You Don't Own This: Sony, Streaming, and the Deliberate Death of Physical Media

The box is the right weight. That's the first lie. On July 1, 2026, Sony announced that physical disc production for all new PlayStation games ends in January 2028. The notice is now printed on PS5 boxes. Physical media was three percent of Sony's gaming revenue - thirty >This is not a nostalgia book. It's a property book. Somewhere in the last fifteen years, without a vote and largely without anyone noticing, the thing you get when you pay for a film or a record or a game stopped being an object and became a permission - revocable, alterable, >We know that shift was real because a legislature had to act. In September 2024, California made it illegal to advertise a digital good using "buy" or "purchase" unless the seller discloses that the customer is receiving only a revocable license. By January 2026, the class actions had reached video game >YOU DON'T OWN THIS follows the evidence: the afternoon Ubisoft switched off The Crew and twelve million paid-for copies stopped working. The Warner removals that made finished shows financially advantageous to erase. The Switch 2 cartridge with no game on it. The February 2025 morning Amazon closed >And the number that reframes everything: 87 percent of classic American video games are out of print - a survival rate comparable to American silent film. >Chapter four demolishes the comfortable version of this book's own argument: physical media did not save us. Chapter ten is the strongest case for digital >Not a manual for piracy. A manual for owning what you buy - while some of it can still be owned.