PSBLACKOUT (boycott of PlayStation)

Halo releases this week. Sony isn't going to notice anything.

Seriously, timed blackouts and petitions are just being performative. If someone actually cares, sell your ps5/move to another platform. Nothing else matters. This is like how sports game fans complain every year that the game sucks but are still willing to drop 80 dollars on it.

Agreed it should be: starting 23 of August not purchasing any digital games and microtransactions. It would hurt Sony the most

this is a pretty accurate representation of most current day boycotts.

Thats a weird one because Activision wants mw2 players to stop playing. They refuse the patch an RCE in multiplayer. These people are probably playing on the private servers. But if they spend any time on the game thats time away from where Activision wants them which is on the new game.

At least peer to peer works theoretically forever though. So it’s not the worst way to keep multiplayer alive.

Hm I wonder if that list of 17 pages is perhaps sorted to show people in the game who may have either accidentally clicked the join button or are new.

My PS3 will have to stay thoroughly boxed up on the basement.

I won't be turning mine on, but that's only because I recently hacked my GameCube, so I'll be playing that until I decide to go back.

I haven't owned a Sony console since the PS2, but I will gladly double, even triple, my effort to continue to do nothing!

You already won vs Sony!

Wouldn't even be surprised if Sony organised this it's so pathetic. Let's people vent for a week and then all over I guess. Why would they even bother changing?

proper boycotts were outdoors.
C👔s actually fled for their lives.

This is a performance.

Boycotting with a small window, isn't the whole war, it's just one shot fired. It gives them an idea of the numbers involved, the amount of people who disagree with their policy, and an idea we won't just forget and roll over. If they ignore the first shot fired, you fire more, and you get bigger with every shot fired. It's got to effect their bottom line, or they will ignore it. People who entirely abstain are just measured as not in the argument at all. You don't give them pressure by never owning a PlayStation. You just aren't a customer. They count customers. It would even be worthwhile to create a PlayStation account, log in the day before the boycott, and log out for the duration, then log in again the day after the end, so you have a measurable voice in the movement. If you went to their offices, you would just look clinically unhinged, and they would just involve police, and ignore you.

Couldn't agree more!

Just cancelled my PS+ subscription with reason "other".

I'll see you all on the seven seas!

but it makes those people feel good about themselves.

Yeah, switching to PC is a significantly more effective boycott strategy. You can still play games and give Sony $0.

Edit: And yes I realize PC generally doesn't have disks either. However, you aren't locked into PS' store and things like GOG exist. I make a point to buy games on GOG, and so should anyone interested in OP's boycott.

They’re actually very good at voting with their wallet for the most part. A minority of them are just very dumb and vote against what they’re claiming they want.

This is the crowd that preorders a DIGITAL ONLY game that hasn't released a single lick of gameplay video. GTA 6 is proof that capital g Gamers are a lost cause.

The sane people that game have to just stay away from all the ball and gun Gamers, and support the indie scene.

I think part of it is people don't forego convenience but also that we've allowed corporations to cement hegemonies that there honestly is very little ability to boycott.

Some industries are so centralized it's impossible to effectively boycott and vote with your wallet.

Gamers are notoriously bad at voting with their wallet

When everyone was complaining about the Switch 2 price prior to release, I knew that it'd still sell like hotcakes.

Hasn't stopped people buying the Steam Machine, either.

if its longer than a week maybe, a week boycott is just a piss in the wind.

For perspective, the Montgomery bus boycott, which is usually used as a prime example of how well boycotts can work, lasted for 381 days.

But yea a 1 week surely will do something.

A boycott that lasts months or years on the other hand…

My son who plays all the time going go whole month without turning on his PS5.

Fucking week! Thought it whole month of August? Also why wait towards the end? Such weak shit. Why bother they won't even notice.

Can we please extend this for whole month starting on August the 1st?

A single week is a realistic goal.

You voted with your wallet for this when you bought into their bullshit.

You spent a single dollar at the company so you support everything they do is reductive and juvenile. Try engaging your brain.

How does it actually affect anything?

It gives certain social influencers a soapbox from which they can shout "Like, Subscribe, and Share!"

Modern day "boycotts" aren't really economic actions. They're media stunts advanced by affinity marketing groups intended to collect personal information and demonstrate their ability to mobilize large numbers of people.

Agreed on the last part. But a less cynical take: Companies like Sony obsessively track their sales metrics. If a campaign like this does go viral, and only a few percent of people actually follow through, it does create a noticeable dip in the metrics and an explanation will be demanded internally. There's a small chance this makes certain managers a bit more careful about such decisions.

In rare cases companies have taken back or at least delayed similar moves, and they never do so without indication that it will indeed affect their bottom line.

Though I don't think this campaign will have much effect, since asking for a full week is not something many people will follow through with. Also Sony is clearly banking on the fact that customers will stay due to lock-in to their ecosystem.

