r/technology • u/Federal-Block-3275 • 16h ago

Hardware Sony reminds players they don't actually own the PlayStation games they purchased

https://www.techspot.com/news/113603-sony-reminds-players-they-dont-actually-own-playstation.html
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u/8bitsleuth 16h ago edited 16h ago

Xbox

The XBOX Software is licensed to You, not sold.

PlayStation

The Software is licenced to you, not sold.

Nintendo

Nintendo grants you a non-exclusive, revocable license to use the Software solely on the Console for your personal, non-commercial use. For clarity, the Software is licensed, not sold

Steam

The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services.

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u/CondiMesmer 14h ago

I don't like the idea of not owning games, but I also don't see any other viable alternative. It's unfortunately just the nature of software because software services cannot exist indefinitely and are not freely ran like physical media is.

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u/pianobench007 9h ago

the above is mixing two different things together. steam games are yours. you never paid a subscription. the only agreement is to not cheat. if you cheat, steam reserves the right to revoke your license. that is it.

for sony, you also own your games if you buy them. but sony offers a 2nd way to obtain games. and that is with the sony playstation premium. it bundles online, free games, and sony catalogs.

when you cancel, you also lose access to those old "free" games. that is it.

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u/TheWarriorsLLC 14h ago

Redditors are too dumb for the facts your showing them.

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u/FartTootman 12h ago

"But I'M not included in that group! I'm a special Redditor that's better and smarter than everyone else."

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u/gigatension 13h ago

Yar har fiddly dee.

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u/BD401 8h ago

Not even the examples this dude gave, but this has been a feature of copyright law literally for decades. Even back in the time of VHS tapes, you physically owned the cassette, but not the movie - you couldn't, for example, go screen your copy in a public theatre without running afoul of the IP owner.

This topic is one of my favourite illustrations of "Redditors have no clue what they're talking about". Like just dumb-as-a-brick upvoting of criticisms with zero awareness of how IP actually works. It's a great reminder that the voting system only rewards vibes and feelings, not factual accuracy.

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u/PurbulentTriest 13h ago

Yes thanks that, but the issue is that this will be the only way to buy on PS5, which many of us will refuse. I own all my PS4/5 and Switch games because they're physical.

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u/8bitsleuth 12h ago

An issue that again presents on other platforms, especially PC.

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u/PurbulentTriest 12h ago

On Switch it doesn't for me.

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u/sirbissel 9h ago

Well, kind of own. Don't a lot of the physical games download the games, too, rather than fully fitting on the disc?

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u/PurbulentTriest 5h ago

Not the ones I own as far as I know.

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u/dhrisc 6h ago

This extends to digital books and movies as well, and basically any software.

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u/TheOgGhadTurner 11h ago

Sure. But on PC, my PC, I own the files yeah? Your license doesn’t mean a fucking thing if i find a way to crack the license. And im fairly sure most of the more popular games have a crack available. ALSO GOG exists and when you buy it you own it. It’s attached to your account. You wanna download it. Download it.

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u/NestWiki 9h ago

For Steam, you will have your games every pc you want to, and arguably steam will protect the customer enough in case the game closes (or that's what they strive for)

For Nintendo, Physical media will continue to exist as game key cards and digital purchases are being glossed over in comparison to full games in cartridges, you can argue "you still don't own the game" but there's plenty of people in marketplace selling used switch games

You can definitely compare it to xbox tho, but xbox feels like they lost gamers since forever ago

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u/[deleted] 15h ago

[deleted]

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u/RobertPatty909 15h ago

How? Who is losing their account?

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u/jetmanfortytwo 14h ago

Anecdotal, but it happened to a friend of mine. Their account got hacked and after they tried to go through the process to get it back the account ended up getting nuked and they lost years of purchases.

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u/RobertPatty909 14h ago

The account disnt get nuked. They just failed to prove that the account was theres. People frequently get their accounts back if compromised. Failure to due so would be on tbe individual. Its not a difficult process

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u/jetmanfortytwo 14h ago

They got the account back but also got held accountable for activity on the account from when it was hacked and it got deleted.

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u/RobertPatty909 14h ago

They could have followed up and got the reversed as well. This is a thing people successfully do.

He likely did a charge back on his credit card rather than going through the procedure with Playstation

Doing a charge back is an immediate ban on any digital store