granted limited access to software that can be revoked at any moment.

If it is that, then it may not be called a purchase. Simple.

Turns out I was granting limited access to my money that can be revoked at any moment.

threadiverse is about to learn what tickets are🤦‍♀️

Please don’t cake it the threadaverse

It should be called renting (or something similar). But then, that would likely mean an expectation of a lower price tag and they wouldn’t want that. Who would rent a game for $80? Even if the rental is a decade or longer. Probably people out there that would and currently do this.

I would agree, but most leases have stipulations that restrict voiding the contract "at any moment". You have to do something to violate the lease agreement most times so this is even worse than renting.

It should just be called License. Put that there instead of the buy button. And clearly visible the minimum expiration date for the license. Reserve the buy button for actual perpetual licenses where not having access to the licensed good is a breach of contract good for money back.

Licenses are a copyright concept, but this isn’t a copyright issue. You’re buying a copy of a game, and you should own the copy after the purchase (which of course, means the company who sold it to you shouldn’t be able to revoke your access at will). That’s the part that sony is apparently not willing to do. But copyright-wise, it would be a license either way, so I don’t think it’s a good idea to confuse people with only tangentially related concepts here.

licenses are a very IT central idea.

I have to buy licenses of Windows, Acrobat, etc… It lines up with what Sony is trying to say too

licenses are a very IT central idea.

No, that’s just the implementation you’re most familiar with. Licenses are a copyright idea that IT adopted and made digital. Every physical movie and game you own also comes with a license that authorizes your retail use of it, but forbids your commercial use of it. You can’t rent your copy of Shrek out to people, nor can you charge admission to people to watch Shrek at your house, nor are you allowed to make copies of your Shrek DVD and sell them, for example.

Care to back that up? You wouldn’t need a license to do something that copyright laws already allow you to do on their own. For example, making additional copies for your own personal use is perfectly legal, if allowed depends on your local fair use or private copying exemption law (provided you do it without circumventing DRM, e.g. via the analog hole), even though of course the movie studio wouldn’t give you a license for that.

Of course, DRM is the real issue here, as due to anti-circumvention the movie industry controls who can legally make players for movies on disks.

You can’t rent your copy of Shrek out to people

That’s literally how Netflix got started.

Netflix had a different type of license they negotiated with the rights holder. They didn’t just buy DVDs retail and start mailing them around.

Yes, they did, at least in some cases: forbes.com/…/netflix-is-not-facing-the-innovators…

How do libraries work then? Do they just go fuck the copyright law lol here are some DVDs? That said not used one for digital media in over 2 decades.

Should use ours more. Been in the cafe a few times and have looked at some books while inside though. Might be an idea to check out the cooking books and take some pictures/notes of interesting sounding recipes to try.

copyright(n.) c. 1729, “the exclusive right to make and sell copies of an intellectual production,”

license(v.) c. 1400, “grant formal authorization to do what would be illegal to do without it,”

Yeah… I don’t think you are right about that…

I don’t really see what that has to do with what I said? Unless you are saying that licenses exist for other things than copyright (in response to “licenses are a copyright concept”). That’s definitely true, I oversimplified to make my point, but I’m also pretty sure that copyright licenses are the only kind of license that are relevant here in the first place.

Copyrights are a type of license not the other way around.

Copyrights are rights. A license grants others (parts of) that right. A copyright isn’t a license.

Physical media also comes with a license.

But then, that would likely mean an expectation of a lower price tag and they wouldn’t want that.

In other words, they want to commit fraud with impunity. Because that’s what lying about the difference between a sale and a rental is: fraud on Sony’s part.

Silly consumer. The subscription is for the software’s lifetime, not yours.

🤣 Well I’m a vampire so jokes on them.

Rent. It’s rent.

I don’t need to read the article to know that they’re making the same argument as Amazon and Apple. When you “buy” a show on one of the streaming platforms, you aren’t actually buying anything except an extended rental.

Then the butt should say “rent” and not “buy”

Consumer protections are for the weak. /s

Digital music for purchase as well.

Not quite true anymore, publishers have pretty much given up on DRM for purchased music :)

Neither Apple’s iTunes store nor amazon’s store (although to be fair, I haven’t used amazon, so I’m not 100 % sure about them) use DRM on purchased music, so you can just take the music files and use them in any way you want. In my personal opinion though, rather than use the iTunes store or amazon, I’d recommend you to try the qobuz store, which is DRM-free and is the only one I know of (ignoring bandcamp, which doesn’t get music from regular distributors) that provides lossless audio.

