Apparently there will be some boycott of PS in regards of decision to discontinue disks.
From 23 to 30 of August.
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Thisll work as well as the fifa world cup boycott.
I never understood these. Then the week after y’all will come back business as usual. How does it actually affect anything?
I owned a ps3. Last one I’ve owned. That’s how you do it.
How does it actually affect anything?
It gives certain social influencers a soapbox from which they can shout “Like, Subscribe, and Share!”
Modern day “boycotts” aren’t really economic actions. They’re media stunts advanced by affinity marketing groups intended to collect personal information and demonstrate their ability to mobilize large numbers of people.
Agreed on the last part. But a less cynical take: Companies like Sony obsessively track their sales metrics. If a campaign like this does go viral, and only a few percent of people actually follow through, it does create a noticeable dip in the metrics and an explanation will be demanded internally. There’s a small chance this makes certain managers a bit more careful about such decisions.
In rare cases companies have taken back or at least delayed similar moves, and they never do so without indication that it will indeed affect their bottom line.
Though I don’t think this campaign will have much effect, since asking for a full week is not something many people will follow through with. Also Sony is clearly banking on the fact that customers will stay due to lock-in to their ecosystem.
Yep. The hill my new console owning habits died on was any corp pushing paying to play online subscriptions and I stuck to that. I’ll buy used later if there’s exclusives I want and I can’t just emulate it like Switch 1.
Yeah I went from Sega to ps3 to switch 1 to nothing. But I’ve always owned a PC.
I still really want to play bloodborne, the emulation was rough when I tried it last, but I’m not gonna buy a ps4 just for one game.
Gamers are notoriously bad at voting with their wallet so i’m very curious to see what comes of this.
I mean all the power to anybody that actually participates in this but effective boycots don’t usually have a start or end date. This looks more like a strike.
You’re going to need to get everybody to abandon Sony indefinately. Preferably from right now right up untill demands are met. That way you either get what you want, or you do not at which point you know chasing that point further is futile.
Yeah, switching to PC is a significantly more effective boycott strategy. You can still play games and give Sony $0.
Edit: And yes I realize PC generally doesn’t have disks either. However, you aren’t locked into PS’ store and things like GOG exist. I make a point to buy games on GOG, and so should anyone interested in OP’s boycott.
However, you aren’t locked into PS’ store and things like GOG exist. I make a point to buy games on GOG, and so should anyone interested in OP’s boycott.
While this is true, releases on GOG are few and far between and all the other stores are just (bad) variations of the same thing. Online web stores are very very far from functioning like brick and mortar stores for physical releases used to.
We primarily have “competition” on pc in online stores because some publishers are big enough to build their own just so they don’t have to pay Valve to be on Steam. So you are not technically locked to one store, but you are very much locked to whatever store publishers choose to push their game to.
So essentially you’re locked to all of them unless you choose to just not play said game, which is essentially the same choice you have on the Playstation with just the PS store.
Big difference for me is PC is open hardware and open OS. Should the worst happen there are possible solutions from those voyaging the seas.
But, consoles are locked down, and jailbreaks can be years away.
Its why despite buying digital on PC without issue I continued to buy physical for consoles, since I felt more in control of PC hardware than I did console hardware. Physical on consoles was a way of gaining back some control despite the hardware being locked.
Oh well. They dont want to sell my the game, then I don’t need the game.
PC is the only chance at you controlling the hardware, so it’s the only choice.
The comparison still doesn’t make sense. You can’t play a PlayStation disc on a different platform. If you buy a disc on console you are locked to that ecosystem.
Sony are doing this because not enough people buy discs to make it worth manufacturing, and PC gamers should know this because this new age of digital gaming started with the PC. Switching to PC just proves their point.
You are locked to the ecosystem, but the disc function can’t be revoked through account ban and is actually transferable to other people because of that.
Something Sony dislikes compared to digital where there is no second hand market.
Switching to PC proves the point that if games are digital people prefer open hardware and open OS options over locked down hardware.
Not that is should be a valid response, but you can jail break PlayStations to play whatever game you have a “back up” copy of. That tends to be my method of playing legacy PS games because it’s easier than dealing with discs.
At the end of the day, console gaming is a different product to PC gaming. That’s more obvious with Nintendo, but overall expectations should be different.
They’re actually very good at voting with their wallet for the most part. A minority of them are just very dumb and vote against what they’re claiming they want.
Nah, the majority of gamers just don’t care.
They just want to play their games and as long as it isn’t too many hoops to jump through will stick with Playstation. They didn’t even read the news about physical media.
They don’t care because they don’t buy physical games. They voted with their wallet to go all digital. That was a decision they made at some stage, and they don’t care about physical games existing or not.
This is the crowd that preorders a DIGITAL ONLY game that hasn’t released a single lick of gameplay video. GTA 6 is proof that capital g Gamers are a lost cause.
