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Sony's social media team are having a rough week: anything they post is getting piled on by angry gamers who are outraged by Sony's plans to stop the production of game discs .

Many PlayStation owners are vowing to boycott the PlayStation Store, cancel their PlayStation Plus membership and never buy PlayStation products again.

It's a PR nightmare for sure, with pretty much any online PlayStation content becoming a place for gamers to protest, derailing any attempt to talk about anything else.

It reminds me of the response to Sonos' introduction of a new and hugely flawed app , which Sonos now admits was badly done.

Sonos' PR nightmare lasted for around 18 months, there is now optimism and rebuilt trust around the new changes it's bringing to improve the app . Could Sony learn from Sonos' experience and its attempts to rebuild customer trust?

I think the answer is: yes it could, but no it won't.

What Sonos got right and Sony probably won't

Speaking to TechRadar earlier this year, Sonos CEO Tom Conrad set out his views on how to try and make angry customers happy again. "You just have to show up in people's life with some humility and do the hard work of earning their trust back through great execution, great product, great software, great experiences, and never forget what you put people through."

Sonos CEO Tom Conrad admits Sonos got it wrong and has been working hard to regain customers' trust through direct communication and carefully targeting what's being worked on (Image credit: Sonos / Future Publishing Ltd) So far, Sony isn't doing that: rather than respond to gamers' concerns, it's battening down the hatches and staying silent about its move to digital-only. And that's a shame, because there are genuine reasons for gamers to worry about Sony's decision.

There are three key concerns about digital-only. The first, and I think the most important, is cost. The PlayStation Store is ludicrously expensive: for example Spider-Man 2 , a three-year-old game, is £69.99 digital today in the UK, where I'm based. Competition between retailers means it's around £37 on disc.

The second is second-hand gaming. I buy many games second-hand, and many gamers like to sell their games after they've completed them or got annoyed by them, so that they can spend what they recoup on more new games (a win for the industry overall). So I can buy Returnal for about £20 on eBay. I can't buy the digital edition second-hand, so if I want the digital version it's… you guessed it, £69.99.

To be fair, you can get both games, and others, on PlayStation Plus Extra. But not everyone wants or can sustain yet another subscription, and we know that all subscription services go up in price — often dramatically so, as we saw with Xbox Game Pass last year.

And the third is ownership. Sony's disc announcement came just days after it deleted customers' purchased copies of over 500 movies , making it clear that purchasing doesn't mean owning forever. And those movies cost a lot less than £69.99.

Sony may have to eat humble pie for a while in order to mimic Sonos here, seeking out customer views to talk about those concerns, and maybe thinking about how to address them — so for example it could tell us that digital codes would still be sold through multiple retailers, like Nintendo does with its key cards, or that we'd be able to resell our digital-only games (even if it hasn't developed the mechanism for this yet).

However, the reality is that for a firm the size of Sony, even a significant customer backlash such as 246,586 signatures on a petition represents a microscopic proportion of its 125 million PlayStation Plus subscribers, let alone the many more PlayStation owners — and it can afford to ignore them.

That's something of a gamble. Just ask Microsoft, whose Game Pass price hike scared off far more customers than expected — according to reports, it lost 4 million out of 34 million Game Pass subscribers when it was expecting huge growth instead, forcing a partial reversal.

But Sony's gaming business is far bigger, and that means it can still upset a lot of customers without feeling much pain.

I suspect Sony is going to take a different lesson from the Sonos situation: even at the height of customer anger, Sonos still sold lots of speakers, soundbars and subs.

Then again, maybe Sony is more rattled than it's currently letting on. Two days after the digital-only announcement, with customers raging online, Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki sold more than half of his Sony stock and Sony's chief strategy officer unloaded a bunch of Sony shares too.

