Comment by fcsp
17 hours ago
Great buildup on Sony's side to gain trust in this move in the gaming community ahead of this announcement when just this week they again pulled hundreds of "purchased" movies from customer's libraries without refund, reminding everyone that digital content is rented, not owned.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/06/sony-erases-digital-...
And don't forget closing the PS3 and Vita Playstation stores, which they announced at the same time:
https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/an-update-on-playsta...
This is a weird marketing strategy. They must feel free to do as they please since they know consumers are trapped.
> They must feel free to do as they please since they know consumers are trapped.
My take is somewhat difference: Sony is offloading the cost of their prior decisions onto consumers.
For things like movies, they should have negotiated a contract where sold copies are sold copies and cannot be revoked (even if their right to sell/rent copies lapse). For things like the PS3 store, it cannot be run indefinitely. That said, from my understanding, the authorization keys expire if the clock battery on the PS3 dies. That should not be permitted.
I don't think that this is a "do as they please" situation. I think it is a case of bad decisions being made in the past. For some, like the movies, there isn't much they can do to fix the problem after the fact. There is absolutely no incentive for the rights holders to let consumers continue to access previously purchased content (especially with Sony taking all of the blame). Even something like offering refunds to people who purchased the movies is problematic. In all probability, all of their contracts have similar terms. They would have to refund everyone for every purchase in the long run.
Other stuff, like access to PS3 purchases, are likely fixable. The question is: where is the incentive? They could create a patch for old consoles, but it would only affect a small number of customers who still have those consoles. (Worse yet, it wouldn't do anything for those who stored their consoles in the closet -- only to pull it out later to discover the authorization keys are invalid.) The math probably doesn't work out for them so they aren't going to do it.
> They would have to refund everyone for every purchase in the long run.
That is the minimum they should do. At best they should offer the movie collections for free through competitors.
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> For things like movies, they should have negotiated a contract where sold copies are sold copies and cannot be revoked (even if their right to sell/rent copies lapse).
This is how movies work on GOG.
In what might not be a coincidence, they haven't released any movies for many years, and the product category isn't even visible if you don't already own a movie through them.
I made a decision to get away from other consoles and only invest in Steam a while ago. In the 2010s I was a big Vita player but Sony backed away from investing in the Vita and I saw that the kind of Japanese games I liked were coming out on Steam so I sold my Vita.
Steam has been (mostly) a good citizen. But there's not much in the way of legal or technical hurdles to them going down the same path. It's all goodwill and reputation.
I hope it's enough.
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And it doesn't have to be this way. I started buying Xbox games digitally for the Xbox 360, and with their backwards compatibility that ended up being a great choice. My current XSX plays games for the last 3 generations of digital purchases I've made.
Well it's just for new sales, access to purchased content remains "for the foreseeable future". How long the future is foreseeable for Sony? Might want to ask the Concord team maybe.
In the long run I think consoles might get replaced to "consolerized" PCs (they are already technically, but I guess we might see more advanced software environments like steam boxes).
Neither Sony nor Microsoft had a consumer orientation and they will likely loose against the competition.
Physical media was a method to have a "plug & play" game, although that changed in recent times. With that I don't think classic consoles can compete, especially with their new price points.
> they know consumers are trapped.
Gaming is a luxury good. We can all just walk away.
Walking away from the closed platform you invested hundreds/thousands of dollars into over the years is a luxury (especially if you were mislead into buying a PS5 with a disc drive thinking it'd be supported at least until the end of the product's lifespan)
Monopolies, anti-competitive behavior, and anti-consumer behavior in general are all bad bad bad. You have to be a very interesting individual to disagree with that.
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Plenty of PC games, the linux distros that run steam are great too!
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Exactly. Nothing is going to get better until consumers realize they have the power (at least for now).
So are cigarettes and liquor. And pot and on and on.
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The writing has been on the wall for a decade now for gaming being a purely rental-driven, consumer-antagonistic segment of the software market.
