Sony has been attracting serious heat over plans to stop manufacturing physical copies of its games, with gamers all over the world expressing concerns about retaining ownership of their media. Sony announced on July 1 that all physical game disc production for new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting in January 2028, restricting gamers to digital-only formats.
Last month, the news that Grand Theft Auto VI will only be available to buy digitally also received a frosty reception from the gaming community. Some indie game stores even stopped stocking the game in protest.
Now, EU Commissioner Michael McGrath has stepped in to say that the economic bloc is powerless to intervene when it comes to keeping games physical. In Strasbourg’s European Parliament, he told the Irish Mirror: “It does come down to commercial and contractual freedoms.”
He added that “companies are free to offer games and services in the manner that they see fit, provided that consumer rights are fully protected in line with national and EU law.”
This isn’t the first time the EU has clarified that it’s unable to heed gamers’ demands in recent months. Online consumer rights campaign Stop Killing Games had been putting pressure on the EU to regulate publishers into keeping their games playable long-term. A petition by the group racked up over 1 million signatories online. While it’s received shows of support from some of the world’s biggest YouTubers, including figures like PewDiePie and Cr1TiKaL, as well as EU politicians like European Parliament Vice President Nicolae Stefanuta.
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But EU lawmakers announced last month that they could not propose “a legal obligation to keep video games playable after they stop being provided commercially,” as a result of existing intellectual property law.
The commission did promise other plans to help gamers, however, including plans to draw up an industry code of conduct on managing games’ ‘end of life’.
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