Alanah Pearce, a former writer at Sony Santa Monica Studio and ex-IGN journalist, has revealed that Sony put in place its “strictest social media guidelines” on its staff to date as a result of the backlash regarding its decision to end physical game disc production in January 2028.
Sony hasn’t said anything about the controversial decision since its initial announcement, despite the fact it has received a huge amount of criticism online — even recent trailers for the likes of Marvel’s Wolverine have been flooded with angry PS5 owners attacking Sony’s decision to end disc production.
However, there’s a reason for this, according to Pearce, and that’s because the format holder anticipated the backlash and has insisted that employees keep quiet.
Sony already knew everyone would be p*ssed off – they knew this. People working within PlayStation first-party studios told me Sony had the strictest social media guidelines for this particular thing they’ve ever seen issued. Sony does somewhat regularly tell employees what they can or can’t say about certain things. I was under a lot of guidelines when I was working on God of War Laufey – I still am. And they did send me guidelines regarding what I could say on the day the game was announced.
But in this instance, it’s apparently the strictest the employees I spoke to have ever seen regarding public communications. They would only have done this if they knew it was going to be an enormous PR issue. This is no surprise to them.
As reported yesterday, the creator of the Disgaea franchise reacted Sony’s decision by stating the company hasn’t taken into consideration the value of physical game discs for collectors, and suggested that they should scrap hardware altogether too. Meanwhile, a petition started by the CEO of an independent retailer in Canada has garnered over 300,000 signatures.
Sony reportedly failed to keep its publishing and business partners in the loop about its decision to end game disc production.
[Source – Alanah Pearce on YouTube via PushSquare]