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Tom Perrotta 's sci-fi novel The Leftovers received acclaim for its thoughtful examination of recovery, resilience, and renewed faith in the aftermath of a mysterious incident in which a small portion of the global population goes missing. While popular novels are often adapted for the small screen, The Leftovers faced an issue with its dark, brooding approach. While it's possible to get something out of a downbeat novel that takes a very cynical look at humanity, it’s harder to sustain that energy over the course of an entire season of television. Although the first season was a faithful adaptation of the novel that followed its events exactly, showrunner Damon Lindelof chose to continue The Leftovers with two more seasons that were based on his own ideas.

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On April 6, the four crewmembers of NASA's Artemis II mission swooped around the far side of the moon in their Orion spacecraft, disappearing from Earth's sight and losing all contact with humanity for roughly 40 minutes.

At the same time, some 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away, Chris White, the mission's lead communications officer, was nervously pacing the halls of NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston, waiting for the chance to do his job again.

"It was all nerves," White, the lead integrated communications officer (INCO) on Artemis II , told Live Science. In addition to maintaining communication with the Orion spacecraft (an impossible task while the moon blocked every signal), the INCO team also controlled its exterior cameras — a job White had previously done for the International Space Station (ISS).

The team knew for over a year what Orion's lunar flyby would entail, and which shots the cameras should capture. They had sent a checklist of nearly 300 commands to Orion that morning, telling the cameras exactly what to do after the spacecraft vanished behind the moon . All that remained was to wait.

After 40 minutes, bits of telemetry data started popping up on White's monitor as the Orion crew reemerged safely from behind the moon. Voice contact soon followed. But it would still take another day for Orion's flyby photos to traverse the space between the moon and Houston. When White finally opened the file the next morning, his body failed him.

"I opened a photo — the eclipse photo — and I couldn't breathe," White said. "I was like, 'There's no way that this turned out this well on the first try.'"

The INCO team's incredible Orion spacecraft photos have now been viewed by tens of millions of Earthlings. Live Science recently spoke with White to get the inside story of the images and the entire Artemis II mission as it was seen from NASA mission control.

Artemis II Lead INCO Chris White (right) and INCO Flight Controller Matthew Johns (left) in the White Flight Control Room at NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston on April 6. On the monitor behind, the Orion spacecraft approaches the moon for its close flyby. (Image credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz) Brandon Specktor: In a nutshell, what was your job on the Artemis II mission?

Chris White: During the mission, the INCO console manages all of the communication systems on the spacecraft, as the name kind of implies. We handle not just the video and the camera system but also the onboard audio system — which was the first flight for that — the system for radio communication and the optical communication system, which was a laser system on Artemis II . We also handle a couple of other minor systems.

During liftoff, I looked up from my console screen zero times to look at the live video.

BS: What was the vibe during liftoff?

CW: So, for liftoff , I was in the back, in a support room. The vibe was intense. Everybody was laser-focused on the task at hand. During simulations leading up to it, we had fake, simulated CGI views [of liftoff] to give us an idea of what we were going to see. I always thought, "Man, it's going to look so much cooler in real time." But then during liftoff, I looked up from my console screen zero times to look at the live video. So I didn't see a lot of that footage until the next day, when I had a chance to breathe.

The INCO team was basically flat-out busy for at least the first three flight days. For a lot of my team, it wasn't until after flight day three where things — and I'm going to use air quotes — loosely "calmed down." I don't think any of us truly relaxed until the vehicle was safely in the water.

A view from cameras on board the Orion spacecraft as the solid rocket boosters are jettisoned several minutes after liftoff. (Image credit: NASA) BS: Let's talk about the lunar flyby. What was your experience watching along with the crew as they got closer and closer to the moon?

CW: It was incredible. I've seen the moon through the ISS cameras, and I'd watched the moon, over the course of the previous five flight days, slowly get larger and larger. But there was something logarithmic — almost like it just got really large very quickly on flight day six as we got close to the moon.

