Apparently there will be some boycott of PS in regards of decision to discontinue disks.
From 23 to 30 of August.
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I never understood these. Then the week after y’all will come back business as usual. How does it actually affect anything?
I owned a ps3. Last one I’ve owned. That’s how you do it.
How does it actually affect anything?
It gives certain social influencers a soapbox from which they can shout “Like, Subscribe, and Share!”
Modern day “boycotts” aren’t really economic actions. They’re media stunts advanced by affinity marketing groups intended to collect personal information and demonstrate their ability to mobilize large numbers of people.
Agreed on the last part. But a less cynical take: Companies like Sony obsessively track their sales metrics. If a campaign like this does go viral, and only a few percent of people actually follow through, it does create a noticeable dip in the metrics and an explanation will be demanded internally. There’s a small chance this makes certain managers a bit more careful about such decisions.
In rare cases companies have taken back or at least delayed similar moves, and they never do so without indication that it will indeed affect their bottom line.
Though I don’t think this campaign will have much effect, since asking for a full week is not something many people will follow through with. Also Sony is clearly banking on the fact that customers will stay due to lock-in to their ecosystem.
Yep. The hill my new console owning habits died on was any corp pushing paying to play online subscriptions and I stuck to that. I’ll buy used later if there’s exclusives I want and I can’t just emulate it like Switch 1.
Yeah I went from Sega to ps3 to switch 1 to nothing. But I’ve always owned a PC.
I still really want to play bloodborne, the emulation was rough when I tried it last, but I’m not gonna buy a ps4 just for one game.
Why one week? Refuse to buy anything until they revert course
I will continue not playing playstation, as I have for years. Fuck 'em.
I will keep not playing PS like I did since I got a PC lol, maybe even pirate my PS4 since I wasn’t using it that much anymore.
Too bad I still got 45€ there from the last gift card I had received…
In my region, PS5s were out of stock for a long time. Yesterday new stock came. Approx $200 more expensive than before. That too is for the digital version. 1 week not enough. Should be indefinite. Seeing industry trends, next one might be over $400 more expensive than current gen
In my region, PS5s were out of stock for a long time.
It’s very funny to see folks talk about a boycott against a product that keeps selling out faster than the parent company can manufacture it.
Push for laws that force digital stores to provide full ownership of digital rights.
The ability to pass purchased licenses from one account to another would be a real game changer.
They’re trying to kill ownership completely, and this would blow it wide open.
And that could just be step one. We need assurances about what happens when a store closes (can we download everything and archive it and play offline? will it be moved to another provider?) We need the ability to move purchases between stores. Hell, even between platforms. We need to make sure accounts that have paid for goods cannot be completely revoked under any circumstances. Locked out of online play or prevented from making further purchases, sure, but never just blocked.
Law makers have sat idly by for too long as our rights were taken from us. It’s high time to take them back.
Well what entitled full ownership for you
just a week?
the sentiment is nice, but those are rookie numbers. gotta pump it up to at least a month or three.
director boards don’t care unless the quarter looks bad.
Babysteps brother. The roaring blaze of a revolution starts with an ember
I would be absolutely floored of enough people were on board to even make a noticable difference for just one week. Boycotts in the gaming space have been hilariously ineffectual, historically.
I used to be jealous of people with playstation back in the day, but now that i could afford one i have zero interest anymore. There’s nothing it does that my gaming pc doesn’t do. There’s no reason at all to buy a new one as far as i can tell.
You know who would say economic boycotts don’t do anything? A lot of people defending Target a couple years ago. You could ask their CEO at that time, bit he was fired after they set the record for consecutive weeks losing value on their stock.
If you have a console, join in. Maybe they will feel it. AND REMEMBER , one corporation always works to give the others cover to follow. So if you have another console, support. Do it, and tell friends.
set the record for consecutive weeks
Then be sure to tell the organizers to set the record of indefinite consecutive weeks of protest.
Why bother.
Leave Sony. Dont threaten. I walked away after the ps2.
The hardware is the problem and everyone seems to act like the physical media is the issue.
Open hardware or gtfo.
I have a couple PS3’s. Bought used. No online games. I think I’ve bought more of their titles on PC than console.
It’s not even a boycott, I just haven’t seen value in their recent offerings and would rather spend my money elsewhere.
There’s some stuff I’d love to experience on the PS5.
But I will not be spending nearly a thousand dollars for a set top box with limited functionality they can effectively disable when I’m no longer making them enough money.
