Game Preservation Chief Warns Sony’s Digital-Only Shift May Spur Piracy Workarounds

Frank Cifaldi, a well-known figure in game history and preservation, argues that recent shifts in publishing policy are leaving archivists with a difficult choice. In his view, decisions that reduce or eliminate physical releases—such as Sony moving away from disc-based PlayStation games—effectively push preservation groups toward piracy-style workarounds. Cifaldi is the founder and director of the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF), one of the largest non-profit organizations dedicated to preserving video games. The VGHF has collaborated with major industry players, including Sony Interactive Entertainment.

On July 1, Sony announced that no new PlayStation games will include physical disc releases. The company says the change begins in January 2028, while also confirming that support for discs already released and those currently in development will continue rather than being immediately discontinued. Cifaldi’s comments don’t directly single out Sony’s policy, but they land in a broader climate of frustration about what the future holds for physical game hardware—and, more importantly, for ownership rights.

Sony’s move to end physical PlayStation game production after January 2028 comes with an important caveat that creates some room for continued access to existing discs.

Piracy Might Be the Only Way to Go, VGHF Founder Says

A recent post on BlueSky claimed, “Piracy is the only extant form of media preservation that exists in games right now.” Responding to that, Frank Cifaldi said the statement is accurate given his role as director of a historical preservation institution and his long-standing work in the field. He added that VGHF has tried to find a legal route forward by working with the industry’s trade organization, but that the group “refuse[s] to offer a meaningful alternative.”

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The underlying argument is that if publishers and producers keep declining to release physical copies—such as Take-Two removing discs from GTA 6 box sets—then the practical way to preserve those works may be to pirate them and move them into formats that can be kept independently. It’s worth noting that most of VGHF’s public archive is made up of digitized games and game-related materials, including magazines. Still, those files live on VGHF’s own servers and on its website, which means large companies can’t simply edit or remove them in the same way the PlayStation Store recently deleted more than 550 movies.

Even so, the current situation in preservation raises serious moral and legal concerns. In technical terms, a publisher or rights holder generally needs to grant permission to a third-party organization to extract the game’s code or store it outside the official storefront. Cifaldi’s position suggests that many companies don’t cooperate with that kind of approach. As a result, the elimination of physical games—like Sony’s decision—can leave archivists with only two paths: use techniques that sit outside the law, or stop short of preserving physical video game media.

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Preserving games has always involved major hurdles, many of them tied to the way older titles were distributed. Classic and rare releases—some early N64 entries, for example—may exist only on physical discs or cartridges. Without a copy in good condition and without access to source code, keeping a legacy title alive can be extremely difficult. What’s changing now is a different kind of problem: archivists may increasingly face games that only exist in digital form. In theory, that could remove certain physical limitations and make preservation simpler.

However, growing reliance on DRM and companies’ reluctance to allow buyers to store digital purchases in personal libraries could make modern games more likely to disappear from the digital ecosystem. It could also increase the risk of censorship. In that kind of system, an authority could remove access to a game instantly, or cut off millions of players from a product at any time.