PSN, Xbox outages show why a disc-free future would suck

It happened two times in two weeks: First Sony's PlayStation Network, then Microsoft's Xbox experienced significant outages. Monday's Xbox outage was particularly galling for users, since many Xbox games these days require authentication via the internet before they can even launch.

Not only were Xbox users locked out of online features, they couldn't even launch games they had installed on their machines. PSN players are vulnerable too: Sony recently confirmed it will stop manufacturing PlayStation game discs after January 2028.

The outages, in short, were an object lesson in the trade-offs that come with an all-digital sales model — as well as the benefits of keeping physical media alive.

Why are game discs going away?

For most of the history of video game consoles, buying a game meant acquiring a physical object. You bought a disc or cartridge, you inserted it, the console read it, and the game ran. You could resell the disc, lend it, or shelve it indefinitely without worrying about digital rights management.

But discs could also produce noticeable delay or stutter during gameplay, since optical drive read speeds have not scaled up as fast as processing power. So publishers began front-loading install data onto consoles' local hard drives, rather than taking it from a disc in real-time. As game file sizes have grown, publishers have leaned further into upfront installation as the more stable engineering choice.

But that's not what drove the backlash to Sony's announcement. Many players are concerned about what happens to the whole concept of games ownership once physical media is entirely off the table.

The digital "sharing" economy was supposed to be defined by the phrase "you'll own nothing and be happy." Though coined by a socialist politician as a positive promise in 2016, this quote has since become a meme with a more sinister meaning.

Streaming services have long illustrated the problem. Netflix, Spotify, and their peers technically sell you access to media, revocable at any time a licensing deal lapses or a platform decides a title no longer earns its keep. This is not a new problem, and one of the more chilling examples is one of the oldest: the time in 2009 when Amazon removed George Orwell's dystopia of erased history, Nineteen Eighty-Four, from users' Kindles, due to a rights issue.

Likewise in the games industry, publishers can and have removed purchased digital titles from a user's library over licensing disputes or expired royalty agreements. Game servers are shut down once a title stops generating sufficient revenue to justify the operating cost, rendering online games unplayable.

In addition to ending disc production in 2028, Sony also revealed it would close its PS3 and PS Vita stores in some countries as early as this August. The company promised users "will still be able to download previously purchased content after the closing date," but only for a vague period of time: "the foreseeable future."

What happens when games discs don't work?

If you're seeking out an older discontinued title, there are often used copies to be found, and workarounds are available online for some games that require server connections. Live-service architecture, which Sony has tried (and sometimes failed) to make the norm, removes even that fallback.

Without a functioning server, there's no local copy to fall back on, no disc to reinsert, nothing to do but wait — precisely the position both Xbox and PlayStation users found themselves in recently.

Take The Crew, a decade-old racing game that publisher Ubisoft deciding to sunset in 2024. Because the game required a persistent internet connection even for its single-player mode, players lost the ability to launch it once Ubisoft delisted it from storefronts, revoked existing licenses, and shut down its servers. Ubisoft offered refunds only to those players who'd purchased The Crew in the past 14 days, its standard refund procedure.

The response from gamers was the formation of Stop Killing Games, a campaign founded by YouTuber Ross Scott. The campaign demanded that publishers not render anything a customer already paid for permanently unusable. It has since collected more than a million verified signatures via a European Citizens' Initiative, and helped spur a French consumer lawsuit against Ubisoft.

For now, Sony is still making discs, and won't be taking away games you've already bought. But after 2028, according to Sony's plan, that will change; you'll only ever be able to purchase PlayStation games online. And that could make PSN users vulnerable to the next server crash, legal dispute over licensing, or online game that simply isn't making its money back.