sony just announced that by 2028 they will no longer be selling any physical copies of games and that their future consoles will not have a disc drive. a lot of other companies are also slowly shifting towards this approach. while i know many are currently outraged and taking the approach of harassing companies on social media, the better course of action would really be to change your spending habits around gaming. if you're really upset about the shift towards no physical copies, then don't buy that digital game, don't buy the 1,000 dollar console that has no support for physical copies of games, don't play that live service game with microtransactions. don't let yourself forget in a month from now, two months from now, a year from now, when all the sudden a digital only or live service game is trending and it seems (this is a very important keyword here) like everyone is playing it and you have to get it to be cool with everyone. don't let yourself be influenced when your favorite streamer or youtuber or any kind of influencer picks up a digital only game or live service game and you feel sold on putting money into the very thing that just two months ago you swore you'd never support. you need to be aware of the cycle of advertisement and how easily companies shfit the narrative quietly without you noticing. they can pay anyone they want to make it seem like their product is the cool new thing everyone wants. they wait for you to forget and then they re-implement the very change they may have claimed they were going to reverse their decision on. we've seen this happen so many times with many companies, the most recent example i can give is with discord and their age verification. online outrage and high school kind of bullying doesn't create long term change. you need to put the work in the change your own habits and invest your money in places that align with your beliefs. because it doesn't matter how much you roasted that multi-billion dollar corporation in the QRTs, the only thing they care about is that they will get your money eventually. they are patient and they are conditioning you to be impatient and impulsive. don't let them be in control of your decisions in the long term.
of course this doesn't mean never ever try anything new, we don't want to go to the opposite end of the spectrum and be crippled by OCD, but we need to reach a medium where we can still use critical thinking to decide whether or not we're using our money wisely and if it's going towards the change we want to see in the world.