7 ms·

PlayStation can delete all your digital games after 3 years of inactivity (EU)

286 points by thewebguyd 3mo ago

al_borland 3mo ago
I'm not in the EU, but had 2 accounts with Sony/Playstation (I'm pretty sure both sat unused for more than 3 years). I tried to delete one and it seemed impossible. The FAQ said to call support. I called, waiting for 45 minutes, and they said they couldn't help me and hung up before I could respond. While I believe they would delete a user's games, I don't know if they would actually willingly give up holding on to customer data. My guess is this is more of a CYA incase they want to clean up accounts at some point, rather than something they actively do.
- throwaway2027 3mo ago
  > While I believe they would delete a user's games, I don't know if they would actually willingly give up holding on to customer data. So basically you get worst of both worlds, great.
  - al_borland 3mo ago
    And on top of that, Sony will probably get hacked again, as has already happened a couple times. That was a primary reason why I actually wanted my account gone, not just inactive.
Mindwipe 3mo ago
"Sony correctly implements GDPR requirements in the EU" is a less exciting headline I guess.
- guax 3mo ago
  That is not how gdpr works. If you have a legitimate reason to hold the data. You can. Ensuring people have access to purchases is a very legitimate reason.
  - cccbbbaaa 3mo ago
    And that data must be held for a limited amount of time under GDPR article 5(1)e. Sony’s policy is very much a consequence of this.
  - computomatic 3mo ago
    Is there evidence that European courts have sided with that? “We’re holding onto all your data indefinitely just in case you log in again several years from now” seems to be the antithesis of GDPR and I can’t discern the difference between that and what you’re suggesting. I believe EU has dug their own hole here. And the best move would be to pass more legislation to explicitly require the retention (and transfer, ideally) of purchased digital goods.
    - cccbbbaaa 3mo ago
      No need to wait for the courts’ opinions: controllers must keep the data for a limited amount of time (which can be something like “3 years after the last connection”) under GDPR article 5(1)e.
      - crote 3mo ago
        To save everyone a click: > Personal data shall be: kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed. (..) Note that this does not say "it must be stored for a limited amount of time" - it says "no longer than necessary". Your basic account data (such as username and password, or an email for password recovery) is still necessary to log in to the platform and make use of your purchases. As long as there is no clear indication that the user will never log in again (such as due to death, or because they explicitly deleted their account), it would be reasonable to keep it around. On the other hand, it may make sense to delete some data. For example, it may make sense to store your full name and address info to make checkout more convenient. If a user hasn't bought stuff in a while, it makes sense to delete it and have them re-enter it in the future. There might be a bit of a gray space for things like game achievements (especially when there's a public profile) or savefile backups, but reading it as "you MUST delete all digital purchases because GDPR" is just not true.
Xeoncross 3mo ago
You know, all those people making new n64, playstation, and gameboy titles might be onto something. Apart from steam, I don't think I've heard anything but bad news from modern consoles.
- amiga-workbench 3mo ago
  Honestly, there's never been a better time to be writing games for those platforms. The SDK's are much improved from the proprietary stuff available at the time and the hardware is very well understood. People have been pulling off some utter witchcraft on the N64.
  - echelon 3mo ago
    Kaze and James Lambert are amazing. Kaze's new Mario game looks better than a first party Nintendo title, and James's engines pushes the console to its absolute limits. I've been thinking about giving it a go myself. It's such a fun and nostalgic console, and the limitations are fun constraints. The code archeology is really cool too. Seeing Rare's Dinosaur Planet boot up and play after being a lost title. Decompiling all the original titles. Building sequels to Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. It's such a fun scene. Then there's Analogue 3D and ModRetro too, which make it fun to play as physical hardware.
    - RajT88 3mo ago
      Even crap emulator handhelds are getting pretty dang good (if you can get the right software stack).
      - opan 3mo ago
        Seconding this. Look for something with ROCKNIX support and put that on there.
    - dml2135 3mo ago
      Wait, someone actually brought N64 Dinosaur Planet to life? I gotta check this out...
glimshe 3mo ago
I was surprised to come back to my XBOX account after 10 years in the US and see that very old digital purchases from previous console generations were not only still available, but actually playable on the latest console through transparent emulation! They did a pretty good job with that.
- PaulHoule 3mo ago
  Whatever you think about Microsoft, they are a good steward of their platforms and go to extremes to maintain backwards compatibility -- even if they are always moving your cheese in the UI.
  - amlib 3mo ago
    Except for the hundred thousands if not millions of people who lost their Minecraft account due to the way Microsoft handled multiple successive account migrations, also including the many accounts that were stolen due to lax security. And since digital ownership legislation is a joke consumers have pretty much no recourse.
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 3mo ago
      Beat me to it. I am still incredibly salty about losing my “lifetime” license to Minecraft. I really am curious to see some of the changes that have happened since I last played (when still owned by Notch), but I refuse to repurchase it.
      - galleywest200 3mo ago
        > I am still incredibly salty about losing my “lifetime” license to Minecraft. I kept my Minecraft license after migrating to a Microsoft account. Unsure how it got messed up for you.
        NekkoDroid 3mo ago
        > Unsure how it got messed up for you. If you didn't transfer it from your Mojang account to your Microsoft account in time (before the account was shut down) you just straight up lost access to it.
ChrisArchitect 3mo ago
Related: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48745456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48745456
homeslice69 3mo ago
