Sony Reportedly Imposed Strict Rules On Employees Over Its Physical Games Decision

Sony’s decision to stop producing physical PlayStation game discs from 2028 is still causing a lot of debate, and now a new report suggests the company knew exactly how players would react before making the announcement.

According to YouTuber and former Santa Monica Studio writer Alanah Pearce, Sony put in place what she described as the strictest social media guidelines PlayStation employees have ever received. The rules were reportedly sent to first-party studio staff before Sony published its July 1 blog post, showing the company expected the criticism and prepared for it in advance.

“Sony already knew everyone would be pissed off. They knew this. People working at PlayStation First Party Studios told me that Sony had the strictest social media guidelines for this particular thing that they’ve ever seen issued,” Pearce explained. “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 that the game was announced.”

She added, “But in this instance, it is 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.” These comments clearly suggest Sony expected the backlash long before the announcement was made. The company knew the decision would upset a large part of the PlayStation community, so it prepared strict communication rules in advance instead of reacting after the criticism started.

The backlash has continued since the announcement, but despite the criticism, Sony has not publicly addressed the issue and has remained silent.  It’s also worth noting that Sony is unlikely to reverse its decision to end physical PlayStation game discs in 2028, with industry analyst Dr. Serkan Toto saying the company will simply “wait for this storm to pass.”