Bandcamp lets you download .mp3 which are DRM free. They probably are tagged in the info but its just a text field

MP3 is a horrible non-free (well, not anymore, because the patents expired; but still), outdated format. bandcamp also lets you download as FLAC, which is none of that and lossless.

edit: it feels this comment came off a bit aggressively, so I just wanted to say that wasn’t my intention 😅

FLAC does not work with alot of devices

Then transcode it to whatever other format you need yourself. Point is, the thing being sold ought to be the highest quality possible.

AAC-LC though works just about anywhere, and AFAIK is also patent free by now.

Which ones don’t support it? It’s a very old format at this point. Every Android device in existence can work with it for example.

HDtracs also sells some stuff losslessly. Though one thing I’ve noticed I’ve noticed on both Qobuz and HDtracs is tha, in addition to only having some stuff losslessly, the availability of lossless varies by region. The same album might be sold lossless in one region and only lossy in another region.

Didn’t know about them before, thanks for sharing!

The same album might be sold lossless in one region and only lossy in another region.

That’s weird, since as far as I can tell, qobuz doesn’t offer lossy downloads at all (I’ve heard they used to, but stopped. Maybe there are some regions where they’re still offering it?)

Hmm, maybe I was misremembering. On second thought I think it was actually 7digital I was thinking of that did the regional lossless, I forgot about that one. For example, the same album on Swedish and American stores:

se.7digital.com/…/the-life-of-a-showgirl-explicit…

us.7digital.com/…/the-life-of-a-showgirl-explicit…

This led to a lot of good discussion around various places to buy digital music. My comment wasn’t so much drm focused as it was about licenses being removed. I’ve encountered that on Qobuz actually. Not many, but a few items are no longer available to be downloaded. I have already downloaded the files when I purchased the music, so that’s certainly something different than a movie or game that can’t be downloaded and used as such. That’s all, just the fact that the license can still be removed.

Ah, didn’t expect you to already know qobuz 🙃

But yeah, that’s definitely a problem. I remember them sending the email where they announced this could happen now (although weirdly enough, they never sent an email for when purchased items were taken down any time after that again), and had it happen a few times as well. Luckily, I’ve also saved everything locally, so I haven’t lost anything. Still annoying. Also sometimes, an album that’s suddenly gone just seems to reappear a few months later, as if they were just reorganizing their library, but really, I have no idea what’s going on.

That’s good to hear some items have returned. I also wonder about things like relistings, if items have or will get moved around. Good discussion!

🎶🎶oh, the pirate’s life’s for me🎶🎶

You know what? Let them. Normalise the idea and watch how the market speaks (yo ho ho).

The market will answer with pathetic mumbling, as always :)

But that might help small studios that don’t use DRMs anyway.

I appreciate the spirit, but the average person will keep giving their money to these shitty companies.

Unfortunately there are still people that will have no idea that this happened, like older people, young people telling their parents to buy them the game etc. etc. Point is that this will never hurt gamings economy not even by a small margin.

if buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing.

Sadly, catchy slogans don't hold up in court. Better to buy from distributors who don't try to make that claim, like GOG - even if they won't put Nine Sols on the store to avoid offending many gamers.

No crime where’s no judge.

Sadly, catchy slogans don’t hold up in court.

Idk, OJ floated by on his.

I’ve heard the argument that if you aren’t pirating via torrent but simply downloading a file (no seeding), there really aren’t any damages that can be claimed aside from the price of the thing you’ve pirated, hence completely not worth any action. The danger is if you’re uploading stuff you can be on the hook based on the number of downloads of that file.

I think that’s largely true in the US, at least.

There’s a technical aspect to it too. Downloading over HTTPS covers your butt in a way that you need a good VPN for if torrenting.

What do you mean by gog offending gamers by selling nine sols? Is it because it’s the same dev as devotion? Or some other reason?

You got it.

we don’t need to resolt to piracy just to have our digital ownership

no, but it’s morally acceptable to pirate things released by hostile corporations

I suppose, but I don’t think that piracy is the true answer, and we should instead be fighting more for digital independence instead of piracy

2 things can be done at the same time just like 2 things can be true at the same time

Piracy isn’t stealing either way. It’s just copyright infringement.

