The Vanishing Second Shelf
You paid for the game. On a disc you could sell it or lend it. You could walk it into another shop and compare the price. The plastic sat in your house. Sony could not reach in and take it back.
That second shelf is the one Sony is closing. From January 2028 the company stops pressing physical discs for new PlayStation titles. Sony's own blog is the record: new releases go out as downloads through the PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. Games that already shipped on disc, or that will still ship on disc before January 2028, stay as they are. A digital code sold in a shop does not resell the way a disc does, so the used copy and the competing bin both leave with the plastic.
The organizers of the Dutch case said it in a video Stop Killing Games later put its name on: your PlayStation is designed so you can only buy digital games through Sony's own store. Once Sony stops selling physical games in 2028, you will not have any choice at all.
The Thirty Percent Checkout
Inside the machine under the television there is one cashier. On a PC you can utilize Steam or Epic and let them undercut each other. On PlayStation the only digital checkout is the PlayStation Store. Sony runs it. Sony takes a 30 percent commission on every sale, and developers pass that cost into the price you see.
Stichting Massaschade & Consument, a Dutch consumer foundation, calls the markup a Sony Tax. Digital PlayStation games cost, on average, 47 percent more than the same title on disc, according to the economic work it commissioned. In the book market, where digital shops actually compete, an e-book runs almost 40 percent cheaper than paper. Xbox and Nintendo have not announced they will stop selling physical media. Sony has. When the disc dies, the last place a PlayStation game could still be bought and sold at a competitive price dies with it.
Here's the thing: that is already the only door for anyone who bought a digital-only console. The 2028 cut just makes the same lock apply to every new release.
They Put Their Weight Behind It
Stop Killing Games and the preservation testers at DoesItPlay? are not the plaintiffs. The Dutch foundation summoned Sony in June 2025. The groups are putting their full weight behind that case so the court can see it actually represents players, not just a claim that it does. Their video title is blunt: "It's time to sue Sony, join us."
Ross Scott started Stop Killing Games in 2024 after Ubisoft shut the servers on The Crew and the copy people had paid for would not run. The campaign's European citizens' initiative pulled in almost 1.3 million verified signatures and got a hearing in the European Parliament in April 2026. DoesItPlay? spends its time testing whether a physical release still plays without a live server, with more than 3,000 tests in its database. Both of them walked into a pricing case because a store that cannot be left is also a store that can decide how long your purchase lasts.
The class is people who live in the Netherlands, own a PlayStation 4 or 5, have a PlayStation Network account, and bought something in the PlayStation Store on or after November 29, 2013. The foundation says that is more than 1.7 million players. Its commissioned economic research puts possible damages at more than 400 million euro. More than 26,000 people have already signed up at fairplaystation.nl. Sign-up is free. You cannot join the claim from outside the Netherlands, and you still live with the same store.
Renting the Permission Slip
A physical copy can, in principle, be kept. It can be lent or sold. A digital PlayStation purchase is usually a license tied to your account. Lucia Melcherts, chair of the foundation, put the 2028 cut in one line: no disc means no second-hand market and no alternative to the PlayStation Store. From 2028 Sony decides what a game costs and how long you may use it. A price cannot be fair, she said, if the buyer has no ownership and no alternative.
Sony already did it with movies. The company told British PlayStation users that previously purchased StudioCanal films and series come out of their libraries from September 1, 2026 because a license agreement expires. People paid for those titles, and the files leave when Sony's contract with the studio runs out. Melcherts's other point is colder: Sony can win the console fight. Using that win to shut every other seller out is the abuse her case names. Once you are inside Sony's digital ecosystem, you take every price and every condition the company sets, now and later.
Price trackers have reported Sony experimenting with personalized prices, so far as discounts, with different accounts seeing different numbers for the same download. A webshop can do that, and it still has a competitor's number sitting next to it. The PlayStation Store has no second number to check.
The Court Has Not Opened the Door
Rechtbank Midden-Nederland held the first oral hearing on June 29, 2026 in Utrecht. The questions were jurisdiction, applicable law, and whether the foundation may represent the group. Sony already filed on those points in November 2025. Both sides have until October 21, 2026 to respond to some Dutch Supreme Court rulings in other collective actions. Then an interim judgment. Sony has not been found liable. Admissibility comes first. The merits wait behind it: whether Sony abused a market position by making the PlayStation Store the only digital shop on the console. The foundation wants that shop opened to other sellers, and the tax paid back.
A similar fight already went to a ten-week hearing in the United Kingdom on behalf of more than eleven million players. Cases have also been started in Portugal and Australia. Europe made Apple and Google open their app stores under the Digital Markets Act. Sony, by size, sits just outside those rules.
October 21 is the next filing date, then an interim ruling on whether this foundation even gets to argue the tax. You already paid. The 2028 date is already on Sony's blog, which means the person who bought a digital-only console is already living the lock the disc buyer will meet when the presses stop. I will take the docket at its word until that interim judgment lands, because the player who already bought in is living under that checkout now, not on the court's calendar.
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