In the past month, Sony announced that in 2028 they'll stop printing physical media for videogames, citing bullshit reasons like consumers preferring digital over physical releases.
People are once again calling for a "blackout" as if that will do anything, plus it's unlikely that enough people will participate. Last time, people announced a boycott on Sony, all it took was for Activision to release ports of 14 year old Call of Duty games to stop, which by they way were sold digitally.
Now there's a separate argument for the validity and the merit of physical media. However, when it comes to videogames, you don't actually own your physical games, not unless we're talking about the sixth generation of consoles, you own what videogame companies say you own.
Take this few examples:
Last week, someone managed to revive the WWE 2k14 servers on PS3, this made me excited but there was one huge problem, I bought it second hand a few years ago and back then THQ, 2K, EA and many others had the brilliant idea to lock gamers who bought their games used to lock them out from accessing the online features of a game, the problem is I can no longer buy an online access code, so basically I have to jailbreak my PS3, even though I own a legit copy of the game.
A lot telltale games physical releases have become glorified demos, you can't purchase the episodes anymore, the only way to play those games without pirating them is to buy the overpriced season pass discs or the overpriced codes on shady sites like g2a.
I'm old enough to remember when Capcom would put characters behind a paywall and then pretended they were DLC but dataminers found out the files were in the actual discs, nothing was being downloaded and they did this with Street Fighter x Tekken and Marvel vs Capcom 3. Hell, they put Asura's Wrath true ending behind a paywall, although this time it was actual DLC.
I could keep citing more examples but perhaps the most egregious one is The Crew by Ubisoft. Because everyone who bought that game, wether physically or digitally, now own a mediocre paperweight at best and absolutely nothing at worst since Ubisoft never bothered adding offline modes, even though dataminers have found there are references to said modes in the files, but they were too busy losing money on Assassin's Creed part 87: the black samurai and who knows what trash, I don't really pay attention to them.
Lots of PC software have activation limits.
Even blu-rays aren't safe, your PS3 if you own one, needs to update once a year to get new encryption keys to able to play new releases, but there's no law that says Sony has to keep updating it, one day they could just easily stop and one day their remaining PS3 servers could shut down and your PS3's CMOS battery will eventually die, at that point you'll only be able to use it jailbroken. As it stands now, the only way to truly own something is by pirating it.
So if you really want to stop companies like Sony from getting away with this, you should instead focus your energy on the Stop Killing Games initiative because only legislation might stop companies from labeling leases as purchases, specially because they've been targeted by lobbies like the ESA. And if enough countries put pressure on this companies, well finally be able to own our goods, wether physically or digitally.
Also, check out alternative platforms like GOG and Zoom Platform, as they offer game releases without DRM protection, so you can install as many times as you want, burn to a CD/DVD or send them to a friend.
sekai de ichiban ohimesama