Soon the game files will be on the cloud and the client on your computer is just a launcher. Then piracy will be over as well

They tried that (Google stadia), performance is crap. They need a datacenter with beefy GPUs need everyone to keep latency low, so the infrastructure costs aren’t worth it.

Unless it’s the only option and they raise the prices. Then you either play Indy games which will resist and still send you the files or if you want AAA you accept the new normal.

I already only play Indies, so we’ll be safe for a while

Seeing G*mers get upset and try to boycott Sony for this.

Then go on to pump money into Helldivers and Palworld on Steam.

Absolutely brain rotted.

wtf does Palworld have to do with Sony?

Apparently they’ve signed a deal with Sony to help them expand the franchise

Nothing “apparently” about it.

There was a lot of coverage about it.

Apparently is used when the person speaking wasn’t previously aware of something, regardless of how much coverage it received within it’s own niche.

So yes, it was. You can now go find something else to uselessly and incorrectly pedant over.

dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/…/apparently

According to this that definition only applies to simplified American English.

Sorry the world doesn’t all follow your backwards country. Go cry in Lake America

Your source.

used when the real situation is different from what you thought it was:

Do they not teach reading comprehension in whatever country you hail from?

If they are from the US: No actually. We don’t anymore. We use that stupid-ass three cuing bullshit that tells students to just guess meaning and pronounciation instead of using phonics, context, and actual tools.

used to say you have read or been told something although you are not certain it is true:

Apparently it’s going to rain today.

Apparently he’s had enough of England and is going back to Australia.

used when the real situation is different from what you thought it was:

You know I told you Alice’s party was on the 13th? Well I saw her last night and apparently it’s on the 14th.

She looks about ten, but apparently she’s 10.

I thought they were married but apparently not (= they are not married).

Do you not see the difference?

Starting the sentence with “Apparently” is you casting doubt over the proceeding information.

Using it mid sentence after giving information as a correction would meet the definition you cherry picked. Which would mean you do know about the Sony deal.

But who am I to try and correct and Yankee, clearly you lot are the absolute authority on everything. And it’s my fault for not instantly understanding what you meant (despite it following zero established rules)

2024 around the time of the game’s release. It was announced that the Devs and Sony formed a joint venture.

ign.com/…/palworld-dev-signs-deal-with-sony-to-fo…

Don’t forget glazing the GTA 6 trailer

If I don’t own, I won’t buy. Good luck.

Already lost my PS4 collection for not logging in 3 years.

Already lost my PS4 collection for not logging in 3 years.

Wait, seriously?! Damn, that sucks. What kept you off PSN for three years?

The fact you even have to ask that is fucking wild. It shouldn’t matter in the first fucking place.

I think they’re just curious, not implying it makes a difference

Didn’t have a PS4 any more, now I got a PS5 and found my account deleted.

We’re going to need the full story here. What the heck man?? They just delete you if you’re offline for a couple years?

Yes, I had a PS4 with a few games, then I sold it and didn’t have ps for many years.

Now I got a PS5 and when I tried to login my account didn’t exist.

Sony has a policy where they can delete you account if you don’t login in 3 years.

How? I didn’t use it for years and it’s fine.

Like when you purchase books for 2 weeks at the library. Simple!

Ah I see Playstation seems out of its wild teenage years and is now so overconfident it’s poke the bear time!

This should be fun.

right, just before going digital only. it’s a bold move cotton…

What even is the point in video games anymore. Many are super locked down, they die after 6 months, they spend 6 years building something and release it so buggy and broken that it’s hard to call it anything but garbage.

At this point, support your local board game store. They at least let you purchase a product.

Easy, don’t buy games that do that. Plenty of games come out feature complete with no expectations of taking more money from you.

There are some. Bless super giant games. But I have found myself spending more time on 20 year old games than anything else.

With how shitty the owning and freedom situation on consoles is already, this really doesn’t change much. People who are still using consoles just don’t give any fucks. They happily swallowed the PSN subscription. They will happily swallow the next toad too.

Going to court to prove they’re arseholes. Nice.

If you want to stop it, write to your representatives. EULAs do not override local laws.

Well it says BUY in the store

Don’t go there, I see a “buy license” button in our future. Right now, nothing but the string of text has to change. They have been changing what really matters, the crazy infrastructure behind that prevents downloading, and allows erasing, the content we have bought.

Buying a license also would mean we own it indefinitely. That is what “buying” means.