Yep. The hill my new console owning habits died on was any corp pushing paying to play online subscriptions and I stuck to that. I'll buy used later if there's exclusives I want and I can't just emulate it like Switch 1.

Oh yeah like the API hissy fits that shown just how weak reddit protests really are.

Yep, and like with almost every other protest or “boycott” these days, it’s all performative. Most of the people “boycotting” will be online playing their digital games during that week, guaranteed.

Yep. I also still remember the last PS blackout. That was 24 days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_PlayStation_Network_outage

There's no changing Sony because there's no changing its users.

Sony is going to wipe their tears with all the money they have made from their player base.

I'm gonna change my profile pic in support

::: spoiler just incase /s :::

I thought that was the stupidest thing, the Reddit "blackout". Company doesn't care. It's a metric. It's a line on a graph. When stakeholders ask they'll point to it and say "This was are anticipated backlash from the Q2 decision to ban 3rd party APIs, but as you can see we already recovered and have grown at our normal pace."

I do want to give some insight. The reddit blackout did work technically. At least for me. I left reddit during the blackout and joined lemmy. Found it a lot better and remained. Letting people get a taste for not bootlicking a corp during a blackout is a small way to kick start a change.

Sure it might not get measurable change in the way the shareholders would change their mind, but every little discression against major corporations is a step in the right direction and I don't think the people ITT should be shitting on people for trying to retaliate against Sony, albeit for a short time.

I have a couple PS3's. Bought used. No online games. I think I've bought more of their titles on PC than console.

It's not even a boycott, I just haven't seen value in their recent offerings and would rather spend my money elsewhere.

There's some stuff I'd love to experience on the PS5.

But I will not be spending nearly a thousand dollars for a set top box with limited functionality they can effectively disable when I'm no longer making them enough money.

And with SteamOS getting better and better, the convenience of a console over a PC is becoming less of a thing.

Honestly, once SteamOS has dedicated apps for things like Hulu and Netflix, I think we can really change things. Right now my parents have an Xbox where my Dad can play an occasional game, but the interface is simple enough for my Mom to open her streaming apps. Once SteamOS gets that simple, I'll be switching them over.

Remember that screenshot of Steam group "boycott modern warfare 2" with almost every player with "in game: modern warfare 2"

Yeah, are they going to stop after a week, stomp their foot, and tell Sony to knock it off?

I boycotted Walmart for years, realized I would never see any change, and continue to not shop there because Walmart sucks and my life is better now. If you make the change the goal, you are lining yourself up for disappointment. If you make doing business with companies congruent with your values the goal, you win if you last a week, you win bigger if you last a month, and you win the grand prize if they change or you leave and never look back!

The only people that made change my views was Vanillaware. But their Switch release made me angry at myself for believing in digital scarcity. I won't fall for haggling tactics like these again.

Remember their stupid proprietary memory sticks?

Damn, I thought I was leading the chunky peanut butter revolution over here.

Because the players have grown addicted to Sony's boot flavored meds, the withdrawals become too great after 1 week.

You bought a PS5? I still have a PS4 that hasn’t been turned on in 4 years.

Linux gaming is the way.

Yeahhh. We've got a PS4, and no PS5, initially because of the whole "you cannot back up your saves, at all, except with a cloud subscription" thing but now with this shit... yeah, nah. We're good with Linux PC (and our PS4 for a very few things).

-- Frost

I mostly use mine as a glorified blu ray player and use the ps4 media remote with it. Pretty nifty for that purpose can’t lie.

Same I bought a PS5 during the pandemic, played TLOU 1 & 2, God of War, and haven’t touched it since. I have a Bazzite gaming machine I subsequently built so the PS5 has been sitting in the box for years at this point.

I was on team Dreamcast and never owned a Sony console! Welcome to my world!

Mine was a second hand PS1 that my brother played. Not sure I ever used it, maybe for a little twisted metal.

When I saw them bait and switch Linux again with the ps3 I was done.

Ps2 the last sony.

I got it for the controller haptics and trigger feedback, ended up just making me worse at every game that has it, idk if I actually like the gimmick

Huh? You could play gameboy games on the SNES?!

Babysteps brother. The roaring blaze of a revolution starts with an ember

I would be absolutely floored if enough people were on board to even make a noticable difference for just one week. Boycotts in the gaming space have been hilariously ineffectual, historically.

Microsoft were going full digital next gen no matter what Sony did, as the next Xbox is a pc.

Nintendo will keep doing physical games for the foreseeable future as it’s much more necessary with handhelds.

If 10% of the physical game buyers convert to digital and stick around, it will likely be a net profit for Sony. I’d wager that number will be closer to 75% of “physical only” players just move to digital too.

Sony wouldn't care about that either, bandwidth is cheap and all you're doing is using up write cycles on your SSD.