And the moon looked wrong, which sounds kind of crazy to say. We're so used to the way that the moon looks from our perspective here on the Earth, that when the vehicle was coming at it from an angle, you could see more of the backside of the moon. So you're in awe of it approaching and getting larger and realizing what's about to happen ‪—‬ but also my brain hurt trying to reconcile what I was seeing, because it didn't look correct. The shape and texture were different than what my brain expected.

The Orion spacecraft approaches the moon during its close flyby. "The moon looked wrong" from this unusual angle, White said. (Image credit: NASA) BS: And the colors too, based on what the astronauts said . Did you notice anything unusual about the moon's coloration?

CW: It was hard to tell. The bandwidth limitations of being that far away from Earth made it hard to distinguish a lot of those finer details. But there was a moment where we looked at it and we were like, "I think we can tweak the exposure on this." It was a little too dark, and then we bumped it up a little bit. And all of a sudden, these muted grays became a little bit more brown. I was not expecting to be able to see that from our cameras.

You see it much more in some of the high-res photos that the crew took. But it was honestly shocking to see how much more color shows up even just a little bit as you get closer.

My brain hurt trying to reconcile what I was seeing.

BS: As you were doing that flyby, did you have a strict checklist of shots you had to take?

CW: Yeah, absolutely. Flyby was a heavily choreographed event for the Orion cameras, as well as the crew and the science community. But we had started working on that plan well over one year earlier, and we knew exactly what shots we wanted and when we wanted them. The timing of all that shifts slightly, depending on exactly when you launch. So we had a framework in place, and then we just tweaked the timing in the 24 hours leading up to the events.

I think it was something like 290 total commands over the course of eight hours. We just scripted and time-tagged and put them on the vehicle, so it just clicked through them.

Orion's cameras capture Earthset — the surreal moment when a crescent Earth disappears beyond the moon's horizon. (Image credit: NASA) BS: How does that work during the eclipse phase, when you were out of contact?

CW: So we knew when Earthset ‪—‬ and, therefore, the start of the loss of signal (LOS) ‪—‬ would be and when Earthrise would be. And so we had the cameras flip into kind of a time-lapse mode at that point and then take a 30-second interval time lapse as the Earth got smaller and smaller and smaller behind the moon. All of that was scripted.

And then, behind the moon, during the LOS, it continued to take photos at a slower pace. I think it was like once every few minutes. We had all that on a timer, basically.

BS: How soon after the lunar flyby did you get to see the images?

CW: Luckily, we had a great optical comm pass that same night. So all those photos came down via laser to the Earth, and I saw them the next day. I didn't see them in the moment; I saw them the next day.

And I opened that photo — the eclipse photo — and I couldn't breathe. I was like, "There's no way that this turned out this well on the first try."

BS: Is that the photo that stands out most to you from the flyby?

CW: Yeah, it absolutely is. A lot of the photos you take in space, people are like, "Oh, where are the stars?" And it's because you have to expose the camera to the very bright, shiny spacecraft in front of you, and all the stars fade away into the blackness in the background.

But because the sun was behind the moon, you have the moon in the foreground in focus, the sun kind of bleeding out from behind it. The stars and the planets are all there. You can see Venus; you can see Saturn; you can see Mars. And then you have the glow of the spacecraft — it's not lit by the sun, but by the Earth — in the foreground. It was an incredible photo.

The Orion crew experienced a total solar eclipse while orbiting behind the moon. The spacecraft cameras capture the first hint of sunlight bleeding into view again as the capsule begins to reemerge. (Image credit: NASA) BS: What were you guys doing during that loss-of-signal phase? What was the vibe like then?

CW: I was pacing around the control center. The INCO team is responsible for keeping communication with the vehicle as much as we can, and there's not really much that we can do about that when you put a celestial body between us and the crew.

It's all nerves. It's all of the, "Hey, did we configure everything correctly? Are communications going to come back on the other side?" So just to distract myself for the 40 minutes that we were at LOS, I just kind of walked around the building and chatted with other people, just to try to keep myself distracted.