It should be renting, and you can be sure plenty of normies would think twice when their buy button now says renting. Sony’s execs don’t want that.

does anyone know why Sony is so intent on ensuring that I never become a console gamer and give them money?

like how does this benefit them?

I’m purely pulling this firmly out of my ass. While I genuinely doubt they have any intention or plans at this point, I assume being able to tell investors “oh we can pull the plug and walk away from these legacy costs at any time” is a plus in someone’s column somewhere. Of course the issue is that what is possible to save money often becomes reality.

You are just a guy. There are millions more that will not care and won’t even know any of this ever took place. There were leaked conversations where Sony talked about their fanbase as brainless cattle, too.

because their fanbase are brainless cattle.

because gamers are brainless myopic cattle.

gamers on the whole moan and groan and whine and bitch about every misdead, but the second the new shiny comes out they are out there en-masse rewarding these companies with billions and billions and billions of dollars (a great example will be GTA6, which I almost guarantee will bring in at least 2 billion dollars within its first week)

and as long as the idiot masses keep doing that, we have no recourse and no hope.

You’re not wrong… but “othering” people is no way to lift them out of the muck. Causes classic back fire effect. I say present the alternative case clearly and succinctly. If still finger in ears well, wish them luck and go separate ways.

I just want to push back on this being a ‘gamers’ problem. We’ve basically hit the point with technofeudalism where we can all collectively moan and groan, but still be effectively locked in.

How do you feel about google or apple… but you must have an acceptable(to the bank) phone in order to set up MFA for your bank account, and you might need to have one for your work or school accounts. How do you feel about linkedin… it’s managed to insert itself into the hiring process for many places and if you don’t participate, then a company will overlook you because you don’t exist. How do you feel about twitter… but the US government almost exclusively drops breaking news there first, if not on the shittier versions.

For the wants instead of needs, the dynamic changes a bit, but the enshittification and perverted “ownership” is coming for us all: TVs, printers, dishwashers, cars, etc. All these things are ‘optional’… but your Quality of Life will be reduced if you give them up and you will either be spending your precious time and energy doing something that used to be easier; or giving up on some of the social and cultural fabric by eschewing the shows/movies/games that others around you are enjoying and want to talk about.

Considering this only a ‘gamers’ problem and that only ‘gamers’ are the mindless cattle is missing the bigger picture.

Another aspect is the difference between Publisher and Developer and Platform.

Sony/Playstation is the platform and they get to do shitty things. So can the publisher. The Developer doesn’t get to make those decisions most of the time. Sometimes we can avoid the bad actors, but not always. The next book in your favorite series has just been released, but it’s not going to be printed, it’s only released on Amazon as an E-book. The author isn’t happy, but their contract says the publisher gets to decide where and how to publish and the publisher gets more money from e-books and expects the audience for the book will not revolt. Same with music. This new album is only available on spotify; no physical CDs, and the artist didn’t have a say because they weren’t big enough to fight back.

Sure, piracy solves some of those access issues (insert Gabe Newell quote), but it robs the artists of their cut because the publishers or platforms are being assholes, which will prevent future content that people like. Do you punish the artist, and remove their ability to make more stuff you want because some monolithic company has locked themselves in the process?

I won’t buy GTA6, or the next Call of Duty or FIFA, because those are not games I’m interested in; but there are other franchises that I would like to enjoy the future. I want to fight back and orgs like Stop Killing Games or the EFF, FULU, Repair.org and more are all helping push back.

We do have hope, and if we understand this isn’t a single-slice-of-the-consumer problem, we can band together.

Certainly if Gamers™ had half a spine, we wouldn’t get here. Instead it’s always been inch after inch being taken, Gamers™ either downplaying it or viciously complaining about it for a short while without anything tangible happening, and rinse and repeat. Miles have been taken, now Gamers™ argue about 30fps in a game that ships with super draconian DRM and no physical copies because we’re already cool with DRM now.

Also the bitter irony when I hear people upset by Sony’s steamification switching to PC, the most steamified platform of them all. I guess it beats waiting until 2028 when you can pull the trigger now?

I warned from the moment that steam became a market place that the end of the road was us not having physical games anymore, and not owning our games anymore, and not being able to play our games should steam ever go under.

and my god the insults I received over the years about it.

Then other DD platforms popped up, and people bought games there (myself included, fuck you direct2drive), and lost all the games and all the money when the platform died.

