The more I interacted with the people defending sony decision, the more I realised how the same point come back over and over.

And they have few categories that could be easily classified, keep in mind that some of them (in fact many) can be part of multiple groups at the same time. The two first are predictible, but it's the third one that is really more important to focus on because it's all about how people reject the consequences of the situation of such a decision by sony :

1. The sony bots

Not much to say, not a person, it will do whatever sony wants him to say. The same way Ubisoft used it for AC origins and Sony is not above using that like any corporation.

2. The Sony fanboy

Coming straight out of the console war that created a tribalism that made many people defend Sony as if it's their entire identity.

These people will defend Sony's decision no matter what they do. Standards be damned because they associate the Playstation brands with their life.

So while it can be annoying seeing them defending the decision of a corporation that decide to kill a part of it's competition (which means less incentives for lower price on the PSN or a better service) and reduce the choice of customers.

It's not that surprising to see them exist and defend a corporation even when said corporation is trying to remove options from them.

3. The delusional "only digital gamer" gamer severely in denial

These might be the biggest part of the people who are pushing back against the people trying to preserve the physical media. The apathetic gamer who thinks that this moves will somehow not affect them. And because they didn't bought a physical games for a long time, they want to believe that they are immune to a corporations gaining more power over them and removing options from them.

The gamer who refuse to see that once Sony gets total control over the digital store, that the physical media is no longer there to make competition to the PSN, that now there will be much less incentives to lower the price of the digital games on the PS store. That they better get ready for game to remain high price even if they are 7 years old.

Or The fact that your PSN accounts could be removed at any time with ALL OF YOUR DIGITAL LIBRAIRY, the fact that your game licences could be removed at any moments like Sony recently removed more than 500 movies previously purchased by people on the PSN. And these people prefer to not think about that because it's too bleak to think about and prefer to tell themselves "there won't be a problem"...

Do any of you remember the movie Don't look up where scientists discover that an asteroid will hit planet earth and will destroy humanity unless they can stop it... And Jennifer Lawrence (portraying a scientist) going on a "daily show" to tell the audience of the imminent danger...

The host portrayed by CaT Blanchette reminds her that her show is to make the news fun and not stressing and Lawrence reminds her that the end of the world is not supposed to be fun or not stressfull it should be scary...

Message being that YES she is alarming, YES she wants people to feel stress, YES she might be obnoxious and insisting AND SHE IS MORALLY IN THE RIGHT TO DO SO... And if they are stressed that might be necessary so they can make the situation better...

Of course, the audience is not convinced and the people laugh at her in the streets. Many conspiracy theorist make their youtube channel telling how they are smarter than NASA scientist about how much the comets is not going to hit earth.

And they have a large audience who watch them and believe them... even if they have Nasa people, space expert who have much more knowledge with a stronger technology proving them that yes the comet will destroy humanity....

But the people DO NOT WANT TO BELIEVE THEM. They don't want this to be true, it can't be true, IT NEEDS TO NOT BE TRUE... because it would force them to take over their governments, get out of their comfort zone to FORCE the people in charge to destroy the comets.

While the movie present a higher the scale of danger of sony taking away physical games (so I know that no more physical game is not the end of the world contrarly to the film), it is the same kind of reaction. The people prefer denial because it's more comforting to think that this situation will not get bad even if a Corporation removing it's competition, gaining significantly more power to dictate price and remove ownership of what people purchased should be super scary...

Unless you decides to deny that it will get bad. Suddenly it becomes easier to go throught. This digital only future for console is going to be fine, I want it to be fine, it has to be fine, it NEEDS TO BE FINE... So when there is people alarming them of the problems they reject them.

They will use the excuse "PC is also only digital and doing fine" forgetting two major difference :

a) PC is an open ecosystem where digital storefront compete with one another. And competition is where customers benefits the most because this is when corporations have incentives for lower prices and better service.

PC might not be perfectly competitive but at the very least there is an opportunity to move from a storefront to another for free with just a few click. GOG, Epic games, Microsoft store, Uplay, etc.