And with SteamOS getting better and better, the convenience of a console over a PC is becoming less of a thing.
Honestly, once SteamOS has dedicated apps for things like Hulu and Netflix, I think we can really change things. Right now my parents have an Xbox where my Dad can play an occasional game, but the interface is simple enough for my Mom to open her streaming apps. Once SteamOS gets that simple, I’ll be switching them over.
There’s some stuff I’d love to experience on the PS5
Like what?
Astrobot, Horizon, God of War, Ratchet and Clank, etc.
Some of the stuff I like from Sony (Last of US, Spider-man, Returnal) gets ported to PC eventually, but Sony has announced they’re cutting back on that.
I don’t think steam will ever have those things. But streaming devices are dirt cheap. The issue is codecs.
On the other hand I do have Plex and jellyfin on my steam deck to watch my shows when I am flying.
Works for me. My last Playstation was a PS2 lol. Been gaming on PC for over 20 years.
Gamers are notoriously bad at voting with their wallet so i’m very curious to see what comes of this.
I mean all the power to anybody that actually participates in this but effective boycots don’t usually have a start or end date. This looks more like a strike.
You’re going to need to get everybody to abandon Sony indefinately. Preferably from right now right up untill demands are met. That way you either get what you want, or you do not at which point you know chasing that point further is futile.
Yeah, switching to PC is a significantly more effective boycott strategy. You can still play games and give Sony $0.
Edit: And yes I realize PC generally doesn’t have disks either. However, you aren’t locked into PS’ store and things like GOG exist. I make a point to buy games on GOG, and so should anyone interested in OP’s boycott.
However, you aren’t locked into PS’ store and things like GOG exist. I make a point to buy games on GOG, and so should anyone interested in OP’s boycott.
While this is true, releases on GOG are few and far between and all the other stores are just (bad) variations of the same thing. Online web stores are very very far from functioning like brick and mortar stores for physical releases used to.
We primarily have “competition” on pc in online stores because some publishers are big enough to build their own just so they don’t have to pay Valve to be on Steam. So you are not technically locked to one store, but you are very much locked to whatever store publishers choose to push their game to.
So essentially you’re locked to all of them unless you choose to just not play said game, which is essentially the same choice you have on the Playstation with just the PS store.
Big difference for me is PC is open hardware and open OS. Should the worst happen there are possible solutions from those voyaging the seas.
But, consoles are locked down, and jailbreaks can be years away.
Its why despite buying digital on PC without issue I continued to buy physical for consoles, since I felt more in control of PC hardware than I did console hardware. Physical on consoles was a way of gaining back some control despite the hardware being locked.
Oh well. They dont want to sell my the game, then I don’t need the game.
PC is the only chance at you controlling the hardware, so it’s the only choice.
The comparison still doesn’t make sense. You can’t play a PlayStation disc on a different platform. If you buy a disc on console you are locked to that ecosystem.
Sony are doing this because not enough people buy discs to make it worth manufacturing, and PC gamers should know this because this new age of digital gaming started with the PC. Switching to PC just proves their point.
You are locked to the ecosystem, but the disc function can’t be revoked through account ban and is actually transferable to other people because of that.
Something Sony dislikes compared to digital where there is no second hand market.
Switching to PC proves the point that if games are digital people prefer open hardware and open OS options over locked down hardware.
Not that is should be a valid response, but you can jail break PlayStations to play whatever game you have a “back up” copy of. That tends to be my method of playing legacy PS games because it’s easier than dealing with discs.
At the end of the day, console gaming is a different product to PC gaming. That’s more obvious with Nintendo, but overall expectations should be different.
They’re actually very good at voting with their wallet for the most part. A minority of them are just very dumb and vote against what they’re claiming they want.
Nah, the majority of gamers just don’t care.
They just want to play their games and as long as it isn’t too many hoops to jump through will stick with Playstation. They didn’t even read the news about physical media.
They don’t care because they don’t buy physical games. They voted with their wallet to go all digital. That was a decision they made at some stage, and they don’t care about physical games existing or not.
Gamers are notoriously bad at voting with their wallet
When everyone was complaining about the Switch 2 price prior to release, I knew that it’d still sell like hotcakes.
Hasn’t stopped people buying the Steam Machine, either.
This is the crowd that preorders a DIGITAL ONLY game that hasn’t released a single lick of gameplay video. GTA 6 is proof that capital g Gamers are a lost cause.