“but steam lets you back up your games!” the inevitable response was.

Okay.

But steam backups still require steam to unpack and run. So that does fuckall.

and with how old steam is, and with how many people use things like humble monthly and shit, who the hell can afford to store local copies of 1500-3500 games? especially when a lot of modern games are 50-150gb in size each.

Also, at least on PC, we can relatively easily acquire our games via alternative methods. Which I have had to do a few times, for games that I owned and paid for, because of stupid bullshit DRM.

You aint doing that on modern consoles. If you wanted to play console games via alternative means you either have to 1)Luckout on a jailbreak and have the right firmware for a jailbreak or 2) wait years for an Emulator and a PC that can run it.

I’m so sick of this cyberpunk hellscape bullshit where you pay everything and own nothing.

and my god the insults I received over the years about it.

Me too, me too. When I lost the internet for a mad long time and noticed my steamed games not working because the launcher was refusing to log in while offline (despite having a so-called offline mode) and questioning why a singleplayer game even requires all of this in the first place, I would then get told the problem was actually my internet provider and not the game’s or steam’s for creating this mess in the first place. Yeah, make it make sense. Incidentally I had to acquire a bunch of executables for those very same games like you did, and yep, they’d work offline as should be. Creator of service problem says piracy is a service problem, why is this not a headline already?

Then other DD platforms popped up, and people bought games there (myself included, fuck you direct2drive), and lost all the games and all the money when the platform died.

I’m getting Desura flashbacks. Lucky I downloaded everything I had when I felt the signs of it going down, but I know others weren’t as lucky. Silver lining is they’re still playable, DRM-free is nice, but like I established we’ve already moved on from that into bigger fish like “the credits reference a consulting company I don’t like.”

I’m so sick of this cyberpunk hellscape bullshit where you pay everything and own nothing.

And there’s not even any cyberware to show for it! But yeah at this point I’m focusing more on buying stuff other than games and playing my massive library of games from multiple decades. It’s just I really suck at that too.

I’m getting Desura flashbacks. Lucky I downloaded everything I had when I felt the signs of it going down, but I know others weren’t as lucky. Silver lining is they’re still playable, DRM-free is nice, but like I established we’ve already moved on from that into bigger fish like “the credits reference a consulting company I don’t like.”

with direct2drive it didnt matter if you downloaded the files, cause the installers still did a call home to direct2drive to decrypt, and that call home server died with the rest of d2d.

Well, they are not wrong. Consumers will really put up with anything

because they HAVE to have the latest shiny, because their self worth is so low and non existent the only measure of worth they have is owning the next shiny.

some consumers… maybe even most. Certainly not all.

I’m actually grateful for the enshittification of the main stream. It’s an excellent incentive to carve your own path, in some small way. Hopefully that spills over to other aspects of people’s lives.

“Fuck you, I won’t do what you told me” is a wonderful fuel.

I worked for the major streaming company when the service was launched in Japan. Sony (among others) said that streaming would never take off in Japan because Japanese consumers are too tied to physical media. This was probably 2014. It’s probably been the slowest place in the world to change, but it has changed. Sony understands the consumer preference for digital media as well as anyone. They just know that resistance and opposition will fade over time.

They are a fairly adaptable company (as Japanese tech companies go), and if they get it wrong, they will pivot, but there is nothing pro-consumer about the company. They didn’t put Blu-ray players in PS3s because it was good for consumers, they did it because it was good for Sony’s entertainment business. And people often forget that part of the Blu-ray spec was mandatory internet connectivity so that the content licensor could revoke content licenses. We haven’t “owned” physical media since DVDs.

This is the company that brought you Memory Stick after all. They’ve been anti-consumer ever since the Walkman was a huge success. It benefits Sony by making people buy more copies of the same thing. You might not buy any, but if the optimization is right, enough people will.

I take personal offense (on Sony’s behalf). How could you possibly frame innovation and progress as anti-consumer behavior? The reality is that the industrial mega-corp is providing the services and products consumers actually want. If they didn’t capitalism would be sure to punish them and they’d die an economical death. Children’s entertainment is funded via their parents and neither child nor parent is choosing to buy physical media. You can’t blame Sony for holding on to stock that no one wants to buy. ‘Gamers’ can have their emotional outburst, but things will continue as normal and they’ll have forgotten about it after nap time.

