God and the PlayStation Blackout

I’ve been a gamer since I was a little kid, starting with the Super NES when I was five years old. I’ve owned a N64, GameCube, first generation X-Box, a Nintendo Wii, and several generations of the GameBoy. In the late 2000s, all of my friends were playing online games on PlayStation, so even though I owned a Wii at the time, I picked up a PlayStation 3 to play games with my friends.

The Nintendo Switch was a regular part of my gaming experience later in 2020 through early 2025, but our system broke. Aside from the few games I played on that system, though, I’ve been a PlayStation player almost exclusively for nearly two decades. But I’m not a loyalist. I go where I can play the games I want to play, and with the last few console generations, that was the PlayStation.

What does this have to do with God and gaming? As I’m writing this, a movement of PlayStation owners are participating in the PlayStation Blackout to protest Sony’s transition to digital-only sales starting in 2028. It started on August 23, 2026, and it technically “ended” on August 30, 2026, but many people plan to keep on protesting. I participated for the first seven days, as well, but I’m genuinely conflicted about it. Is this a moral issue? One that I have a biblical responsibility to take a stand on, one way or the other?

It may seem to some like this is just how technology and media is changing. I’ll admit the last game I purchased in a physical format (on a disc) was Deathloop, which was a launch title for my PlayStation 5. I bought other games, previous to that purchase, from the digital store on my PlayStation 4, but every other PlayStation 5 game I own is digital. Deathloop, for that matter, requires a significant patch to be dowloaded after inserting the disc to simply run properly. In fact, I can’t remember a single physical game I’ve purchased that worked without a mandatory download to patch errors that didn’t get fixed by the time the game went “to print.” Sometimes the patches are bigger files than what’s on the game discs. This includes a game I bought a few years ago that requires two discs just to start up!

Functionally, I’ve pretty much shifted to digital. But I don’t like the idea that the games I’ve spent good money on could suddenly be taken away because a license gets pulled. It’s why I rarely, if ever, buy in-game currency. If I spent real money on fake money, especially for a game I’ll eventually stop playing, I suspect I’d regret the purchase. I don’t want that to happen with my favorite games!

This leaves me conflicted. On the one hand, I’m in full support of the movement calling for the continued availability of physical game discs. On the other hand, buying physical games has not been necessary for me since the PS5 came out. Bigger than this conflict, I need to ask, “Where would God stand on this?”

I ask that question because I need to determine how much energy to devote to the issue. Not because I think it’s unimportant, I do think it’s important. But I need to figure out if this is a moral issue that needs pastoral leadership or a personal preference that should be defended when bigger concerns don’t take precedence.

I’m not going to make a final declaration in this post because there’s a lot I don’t know, and a lot I can’t know for a few years to come. What I will say is that everyone involved would benefit from reading Proverbs 22:16, 22-23, Matthew 7:12, and 1 Corinthians 10:311. These verses talk about not taking advantage of the poor while also treating each other well, especially for the glory of God. If anyone suffers, especially people who are trying to feed their families, because of Sony’s changes, then the policy is a clear violation of Scripture and tells me where I should stand morally. In the meantime, I’m going finish out the blackout and try to figure out what to do next.

Sources and Notes

1 At Disciple Gaming Ministry, we encourage people to read the Bible using an accurate translation that is also easy to understand. With that being said, the translation we use is the ESV® Bible. The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.