Well what entitled full ownership for you

Only buy the good stuff when you actually know it's good

That's a great way to never get new games. Obviously you have to take some risks, which is why return policies are great

set the record for consecutive weeks

Then be sure to tell the organizers to set the record of indefinite consecutive weeks of protest.

Lol the absolute fucking panic at the c suite when a discord server figures out the exact number of users it takes to do that and starts coordinating it every day.

I know it will never happen but it would be hilarious.

This one did earlier this month.

They'd work if people would commit to a full, indefinite boycott until demands are met. This "one week boycott" shit is controlled opposition pushing a narrative that a one week boycott is an appropriate response to something like this.

In my region, PS5s were out of stock for a long time.

It's very funny to see folks talk about a boycott against a product that keeps selling out faster than the parent company can manufacture it.

I don't see you organizing a demo crew.

Boycotts with deadlines expressed in terms of dates on a calendar have never been effective at anything besides making people think they're accomplishing something.

I've been boycotting Sony since they started charging for PSN. Join me. Unless you can't go that long without your precious God of War or whatever.

Sony do not care about this in the slightest lol. It wouldn’t even register a blip on their radar.

Also Sony barely release games anymore because of how much of a hold they have over the industry.

Absolute platinum tier brain-dead take.

The only “morons” around here are people who loudly and proudly share the same stupid disinfo, and try to disparage those that actually trying to keep this hobby from completely going down the shitter.

No one’s trying to take away your ability to buy and play digital games, so why the fuck are you advocating doing so for those that prefer physical media?

Has your dumb-ass not yet realised that physical media means competitive pricing, due to Sony’s online store needing to compete with B&M sales, as well as the 2nd hand market?

Once that’s taken away, and you’re stuck with “dynamic targeted pricing” of $70+ dollars for years-old titles - if you can even still purchase them - maybe then, the couple of brain cells floating around in that massive waste of space between your ears might just manage to find each other, and it will finally dawn on you just how hard you’re now getting fucked over.

Oh, and by-the-way - removing digital-only titles and DLC from the sales metrics, something like ~50% of game sales are still through physical media.

For me it's Sony gaining full control about game prices and reselling. You can get disc versions of games for a lot less than in the playstation store.

I think there are two types of people who care. Collectors and resellers / buyers of used copies.

I play a mix of games, some digital and some physical. I don't buy used copies (I, perhaps naively, believe that I support the developers by purchasing new copies — and by "support" I mean they can make more games that I like), but I sell the games that I have finished (well, most of them). I think I buy/play more digital games than physical, part of the reason is PS Plus / PS Portal.

However, I don't like that Sony wants to abandon physical media. I believe customers should have a choice. Also, the digital versions are almost always more expensive than physical, and for years they've been misleading us into believing that digital distribution is supposed to be cheaper. Yeah, right.

If Sony controls all means of distribution, by cutting off physical media, they will further increase prices for games and subscriptions, because why not. Consumers will have no choice if they still want to play on their PlayStation.

The overwhelming majority of playstation games are contained in disc and playable without internet.

We can argue about what "fully on disc" means in regards to day one patches and whatnot, but you don't need those to play the game. Buy a disc, place it into an offline ps5, install it, and play.

And you'll be able to do that in twenty or thirty years when they bring their digital purchase servers offline, too.

Because you don't own the game anymore. You're renting it from them, as long as they decide to keep it online, and they won't forever.

It's like "buying" a movie on Amazon. It's not the same as buying a bluray or DVD. It means renting it from them as long as they keep serving it. They eventually will turn that service off and you won't "own" it.

My biggest problem with this, is lack of ability to resell. I would be saying the same if they made it so the disks are license only locked to the first account that plays them.

The issue for me isn't the content of the disk, it's what the disk allows.

That being said, if I had to choose between the disks acting like a key, or the disks containing the game I would obviously choose the disk playing the game.

But if I had to choose between a disk acting as a key, or no disk at all. I'm going to choose the disk acting like a key.

Not that I've ever actually sold any of my games, or hardware. But I would still like the ability to if I wanted.

Plenty of games are fully playable in some form of physical media. In fact, the vast majority of games I have purchased in the last year have been fully playable physical copies. Just because there have been several examples of shitty business practices, doesn't make it a good idea to just give up. There are several massive reasons to die on this hill as others have already outlined in their comments here. Owning the shit we buy, keeping game prices down by giving consumers choice, preventing Sony from giving themselves a monopoly, game preservation. All of these things will be severely damaged or destroyed if we do not die on this hill. If you want to pay less for your games, own what you buy, and preserve games, it is imperative that we stop Sony.

With discs Sony can't revoke your game like with digital. Doesn't matter if they banned your account. Disc still works for you and whoever comes to gain possession of it.

The games in most cases haven’t been fully contained on the discs since the PS2 era.

They should be. That's why people care.