consider that. And in the future digital ecosystem, how do we engage the gamers is something that we would like to continue to explore.”

Virginia Glaze

News Editor

Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.