This must either be sarcasm or a troll

in the short term? It doesnt benefit them at all. it may actually hurt them.

in the long term? Bandwidth is cheap. especially at the scale that companies like Sony, Steam, Microsoft, etc, use it. So sell 6 million copies of a game, 10 extra bucks of profit thanks to no physical media/boxes/shipping/etc, per game… Thats 60 million dollars in free money.

Plus, because you no longer own anything, they no longer have to invest in storage to keep old games up and running. So as new games release, they delete old games from their servers and from your accounts, So thats less investment they have to make in infrastructure, which is again more free money for them.

I wager Sony would love the day when people pay 100 dollars for a game that gets deleted in 6 months, that they have to rebuy again at full price to play again.

Cause remember, with no physical media, you have nothing but sony’s closed garden marketplace to buy games… Which means no competition for sony, which means no incentive for sales, no lower prices (not that 70+ dollars is a low price for a game 🙄 ), no nothing but take what sony offers you, and liking it.

I wager Sony would love the day when people pay 100 dollars for a game that gets deleted in 6 months, that they have to rebuy again at full price to play again.

Oh, you wanted to play [AAA game] that you already bought and paid for? Too bad, it’s shut down and gone. But you can buy the almost-identical sequel [AAA game 2] for just $90!

This will also affect history badly. Entire games will be lost to history forever.

Yeah, by the time copyright finally expires, it will be impossible to find a copy of it anymore.

… For everyone one of “us” on this thread, there’s 10,000 that will shrug and conform.

You and I are not the target demographic. Clearly - look at where we’re having this conversation :)

Ipso facto we need to make sure that we support those that support us (Indie devs, FOSS etc). Let Sony do Sony things.

Untio the first 250 USD game hits the market and it’s a choice between homelesness, starving and getting a digital product you don’t own.

The smaller the customer base, the less money they rake in.

Sony’s history of security breaches also doesn’t give much confidence. Games like Concord and Marathon also prove nobody is too big to fail.

Games are a luxury good that need to thread a fine needle.

With roughly fifty years of back catalog to draw from, free engines, and endless other distractors, a $250 game would need to be an epoch-defining masterpiece - or have true AGI baked in - to get my attention.

Then again, I’m not the target demographic: I built my own retro console from office e-waste and play retro games, older AAA and indies.

i hope theyre ready to give a ton of refunds for digital “purchases”

um yeah, that’s not hard to prove, you can check my torrent history

you still own them more than a psn store enjoyer owns their games

It’s a bolder than usual move for Sony to announce the end of physical media prior to a new console launch, and launch this “you don’t own the digital games you buy” campaign at the same time.

The usual easy strategy is first you end physical media sales, let people be content with the idea that they own their digital games at least so that the only thing people think about is the convenience of digital, then after you launch your new console, get everybody locked in, that’s when you launch the “Oh you don’t own these digital games btw” campaign.

The fact that they’re just doing all of this at the same time means they know they won’t lose any money over it because we’re sheep and the consumer just doesn’t care anymore

Their consumers don’t care perhaps. The people that do care were probably not using PlayStations in the first place.

at this point, i have quite bleak view on anyone buying anything from sony. those people are effectively supporting this shit, which may spread elsewhere.

Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. Linux PCs will run the vast majority of games and the handful of exclusives that don’t run yet will run on an emulator at some point.

I’m so old school I still prefer OpenTTD and OpenRCT2

If buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing.

Good thing I buy games on gog so I own them and I could copy them to a DVD if I really wanted to.

I think in terms of the subscriber access to Xbox GamePass or PlayStation Plus, this is valid. But not for game purchases.

The store purchases have always been about buying a game. If I go to Amazon and buy a thing, it gets shipped to my house and I own it - the experience of adding an item to a cart, viewing the cart, and checking out are the same across game stores, for online and brick and mortar, whether digital and physical goods are being purchased.

If I don’t own the item I am buying on the PlayStation store, why the hell am I paying a premium for it? I thought it was because I will always be able to play that game without having to worry about the disc getting scratched and in both cases I would own the item.

This is true.

If it’s a subscription, sure. But if I literally paid to own the game? What the fuck is the point?

Sony has trained me to pay my subscription fee and be extremely skeptical about “buying” any games, no matter how deeply discounted they are. I don’t play much on PC but I have no qualms buying a game on Steam.

