A hot potato: Sony's recent decision to stop manufacturing physical copies of PlayStation games has reignited discussions surrounding game preservation. Although piracy sits in a legal grey area at best, game preservation experts recently claimed that the industry has left them no alternative.
Video Game History Foundation founder Frank Cifaldi recently supported claims that piracy is the only effective way to preserve video games. The comments lay the blame squarely on game companies' refusal to keep legacy content available or allow archivists to build legal repositories.
Sony's announcement that all PlayStation games will be digital-only from 2028 onward has sparked concern that titles will become harder to preserve and more easily vanish, since the company's servers will become the sole point of distribution. In an official statement, Cifaldi noted that the end of physical PlayStation games has surprisingly little impact on the Foundation's efforts because the majority of games from the last two decades are already digital-only.
Statement from VGHF director Frank Cifaldi on the discontinuation of physical PlayStation media, and the closure of the PS3 and PSP digital storefronts.
– Video Game History Foundation (@gamehistoryorg.bsky.social) July 1, 2026 at 2:47 PM
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According to the Foundation, most games nowadays are not released for consoles, let alone on physical discs. Furthermore, many discs for major titles require downloading updates before they are playable, although the DoesItPlay database reveals that, even today, most are playable offline out of the box.
Cifaldi claimed that the true reason piracy remains the best option for preservation is that the Entertainment Software Association, which lobbies for game publishers, has closed off other routes. For example, in 2018, the Association opposed efforts to grant copyright exemptions for museums, libraries, and archives to retain copies of abandoned online games for research.
This is the same organization that recently helped defeat a proposed California bill to preserve premium-priced online-only games by falsely claiming that community servers are illegal. The Foundation accused the ESA of repeatedly blocking attempts by cultural heritage institutions to reform DRM legislation.
As the director of a historical video game preservation institution, and someone who has dedicated his entire adult life to this cause, this is accurate. We have attempted to work with the industry's trade organization to find a legal path forward, but they refuse to offer a meaningful alternative.
– Frank Cifaldi (@frankcifaldi.bsky.social) July 1, 2026 at 2:45 PM
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Cifaldi also described the Library of Congress' outdated software preservation process, which currently only requires tiny snippets of source code. For example, Capcom once asked the Foundation to provide the LoC with "the first and last ten pages of code" for a Mega Man game. Unable to discern where digital records began and ended, the group simply chose random segments.
Platform holders' habit of closing online storefronts and removing media from users' accounts is also unhelpful. Days before Sony's historic announcement, the company delisted more than 500 movies and TV shows from the PlayStation Store in the UK. Users could no longer download movies such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Apocalypse Now, Moonlight, the John Wick series, and Paddington despite having "bought" them.
"If platform owners are deciding to eliminate physical media and older digital storefronts, then we'd also like to see trade groups like the Entertainment Software Association offer meaningful solutions for archives and museums to legally preserve digital-only content and make it accessible for research."
To make matters worse, on the same day that the company announced the impending end of physical PlayStation discs, it also confirmed plans to shut down the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita digital storefronts. Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua will lose access to the PS3 store in August, while other Latin American countries and Eastern Europe will be cut off later this year. Sony will close the PS3 and Vita stores globally in July 2027, although users will still be able to redownload purchased titles for the foreseeable future.
Since the company's modern consoles do not support most PS3 and Vita games, potentially thousands of titles will no longer be officially available for purchase. Furthermore, according to the unofficial archive NoPayStation, significant chunks of these libraries have not been preserved. Currently, the repository only contains approximately 51% of Vita games, 69% of PS3 titles, 64% of PSP games, 71% of re-released games from the original PlayStation, and 33% of PlayStation minis.