Casey Neistat

They Told Us Physical Was Dead. The Kids Disagree. I've been feeling this for a while now, but wondered if nostalgia has biased me... Is physical media making a real comeback? DVD and Blu-ray sales declined just 9% last year, down from 20%+ freefall the years before. Boutique labels are posting significant year-over-year growth. Video rental shops are having record months. And Gen Z is actually driving a lot of it. Maybe they are fed up. Subscription prices keep climbing. Content keeps scattering across platforms. You pay more every year to own less. You don't even own a license half the time. You're renting access to a library someone else controls, and they can pull the rug whenever they want. Younger people figured that out faster than anyone expected. Vinyl records may have been the start. Now, if subscription fatigue is reviving physical film, the same pressure may build in gaming. Game Pass doubled in price. Digital storefronts remind you that you bought a license, not a game. Retro game stores (and prices for rare games) are expanding, not closing. There's a lazy narrative that Gen Z doesn't care about owning things. That they're a streaming-native generation happy to rent everything. The data says the opposite. And in gaming, the case is even more compelling. The Video Game History Foundation found that 87% of all games released before 2010 are no longer commercially available. If you didn't buy a physical copy, you're out of luck. California had to pass an actual law: AB 2426, forcing platforms like Steam to stop using the word "buy" because customers weren't buying anything. They were licensing access that could be revoked at any time. Gen Z isn't oblivious to this. They're the first generation to grow up watching their digital libraries evaporate in real time, games pulled from app stores overnight, 32-bit titles bricked by OS updates, entire platforms sunsetted with no refund. They don't reject ownership. They've just never been offered real ownership in a digital context. Hand them something physical, a cartridge, a disc, a vinyl record, and they hold onto it, because they've learned the hard way that anything on a server can disappear tomorrow. Physical media isn't (just) a nostalgia play. My assumption is that the generation everyone assumed wouldn't care about it will soon be driving intense demand. We'll see! .... Citations: "DVDs are the new vinyl records: Why Gen Z is embracing physical media," Los Angeles Times, February 23, 2026. Video Game History Foundation study (2023), cited in multiple outlets including the Delisted Games Database (gertlushgaming.co.uk) and ofzenandcomputing.com. California Assembly Bill 2426, signed by Governor Newsom, requiring digital storefronts to disclose that purchases are licenses, not ownership. Reported by TechTimes, October 2024. Ubisoft's server shutdown of The Crew and subsequent legal arguments, reported across multiple outlets including COGconnected and Lon.TV Blog, 2025. Stop Killing Games European Citizens' Initiative, StopKillingGames.com, reported by BallerStatus and others, 2025.