The sane people that game have to just stay away from all the ball and gun Gamers, and support the indie scene.
I think part of it is people don’t forego convenience but also that we’ve allowed corporations to cement hegemonies that there honestly is very little ability to boycott.
Some industries are so centralized it’s impossible to effectively boycott and vote with your wallet.
Gamers are notoriously bad at voting with their wallet
When everyone was complaining about the Switch 2 price prior to release, I knew that it’d still sell like hotcakes.
Hasn’t stopped people buying the Steam Machine, either.
Boycotts don’t have start dates. They happen as soon as someone says it happens and you’re either in, or you’re out.
Boycotts don’t have end dates. They happen until demands are met. If that means you never buy/do that thing again, so be it. If you’re not prepared to commit all the way, don’t participate.
Over time, the definition of “boycott” has been watered down to make people forget what makes a boycott effective. People have forgotten that the Montgomery Alabama bus boycotts lasted for literal years and saw people donating time and money to fixing up old cars, horse-drawn carriages, and carpooling to make them effective.
If you want real change, you have to be prepared to take real action. This one week boycott is pussy shit and won’t solve anything. If you’re gonna organize, do it for something that will work.
The boycott begins today. Right now. No more PS+ logins or payment. No more buying new games or consoles. No more anything that puts money in Sony’s pocket (buying used is fine, that money only goes to the reseller) and it lasts until Sony reverses its decision to stop printing physical games.
If we want to continue boycotting until they revise their digital licensing, we can demand that once we’ve made progress on the physical media. That’s what everyone cares about, so let’s keep the demands short and simple with that as the only one.
Couldn’t agree more!
Just cancelled my PS+ subscription with reason “other”.
I’ll see you all on the seven seas!
Wait so you’re going to stop buying physical PlayStation games and instead …. pirate pc games?
Technically pirated games can be put on a physical media and stored indefinitely, neither do those require online connection afterwards, so Sony cant just remove those and Sony won’t be getting any money or user metrics for it either.
While not a perfect solution, it’s a decent stopgap and will get more people on board than fully abstaining.
But the PS5 can’t play pirated games……
… can’t play pirated games yet.
Likely never will. The PS4 is still hard to jailbreak, and even harder to play pirated games on. Not to mention that if you do it you can’t connect it to the internet or you’ll have your entire PSN account banned.
Same with Xbox - still to this day uncracked and not playing pirated games 13+ years later.
and instead …. pirate pc games?
Yeah PS5 games can’t, but PC games can be.
So why are you talking about “Sony can’t remove those” then? No one can remove pirated games, but you’re also not getting them physically at the stores.
I imagine this is going to lead to a resurgence of the homebrew scene. Not sure if I’ll find games in the forest, or just get my fix watching a streamer long play the games I’m interested in.
No physical, no purchase. Period.
It’s not going to lead to a resurgence in anything, let’s be serious. It’ll lead to more profits and more digital games sold for Sony, and a gigantic drop in physical game sales.
but it makes those people feel good about themselves.
Why bother.
Leave Sony. Dont threaten. I walked away after the ps2.
The hardware is the problem and everyone seems to act like the physical media is the issue.
Open hardware or gtfo.
I have a couple PS3’s. Bought used. No online games. I think I’ve bought more of their titles on PC than console.
It’s not even a boycott, I just haven’t seen value in their recent offerings and would rather spend my money elsewhere.
There’s some stuff I’d love to experience on the PS5.
But I will not be spending nearly a thousand dollars for a set top box with limited functionality they can effectively disable when I’m no longer making them enough money.
And with SteamOS getting better and better, the convenience of a console over a PC is becoming less of a thing.
Honestly, once SteamOS has dedicated apps for things like Hulu and Netflix, I think we can really change things. Right now my parents have an Xbox where my Dad can play an occasional game, but the interface is simple enough for my Mom to open her streaming apps. Once SteamOS gets that simple, I’ll be switching them over.
There’s some stuff I’d love to experience on the PS5
Like what?
Astrobot, Horizon, God of War, Ratchet and Clank, etc.
Some of the stuff I like from Sony (Last of US, Spider-man, Returnal) gets ported to PC eventually, but Sony has announced they’re cutting back on that.
I don’t think steam will ever have those things. But streaming devices are dirt cheap. The issue is codecs.
On the other hand I do have Plex and jellyfin on my steam deck to watch my shows when I am flying.
Why one week? Refuse to buy anything until they revert course
Push for laws that force digital stores to provide full ownership of digital rights.
The ability to pass purchased licenses from one account to another would be a real game changer.
They’re trying to kill ownership completely, and this would blow it wide open.
