THE DEATH OF OWNERSHIP: HOW PHYSICAL MEDIA'S DECLINE HANDED PRESERVATION TO PIRATES

Here's a claim I'll defend: the shift from physical media to streaming and digital storefronts isn't just changing how we buy entertainment. It's quietly ending the concept of owning it. And the ugliest consequence is that for a huge chunk of gaming history, the only people with reliable access to old titles are the ones breaking the law to get them.

Let's walk through how we got here, and then let's take the strongest counterargument seriously.

The numbers are not subtle

Physical media had a real peak, and we've fallen a long way from it. Physical media sales hit more than $16 billion in 2005, during a time when video streaming was still in its infancy. Fast forward and the floor gave out. Total revenue across 4K Blu-ray, regular Blu-ray, and DVD fell below $1 billion for the first time in years, according to a report by Digital Entertainment Group and Omdia. The same report found physical media sales slumped 23.4% in 2024, hitting a record low since DEG and Omdia first began tracking the market.

Games followed the same curve, just steeper. By 2018, physical video games accounted for roughly 17% of all game sales in the U.S.; by 2023, physical made up just 10.5%, with around 89.5% going digital. The most recent read is bleaker still. Circana reported that physical game spending in the US fell to roughly $1.5 billion in 2025, the lowest level since the mid-1990s and an 11% drop on the previous year.

This isn't a demand problem. People are spending more on games than ever. The decline is not because people are buying fewer games, total spending is near record highs, but because the same buyers are choosing downloads. The manufacturers are reading the tea leaves and acting accordingly. Sony has confirmed that it will no longer support physical discs for PlayStation games, for first- and third-party games, starting in January 2028.

So the format is retreating. Fine. Formats die all the time. The problem is what dies with it.

"Owning" digital is a rental with extra steps

When you buy a disc, you own a copy. Nobody can reach into your living room and delete it. Digital purchases don't work that way, and one incident made that painfully clear.

Ubisoft's 2014 online racing title The Crew was taken offline permanently in March 2024, rendering it completely unplayable, even for those who still owned physical or digital copies. The company didn't stop at pulling the servers. The downside of digital ownership reared its head for The Crew when the publisher revoked its licence for those who owned it on Ubisoft Connect. When sued, the company's defense wasn't an apology. Ubisoft's position is that players were clearly informed at the time of purchase that they were buying access, not ownership.

That's the whole game, stated plainly by the people selling it. You are buying access. And access can be switched off. The fallout was loud enough that Steam updated its store pages with a disclaimer clarifying before payment that players are purchasing a license. That disclaimer is honest. It's also an admission that the thing you're clicking "buy" on is not a thing you keep.

The preservation gap piracy is filling

Now connect the two threads. Physical copies are drying up at retail, and digital "purchases" are revocable licenses. So where does the historical record actually live?

Mostly, it doesn't. 87% of classic video games released in the United States are critically endangered, with only 13 percent currently in release. This isn't a symptom of one lazy publisher. These low numbers are consistent across platform ecosystems and time periods. And the older the game, the worse it gets. The reissue rate drops below 3 percent for games released prior to 1985, the foundational era of video games.

The Video Game History Foundation put it in terms anyone can feel. Imagine if the only way to watch Titanic was to find a used VHS tape and maintain your own vintage equipment, and no library, not even the Library of Congress, could do any better. That's the actual legal state of games right now. Libraries can preserve, but they're hamstrung on sharing.

So here's the punchline nobody at a publisher wants to say out loud. Nearly 90% of classic titles can only be accessed from the second-hand market, visiting a library collection in person, or resorting to piracy. As the second-hand market thins and library access stays locked behind on-site rules, that list collapses toward one option. If you want to play most of gaming's back catalog, an emulator and a ROM file is the path that actually works. The law says that's infringement. Reality says it's the archive.

The counterargument, taken seriously

The strongest pushback is that physical media isn't dying, it's stabilizing, and a collector revival is underway. There's real evidence for it. The rate of decline slowed dramatically from a 23 percent drop in 2024 to about 9 percent in 2025. The premium tier is even growing. 4K Blu-ray sales increased 19.5% per the 2025 ERA report. Gen Z is reportedly part of it, with young consumers drawn to the nostalgia of physical media and the ability to own content, rather than relying on fragmented streaming platforms.

I'll grant all of that. But notice what the revival actually is: a boutique, steelbook, cinephile niche. Physical software was a multi-billion-dollar pillar of the industry for two console generations; it is now a niche. A slower rate of decline is still decline, and a growth spike in $40 collector editions doesn't repopulate the mass-market shelf that let ordinary people own ordinary copies. The revival saves the trophies. It doesn't save the catalog.

And it does nothing about the licensing wall. A thriving Blu-ray boutique scene has zero effect on whether a delisted, server-locked game from 2014 can ever legally be played again. That's the tell. The collector comeback and the preservation crisis are running on separate tracks, and only one of them is about ownership as a right rather than ownership as a luxury good.

The market gave us convenience and took the copy. Until libraries get the legal room to share what they've already preserved, the honest description of the situation is uncomfortable: the pirates are doing the archiving the industry won't.