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  1. Games

GOG dunks on Sony and reminds everyone why PC gaming is so beloved: "You don't need a storefront's permission to play what you bought"

News
By Anthony McGlynn
Published 14 July 2026

If you want disc games, you might just have to do it yourself

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Dunks have been coming in hard and fast since Sony announced it will be ending physical disc production in 2028. Domino's, Ryanair, and KFC are among the brands that jumped at the chance to joke about going all-digital. Games retailer GOG has now entered the fray, going straight for the jugular in terms of what the store offers customers.

Since GOG is a non-physical storefront, you can't get anything on disc directly from the company. What you can do, however, is buy a game, then put it on physical media yourself, for your own safekeeping, which is what GOG advises everyone to do.

"Download the offline installer of any of your games on GOG, save it to a disc, and it's yours forever," the company's official Twitter account says. "You don't need a storefront's permission to play what you bought."

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Download the offline installer of any of your games on GOG, save it to a disc and it's yours forever.You don't need a storefront's permission to play what you bought.July 14, 2026

This is an extension of the store's fundamental policy of giving the buyer as much power over their purchase as a digital outlet can offer. In contrast to Steam, where you need to be logged into your account to access your library, GOG gives you a downloadable installer for every game, letting you do what you will.

Digital libraries are precarious when it comes to what you actually own. Games are regularly delisted for a variety of reasons, and once they are, they can become inaccessible unless you already have them on your hard drive. Meanwhile, some users can wind up locked out of a game they wish to play due to criteria such as always online, or regional account requirements.

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All of that is minimized when you have a copy to hand, in physical form. The caveat here is that GOG is on PC, where options like this have flourished going right back to Doom being shareware in the '90s. This alternative doesn't apply to PS5 users, but it may guide some people towards using PC instead in the future.

There are YouTube videos and other resources available if you'd like help with putting a game to disc yourself, and then making a label and cover art for it. If these things need to be DIY, then so be it - long live physical media.

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PlayStation is ditching a $402 million market and destroying consumer "freedoms" by abandoning physical games, says major UK retail association

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Anthony McGlynn
Anthony McGlynn
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Contributing Writer

Anthony is an Irish entertainment and games journalist, now based in Glasgow. He previously served as Senior Anime Writer at Dexerto and News Editor at The Digital Fix, on top of providing work for Variety, IGN, Den of Geek, PC Gamer, and many more. Besides Studio Ghibli, horror movies, and The Muppets, he enjoys action-RPGs, heavy metal, and pro-wrestling. He interviewed Animal once, not that he won’t stop going on about it or anything.

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