French Presidential Candidate Slams GTA 6, PS5’s Disc-Free Future Over Gamer Rights
French politics has collided with the video game industry’s disc-free future. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, founder of the left-wing La France Insoumise party and a declared candidate for the 2027 French presidential election, used a post on X to attack both Rockstar’s decision to ship Grand Theft Auto 6 without a physical disc and Sony’s plan to end boxed PlayStation releases entirely from January 2028.
Mélenchon ties GTA 6’s code-in-a-box to Sony’s 2028 disc phase-out
Mélenchon sounded off on the recent developments in a Twitter/X post, taking a firm stance against the changes that are taking away ownership and choice from gamers. In the post, he wrote that “Demain, vous paierez sans jamais rien posséder” — tomorrow, you will pay without ever owning anything — going on to list what disappears with all-digital sales: the ability to lend, resell or guarantee long-term access to a purchased game.
He framed the issue in explicitly political terms, arguing that the video game “n’est pas une simple marchandise, c’est un bien culturel” — not simple merchandise but a cultural good — and that existing consumer law should therefore apply to it. According to Siècle Digital, Mélenchon promised that if elected he would treat video games as a cultural good subject to existing law, and floated creating a national video game centre modelled on the CNC, the body that funds and structures France’s film and TV industry.
What Rockstar and Sony actually confirmed
The controversy Mélenchon is tapping into is real and well documented. Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two confirmed that the physical version of Grand Theft Auto 6 will ship with a digital download code inside the box, news confirmed alongside details of the game’s standard and Ultimate editions. Per the official pre-order notice, the physical versions will “contain a download code inside the box,” with no disc included, and those who pre-order will be able to pre-load content from November 12, ready to play on November 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Days after that reveal, Sony delivered its own shock announcement. French outlet Presse-citron reported that on July 1, Sony announced that from January 2028, no new PS5 game will be sold on disc, with all titles offered exclusively in dematerialised form. Mélenchon’s post explicitly linked the two events, arguing that together they raise the question of how these products should legally be treated.
Streamers and players split over the political intervention
The reaction online has been anything but unanimous. Gaming outlet Gameblog reported that French streamer Sardoche fired back at Mélenchon, telling him “Le seul moment où vous êtes pour la propriété privée, c’est pour draguer les gamers finalement” — roughly, that the only time he supports private property is to court gamers — in a reply liked thousands of times. Other users accused the politician of opportunism, while some praised him for raising a genuine issue around digital ownership and the second-hand market.
Destructoid, an English-language outlet that also covered the post, noted that Mélenchon placed third in the 2022 presidential election in France with just under 22 percent of votes in the first round, so he certainly has at least some sway. The same outlet suggested the outcry against Sony’s announcement has been loud enough that more politicians getting involved, whether to curry favor with voters or to legitimately examine the ethics of it, would not be surprising.
France’s “cultural exception” argument meets EU copyright law
GTA Boom placed Mélenchon’s comments inside a longer French tradition: France has a long history of treating films, books, and music as cultural assets with special rules and subsidies, an approach called the cultural exception, which Mélenchon is now proposing to extend to video games by arguing they deserve the same protected status. It’s a notably different framing of the digital-ownership debate than the usual consumer-rights angle, and one that plays to Mélenchon’s existing political base.
But any attempt to legislate around Sony or Rockstar’s practices would run into thorny legal ground. Presse-citron pointed out that when the Stop Killing Games movement petitioned Brussels over game preservation, the European Commission stated it could not currently propose a legal obligation to keep video games playable after they stop being sold commercially, partly due to existing intellectual property rights, since EU copyright law grants rightsholders exclusive control over their creations. France’s own top appeals court has already sided with publishers domestically: Jeux Actu noted the Cour de cassation confirmed in 2024 that games bought on digital platforms cannot be resold, reinforcing the model adopted by the main console makers and distributors.
Read also: EU Commissioner: Bloc Can’t Stop Sony Ending Disc-Based Games
Why the fight matters beyond France
The debate isn’t purely academic for collectors and trade-in shoppers outside France either. Physical media still underpins a chunk of retail in New Zealand and Australia through chains like EB Games and JB Hi-Fi, where trade-ins and second-hand sales remain a core part of how many local gamers afford new releases. If Sony’s 2028 all-digital shift for PS5 first-party titles holds globally, that resale pipeline shrinks regardless of what French lawmakers decide, making Mélenchon’s underlying question about ownership relevant well beyond his own electorate.
Whether the issue ever becomes concrete legislation is far from certain, and Mélenchon himself has only pledged to “open the file” in 2027, when France next heads to the polls. For now, GTA 6’s empty disc slot and Sony’s looming 2028 deadline have handed the digital-ownership debate a rare mainstream political spotlight, even if neither Rockstar nor Sony is under any legal obligation to change course.
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