Left 4 Dead writer Chet Faliszek hears you crying about PlayStation's decision to end physical game discs in 2028, and he's shoving your own fist in your mouth to make you stop. You caused your own suffering, he wants players to know.

"You, the consumer, have made a choice, and your choice is for digital," Faliszek says plainly in a new YouTube video on the subject. "I keep seeing this, like, 'Oh, they should do memory cards. They should do…' Right now, today – the games we are talking about are available at retail today. The used games are available at retail today, and you aren't going into retail and buying them."

Unfortunately for the thousands of commenters spamming Sony's last trailer for Marvel's Wolverine with emoji pitchfork and torches, he's right. Circana industry analyst Mat Piscatella just revealed only seven PlayStation games managed to crack 100,000 physical sales in the US this year.

Even worse, "Anybody who's reporting software sales right now, and they're doing digital and retail, they're all under reporting," Faliszek says, "because they're not reporting Steam. Let's not even get into mobile. And what was Game Pass? Game Pass was digital only. You as the consumer have forced the large corporations hand, and you've told them 'Stop with retail.'"

Once you, apparently, regretted your decision to invest almost entirely in digital, you didn't start buying Crimson Desert discs while you could, nor did you abstain from making digital purchases altogether. Now it's too late, says Faliszek.

"You should have started protesting Game Pass, and stop buying Xbox games, and stop buying digital," says the frustrated writer. "But you didn't, because it's easier."

The Steam Machine isn't doing exclusives because Valve thinks "restricting where people can play" doesn't work.

The FBI has arrested a 21-year-old Florida resident, identified as Zyaire Dontaevious Zamarion Wilkins, for allegedly distributing malware embedded in a series of Steam games to approximately 8,000 PCs. Arrested last week, Wilkins—alongside two unnamed co-conspirators—is accused of using the private information stolen from those infected computers to steal over $200,000 in cryptocurrency.

According to criminal complaint filed by the FBI (via Techspot), Wilkins and his associates allegedly encouraged social media users to download their malware-laden games on Discord, Telegram, X, and LinkedIn, while also employing chatbots to identify and prioritize "individuals with large cryptocurrency holdings."

The FBI doesn't name Steam in the document, but refers to the weaponized games as being "available for download on a popular digital distribution software company for videogames located in the Western District of Washington," and the games it says were used for distributing malware—Dashverse (2024), Lunara (2024), PirateFi (2025), Blockblasters (2025), and Lampy (2026)—had all been previously named in its March 2026 call for information from users who had downloaded malicious software through Steam.

According to the FBI, it was able to identify Wilkins when Google cookie records indicated that the email address tied to one of the co-conspirators' Steam developer accounts was accessed through the same devices and web browsers used by a cluster of other Google addresses, which were themselves associated with Apple and T-Mobile accounts.

After obtaining a search warrant for the address associated with those Apple and T-Mobile accounts, the FBI seized a number of devices from the premises in February 2026, one of which allegedly contained records of messages coordinating the Steam malware scheme and Bitcoin payments sent from the co-conspirator to a Signal user named "Sibel.eth."

Sibel.eth was identified as Wilkins when investigators found that the Bitcoin wallet which received those payments was used to purchase over 150 gift cards, some of which were used for UberEats orders allegedly linked to Wilkins' University of West Florida student email address.

The FBI doesn't identify the co-conspirator, who allegedly wrote the malware embedded within the weaponized Steam games. During the two years in which the co-conspirators distributed malware on the platform, the FBI says they gained access to roughly 80 cryptocurrency wallets, from which they stole at least $220,000—an amount which includes $35,000 stolen from streamer RastalandTV that he'd raised to pay for his stage 4 cancer treatments.

PlayStation fans continue to demand physical game discs from the company after it announced it would stop making them in 2028, but actual sales numbers gathered by Circana industry analyst Mat Piscatella suggest that – as much as I hate saying this – Sony might be right.

People are not buying physical games, though the 12,000 wailing comments under the latest Marvel's Wolverine trailer might confuse you into thinking you fell asleep and woke up in a physical media Eden. But – I'm consoling my tired, creaking DVD shelf as I say this – we are not in Eden, as Piscatella reveals only seven PlayStation games have sold more than 100,000 physical copies in the US this year.

"2 PlayStation video games sold more than 10k physical units in the US during week ending July 11, 2026," the analyst shares on Bluesky, "7 have sold more than 100k physical units year-to-date." Global estimates from earlier this month by Alinea Analytics suggest EA Sports FC 26, Resident Evil Requiem, and 007 First Light might be among those seven games, as each saw at least 12% of their millions of international sales derive from physical games. In Requiem's case, a hefty 27.8% of its 3.5 million copies sold are estimated to have come from physical discs.

Those are not small numbers. But they're not big for PlayStation, either, especially when considering the fact that Piscatella's data comes from "all games, all pubs, all PS platforms," he explains.

Things used to look very different for all games, all pubs, all platforms. According to a wedge-shaped chart Piscatella posted on Bluesky in June, US consumer spending on physical games went on a sleigh ride downhill from $11.5 billion in 2009 to $1.6 billion in 2026. We're still nurturing a capital-B Billion, but that wad of cash is a much smaller prize for Sony than it's used to.

Piscatella predicted this summer, "More than half of all Xbox Series consoles in the US don't have a physical drive, while over a quarter of PS5's are the same. We likely have less than a decade left of physical software."

Now, PlayStation is fulfilling the prophecy. Piscatella says about players' recent outrage, "Commenting is cool, use your voice and all that. But commenting is cheap." So, remember, if you really do care about physical discs, buy them.

Sony's attack on physical goods spreads to Crunchyroll as it adds a $14 subscription requirement just to access new store "experience."