Playstation plus price increase, taking bought media away, banning accounts for no reason. What’s next for Sony?
Not sure why anyone at this point is stoked to own a Playstation. Literally all of their games are going to be on PC, GTA6 will eventually be on PC, not to mention all of the cross platform games on PS5 that are, you guessed it, also on PC.
Between digital storefronts removing content you paid for and the price tag on all new releases, it just doesn’t make sense to engage with this new generation of “you don’t actually own your games now”.
Because it costs like a quarter of an equivalent gaming PC, and there’s actually an option for physical disc ownership unlike PC.
Honestly, buying a disc for a new game and selling it a month later is still the cheapest way to play new things without being constrained by a subscription’s library. PC is excellent for old/indie stuff going cheap, but discs are awesome.
“But consoles suck compared to PCs of the same price!”
~People who built their PCs before bitcoin was popular
Remember the time when Sony invented rootkits to make their drm stronger? Pepridge farm remembers.
It should be illegal to take back / away a digital purchase because of a rights change or any other reason. Sure, maybe I lose the ability to download again if the company goes out of business, but other than that, my media, my fucking property. And not in a distribution sense. Like it was a physical copy. It’s not like they’re allowed to enter my home and steal my blu-rays.
They’re not offering true purchases, they’re offering one time payment leases - and they should be forced to market them as such if they’re not willing to guarantee perpetual access.
In addition, remember how Sony bought OnLive then shut it down? Fuckers.
Yeah sometimes companies buy competition not to absorb them but to destroy them.
OnLive was a decade ahead of its time, and it worked decently.
Problems were nobody really expected it to last and prior wanted to be able to keep their games off the service shut down.
I think their biggest mistake though was targeting gaming. Imagine if instead they offered enterprise software rental.
Say your business needs to use ArcGIS, but just for one little project. Pay 200 bucks to rent the software for a few hours, make a deliverable, and that’s it.
Or what if you want to do a quick Photoshop project? Pay 10 bucks for an hour of time workout having to download anything or buy a $1000 software package (CS was a purchased product back then), then email yourself the final image.
It also would have been great for anti-piracy purposes for some software, since the client only ever gets an AV stream.
We need to stop calling it digital “ownership”! You don’t get to own anything as a customer on these platforms, because rights that can be taken away on a whim are no rights at all.
In the case of pc platforms like GOG, and itchio, if you get a drm free version of a title, theres nothing the company can do to both stop you from storing it on an external storage (or multiple) if you wanted. They wouldnt be able to revoke it if its a single player game.
Technically, you still don’t own it. You have a licence that they can revoke at will. They just can’t enforce it.
What makes you say so?
GoG about page explicitly talks about owning, and terms even explicitly mention advance notification so you can download Dr free versions if they will ever become unavailable.
GoG terms do not qualify purchases as temporary access licenses - only to the degree of servicing downloads as long as possible and without other limitation.
- https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User-Agreement?product=gog
- https://www.gog.com/about_gog
We don’t believe in controlling you and your games. Here, you won’t be locked out of titles you paid for, or constantly asked to prove you own them - this is DRM-free gaming.
You know that’s the exception to the general trend though right? GoG has good terms, most others do not.
Physical media still is a better way to go than digital whenever possible.
Commenter specifically talked about gog and itch. Other commenter then replied you wouldn’t own it [there].
The comment chain specifically moved away from “general trend”.
because rights that can be taken away on a whim are no rights at all
They’re rights to temporary access. A contacted temporary right.
I agree with your main point that it’s not ownership though.
What you’re talking about is being allowed to use something or being tolerated, that’s different from having a right. A temporary right is a real right for a specified time frame, but here it would just be “until I decide you don’t”.
If buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing.
It never was
Arr-men to that!
Whatsab!
What the hell they talking about? Digital ownership is amazing. I can stream all my content from my server and keep it forever as long as I backup regularly. What sucks is buying shit digitally because then you don’t own it at all
I think “licensing” is the correct word here, instead of “ownership”.
