Kojima Calls All-Digital Ownership a Ticking Time Bomb as Disc Era Nears Its End

Speaking at the Il Cinema in Piazza film festival in Rome, Hideo Kojima — the creator behind Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding — delivered a sobering warning about what he sees as a deeply troubling trajectory for how people will access games, films, and music in the years ahead. While he stopped short of naming Sony directly, the timing of his remarks left little ambiguity: PlayStation disc production is scheduled to end in January 2028, and Kojima made clear he finds that prospect genuinely sad. 'I grew up with physical media, so I find it really sad,' he told festival attendees, also noting he has been stockpiling Blu-rays and CDs in response to the broader industry shift.

Kojima's concerns extend well beyond the retirement of physical discs. He drew a careful distinction between downloaded games — which live on a player's own hardware — and streamed content, which he argues represents a fundamentally different and more fragile relationship between consumers and the media they love. Using the analogy of a tap, he explained that streaming services grant users only the right to access data flowing from a remote server, not possession of that data itself. 'You don't actually possess the data yourself,' he said plainly, echoing anxieties he first expressed publicly back in 2021, when he warned that individuals could soon have their access to beloved movies, books, and music revoked without notice.

The broader industry context makes Kojima's words land with particular weight. In late June, Rockstar Games confirmed that physical copies of GTA 6 would ship without a disc, containing only a download code — a decision that triggered significant backlash from fans invested in physical ownership. Sony compounded consumer frustration around the same period by informing digital movie buyers that they would lose access to a library of over 550 previously purchased films, a move that inflamed debate about what 'buying' digital content actually means in practice.

Kojima warned that the political and corporate realities of server-dependent media introduce risks that most consumers rarely consider. He pointed out that shifts in national politics, corporate priorities, or international relations could theoretically result in content being switched off at the server level — leaving users unable to access games and films they believed they owned. 'That is what is frightening,' he said, urging audiences to think critically about the infrastructure underpinning the entertainment they consume daily.

For now, Kojima remains active on multiple fronts. Kojima Productions finished work on Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, and his upcoming horror project OD is confirmed to be safe at Xbox amid recent industry turbulence around studio closures. But even as he looks forward creatively, his message at the Rome festival was unmistakably retrospective — a call for the public to pause and reckon with what is being lost as the disc quietly fades from the cultural landscape.