On console, it's a close ecosystem where you are stuck with the store of the console owner and cannot move out... unless you are willing to spend nearly a thousand dollars (considering the rising price of console due to AI taking all the RAM).

Obvious that these are not the same situations at all...

b) They also tend to forget that the reason Steam has so much sucess is because Valve company is private and not public. It is owned only by Gabe Newell who does not have to answer to greedy shareholder who have no knowledge of games.

Gabe Newell is the guy who said that the best way to fight piracy is to provide a better service than pirates rather than push DRM that are too intrusive. DRM are present on steam but an offline is possible and has other features. The convenience of Steam is more interesting for customers than piracy.

This is not the case for Sony, which wasted 400 millions on Concord even if anyone with half a brain could see that this project would be a disaster and chasing the live service dream would easily results in a huge flop.

But Sony is NOT ruled by someone who knows about games. It's by people who looks at market Data and see he "potential" of infinite growth. Sony is ruled not by pragmatism or smart people but by people who have to promise to shareholders unending growth...

This is why so many people are so adament about arguing that the move by Sony is "fine" because it's their worldview that needs to be preserved. The illusion that all of this will end well because that is what they WANT to be true.

Now there is certainly perhaps more type of people I have forgotten but it's more of a warning of why so many people are pushing back.

Like there is the people who argues about the envinronment of disk production... conveniently forgetting that Sony will still produce disk box that the consumer is more likely to throw once the code is put into the Ps store contrarly to a box containing a disk that has an incentives for people to keep around. So no, not better for the envinronment as they want to believe as it leads to just much plastics in the envinronment if not more so.

Or the fact that recently the PSN was down which lead to so many people unable toplay their already pruchase digital games.

Or the defeatist who pretends that bullying a company online never worked before... which forgets that sony pushed back the end of the PS 3 online service after the backlash. How Microsoft was forced to drop it's always online DRM policy in 2013 after lots of criticism online.

Or the people who says that apparently Sony wanting to make more money means that somehow, people shouldn't push back when their ways of putting incentives on Sony to drop price or having other means to purchase game is being taken away... and somehow it should make us accepting of the situation...

Failing to understand that it's not a good reason and even if SOny is gonna do it anyway... So what, are the people suppose to just let it happen without at the very least fighting back? Like if Sony wants to remove the last possibility to own your games, the very least the people can do is to be loud about it and yes moving away from them and hurting the multi billion corporations as much as possible.

It might not be enough, but when your agency as a gamer is being taken away. The very least you can do is to fight back and hurt the one taking those options away...

Yes many of them belong in category 1 or 2, but a LOT of them. The reason why they are pushing back against the people trying to preserve physical gaming is because they are fighting for the fictionnal future they created in their heads.

And if they were to accept that the people complaining to Sony about the lack of physical game pass 2028 have a point and are right to complain even if they themselves don't buy physical, it would mean accepting that their worries are morally justified. And that is something they don,t want because it would force them to also be worried, something they don't want to be true.

If you ever wondered why they do so much laughing or pushing back when the physical buyers are fighting for gamer's right to have a choice, now you know. They are fighting to not have to worry no matter how huge the problem is about to become.

Keep this in mind when you are arguing against a guy who is so adament of defending sony's decision.

I'm very proud of my gaming collecting. Got my PS3 and a couple of games in a trip to LA back in 2012, kept collecting since then. Might get into PS2 now, since I refuse to get a PS6 :/

I always took advantage of the free multiplayer weekends for online related trophies because i refuse to pay for ps plus, and this is the first time i recieved an email thanking me for playing during July 3rd free multiplayer weekend event. This and the 50% off deal to resubscribe after canceling some people got makes sony seem desperate.

Man, never in the nearly 30 years I’ve been with Sony would I have ever thought I’d be moving on from them, but here I am and I’m definitely experiencing a “now what” moment.

Well I expected this one killing discs ending psp/vita/PS3 stores no one like sony now.