The sane people that game have to just stay away from all the ball and gun Gamers, and support the indie scene.
I think part of it is people don’t forego convenience but also that we’ve allowed corporations to cement hegemonies that there honestly is very little ability to boycott.
Some industries are so centralized it’s impossible to effectively boycott and vote with your wallet.
remember when Sony was the only console with backwards compatibility? Pepperridge Farm Remembers.
Huh? You could play gameboy games on the SNES?!
with an adapter, yes, but the PS2 and PS3 could run PSX games natively.
Wow! It’s worthless!
As if a back out will convince a corporation that they are doing bad things and give up and change their minds.
Remember reddit black out?
Yep. I also still remember the last PS blackout. That was 24 days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_PlayStation_Network_outage
There’s no changing Sony because there’s no changing its users.
Sony is going to wipe their tears with all the money they have made from their player base.
I’m gonna change my profile pic in support
just incase
/s
Boycotts don’t have start dates. They happen as soon as someone says it happens and you’re either in, or you’re out.
Boycotts don’t have end dates. They happen until demands are met. If that means you never buy/do that thing again, so be it. If you’re not prepared to commit all the way, don’t participate.
Over time, the definition of “boycott” has been watered down to make people forget what makes a boycott effective. People have forgotten that the Montgomery Alabama bus boycotts lasted for literal years and saw people donating time and money to fixing up old cars, horse-drawn carriages, and carpooling to make them effective.
If you want real change, you have to be prepared to take real action. This one week boycott is pussy shit and won’t solve anything. If you’re gonna organize, do it for something that will work.
The boycott begins today. Right now. No more PS+ logins or payment. No more buying new games or consoles. No more anything that puts money in Sony’s pocket (buying used is fine, that money only goes to the reseller) and it lasts until Sony reverses its decision to stop printing physical games.
If we want to continue boycotting until they revise their digital licensing, we can demand that once we’ve made progress on the physical media. That’s what everyone cares about, so let’s keep the demands short and simple with that as the only one.
Couldn’t agree more!
Just cancelled my PS+ subscription with reason “other”.
I’ll see you all on the seven seas!
Wait so you’re going to stop buying physical PlayStation games and instead …. pirate pc games?
I imagine this is going to lead to a resurgence of the homebrew scene. Not sure if I’ll find games in the forest, or just get my fix watching a streamer long play the games I’m interested in.
No physical, no purchase. Period.
It’s not going to lead to a resurgence in anything, let’s be serious. It’ll lead to more profits and more digital games sold for Sony, and a gigantic drop in physical game sales.
Technically pirated games can be put on a physical media and stored indefinitely, neither do those require online connection afterwards, so Sony cant just remove those and Sony won’t be getting any money or user metrics for it either.
While not a perfect solution, it’s a decent stopgap and will get more people on board than fully abstaining.
But the PS5 can’t play pirated games……
… can’t play pirated games yet.
Likely never will. The PS4 is still hard to jailbreak, and even harder to play pirated games on. Not to mention that if you do it you can’t connect it to the internet or you’ll have your entire PSN account banned.
Same with Xbox - still to this day uncracked and not playing pirated games 13+ years later.
and instead …. pirate pc games?
Yeah PS5 games can’t, but PC games can be.
So why are you talking about “Sony can’t remove those” then? No one can remove pirated games, but you’re also not getting them physically at the stores.
Most important features of physical media are transferability (you can give the game to someone else and it will run) and autonomous access (you can run your game even if Sony or simply your Internet connection go down). Piracy typically checks both of these boxes.
It may not hold a collector’s value if that’s what you’re after, but I’d argue this is secondary anyway. And if you simply want to hold a bunch of game disks, you can always buy an empty disk and put the game in there.
Just FYI because seemingly no one appears to know this, but if your console is set as your “home console”, you can play all of your digital games offline, forever, on it. You can back them up to external drives, and copy them back over to the console at any time and play them, even in a nuclear submarine under the ocean.
The “home console” thing make it store all of your licenses locally, so there is no need to connect to auth servers ever on that console to play the existing games. I used to have every single game I own on Xbox backed up on external drives, but couldn’t be bothered after a while as I have no issues with internet.
If I lost internet for a bit and couldn’t play a specific game because I didn’t have it downloaded, I’d just play something else until I have internet again. That’s not something I lose sleep over.
The more I know!
but it makes those people feel good about themselves.
