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Legendary director Hideo Kojima, known for creating the Metal Gear and Death Stranding games, expressed his deep sadness and fear for the future of game ownership after Sony announced it would stop manufacturing PlayStation games on discs starting in 2028, moving entirely to the digital market.

During his speech at the “Il Cinema in Piazza” film festival in Italy, Kojima explained that he belongs to a generation raised on tangible media (discs and tapes) and feels genuine sadness about the fading of this pattern.

He added that the difference with digital games currently is that the user keeps a copy of the data on their device, whereas in the case of cloud streaming, the game does not actually exist on the player’s device, but relies entirely on streaming from servers.

He pointed out that if cloud streaming becomes the prevailing standard, the idea of true ownership will disappear:

When you subscribe to a platform like Netflix or Amazon, everything depends on the servers being up, and the flow of artistic works or games can stop at any moment due to a political decision or market changes. Thus, users would effectively lose their right to free and permanent access to the films, games, and music they own.

Kojima had posted a tweet in 2021 expressing his fears of a world where individuals lose control of their digital libraries as soon as any major change occurs in politics, technology, or even accidents, leading to sudden disconnection from these libraries.

It is worth noting that Sony assured developers that it is still possible to reprint discs for games released before 2028 even after the general manufacturing halt, and it will also allow releasing new games in retail stores via digital download codes placed inside boxes.

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Editorial team: Follow on X, Send an email. Last updated: July 5, 2026

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