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According to ex-Santa Monica Studio employee Alanah Pearace, Sony has imposed the “strictest social media guidelines” ever on its employees due to PS5’s disc debacle.
Earlier this month, the manufacturer announced plans to cease manufacturing physical media in January 2028.
This has created one of the biggest and longest-running backlashes I’ve ever seen in almost two decades covering PlayStation, but the manufacturer is yet to say a word about any of it.
That’s because, according to the former God of War Laufey writer, it predicted the backlash and has told its staff to keep their mouths shut.
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While Pearce explains the platform holder regularly enforces these kind of policies around new game announcements et al, she also stresses that these are some of the most forceful guidelines the company has ever implemented.
She said:
“Sony already knew everyone would be p*ssed off – they knew this. People working within PlayStation first-party studios told me Sony had the strictest social media guidelines for this particular thing they’ve ever seen issued.
Sony does somewhat regularly tell employees what they can or can’t say about certain things. I was under a lot of guidelines when I was working on God of War Laufey – I still am. And they did send me guidelines regarding what I could say on the day the game was announced.
But in this instance, it’s apparently the strictest the employees I spoke to have ever seen regarding public communications. They would only have done this if they knew it was going to be an enormous PR issue. This is no surprise to them.”
Like Pearce points out, this does suggest it anticipated a robust backlash – although I do wonder whether it expected things to go on this long.
All of the platform holder’s social media accounts continue to get peppered with Community Notes and comments day after day, and there’s no real sign of this dying down.
To be honest, I’m not particularly surprised to see Sony clamp down on its staff, because one errant comment from any of its employees could end up escalating this whole thing.
However, it’s frustrating to learn the company intends to deal with all this by staying silent – I’ve long argued it needs to communicate with us better.
The ex-IGN reporter goes on to explain why she believes it’s unlikely Sony will back down, pointing out that its disc manufacturing facility in Austria is already being repurposed as a microlens facility, which is a component considered critical for AI data centres.
It’s a good video that gets into the nitty-gritty of the issue, without misrepresenting facts or leaning into misinformation, so I recommend watching it if you’re eager to learn more.
I do hope someone from Sony will eventually come out and speak to us like we’re humans, though – even if it is telling the rest of its staff to stay quiet.