Does the average person know that a physical book they bought can deteriorate with age, and pages can tear or fall out as well? But as long as they have that book in their possession, it belongs to them, and they can read it, lend it to someone else, to their heart’s content. How are discs any different? Surely a physical book is not “permanent” but it certainly has its own merit, as compared to a DRM ridden copy of a book from Amazon. Also, some people just enjoy collecting physical media.

It’s not even clear if you’re saying its playback will be unsupported at some point? Or the media itself has a shelf life?

If I use a disc to backup family photos, will it experience bit rot? I suspect no. Is there a potential that no software supports JPEG in the future? Sure, everyone knows that’s possible. I use JPEG over other technologies because I feel it has a lower chance of getting obsoleted into obscurity.

> do they think if they get the disc, they can just hold and be able to play that disk for decades or just copy to drive they have?

We can legally back-up owned discs to hdd or whatever other media in my country, including to the cloud. I can use the original media or any such backups as many times as I want, forever.

We can also sell a "hard media" copy wheven we want. IP owners cannot take away that right from us. Of course you must delete your backups if you sell the original media.

With digital "purchases" neither of these is true anymore. That's where the outrage comes from.

I have some 1999 era DVD-ROM still working perfectly last time I checked. And I didn't put any care in storing it "properly", normal drawer. I still have musical CDs from the 90s that have been remastered 3 times by now and I prefer the original version I hold. Yes I can download some pirate mp3 version of it, but still, no Spotify or music label can remove it from my hands now.

They will outlast digital access for almost all cases, which may go away anytime as Sony please, or die with the console's central server etc. This is not defendable.

I still have a stash of SNES ROMs along with an old zSNES emulator binary. The whole collection is less than a GB in size and can be easily copied to whatever new drives I get.

There is some irony that those games from 40 years ago will probably still be playable long after lots of the more modern games are gone for good.

If you know what you're doing, you put anything important on an M-disc.

Everything else is prone to random flaking. Some discs last much longer than others, but there is not always an easy way to know in advance unless you do a deep dive on the state of manufacturing at the place and time it was made (if such info is even available).

Environmental conditions can also have an effect.

I think most people who have crossed paths with a lot of optical media over the years are aware of this, but your average consumer? Probably not.

Scratched discs can be polished, pretty much restoring them to as-new condition, and the lifetime of Blu-ray media, even recordables, is pretty impressive, as in: longer than yours or mine.

Addressing the core of your question: in my opinion, the value of abandoned games is limited: playing them is usually no fun whatsoever, if only because of the quality-of-life being very-noticeably substandard due to later innovations.

So, a couple of (reproducibly archivable) playthrough recordings may suffice for most purposes. That being said, I do think publishers should be pushed to open-source their games upon reaching end-of-life. But given that a lot of dependencies tend to be licensed, as is some (or even most) artwork, that push should be rather gentle.

The main point of campaigns like "Stop Killing Games" should be addressed through regular consumer protection: if the game you bought becomes unplayable in 2 years or less, there should be a refund. But beyond that, I'm afraid goodwill is the only way forward, not legislation.

And I'm saying this as someone who still has several playable PSP Minidiscs, alas never plays them anymore (except Loco Roco, once a year), because, well, they're no fun anymore

Do people know CDs get scratched, stat to skip and go bad? I would say at this point essentially everyone knows that. Do people know hard drives go bad? Probably most at this point know that drives fail.

While I'm not challenging the notion that it would be great to be able to copy your CD and put the content in the cloud, the reality is that we own nothing digit any more no matter how it is delivered to us. The notion that we should have a copy in the cloud is exactly what Sony is offering.

Given the practical reality, I would much rather have a CD of my game that rely on Sony but like music, that is fading into quaint obscurity. The part of the situation that really irks me is with the CD there is no secondary market and when i buy a 5 year old game from Sony they charge me 60 bucks as if it was a new release.

I think it is too much for you understand the other implications of not having a physical copy of your purchases...

The Wii came out in 2006 and all my discs still work fine. But me thinks this missing the main point people are mad. People are fine with digital only for the most part, but they don't trust Sony to do the right thing. For instance, I wonder if all the games I bought for the PS Vita and PS3 will be available in 5-10 years. With physical media I at least have the option of going to a retro game store and buying a copy.

Incidentally, I've recently started collecting DVD and Blu Ray. I've found unopened copies of some of my favorite movies at thrift stores for a few dollars. It is nice to know I can watch a movie without figuring out which streaming service it is currently on or having to connect to the internet. Plus, if I had friends, I could loan them a copy.

An aluminum pressed disc will last a long time if you don't constantly swap it out. I have a PSP that hasn't played anything other than Lumines in many, many years and I expect that disc will last functionally forever, as long as I can keep the PSP running.

> or is it too much to understand for them?

You’re talking about a guy in Cleveland like he’s a Neanderthal.

Clearly superior option is to be able to copy the game and it's content. Of course they don't allow this via DRM but this is what should be requested. Not some disc or online only. Both current options have limited lifespan.

Better question is does average person have a disk drive to use a disk?

As far as I know, Bluray discs are fairly decent in comparison to something like a DVD. In any case, I imagine the disc will live for longer than what Sony will keep their store up.