And that could just be step one. We need assurances about what happens when a store closes (can we download everything and archive it and play offline? will it be moved to another provider?) We need the ability to move purchases between stores. Hell, even between platforms. We need to make sure accounts that have paid for goods cannot be completely revoked under any circumstances. Locked out of online play or prevented from making further purchases, sure, but never just blocked.
Law makers have sat idly by for too long as our rights were taken from us. It’s high time to take them back.
Well what entitled full ownership for you
Lol, a single week? So pathetic. I am sure that will show them…
You voted with your wallet for this when you bought into their bullshit.
A boycott that lasts months or years on the other hand…
I’m happy to proclaim entering my 30th continuous year of Sony boycotting. Where’s my award?
🤝 thanks for showing our ages🤣
My son who plays all the time going go whole month without turning on his PS5.
Fucking week! Thought it whole month of August? Also why wait towards the end? Such weak shit. Why bother they won’t even notice.
Can we please extend this for whole month starting on August the 1st?
A single week is a realistic goal.
Realistic in the sense that its easy and won’t do anything I guess.
Although what does not playing your games even achieve? It has a larger cost on you than it does on Sony. Playing games you already bought doesn’t even benefit them.
Surely more effective and easier would be to keep playing the games you already have and just to indefinitely refuse to ever buy another Sony product. You don’t lose anything you already had that way and they take a massive hit on future sales.
So is cutting power to a building.
You first.
pissy
now u
deleted by creator
You voted with your wallet for this when you bought into their bullshit.
You spent a single dollar at the company so you support everything they do is reductive and juvenile. Try engaging your brain.
You spent a single dollar at the company so you support everything you do
Is a reductive an juvenile way of interpreting the original comment, how ironic. He’s right, it seems during weekends peak PlayStation users go above 100 million, which would mean if even 1 million people followed this boycott, that’s less than 1% of their active user base. It’s too late, and it’s because people like you spend hundreds of dollars for their hardware and service, year after year, and then you belittle it because you’re in denial of making an awful decision.
wow you nailed my spending habits so well considering i get all my games at the library
And what, just stole the PlayStation? If you’ve spent no actual money on Sony then you’re by far the exception of PlayStation owners, and not the norm. It’s funny how you don’t realize that.
The reason I’m laughing at you and not reverb taking the effort to edit or spell check this comment is because your getting worked up over games. Don’t you know there are multiple genocides
The voting happened when this statistically average individual bought digital games over physical, or, after purchasing a physical disk, downloaded any updates.
A boycott with a deadline isn’t a boycott; it’s barely a demonstration. A boycott is until demands are met, no sooner. This is controlled opposition. If you want your demands met, don’t waste your time organizing for anything less than a real (full, indefinite) boycott.
Yep, and like with almost every other protest or “boycott” these days, it’s all performative. Most of the people “boycotting” will be online playing their digital games during that week, guaranteed.
That’s not true.
It’s much simpler, this tweet from one dude won’t have the reach to really make any impact. Awareness is the problem more than willpower, and it’s werid that we think anyone who “broke” the boycott was even aware to begin with. Or cares.
Be careful, the dude above seems to be a shill of some sort for kernel level anti-cheat/DRM or potentially a large corporation. Or just a full on rightoid.
🤡
Not really sure what you were reading, but I specifically said that most of the people taking part in this boycott, however few, will break said boycott and play digitally bought games anyway.
And I’m saying that’s a bad faith statement, as if you know every single person who didn’t boycott pledged to boycott or even know of the boycott.
But that’s not what I said. Again, I said that those who have joined this boycott will still likely play their digital games on their ps5 during the “boycott”.
I quote myself:
most of the people “boycotting”
If you don’t know about the boycott, you’re not boycotting.
I’ve very clearly and explicitly pointed out to you twice now how you either misread or misinterpreted what I said even though it’s very clear. I’m hoping I don’t need to do it a third time because that would be sad.
that’s not what I said.
I’m saying you’re premise is flawed, unprovable, and simply bad. Does that get it through to you? You’re making unfounded assumptions and triping down doesn’t make it more correct.
What’s my unfounded assumption?
You keep saying that I’m talking about people who don’t even know about this “boycott”, despite my original comment clearly specifically talking about people who do know about it.
I’m still pissed at Sony for the rootkit fiasco. I have not willingly spent one penny on their products since then.
Remember their stupid proprietary memory sticks?
Proprietary in design? Cause ps1, 2 and 3 had the memory cards and those were sold by MadCatz, Neon and there was another really good third party seller that sold those. The PSP original ran off of of regular memory sticks that you could use literally any brand but the speeds and quality of the Sony ones were set to specs for the PSP, like the Nintendo cards are set to specs for the system but in reality you can use nearly any SD card.
So whatchu talking about?
For the original PSP, which uses Memory Stick (Pro) Duo, there exist third party adapters to use 1 or 2 microSD cards.