Hopefully their inquiry will lead to more clear definitions in market places. It could lead to having indefinite leases. For example you will see a button that says lease and below it there will be a time period which would be indefinite. I think that would be a fair portrayal purchase agreements.

If you buy a CD with software and it gets shipped to your house, you own the disc, not the software. It’s always been this way, we are just now living in a world where the technology exists to take the software away from you after you paid.

Correct, I owned the license to it. It wasn’t revokable though.

Which do you want? A single physical disc that is a tangible product? Or access to a server that has data redundancy?

You seem to want the guarantee of high availability servers but expect to claim ownership of the data. You never owned the data, and you don’t now.

You’re hallucinating. I never claimed to want HA servers or claim ownership of data.

If I pay for ownership of a license, I just want it to be permanent. Non-revokable. I don’t care how it is delivered.

This is why I use Serif’s Affinity applications, not Adobe’s etc.

@Couldbealeotard @jsnfwlr sure, but you were also able to sell it eventually.

I don’t believe resale was ever part of the licensing.

Lol Sony gonna Sony

If buying isn’t owning… (just be careful not to get hit with malware if you do sail)

unless it is layed out plain in their TOS it aint gonna live long. if they place a revision of the TOS to reflect that, then john q public is thoroughly screwed

Don’t put it past them to change it without telling anyone and backdate it.

Prove deez nuts biatchhhh

I wish them luck, because if you can’t buy it, you can’t steal it.

If I don’t own them, no eeason to pay for them ever.

Imagine how well digital games would sell if they showed up in your cart like: 1 x Revokable License for God of War $69 See Terms and Conditions* [Confirm Payment]

• Terms: we will do whatever the fuck we want. Conditions: whenever we want.

There’s a reason they say “Buy” instead of “Pay”.

It’s been going on for generations, but it’s no less dishonest for all that. Software sellers write complex EULAs for which the only valid answer is “Agree” because the store won’t take an open box back and the software won’t install unless we pretend to agree, so even us legitimate software enjoyers are pirates in our hearts. Meanwhile normies don’t even think about it that much. Fuck this whole system, but double fuck an online service that says “purchase” but will steal it back later. Fuck that.

1x temporary license to play. Duration of license unspecified.

Pretty sure in the past it was at least considered a lifetime license.

*Lifetime for the time the product/service is alive

If they end the thing, they can just pretend they did a rewrite and invalidate the current version/not develop it any further and maybe offer a migration discount (lol).
I’d prefer the model of “Buy version X for at least x years of feature updates and Y days of security updates”.

In the past it didn’t matter, because you had the whole file structure for the application when you purchased it. You either downloaded it in whole as an install file or archive, or you had it on the physical media that you purchased it on. Maybe there was a license you had to input or some other rudimentary DRM system, but you had that too. No remote access from the company, no forced additional downloads or internet connectivity, no phone home. So they could say whatever they wanted, but you actually had the product.

Now with media files that only play with proprietary tools that phone home, or applications that phone home, your computers are backdoored. And if you have a system that’s backdoored, it’s not really yours, it’s just something you can access for now. That’s what your Kindle is: a backdoored computer with an e-ink screen and proprietary software that can open proprietary files that other software isn’t supposed to be able to open. Which is why no one should buy one.

You should stop buying that shit then.

Also isn’t the kindle fine if you just download offline files? Its been a very long time since I used one though.

I do happen to agree that one should not buy a Kindle. There are alternatives, and good ones.

But also a Kindle, a locked down computer that is illegal to make work properly, shouldn’t exist.

The problem is that in so many of these specialized computers, every major device available is rights violating, or under powered. It is damn hard too “choose” your way out of an economy as an individual.

Nothing new. This is the same bullshit legal framework that underpins the entire software industry and extends back to the mid 90s. It’s just front-and-center in games now because the industry has transitioned from a growth industry to a mature one wherein producers need to extract more revenue per user and predictably enshittify their platforms to do so.

I’ve basically decided that I will not buy any game that I cannot play offline. If I do a buy game, I will also pirate it to ensure continued access. If I can’t pirate it, I won’t buy it.

Fuck em.

That’s why you should buy physical disks. In the worst case you can re-sell them to someone else.

Or buy games without DRM. Like on GOG.

Also wait until development of the game is really done. That way the game is better and cheaper and works on cheaper hardware.

GOG doesn’t work on consoles.

