The row over Sony and physical games has triggered a larger question than the future of discs. On 1 July, Sony confirmed it will stop manufacturing physical PlayStation games from January 2028, making all new releases digital-only. Two months earlier, on 1 September 2026, it will remove 551 films and television series from PlayStation Video in European accounts after a licensing agreement with StudioCanal expires, with no refunds and no compensation offered.
When European Consumer Rights Commissioner McGrath was asked whether the EU could intervene, his answer was clear: “It does come down to commercial and contractual freedoms. Companies are free to offer games and services in the manner that they see fit, provided that consumer rights are fully protected in line with national and EU law.” That is the current legal ceiling. It is not a high one.
If a company can move consumers from ownership-like products to more conditional digital access, and regulators say there is little they can do beyond general consumer law, then the real issue is not nostalgia. It is power. More and more of European life now runs through digital systems that feel personal and permanent to users whilst remaining highly conditional in legal and practical terms.
Use is Replacing Ownership
Physical media carried forms of control that digital purchasing often does not. A disc could be lent, resold, archived or simply kept. A digital licence is narrower: it depends on accounts, compatibility, platform continuity and terms of service that ordinary users do not meaningfully negotiate. The legal basis for this distinction is also firmly established.
As copyright scholars at Glasgow’s CREATe centre note, the EU’s exhaustion doctrine, which limits a rights-holder’s control after the first authorised sale, has long applied to physical copies but does not apply to digital downloads in the UK, EU or US. The same game, bought on disc or downloaded, carries fundamentally different ownership rights.
The problem is not only that physical games may disappear. It is that consumers are being trained to accept access as if it were ownership. The Stop Killing Games campaign has gathered 1.3 million signatures against purchase agreements that can be revoked, and 45 members of the European Parliament had signed a call for legislative action by late June. The EU’s forthcoming Digital Fairness Act, expected in the final quarter of 2026, is the vehicle most campaigners are now watching. But as a planning document still without a legal text, it offers no protection today.
Digital ID Makes the Same Logic Feel Normal
The UK’s digital ID rollout shows the same pattern in a more official register.
The government presents digital ID as a convenience tool that will simplify access to services and eventually become useful across both government and private life. A digital identity stored in an app is not the same thing as a paper document in your hand, even if both serve similar functions. The app can be updated, integrated, required in new contexts or gradually normalised in ways users did not originally imagine. This does not make digital ID inherently sinister, but it does mean that infrastructure sold as helpful can quietly become difficult to live without.
That is where the Sony comparison becomes useful. In both cases, the consumer or citizen is told the new system is smoother, faster and more modern, and often it is. But smoother also tends to mean more mediated, more dependent on central systems and less open to the kinds of informal control older forms allowed. California has already passed a law requiring storefronts to disclose honestly when “buy” language is used for conditional digital goods. Europe has no equivalent rule yet, and the gap between what users expect when they click “buy” and what they legally own is growing wider every year.
Europe’s Ownership Gap is Growing
Sony is only one example. Digital ID is another. Together they show the same movement from different ends of life: from leisure to governance, from game shelves to state apps. Users gain convenience, but often lose clarity about what is truly theirs, what can change and who ultimately decides. Consumer law still tends to treat problems one by one: unfair terms here, transparency there, portability somewhere else. But the broader pattern is that tangible possession is shrinking whilst dependence on managed digital access grows.
Europe talks often about digital rights. When major firms change the terms of ownership in practice, the legal and political response still looks weak. The consumer is protected at the margins whilst the deeper structure keeps shifting against them. The continent will keep drifting into a future where everything important is available through digital channels, but less and less is genuinely owned or controlled by the people using it.
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