But with the PSP Go, they introduced the Memory Stick M2, which is dimensioned in such a way, that microSD Adapters are impossible.
With the PS Vita, they introduced yet another format, very similar to the M2 in size, but different enough to be incompatible. Again, no microSD card adapters exist, if it wasn’t for nifty homebrew hacks utilizing the game card slot, there would be no way to use microSD cards at all.deleted by creator
This: Memory stick pro
A bunch of their laptops and the PSP/etc would only support these instead of a normal a USB flash drive. And Sony’s stupid proprietary memory stick cost like 2x what other storage mediums cost.
I was under the assumption they were talking about the PS Vita memory sticks which were already expensive at release and haven’t really followed the trend in prices that other SD cards have since then.
That problem is mostly solved these days by the modding scene making the SD2VITA so you can use regular MicroSD cards in the game cartridge slot, but Sony would still have you pay $65 for a 32GB stick of their official storage.
Meanwhile I found an SD2VITA available for $7 and a 128GB MicroSDXC card for $35.
I notice their speaker and AV proprietary connection shit is everywhere … I do audio and HT gear as a side hobby
the reddit thing failed bc the blackout had an end date, so this will fail too
if yall want to make a noticeable impact then stop using playstation (or sony) services until they revert their decision
I thought that was the stupidest thing, the Reddit “blackout”. Company doesn’t care. It’s a metric. It’s a line on a graph. When stakeholders ask they’ll point to it and say “This was are anticipated backlash from the Q2 decision to ban 3rd party APIs, but as you can see we already recovered and have grown at our normal pace.”
I do want to give some insight. The reddit blackout did work technically. At least for me. I left reddit during the blackout and joined lemmy. Found it a lot better and remained. Letting people get a taste for not bootlicking a corp during a blackout is a small way to kick start a change.
Sure it might not get measurable change in the way the shareholders would change their mind, but every little discression against major corporations is a step in the right direction and I don’t think the people ITT should be shitting on people for trying to retaliate against Sony, albeit for a short time.
Good point. People are right that a week is unlikely to change much and we should set our sights higher. That said, you are also right that if we approach it with a “this is pointless and will fail” attitude, then no one tries the alternatives at all and the conditions that eventually lead to change will never develop. Best to participate, encourage your IRL friends to participate, and spend the whole week telling everyone who will listen about it.
How do people get a taste of strikes and boycotts in the middle of summer?
Are we Reddit now? A boycott indicating the time it’s over so they now when things go back to usual?
Oh yeah like the API hissy fits that shown just how weak reddit protests really are.
The reddit api protest was actually effective if people actually reacted properly. Shutting down the subreddit made reddit go a step to far and force them open. That should have destroyed the community trust in reddit and caused a mass migration. But alas apathy
Didn’t a lot of mods just open up again after by choice too? If more of them took a firm stance then perhaps reddit wouldn’t have been able to replace them all so easily.
I don’t know if there will ever be a better opportunity to have a large anti-reddit movement though, wouldn’t be surprised if they have worked to prevent it since then.
Yes but having reddit step in shows how much it hurt
Yes, and also that it was the time to push harder. Go ahead, make then have to pay people to moderate their platform. See how long that lasts. Even encourage extreme shitposting and upvoting shit content to sabotage the site.
It will convince some, but probably not enough to make a difference. Sony is betting that the increased revenue per customer will greatly offset those choosing to leave their platform.
Hey now, I’ve been here for 3 years and my reddit accounts haven’t seen a login since. If everyone else went back that’d on them.
Have not purchased any Sony consoles or games for Playstation since the PS2. Get on my level!
I was on team Dreamcast and never owned a Sony console! Welcome to my world!
Mine was a second hand PS1 that my brother played. Not sure I ever used it, maybe for a little twisted metal.
Good game. High five my fellow old fart (and non Playstation supporter)
When I saw them bait and switch Linux again with the ps3 I was done.
Ps2 the last sony.
I’m doing a #psblackout since I was born but it didn’t change anything
The only people that made change my views was Vanillaware. But their Switch release made me angry at myself for believing in digital scarcity. I won’t fall for haggling tactics like these again.
I see these things and laugh every time. One week or even one moth is meaningless, you have to commit. Boycott until you see the change you want. I’ve been boycotting EA for over a decade now, still haven’t see any change but I feel better knowing I am not giving them money.
Remember that screenshot of Steam group “boycott modern warfare 2” with almost every player with “in game: modern warfare 2”
Yeah, are they going to stop after a week, stomp their foot, and tell Sony to knock it off?
I boycotted Walmart for years, realized I would never see any change, and continue to not shop there because Walmart sucks and my life is better now. If you make the change the goal, you are lining yourself up for disappointment. If you make doing business with companies congruent with your values the goal, you win if you last a week, you win bigger if you last a month, and you win the grand prize if they change or you leave and never look back!