People have been talking about "walking away" for at least that long.
The soles of those walking shoes are as thick and un-worn as they've ever been.
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> This is a weird marketing strategy. They must feel free to do as they please since they know consumers are trapped.
I've been on PlayStation family since PS2, and used to think I was married to it, with my game library and my player character stuff/gear/creations in various games.
But the platform no longer lets me play many of those games, anyway, whether due to console gen or server shutdowns. And nobody cares about my PlayStation gamer score or trophies. So there's little tying me to the platform for the next game I buy.
Sony, please don't make me move to "Linux" gaming, via Valve/GOG/Epic (since I don't want to endorse Microsoft hegemony over the low-level gaming "standard"). PlayStation should be a beloved brand and platform that can be trusted to keep games working -- not one that throws away history, nostalgia, and community. You already impose rules on publishers, so this is within your power.
Related: Project Aces, I was fairly highly ranked in a couple of the Ace Combat installments, but when you shut down the servers, you took away what I'd invested in. I reluctantly bought AC7, but found I didn't have the heart to invest in it, just to have it taken away again, and I won't be buying AC8 nor anything else in the franchise.
Server shutdowns are a problem regardless of the platform.
There used to be a time when PC games allowed you to connect to random servers. These days Minecraft is the only one that still allows it. And even there, Microsoft go hard on the upselling of their Realms.
Some studios kill their servers after just a couple of years. Even for games that are online first.
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"Linux" gaming on Steam deck or Steam in general is a lean-back experience that's got almost nothing in common with the sweaty PC game experience of the past with the big chunky joysticks that were always falling apart and had to be recalibrated all the time and the too-sharp graphics and all.
I picked up some ACER handheld at Best Buy and it was a complete joke, the first thing I saw looked like a Windows PC with comically small fonts. My Steam Deck looks more like a Switch or PS Vita.
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Sony is dead to me now.
Parasocial relationship with corporation update from love to hate.
I mean the PS3 was launched in 2006.
The fact that the PS store has still been supported on the console for this long is kind of incredible.
The PS store enables spending money on the platform. It’s gotta be incredibly easy to justify server expenses for that.
Also let us not forget the rootkit malware Sony BMG distributed on their audio CDs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
If you hadn't brought that up, I would have.
Sony should not be let off the hook for its offensive (essentially criminal) behavior.
I won't even review Sony's decades-long efforts to undermine industry standards...
Sony also used to mock digital only approaches.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA
Now at a time when memory and storage prices are at an all time high - they pull a move that directly hurts the customer.
The storage price isn't really an issue. For the average game it's probably $2 of storage on a hard drive when it's not currently installed on your console. And digital versions see discounts more often.
I'd say screwing up ownership is a much bigger issue.
I remember when the ps3 released Sony mocked controller rumble as a 'last gen feature'. Now their haptic feedback is the only distinguishing feature of their console.
If you're only counting ones not on their previous consoles. How easy it is to disassemble and clean is a change from prior playstations too.
The sad reality of DRM is that only rentals and subscriptions can honestly be done with it. You can guarantee access to a subscription library (Netflix, Xbox Game Pass, etc) for 30 days. You cannot guarantee access 30+ years in the future. And selling access like that is just a lie.
I do think if you are claiming something is not permanent you should basically have to make some specific claims about the timeliness of it (eg you can use it for at least 10 years or your money back).
Digitally rented content is rented. My music via Bandcamp/iTunes, my games from their developers’ websites/itch.io/GOG, and my ebooks are owned (for the purposes of the “owned”/“rented” distinction people are making here). Not all physical things are owned, either. Wrong distinction. We can ask for better with respect to digital.
It probably reduces the amount of media attention if they do it all at once instead of spreading it out over months
Utterly brazen they are. You'd think they'd be keeping a low profile after the pulled all of those movies, but no - they are doubling down on the asshattery.