Jussayin not everyone wants to maintian a PC so they can game…

My gaming PC takes the same amount of maintenance as my PS5. Both are computers with parts that can break. Other than that, install updates when they pop up.

Also, Steam Deck / Machine (or any PC with SteamOS) essentially can handle like consoles and run GOG games.

If you want to own your games why don’t you want to own the device you use to play them?

That is a bullshit arguement. “You dont own the hardware so you dont deserve to own the games” - I do own the hardware… I can’t update/upgrade it the same way I do my PC, but I still own it.

If you read my message carefully you would see that I didn’t say what you quoted.

No, you didn’t, it was implied though … And I didn’t quote you, it was paraphrasing your argument

Hey guys, you all seem to want to have ownership of your software. Come over here where we have ownership of hardware too!

This is bullshit! You are saying we don’t deserve ownership!

Yep. I buy every game I can on GOG.

Its crazy how everybody got used to rental prices as high as physical copy.

Most people don’t know they are rentals

They are not wrong tho

The courts still need to weigh in on this. If you purchase a license to use the software, the company shouldn’t have the power to revoke that license without cause. The license should last as long as the copyright/patent/etc. does.

There may well be a valid argument that they don’t make it clear enough at the point of sale too.

They are wrong, you can buy digital downloads from other platforms like GOG, Itch.io, Humble Store, and keep the files forever. There is no DRM on those purchases, no way for the seller to revoke it in any way. Sony could operate their store that way too but choose not to.

They are not wrong, when it comes to their platform

To prove their decision to ban physical was greedy? Are they trying to shoot them on the foot or just a rage bait title?

If I’ve already bought it I won’t even hesitate to pirate it.

Having backups of owned digital media is just good practice.

Even if they succeed with a weird judge to prove this… It’s not the point. We want to own stuff, so either make “owning” available or we stop buying/renting.

Also, there is the common online sentiment “If buying isn’t owning, then piracy is not stealing” and I can’t help but believe that this will permiate even deeper into the gaming culture.

Piracy has never been stealing, whether you were allowed to own the thing or not. Piracy is a copyright infringement.

Then why do they have the word “buy” on the PS store🤨

Next time: Acquire license

Seriously? You can buy a license.

There are tons of examples of other products/services that you can buy that are licenses and not full ownership.

I’m 100% against this Sony BS, but come on - lets use our brains a bit to counter this.

Because you buy it. It being a limited license of course, not a game.

“Sony pushes the idea that “reasonable consumers would not be misled” into believing they own the games in their digital library”.

Wasn’t this the same basic legal outcome Fox News received when they were sued and it was determined that ‘no reasonable viewer’ would think Tucker Carlson was anything but entertainment? That worked out well.

But people who are easily fooled by such things are exactly the ones who need extra protection. Many laws exist to protect the weaker members of society.

People need to stop supporting these companies. Stop buying Nintendo. Stop buying Sony.

I heard sega is thinking about releasing a handheld that takes carts 🤞

Where’d you hear that? :o

Scrolling somewhere… sorry I don’t have more info

Oh cool, still i don’t trust them since they implement Denuvo on some of their games.

Plus Microslop

im just glad i didn’t invest in a console or a gaming PC because game streaming is going to be the norm very soon.

That opinion sounds like it is from 1985.

I’ve still got an OnLive console in my closet gathering dust! Bring on the streaming revolution!

I should clean out my closet.

Hah, no it isn’t. They want it to be, but it’ll only be clueless poors that use it, and then the price will creep up super quickly and it’ll be full of ads and everything is a subscription and your favorite games will just randomly disappear and you won’t be able to do a damn thing about it and suddenly you’ll go “shit, I should have just bought a computer.”

If you trust streaming gaming to be handled responsibly then you should really ask yourself why these companies want so badly for you to not only not own your games but also not even own your hardware, and why you even entertain the notion that the companies offering it will behave any better when they have total control over your entire gaming ecosystem.

who said anything about responsibly? its going to be convenient like video streaming and that’s case closed

I can prove in home that I don’t own any playstation past the 4.

Let’s see who loses.

Its not enough they are ditching physical media, they’re being this brazen about it.

If I won’t own them, I’m not buying them. This is them shooting themselves in the feet.

yeah but they don’t own their feet

Digital feet only, you say?

This kind of thinking is why they’re taking so much heat

Pirate away. If you don’t know ask. Fuck the system.

You can’t steal what you can’t own.