Sony wanted its move to digital-only to look like progress. Instead, it handed the internet a piñata.
Within hours of the announcement that physical disc production for new PlayStation games ends in January 2028, some of the biggest brands online lined up to take a swing, and the beating has been merciless.
The uncomfortable part for Sony is why the jokes are landing so hard. They only work because everyone already understands exactly what “digital only” means, and none of it is good for the people paying.
Domino’s Started the Feeding Frenzy
The biggest shot came from Domino’s Pizza UK, which posted a mock “official statement” declaring that, “in response to trends in the gaming industry,” it would cease production of physical pizzas as of April 1, 2027 and shift to digital pizzas only.
Customers, it explained, could download pizza codes and enjoy them “using the power of the imagination, in an entirely virtual sense.”
The post detonated, piling up 3.4 million views, nearly 200,000 likes, and 26,000 reposts as gamers flooded the replies with their own frustrations.
Then Domino’s kept swinging.
When one user joked about a pizza arriving with a code in the box, the account replied, “the box is digital too.” When another pictured the same thing, Domino’s answered, “Hologram and pineapple.”
This isn’t the account’s first time needling PlayStation. Just weeks earlier, Domino’s mocked the reveal of God of War Laufey with “God of War game with no Kratos = Pepperoni Passion with no pepperoni.”
That one went so viral that Sony’s own Santa Monica Studio broke character to reply, “ok thanks for the feedback, dominos pizza corporate account,” a clapback that promptly got ratioed harder than the joke it was answering.
GameStop and GameFly Twist the Knife
The companies with the most to lose from a discless future reached for gallows humor.
GameStop posted a side-by-side of a customer who traded in an old Xbox 360 collection for more than $1,000 in store credit, and signed off vowing to keep selling and renting physical media “until they pry the discs from our soft, moisturized hands.”
GameFly, the rental service whose entire business runs on mailing discs, put out its own statement reaffirming its commitment to physical media. When the companies your policy stands to wipe out are the ones cracking jokes about it, the jokes have teeth.
KFC Went Fully Unhinged
Then there’s KFC’s Spanish account, which committed to the bit harder than anyone.
It announced that KFC would stop offering its “physical format” effective immediately, with its products now available only through the app “in fake PNG format,” complete with a mock menu showing fried chicken floating on transparent checkerboard backgrounds.
It didn’t stop at one post. KFC promised a DLC pack of sauces, each one sold separately, invited fans to “pre-order the PNGs” before they sold out, and capped it with a riff on the old anti-piracy ad: “YOU WOULDN’T STEAL FRIED CHICKEN.” The digital-only future, served as a bucket of transparent pixels.
It’s Funny Because It’s Real
Underneath the pile-on was a serious voice.
The Video Game History Foundation, which fights to preserve games, issued a statement from director Frank Cifaldi addressing both the end of discs and Sony’s simultaneous move to shutter the PS3 and PS Vita storefronts. For preservationists, none of this is a punchline. It’s the slow erasure of the ability to own, archive, and access the games people paid for.
And that’s the thread running under every joke. The brands didn’t manufacture outrage, they tapped into one that was already there.
A digital-only future quietly strips out the things players have always taken for granted: trading a game, reselling it, lending it to a friend, keeping it playable long after the servers go dark.
The pizza gag works because “download a code and imagine the rest” is a genuinely accurate description of where Sony just pointed the entire industry. For the full breakdown of what Sony actually announced, see our report on PlayStation ending physical disc production in 2028.
Sony Should Remember 2013
The richest irony is that Sony used to be the one telling this joke.
Back in 2013, when Microsoft launched the Xbox One with restrictive always-online DRM and used-game limits, Sony torched them for it, including an official video showing one employee simply handing a disc to another to demonstrate how sharing works on PlayStation.
It was a masterclass in positioning Sony as the pro-consumer, pro-ownership choice.
Twelve years later, Sony is the one killing the disc. The brands roasting the company this week are only holding up the mirror. And so far, Sony hasn’t come up with a punchline of its own.
