PlayStation 5 owners warned they're 'destroying their games' by making this common mistake

They don't make 'em like they used to, and while some video games have stood the test of time, think how many hundreds (potentially thousands) of dollars we've thrown away by not looking after our old tech.

Back in the day, we were warned about blowing on our Nintendo 64 cartridges, but in 2025, it seems we're still making deadly mistakes when it comes to preserving our games and gaming consoles.

There's a big argument to be made for physical media, especially as it seems to be dying a death while mass PlayStation Network outages leave us without the ability to play our favorite titles.

Remember when Ubisoft Director of Subscriptions Philippe Tremblay told GamesIndustry.biz how we need to get 'comfortable' with not owning our games? Nah, Philippe, we'll keep growing our physical collection, thank you.

Whether it be sealed copies of Spyro: Collector's Edition going for nearly $1,000 or an old PS2 fetching $1,500, it's important to preserve your pixels.

We wish we had a time machine to go back and tell our past selves to buy up copies of 1996's Resident Evil - especially with a graded copy being worth over $7,700.

When it comes to looking after our collection, we could be making a deadly mistake by leaving our discs in our PlayStation console.

There's nothing more frustrating than opening up a copy of Bloodborne and finding The Lord of the Rings: Gollum in there, but trust us, it's best to keep things organized.

Over on Reddit, one gamer asked whether it's okay to leave your discs in your PS5 when you aren't playing them. The answer is, no!

The OP asks: "Just got a PS5 this month and was wondering if it'll cause any problems in the future if I leave a game disc in there even though I'm playing a different game."

Replying to the thread, the top comment reads: "I used to leave discs in my (PS4) all the time, one day my disc drive broke, likely because it was spinning and scanning the disc every time I took it out of rest mode.

“If you don't play disc games much it's best for the console to leave them in their cases instead."

The thing is, we might boot up a digital copy of a game or play something like Fortnite while forgetting there's a physical game in the disc drive.

Someone else added: "Technically yea, but personally I like to remove it because the console does periodically spin it up and I don't like risking extra wear on discs.

"The other reason is that keeping it in the bay will also expose it to the ambient heat of the console. Again, these are really only issues on the long term, so it's up to you."

More than just damaging your games, you could be exposing your console to long-term issues.

In a different Reddit thread, someone else claimed they managed to brick their console due to an unfortunate incident: "As for me I left the disc inside and, after a power outage, my PS5 couldn't read any discs anymore. Everything else works perfectly tho. (It kind of became a digital edition PS5 e.e)."

Opinions are split, with some saying leaving a disc in your PS5 won't cause any damage to it or the console, but to be honest, we'd say it's better to be safe than sorry.