Frustrated Sony fans have showed up in force for Sony’s first State of Play showcase since announcing the end of new PlayStation game discs, flooding the chats on YouTube and Twitch with calls for the PS5 maker to develop Destiny 3 and keep physical gaming around.
“D3” emotes on Twitch and chants of “no disc, no buy” on YouTube were all you could see in the chats during the presentation for upcoming games. The demands have become slogans for fans unhappy with with Sony’s recent business moves, as well as catchalls for anyone disappointed over this console generation more generally in which the company has raised prices and wasted tons of money and studio time chasing the lucrative trend of live-service gaming.
Sony’s decision to abandon physical games with the start of the PS6 console generation has brought all of the simmering frustrations to a boil, and this is players’ first opportunity to spam the chat for a major PlayStation event since the July announcement. It also comes a week after some people tried to stage a seven-day boycott of the platform.
But so far at least, Sony has shown no public signs of backtracking on either its decision to gut Bungie and sunset Destiny 2, or to stop printing game discs. “We put in a lot of thought and time, and we cautiously considered this—and we came to this conclusion, and we’re going to cautiously move this forward,” chief financial officer Lin Tao said during the last earnings call. “And to this decision, we have received various opinions and people have strong views, and we understand that the community has put forth those views to us.”
She continued, “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. 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.”
A month later, that calculus doesn’t appear to have changed at all, and PlayStation’s YouTube and Twitch chats won’t let the company forget it.
