A former Infinity Ward employee says Activision considered abandoning physical game discs as early as 2007, during development of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Robert Bowling told Decrypt that publishers have repeatedly pushed for an all-digital model to increase profit margins, reduce production costs and weaken the second-hand market.
A long-running industry push
Bowling, who worked as a creative strategist on the Call of Duty franchise from 2006 to 2012, said an Activision executive raised the idea of stopping disc production while Call of Duty 4 was being made. The proposal would have moved games entirely online and removed the need to manufacture physical copies.
According to Bowling, the commercial appeal was broader than simply saving on manufacturing. An all-digital system could give publishers greater control over how games reached customers and avoid the resale disputes associated with physical copies. He also said publishers could avoid the disc fee charged by Xbox and PlayStation when a game is distributed on their physical media.
Bowling said publishers had also tried to persuade GameStop to share revenue from used-game sales. That effort did not succeed, he said, leaving publishers to consider a more fundamental way of eliminating the resale market: ending physical discs altogether.
The former Infinity Ward employee described the issue as a conflict between two views of games. One treats a game primarily as software that can be sold and managed digitally. The other regards games as entertainment, creative works and collectibles that players can keep, share and value over time.
Why Sony’s decision is drawing attention
The comments come as Sony faces criticism over its plan to discontinue discs in 2028. More than 387,000 people have signed a “Don’t Kill the Disc” petition opposing the move. PlayStation founder Ken Kutaragi has defended Sony, saying that resistance to the change reflects a “mentality issue.”
Bowling said the main reason Sony did not make the transition in 2007 was that consumer behavior had not yet shifted far enough. In his view, the balance has since changed, with more gamers choosing digital purchases instead of physical editions.
The change matters because the two formats offer different forms of access. A physical disc can generally be collected, transferred or resold, while a digital purchase is tied to an account and the platform’s rules. Digital distribution can be more convenient, but it also changes the customer’s relationship with the game and with the resale market.
Sony has argued in court filings that buying a digital game through the PlayStation Store does not amount to owning the game itself. Instead, the purchase is described as a license that can be revoked at any time. That distinction has added to concerns among players who believe they should retain lasting ownership of games they have purchased.
Bowling said developers make games to be bought and enjoyed, and argued that players should be able to own, share and value them. He characterized the push toward digital-only distribution as a decision led by publishers’ business priorities rather than by developers or consumers.
Bowling’s industry background
Bowling spent six years at Infinity Ward before moving to Electronic Arts, where he worked as a creative consultant on titles including Battlefield V, Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. He later co-founded Midnight Society in 2021 to develop the crypto extraction shooter Deadrop, but left the company in 2025 after funding ran dry.
He is now studio head of //18.bravo, which is developing a first-person shooter. Bowling told Decrypt that, across his two decades in the video-game industry, publishers had been the “only ones” pressing to remove physical discs. Activision had not immediately responded to Decrypt’s request for comment.
The dispute is therefore not only about manufacturing media. It also concerns who controls distribution, whether players can resell or preserve their games, and whether a digital purchase represents ownership or a revocable license. Sony’s planned 2028 change has brought those longstanding questions into the public debate.
Moneyiar market picture
Moneyiar market data at the stated times shows mixed performance among the tracked digital assets:
- NEAR Protocol (NEAR): $4.6166906773, up 3.36% over 24 hours and down 6.21% over seven days, as of October 25, 2026, at 22:38 +03:30.
- VeChain (VET): $0.0068180967, down 0.08% over 24 hours and up 2.82% over seven days, as of October 25, 2026, at 22:39 +03:30.
- Vision (VSN): $0.0386045059, down 0.69% over 24 hours and down 7.74% over seven days, as of October 25, 2026, at 22:39 +03:30.
- Initia (INIT): $0.1568164254, down 1.4% over 24 hours and up 25.75% over seven days, as of October 25, 2026, at 22:04 +03:30.
These figures are Moneyiar data and describe the market at the times specified above.
