"6 guarantees to dematerialise our rights": the GamerGen op-ed
The debate is broadening, and that is good news. On 3 July 2026, two days after Sony's announcement of the end of disc production, Eric de Brocart, founder and publishing director of GamerGen, published a widely noticed op-ed. His idea: not merely to mourn the disc, but to frame the digital model so that players retain genuine rights within it. His phrasing sums it all up: "If the disc is living its final years, our status as customers must not die with it."
The op-ed proposes six guarantees to "dematerialise our rights" rather than let them disappear. Here they are, summarised; we invite you to read the full op-ed on GamerGen.
The six proposed guarantees
- A permanent right of use, every purchase must guarantee lasting use of the copy acquired, and not access that can be revoked at any time.
- Access guaranteed over time, the closure of a store must not deprive players of the games they have already paid for.
- Transferability and transmission, being able to give, pass on and resell one's game, within a controlled framework.
- Compensation and durability of single-player, a refund in the event of withdrawal, and offline modes preserved when servers shut down.
- Full transparency before purchase, clear display of the duration of access and the real conditions, before paying.
- Offline preservation, the right to download a local copy and to run it without depending on remote servers.
Our reading: a convergence, not a coincidence
These six guarantees overlap, almost point by point, with what we have been defending from day one. They say the same thing as our summary of the issues and our legislative avenues: the real subject is not "disc versus download", but the whole set of rights that must survive dematerialisation, lasting use, resale, refund, transparency, preservation.
When a specialist outlet, a players' collective and a European citizens' initiative ("Stop Destroying Videogames") reach the same conclusions, it is no longer an isolated mood: it is a movement. And a movement carries weight, all the more so at the moment when Europe is preparing its Digital Fairness Act.
The end of the disc obliges no one to accept the end of their rights. Six guarantees, a clear course: it is up to us to carry it.
See also: PlayStation stops producing discs in 2028 · Why publishers would gain from it too
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