Sony just set a date that hits preservationists in the gut: it will stop producing PS5 discs in 2028. In a world where console ownership keeps shifting from “a disc you can keep” to “a license you can lose,” Frank Cifaldi, director of the Video Game History Foundation (VGHF), argued that piracy is, for now, the only preservation option that actually works.

Cifaldi agreed with a Bluesky post describing piracy as the “only extant form of media preservation that exists in games right now.” He backed it with the blunt credibility of someone who has dedicated his entire adult life to game preservation. He added that the VGHF has tried to find a legal path forward with the industry’s trade organization, but “they refuse to offer a meaningful alternative.” That refusal is the core of the story, and it matters because Sony is not just changing a distribution format. It is effectively tightening the leash around what can be archived, studied, or kept accessible once the physical path closes.

This is not presented as a surprise. Cifaldi also pointed to a broader long arc: museums and archives have been preparing for a future where “putting discs on a shelf isn’t going to be a long-term solution for preserving new games.” The reason is simple and brutal. For digital-only content, “access” depends on storefront availability, licensing, encryption, and platform decisions. When those systems change or disappear, preservation stops being a hardware problem and becomes a rights, policy, and enforcement problem. In other words, even if an institution preserves a copy, it still may not be able to legally make it accessible for research.

Cifaldi’s criticism targets how the industry responds when cultural heritage institutions ask for rules that would let them preserve digital-only works. In a later statement from the VGHF, he said what baffles the organization is what industry expects institutions like theirs to do about it. If platform owners decide to eliminate physical media and older digital storefronts, the VGHF wants trade groups, including the Entertainment Software Association, to offer meaningful solutions for archives and museums to legally preserve digital-only content and make it accessible for research.

His statement adds two more pressure points. First, he noted that the ESA has repeatedly opposed efforts to reform digital copy protection laws to make that legal work easier. Second, he highlighted today’s specific platform moves as part of a pattern: the discontinuation of physical PlayStation media, and the closure of the PS3 and PSP digital storefronts were part of the same announcement set. If you operate in games, this should land like a governance alarm. Storefront closures can function like silent sunsets for entire libraries, and digital licensing terms can make “loss” arrive even when servers are gone but rights still exist.

There is also a secondary market reality that executives cannot ignore. Some people frame Sony’s decision as inevitable, and PC gamers have experience with a different kind of flexibility. The source notes that the PC is perennially backwards compatible, and flexible and open enough that game preservation is “a matter of will, not way.” On PC, classics persist both legally and dubiously, and they run on the same machine you play new releases on. The missing piece is not technical capability. The missing piece is structured, enforceable preservation rights across time and platforms.

For Sony’s ecosystem, there is currently no “PlayStation GOG” and no formal plan from Sony to address scheduled abandonware, with the PS3 and PS Vita digital store closures called out as part of today’s unpopular announcements. That means preservation work shifts to unofficial efforts, as it has in the past when physical markets fade and legal pathways are blocked. The real governance stakes are bigger than any single storefront. If trade groups oppose digital-copy protection reforms, preservation organizations face an impossible equation: either they accept restricted access, they wait for rare licensing permissions, or they operate outside the formal system. Cifaldi’s core claim is that, right now, piracy is the only preservation option that still provides the practical outcome institutions need: actual preservation that survives platform change.

So what should decision-makers take from this? Treat preservation as a systems problem with legal dependencies, not just a nostalgia project. When platform owners eliminate physical media and older storefronts, the industry effectively reshapes what can be archived and who can study it. The boards and executives setting policy, distribution strategy, and compliance for digital ecosystems are ultimately deciding what future researchers, libraries, and historians can see. And when the trade group stance becomes “no meaningful alternative,” the gap will get filled, whether the industry likes it or not.