Sony's plan to stop producing physical game discs in 2028 will fall hardest on low-income gamers around the world by wiping out the cheap used-game market, experts told Decrypt, and one African games industry expert argues the continent stands to lose out badly.

In Nigeria, downloading GTA 6's expected 212GB pre-load file could cost anywhere from $25 to $60 in data charges and take nearly 13 hours at the country's median download speed.

Many African gamers get around the problem by using foreign PlayStation Network accounts, because PSN does not officially support most of Africa. That workaround breaks Sony's terms of service and puts players at risk of losing their entire digital libraries.

The end of the bargain bin

Gamers in low-income areas will be among those hit hardest by Sony's decision to stop producing physical game discs from 2028, experts told Decrypt. The company's announcement sets the cutoff at January 2028 for discs of new games releasing on PlayStation consoles. The secondary market has long been an affordable way for players to get hold of games, because a disc can be resold, traded, or lent once its owner is finished with it, while a digital license stays tied to a single account. The PlayStation Store does run sales, but buying digitally assumes a decent internet connection, which rural households are less likely to have.

"By abandoning physical discs, some players at the bottom of the economic spectrum lose access to physical distribution through retail and, more importantly, discounted used sales," Joost van Dreunen, a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and video game business author, told Decrypt. "It won't immediately show up in the financials of major game makers, since their focus is now on creating premium experiences for a luxury class of gamers."

The move comes as the cost of being a gamer trends upward. Sony raised PS5 prices in March, citing "pressures in the global economic landscape." The next generation of Xbox, meanwhile, is expected to cost up to $1,800, according to Fortune.

A spokesperson for UK advocacy group Gamer's Voice told Decrypt that Sony's move to cut discs will "likely affect people on lower incomes more."

'Out of reach for most Africans'

Isa Muhammad, founder of Africa and Middle East-focused games industry platform Bijetic, told Decrypt that the PS5 is already "out of reach for most Africans." Those who can afford a console, he stressed, still rely on the second-hand games market to be able to play.

Even the wealthiest African buyers cannot simply fall back on PlayStation Store discounts. According to Muhammad, the PlayStation Network officially supports only one African nation: South Africa. Many other countries are missing from PSN's official list of supported countries.

"A gamer in Nigeria who wants to buy digitally has to set up an account registered in the U.S. or UK, then pay with foreign gift cards or a dollar card," Muhammad said.

'Bandwidth is now part of what a game costs'

Download speeds in rural, remote, and low-income areas present another major hurdle.

"Bandwidth is now part of what a game costs," van Dreunen said. "Roughly one in four rural [American] households has no wired provider offering 100/20 Mbps, and at 10 Mbps a 50GB download takes about 11 hours."

Across Africa and the Middle East, internet speeds vary significantly, Muhammad said, from super-fast connections in Dubai to unreliable ones in Iran. Internet access is also costly in some countries.

"Just recently I paid 75,000 NGN (around $55) for a 450GB broadband bundle, which is more than Nigeria's minimum monthly wage," Muhammad told Decrypt. With GTA 6's pre-load file expected to be 212GB, "a gamer here would first spend $80 on the game, then anywhere from $25 to over $60 just to download it, depending on how they buy data."

At Nigeria's median download speed of 36.77 Mbps, per Speedtest by Ookla, the download would take nearly 13 hours. Gamers would also need a non-Nigerian PlayStation account, a download code matching the country their account is registered in, and a way to pay in that country's currency.

Locked out of their libraries

"Sony's own terms say you must register your account in the country where you live, and Sony can suspend or close accounts created with false information," Muhammad told Decrypt. "So every Nigerian or Egyptian on a US or UK PSN account is breaking the rules from day one."

African gamers live in fear of needing help from Sony and being refused—or worse, banned—because their accounts violate its rules, Muhammad explained. In a future where every purchase is digital, that could open the door to gamers losing accounts that hold every game they have ever bought.

"If a player in Africa buys GTA 6 and can't recover their account, they may have no choice but to buy it again on a new one, along with everything else they've lost," he said. "A disc-free future will see this become the reality for every new PlayStation game, for gamers across most of Africa."

How Sony expects gamers in countries its network doesn't support to buy new titles in a disc-free future remains an open question.

Sony and PlayStation did not respond to Decrypt's request for comment.