Why the PS Plus Boycott Hurts You More Than Sony

There is a protest going on. After Sony Interactive Entertainment confirmed it will stop making physical discs for new PlayStation games in 2028, a chunk of the community has started cancelling their PlayStation Plus subscriptions in anger, or at least turning off auto-renew, a petition to save physical games has passed roughly 250,000 signatures, and people are posting screenshots of themselves hitting cancel. The mood is, by all measures, loud, and if you're a Grand Theft Auto Online player thinking about joining in, you might want to sit on that thought first before you click.

On a PlayStation console, you need PlayStation Plus to play GTA Online at all. It is not optional except in the rare occasions where it isn't but it doesn't happen often and it only lasts for a limited time. Sony requires the paid membership for basically all online multiplayer that is not free-to-play, and GTA Online is not free-to-play. So if you cancel your subscription to protest the disc decision, you are also cancelling your own ability to log onto Los Santos and join a heist on your PlayStation.

While you are protesting against Sony's decision, you're also punishing yourself in the same click.

The disc decision is a genuine loss for players, and you're free to feel upset about it. It just means cancelling your subscription is a protest that hurts you more than its intended target, who, by the way, according to analysts, aren't going to feel your loss at all. Even if half a million people cancelled in protest, that would make up roughly only one percent of Sony's PlayStation Plus subscriber base, which runs into the tens of millions.

Sony expects to make far more money from going all-digital than it could lose from a protest this size. Money is the entire reason it is doing this. Sony has already said, in so many words, that it is moving forward regardless.

The only way they'll change their mind if the governments around the world, from Brazil to France, Mexico, the Netherlands, and probably, the UK, tell Sony that what they're doing is wrong.

Funnily enough, a lot of people trying to cancel have discovered that the moment they hit the button, Sony suddenly offers them a discount to stay. Reports describe deals like 50 percent off three months, or 25 percent off a year of the Premium tier, appearing right at the exit. This isn't Sony panicking. This is their system at work. You go to cancel, an algorithm fires off a discount to keep you, and it does this whether ten people are leaving or ten thousand. The protest just sent a lot of people to the cancel screen at once, so a lot of people saw it at once. If anything, what this simply means is that you can often knock money off a subscription just by pretending to leave, protest or not.

One thing worth clearing up while we are here is that PS Plus is not the same as GTA+. PlayStation Plus is Sony's subscription that lets you play online at all on a PlayStation. GTA+ is Rockstar Games' separate optional subscription that hands out in-game money and perks in GTA Online.

So where does that leave you if you are angry about the discs? Nowhere, really. You can join the petition if you want since it costs you nothing and adds to a number people are actually counting. If you play on PC, none of this touches you anyway, because GTA Online multiplayer there needs no subscription at all, and if you were going to keep paying regardless, at least now you know that clicking cancel might get you a discount.

The disc fight is real, and it is not going away. Unfortunately, it will take years for real movement to happen if it happens at all. Cancelling PS Plus is a good idea but it quietly punishes you, the protester, more than the company you want to see make changes to their future plans.