This might read like a niche complaint about gaming and PC hardware, but the pattern underneath it touches almost anyone who has ever bought a movie, a game, or a piece of software they assumed was theirs. This is about how much control people have over things they have already paid for.
Sony confirmed it will stop producing physical PlayStation game discs entirely starting January 2028, which effectively confirms the next console will ship without a disc drive. GTA 6’s physical edition, priced at 80 dollars for the standard version and 100 dollars for the Ultimate Edition, will ship with nothing but a code in the box. There is no disc to resell, lend, or keep working if a server somewhere eventually shuts down. Valve’s long-delayed Steam Machine arrived at 1,049 dollars, roughly 300 dollars above its original target, for hardware many already call underwhelming for the price.
None of this is happening by accident and the timing lines up with a hardware market under real strain. Memory analysts at Jefferies expect DRAM prices to rise 40 to 50 % in the third quarter of 2026, then another 30 to 40 % in the fourth, with no meaningful relief before 2028. A California lawsuit accuses Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron of deliberately restricting supply to chase the much higher margins available from AI data centre memory instead. Microsoft is already raising Xbox prices by 100 dollars this August because of it.
The part that should worry people who never touch a console is what is happening to things they already bought. Sony will delete 551 movies and TV shows, including Terminator 2 and Apocalypse Now, from PlayStation libraries across the UK and Europe on September 1, after failing to renew a licensing deal with Studio Canal. No refunds are being offered and this is not a first offence. Sony pulled over 300 titles from German and Austrian libraries in 2022 and wiped more than 1,300 seasons of Discovery shows in 2023. The same thing happens quietly across streaming platforms every year, as licensed films and shows vanish overnight with no warning and no way to get them back.
Add to this the collapse of the tools people once used to protect themselves. Pioneer exited the optical disc drive business last year, Sony has quit recordable Blu-ray and Elecom is winding down its remaining drives this summer. Burning a personal backup, once a basic consumer habit, is turning into a niche skill for people who kept old hardware.
Put together, the message is clear: fewer discs, no resale market, rising prices for the hardware needed to run any of it and a growing list of things that can simply disappear from your account without explanation or compensation.
And for my Bulgarian readers who have not bought any media because Zamunda always had it, even that era is over. The site was seized in a joint US-Bulgarian operation this year and this time it did not come back.
