Sony won’t be producing game disks anymore—a decision that’s been met industry-wide with a mixture of frustration and ambivalence, depending on which side of the fence you fall on. Personally, I don’t think a videogame company or distribution platform having final say over whether you concretely own something is healthy, even if I am admittedly arm-deep in Steam purchases. It’s a controversial enough mandate that it even got a french politician riled up!
It’s also something that makes the creators of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 a little melancholy, per a recent interview with Automaton: “Personally, I find it super sad because I really like video game stores,” says CEO and Creative Director of Sandfall Interactive Guillaume Broche. “We have a lot of people on the team who play on PS5 and love to collect physical discs. I think it’s part of the beauty of art too – that it’s something tangible that you can touch.
“I completely appreciate that people want to have their rows of DVDs and games and just feel that they own them. So I think it’s a shame. I mean, business-wise, I can understand why it may make sense, but I think in terms of the artistry of video games, it’s a sad decision.”
Tom Guillermin, the studio’s CTO and co-founder, concurs that while physical releases are a bit of a pain, they’re still vital to the joys of the hobby: “A physical release adds more constraints because you have to account for the production time of the physical items, and you also earn less money per copy.