“PS5 Blackout” Announced by PlayStation Fans to Protest Sony Disc Decision as Petition Hits 345,000 Signatures

A “PS5 Blackout” has been announced by PlayStation fans to protest Sony’s controversial decision to stop making physical games by 2028. The new announcement follows a petition demanding Sony reverse course, hitting a staggering 345,000-plus signatures. So far, PlayStation has stood firm in the face of its biggest PR controversy since the great PSN outage of 2011, but this new “Blackout” event hopes to change this.

Over on social media platform X, popular account Does It Play, announced the campaign on July 26, and in roughly 24 hours it has already amassed 800,000 views. In other words, the post is on its way to going viral. And it calls for PlayStation fans and creators alike to band together one week in August and completely disengage from the ecosystem. This means no logging in to PS Plus, no playing PS5 games, and of course, no purchases on the PlayStation Store. And this isn’t just a call to action for PS5 and PS5 Pro users, but PS4 users, as well as any other PlayStation fan on any other platform.

PS5 Blackout Details

The event is scheduled to commence on August 23 at 7:00 PM your local time and run to August 31 at 7:00 PM your local time. According to Does It Play and other organizers, they feel this specific window and amount of time will produce minimal impact on developers and publishers, whilst sending a message to Sony. To this end, there isn’t a single massive release in this window that could undermine the cause. There are a couple of noteworthy ones — particularly Star Wars Rogue Company and Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy — but neither of these seriously threatens the event.

According to the official announcement, this new disc decision is not the beginning and end of the problems Sony has inflicted upon PlayStation fans, but the straw that has broken the camel’s back.

Organizers argue that this entire generation, Sony “has continued to grow further apart from its fan base.” It cites examples such as closing beloved studios like Bluepoint, betting large on live-service at the cost of single-player games, cancelling fan events, sending PS VR2 out to die, and mishandling fan-favorite franchises.

“We understand there is only so much SIE can control, but with the decisions that are within its control, the company continues to mismanage the strong position it inherited from the PS4 era,” reads the aforementioned announcement.

Whether this fan-organized event will gather enough participants to make Sony listen to their pleas or not remains to be seen. While this controversy was still in its infancy — very fresh and very hot — Call of Duty: Black Ops and Black Ops 2 were released digitally on the PlayStation Store. And despite calls not to buy any digital games and despite the controversy burning at its maximum, so many PlayStation fans rushed to buy the games from yesteryear that it crashed the PS Store. To this end, it’s going to be an uphill battle for organizers.

All of that said, and as always, feel free to sound off in the comment section, or join the video game conversations happening over on the ComicBook Forum.