Weekly Roundup: PlayStation Physical Media Backlash, ESA Minecraft Server Confusion and Godot’s AI Crackdown

Godot cracks down on low-quality AI-generated code submissions.

Brands mock Sony’s announcement, with KFC stealing the show.

PlayStation Backlash Continues

Let’s be honest: Sony ending physical discs in less than two years from now is the biggest news that dropped this week, and the backlash has only intensified. Some have spoken out against it, whereas others decided to hold steady in the name of game (or code) preservation.

I asked Lost In Cult, who are in favour of game preservation, what it thought about the news and how this might affect its business, and was told “we are super sad to see this happening, but this is also why we do what we do. Game preservation is something [we] deeply care about and will do everything in our power to do so for as long as we can.”

Another company that’s thrown its hat in the ring in defense of physical media is GitHub. As the internet’s number one code repository it’s long being used to store everything from Godot projects to AI agents. Now, in a surprising move, the site is offering to burn code onto CD for free.

We heard you. And we agree.

In light of recent developments in physical media, GitHub is proud to announce that you can now obtain your public repo on CD-ROM.

Keep it. Lend it to friends. Pass it on to your children.

Your code is physically yours, forever. Until you lose it,…

pic.twitter.com/p1qxqjmnfa — GitHub (@github)

July 2, 2026

There are two important caveats to this, though: the option is only available until July 6, and the first 1,000 people who apply.

Meanwhile, an unexpected voice in favour of physical media arrived in the form of Trevor Noah, who posted on X: “…for a lot of gamers physical discs are the only way they could afford to play games because they could get them secondhand. You can also give games to your younger siblings, which is a great way to introduce them to the games you were playing.”

“Most importantly though, as we saw from PlayStation this past week, if the media we buy is only digital, it can be taken away from us at a moment’s notice with no recourse,” he added, echoing the biggest issue people have with Sony’s decision. “Imagine that, one day your entire library of games could be deleted overnight because technically you don’t own it.”

I reported on Wednesday how many game preservation-orientated people and companies have been up in arms about this, and one of the biggest voices in this area has now made a statement that sums things up pretty well. Frank Cifaldi, the director of the Video Game History Foundation, posted on Bluesky:

Statement from VGHF director Frank Cifaldi on the discontinuation of physical PlayStation media, and the closure of the PS3 and PSP digital storefronts.

image or embed

— Video Game History Foundation (@gamehistoryorg.bsky.social)

July 1, 2026 at 8:47 PM

Private Minecraft Servers are Illegal, Apparently

The “ESA” Cifaldi mentions is the Entertainment Software Association, an organization that proudly claims: “As players ourselves, we know and love games just like you do. Our mission is to help expand and protect the innovative and creative marketplace for the video game industry here in the United States.”

But what they actually are is the primary trade association and lobbying group for the video game industry in the United States. This puts them in the same bracket as TIGA in the UK and Video Games Europe, in terms of being organizations that put business’ interests before players’. The ESA’s latest salvo against players came earlier this week when it fought against the Protect Our Games Act in California.

As part of this, Jennifer Gibbons, the ESA vice president of State Government Affairs, spoke out at the bill hearing about how community Minecraft servers “are not in any way affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft, for Minecraft, has gotten a lot of criticism because of those community servers not employing the same safety standards that Microsoft does on their Minecraft servers.”

When asked if this was like a video game black market, Gibbons responded with “Yes. In fact, we consider it piracy, we have two pending lawsuits against private servers right now, and the United States trade representative in their Notorious Markets reports on counterfeiting and piracy has named some of these big private servers as a notorious market.”

This caused a lot of confusion among gamers given that Minecraft has run on, and arguably even thrives because of, community-run servers. The ESA has since walked-back Gibbon’s comments with a clarification sent out to the press, shown below.

The ESA quote.

Stop Killing Games remains undeterred, however, and is currently looking at next steps.

Godot Devs Draw Line About AI

Godot announced two major updates this week, but not to the engine. Rather, the people behind it have finally formalized the Godot Foundation’s vision for what Godot stands for and can be used for, including how it will always remain free and open source. The other announcement relates directly to Godot’s open source nature: since anyone can offer to update or tweak Godot (ie. make a pull request), the amount of these is huge, meaning the time it takes for someone to review code is in short supply.

As such, the Godot Foundation has had to speak out against the sheer number of AI pull requests, made by humans using AI or AI agents. The trouble is that code is being submitted that simply isn’t very good, and is often the result of somebody vibe-coding or otherwise not really understanding what they’re doing.

Bad AI code is something that a lot of companies are now facing on a regular basis; the devs behind noted PS3 emulator RPCS3 had to issue a similar policy change as Godot back in May after it got inundated with “slop” code.

And Finally

I write the news so I can get away with whatever I want in it. Usually, this involves proper research into a topic and attempting to dig into a story from an angle others might have missed. Other times, I want to acknowledge that Sony’s news also prompted a ton of major corporations to take the piss out of them by offering digital-only products of things like pizzas and Deloreans.

And then there’s KFC, which has once again gone above and beyond what’s expected in a situation like this. I’ll leave you with this tasty little nugget:

YOU WOULDN’T STEAL F̸̮̫́́́̏̋̂̓͛͗̌R̶̢̜̻͔̜̩̯̘͐̌̀́̀͆̒̈̀͛̔͋̕͝͠ͅI̸̢̧̮̞̯͌͋̏̈́̑̐̒́̉̌Ḛ̸̢̧͍͈̱̹̙̘͖̹̖́̐̍̐̆̒̾͂̅̔̉̽̋̃́͜Ď̸̘̤̦̤̯̺̭͓͓̠́͛̔̈́̓̾̿̊͜͝ͅ…

pic.twitter.com/7lGcmOgE7V — KFC (@KFC_ES)

July 2, 2026 Featured, Stop Killing Games, Weekly Roundup