Technically pirated games can be put on a physical media and stored indefinitely, neither do those require online connection afterwards, so Sony cant just remove those and Sony won't be getting any money or user metrics for it either.

While not a perfect solution, it's a decent stopgap and will get more people on board than fully abstaining.

Most important features of physical media are transferability (you can give the game to someone else and it will run) and autonomous access (you can run your game even if Sony or simply your Internet connection go down). Piracy typically checks both of these boxes.

It may not hold a collector's value if that's what you're after, but I'd argue this is secondary anyway. And if you simply want to hold a bunch of game disks, you can always buy an empty disk and put the game in there.

I imagine this is going to lead to a resurgence of the homebrew scene. Not sure if I'll find games in the forest, or just get my fix watching a streamer long play the games I'm interested in.

No physical, no purchase. Period.