The users in question don’t “own” anything, they merely “license” it.
Yeah they’re not talking about ownership here. They’re talking about custodial “ownership”. Like when you buy bitcoin and keep in on an exchange - you down actually own it.
Some people think if you buy a movie from Sony or any other online only marketplace you actually own it….
It’s a “permanent” rental, Until something like this happens.
It’s not even a rental. It’s “permission” to stream anytime anywhere or possibly store a cached copy until the company changes its mind or ceases to exist.
I own 4 PS5 games, all are physical, all were bought used and I can sell them on if I want. This November I opted not to renew PS plus.
It amazes me this is still possible but I’m not complaining.
Sony had been at the top for the past ten years so they now feel emboldened to think they will get away with predatory monopolistic behaviour. Just like Microsoft after Xbox360 era when the console had proved more popular than PS3. So now, Microsoft with its Gamepass is seemingly retaking the lead.
Counterpoint: digital ownership — true ownership when you have the actual files — is amazing. It’s the media panacea we’ve wanted for years. Storage is cheap, content is boundless, and if you curate your own collection you can usually get it anywhere you want.
Too bad it’s not applicable to defective-by-design appliances like the PlayStation 5.
It isn’t vulnerable to physical degradation.
Unless you use mdiscs. Those still degrade, but it’ll take centuries.
Yeah, lots of newbies fall victim to this. Nobody wants to believe hard drives fail, until their hard drive is dead and they’ve lost all their data.
I believe there’s a saying along the lines of “nobody wants to build earthquake-proof houses before the first earthquake.”
Back the fuck up! If you only have one copy, you have none.
Yea but literally nothing is. The best thing you could do is have multiple backups in multiple locations.
Yeah, I’m at the point where I view all storage as temporary, just on different time scales. Storing anything indefinitely requires ongoing maintenance to replace degraded media with fresh media.
If there’s DRM involved, then you’re renting, not buying. Take that into account when considering how to spend money.
Points at the Jolly Roger.
🏴☠️
And it’s a heave-ho-hi-ho, comin’ down the way
“Stealin’” films and movies and all the other games
And it’s a ho-hey-hi-hey, corpos bar your doors
When you see the Jolly Roger on Francisco’s mighty shores!
I miss Armored Core Masters of the Arena. I will not under any terms, ever touch AC5 because of exactly this fucking bullshit brainwashing nonsense. It was perhaps the best video game I’ve ever played and that’s not a short list. I quit them and I’d only give exceptions to Sauerbraten these days and, well, I just don’t do it anyway cuz I now prefer board games because it’s like playing games with real people. I’m not good socially and need the means to practice, in all honesty.
So yeah, fuck Sony, and fuck PS. I refuse to even pirate their nonsense. I have zero interest in anything that isn’t FOSS.
OoO this would be fun to try to do the whole song…
I was hoping someone would recognize it lmao
Sounds like class action baby
Nah, they have a clause in their EULA which allows this, it’s ridiculous. Piracy is the only solution.
Just because they write it into their EULA it doesn’t make it legal.
Unfortunately this particular clause has been tested pretty throughly in court and current courts have decided that your average Joe has alternative options and can/has consented to the licensing clause of the Eula. The only thing that might change (and should change by the way) is Sony/others being able to use the term “purchase/buy” without specifying in clear detail that you’re purchasing a temporary license to the product and not a copy of the product. This is laid out in the Eula, but should also be either directly labeled near the purchase button or prompted and accepted during checkout. Wouldn’t change things but at least people can’t then bitch when the leopard eats their face.
DVDs are also digital though. I cannot really imagine analog video games
Whack-a-Mole
I think Pong (or some variant) was analog. Then there were the games played on oscilliscopes.
“ownership” lol
In the current stage of late capitalism we do not actually own anything, we cannot question the sanctity of “Capital” and we are already monitored in many ways 24/7
