2027 French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon has pushed back against the games industry’s continuance towards a digital-only future.
Following PlayStation’s announcement to end physical game sales by 2028 and the news that GTA 6 will only be available in digital form, Mélenchon pushed a petition to “Save Physical Video Games”.
Mélenchon, who is running in France’s 2027 presidential election, has long-declared the rise in digital game sales as a political issue. The politician has previously described video games as a “total art that breaks with previous forms of art”, and has reacted strongly to PlayStation’s decision to abandon physical media in 2028.
“With GTA 6 without a disc in 2026 and Sony’s announcement of the end of physical disc sales for games in 2028, the question arises of how we view these products,” Mélenchon told followers on social media. “Tomorrow, you will pay without owning anything. No loan, no resale, no guarantee of keeping what we’ve paid for.”
The presidential candidate argued that “video games are not mere merchandise, they are cultural assets, and the law in force must apply to them”. In a separate statement, this time pushing the Save Physical Video Games petition which can be found here, the politician told gamers to not allow companies to “confiscate our cultural heritage”.
“With the end of physical games, the video game industry wants to impose a fully digital model on us, where access will be conditional and time-limited,” Mélenchon said. “The buyer’s rights will be denied. This is the triumph of total commodification: you pay full price for nothing more than a simple revocable right of access.”
While some agree with PlayStation’s move to abandon physical media, the response to Sony’s decision has been universally negative. Since the announcement, PlayStation has remained silent on social media as fans cancel PlayStation Plus subscriptions and beg the company to reverse its stance.
Despite this, it seems that the only recourse is some form of legal legislation that focuses on consumer rights. While PC is an open platform, which has led to heavy preservation from fans, consoles are closed platforms. This means that games can only be preserved if a console is cracked and digital files are backed up by homebrew developers.
With Sony already removing hundreds of paid films from users’ accounts, the removal of physical media for games is a slippery slope. There are hundreds of games that are no longer available due to being removed from stores including Godzilla PS4, Onrush, and many others. A world without any physical media is a world where digital games can be stripped away from gamers without notice.