It wasn't until about three or four minutes after Earthrise that we started getting stable video, and then the crew called down. And that was really when I breathed a sigh of relief, once I heard voice coming down from the vehicle again.

BS: Do you feel different after this mission?

CW: People keep asking me that. I don't know that I've had quite enough time to fully unpack the mission. But I think it's slowly sinking in that we just sent four people around the moon, literally further away from Earth than ever. And I think, not only did we change them and the flight control team from that experience, but I think we changed a lot of people's perceptions of the moon , which is awesome.

BS: Do you know what your role for Artemis III is going to be?

CW: I definitely still plan to be on the INCO team for Artemis III. I will not be the lead for that mission. But I definitely still plan to be on console and hope to take some even more incredible photos during that mission.

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'I heard gasps' and 'oh my God': Artemis II astronauts reveal inside story of their mind-bending solar eclipse

BS: Any closing thoughts?

CW: I just want to stress what a team effort this was. The vehicle cameras had a script and a plan that involved not just the INCO team. But to point these cameras, I have to get the solar arrays swung forward in a specific direction, so I have to coordinate with the power guys. I have to sometimes ask the GNC [guidance, navigation and control] team to rotate the vehicle itself, which is entirely different from how we do things on ISS. There was our imagery team handling camera settings and proper exposure. There's the engineers who developed these systems.

This was not just me and the INCO team on console. It was truly a full flight control team effort to get these.

Editor's note: This interview has been condensed and edited lightly for clarity.

Are you a NASA nerd? See how well you score on our Artemis quiz to find out!

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As reported by Massively OP , senior developers at ZeniMax Online Studios said that the company has returned to its circa 2015-2018 headcount, before it staffed up for the development of canceled MMO Blackbird. The estimate is similar to one recently proffered by id Software in a statement on X, "The Everything App."

Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP) Discord moderator Baratron relayed the statement from the Elder Scrolls Online Tavern event in Hesse, Germany, where a number of devs are interacting with fans.

"According to both Jason Barnes (Associate Design Director) and Jessica Folsom (Associate Director of Community Management), ZeniMax Online Studios is now at the same size as it was when they made both Wrothgar and Summerset,” Baratron told the UESP Discord. "Which, as we know, are both highly acclaimed DLCs.

"So while the layoffs are extremely upsetting for everyone involved (of course including players), this is not necessarily the end of new content or the game going into maintenance mode."

For context, ESO's Orsinium (containing the region of Wrothgar) and Summerset DLCs were released in 2015 and 2018 respectively. In id Software's statement last week, it wrote that "The team today is about the size we were when making Doom (2016)." According to WARN Act filings, ZeniMax Online and id Software laid off 213 and 136 employees respectively . ZeniMax also laid off 62 people in 2025 immediately following the cancellation of Blackbird.

I have some sympathy to members of these studios wanting to counter narratives of their decline⁠—see also Outer Worlds 2 director Brandon Adler's harsh words for outsiders who flippantly claim the studio no longer has the same developers who made classics like KotOR 2 or New Vegas. It is also not inherently sinister for two studios with the same parent company to adopt a similar PR line.

At the same time, it doesn't sit right with me. It is an admission of undoing a decade of growth and development at these studios. Even if the headcount is the same on paper, a studio on the upswing is a vastly different environment from one that's just been gutted. The 136 people fired from id and 213 from ZeniMax were brought in for a reason. Game development has changed in the span of 10 years.

Bungie and BioWare probably hit similar headcounts as in their golden ages amid wave after wave of layoffs in the 2020s, and it did not improve their output or efficiency. It did not bring back Halo: Reach or Mass Effect 2.

If this is a PR justification Microsoft would like to exploit in the coming days, I have no interest in indulging it. It carries the tacit implication that those who were laid off did not matter, and beckons to that nasty "lazy devs" rhetoric.

It's a line of thinking that, at its heart, allows for this wanton misery and mismanagement to have been a necessary course correction by the adults in the room. I have no patience for it.

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