30,000 Sign Petition Against Sony’s Disc Shutdown, But Factories Are Already Retooling
The “Don’t Kill the Disc” petition opposing Sony’s plan to end physical PlayStation disc production has climbed past 279,000 signatures, according to a count published on July 10 by Netto’s Game Room, even as the Austrian factory that presses those discs is already converting part of its production lines to a different product entirely.
Sony announced on July 1 that, as consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital, physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028, after which new titles will be available on the PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. Sony stressed the change has no impact on games that have already released, or will release, on disc before that date. The company framed it as “a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs,” adding the shift “will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.”
Thalgau Plant Already Building Microlenses, Not Just Discs
The clearest sign Sony isn’t reconsidering sits in Austria. Sony DADC’s plant in Thalgau, Austria, produces about 600,000 discs a day, roughly half of them PlayStation titles, and has begun shifting some workers onto optical microlens production, DADC CEO Dietmar Tanzer told Austrian broadcaster ORF Salzburg. The Thalgau facility isn’t just one of Sony’s disc-making factories, it’s where DADC is based, and Tanzer expects disc production to drop to 10 percent of the plant’s current output in 2028.
Sony has put €30 million (around $34 million) into new equipment, according to Engadget, funding a pivot toward components used far outside gaming. Optical microlenses steer and concentrate light across very small distances and appear in camera modules, AR and VR headsets, fiber-optic gear, and automotive lighting. Markus Streibl, head of micro optics at Sony DADC, said mass production could begin as early as 2027, and reporting suggests the groundwork for the switch predates Sony’s public announcement by roughly a year and a half.
300 Workers Retrained Rather Than Laid Off
Unlike many manufacturing pivots, Sony says the Thalgau transition won’t cost jobs outright. The company expects disc output to fall to about 10% of current volume by 2028, according to Engadget, and plans to retrain roughly 300 staff rather than lay them off. Tom’s Hardware reports management only briefed Thalgau workers about the changes on July 1, the same day Sony went public with the wider disc announcement, even though the microlens work itself had reportedly been running in some form since December 2024.
For a plant historically built around a single product, the switch marks the end of an era regardless of the petition’s outcome. Sony’s DADC arm also once ran a mass-production facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, which made billions of discs from the 1980s until its closure in 2022, meaning Thalgau’s retooling effectively closes out Sony’s remaining in-house disc manufacturing at scale.
Petition Growth: From 12,000 to 279,000 Signatures in Nine Days
A Change.org petition urging Sony to keep making physical PlayStation games climbed from around 12,000 signatures on its first day to more than 172,000 by the morning of July 7, before continuing to grow. As of July 10, the “Don’t Kill the Disc: Tell Sony to Keep Physical PlayStation Games” campaign had passed 279,000 signatures and thousands of supporter comments, per Netto’s Game Room’s tracking of the Change.org page.
The petition was started by Jade Pearce, CEO of Canadian retailer PNP Games. In the petition’s description, Pearce argued the change is “also about jobs,” writing that physical games support “retailers, distributors, manufacturers, warehousing and logistics, the pre-owned and trade-in market, and the collector and preservation community,” representing “thousands of jobs and countless small businesses,” and that ending physical media “hands a few platform holders total control over how, and whether, you can access the games you buy.” Pearce stressed the campaign is “not against digital,” adding “we are against digital being the only option.”
The reaction has spread beyond ordinary fans venting online. Former Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra urged companies to make a “digital promise” to give players confidence they’ll always be able to access their games, and Hideo Kojima has warned of a “frightening” digital-only future.
GTA 6’s Code-in-a-Box and the PS6’s Missing Disc Drive
Sony’s timing amplified the backlash. Sony’s announcement comes shortly after Rockstar confirmed there won’t be any GTA 6 discs: the physical edition will come with a download code inside a box, giving critics an immediate, high-profile example of what a “physical” release without an actual disc looks like even while Sony’s disc lines were still running. The PlayStation 6 is reportedly in development without a built-in disc drive, which would leave Sony’s hardware team to reintegrate one if the company changed course.
Sony has history reversing unpopular platform decisions under pressure, having previously delayed a planned shutdown of the PS3 PlayStation Store after an earlier outcry. But a €30 million factory conversion, a 300-person retraining programme and a 2027 microlens production target all point toward Sony treating the January 2028 disc cut-off as a fixed engineering deadline rather than a negotiating position, whatever the petition’s final tally turns out to be. For Australian and New Zealand shoppers, where used-game trade-ins and boxed retail remain a meaningful part of how PlayStation titles change hands, the practical fallout of that industrial shift will likely be felt at the shelf level long before 2028 arrives.
Read also: EU Commissioner: Bloc Can’t Stop Sony Ending Disc-Based Games
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