While Microsoft may not be as bad on this as Sony so far, they have certainly shown a willingness to revoke access to digital games. For example- in an effort to push users to the newer fifa titles with microtransactions, they quietly removed the ability to redownload purchased digital copies of older fifa games. For anyone who might've temporarily uninstalled the game to free up space, there was suddenly no way to get the game on your machine again.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3mo ago
  That sounds like deletion by proxy. If there is no way to redownload it, seeing the title listed on your account does little good.
- thewebguyd 3mo ago
  That's almost certainly due to EA's licensing agreement with FIFA rather than Microsoft's decision. Similar to how you can no longer purchase older Forza games due to the licensing for use of the cars expiring.
  - forestry 3mo ago
    Ultimately it’s the same thing. If it can be taken away, you didn’t buy it.
  - diego_sandoval 3mo ago
    But it was bought on Microsoft's Store (a walled garden) on a Microsoft platform, so the ultimate responsibility towards the customer lays on Microsoft.
- charcircuit 3mo ago
  Also as a part of forcing Minecraft users onto Microsoft accounts they threatened, and carried out deleting everyone's Minecraft and Mojang accounts. If you refused to comply or happened to take a break from the game during that time, now you have to buy the game again and you lost anything on any multiplayer tied to your old account.
BiteCode_dev 3mo ago
And consumers will cry about it for about 5 minutes, then go back to reward the company. When HP started making printer cartridges that expired even when they were still full, people complained—then bought more. When Microsoft let the web stagnate with IE6, people complained, then turned around and did the same thing with Chrome. When Apple deliberately put a bug in the iPhone that caused the Home button to fail, pushing people to buy the next model, people got upset—and then bought the next one anyway. I'm amazed nobody remembers that one; it was such a huge deal at the time. And there is not a single link to articles about it anymore. When Adobe switched to mandatory Creative Cloud subscriptions, plenty of users protested, but most professionals stayed. When Amazon remotely deleted books from people's Kindles (including 1984), it was a scandal for a month, and then... nothing. When we found out PRISM existed, users were worried for a few months, then went right back to filling those platforms with their personal data. When Google allowed fraudulent DMCA takedowns, shut down accounts with no appeal, and censored its search engine, there was a brief outcry, then it was back to business as usual. When Sony put a bloody ROOTKIT on its music CDs (!!!!), people grumbled for five minutes and kept giving them money. These companies have no reason to stop. We never make them regret anything. I should make a website to save those for posterity, so that at least we have a track record of all the things they get away with because we let them. We're screwed—and we deserve it.
- handoflixue 3mo ago
  Switch to Brother laser jet printers - I hear about them every time HP comes up, I've had mine for years, it is a lovely solution Tons of people switched from IE6 to Chrome; IE is a dead browser. These days I'd recommend Firefox. Is there something wrong with the iPhone as of today? It sounds like the bug got fixed in response to outcry, especially if they went and scrubbed all traces of the event - that seems like a good outcome? Adobe stock is down almost 50% (42.24%) in the past year - I dare say a lot of people got sick of their shit. I have no clue what professionals use, but GIMP works fine for my amateur edits. Like, c'mon, change very clearly does happen. It's just slow and uneven. If you actually cared about change, I feel like you'd maybe list a few of the cool alternatives out there and actually help people make that transition. https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ - people do actually have to be taught about these things, not everyone knows what the alternatives are!
surcap526 3mo ago
[dead]
mindcrash 3mo ago
Closing inactive accounts in the EU is due to (interpretation of) certain provisions set in the GDPR (e.g. article 5 - https://gdpr-info.eu/art-5-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-5-gdpr/) and Sony is not alone, many services in the EU automatically close and delete orphaned accounts after a given amount of time, and if they are international ones even when they don't outside of the EU. If implemented correctly the affected person is also warned/notified several times by email before this is going to happen, so you have enough time to log in at least once and prevent it (and also extend the time frame again).
- fabian2k 3mo ago
  Those articles don't require deletion in this case, in my non-lawyer opinion. There is still a purpose to keeping the user's personal information here. Sony needs that information to be able to grant the user access to the content they bought. There's a difference here between an account that hasn't been used and doesn't hold anything of value and an account like this that holds items that were bought.
- handoflixue 3mo ago
  The problem with email is that it's an email address from 3+ years ago, which means there's a much higher chance of it being out of date - are you still using XxCoolDude67xX from high school? Consoles area also marketed heavily towards older teenagers and younger adults, who are exactly the ones unlikely to maintain a consistent email address. And of course if your email provided decides to cut you off, or goes out of business, or you used a university email...
  - ndsipa_pomu 3mo ago
    The solution to that is to allow people to set an additional email address for the account and then maybe allow them to disable the original after a period of time.
- tencentshill 3mo ago
  Good, customer data should be a liability and they should be incentivized to delete it as early as feasible, or not store it at all when possible. It's your data, not theirs.
kleiba2 3mo ago
I'm getting at the top of my browser window: > Your browser is not Javascript enable or you have turn it off. We recommend you to activate for better security reason It's reassuring to know that their copy is not AI-generated.
csrse 3mo ago
I am not sure, but I feel that many of these "Sony bad" type of conversations appear close to something unfavorable being discussed about Xbox. Am I imagining it? The Playstation issue discussed here is certainly not new, but the timing is interesting.
- fizwidget 3mo ago
  The timing surely is due to Sony’s recent announcement that they’re retiring physical media.
- johnnyanmac 3mo ago
  >many of these "Sony bad" type of conversations appear close to something unfavorable being discussed about Xbox. Both console makers released some devastating news this week. Perhaps by design (But probably not. It's a new financial quarter, the usual time for big news anouncements, good and bad). And this is coming all the backs of rising memory prices driving speculations of 4 figure next gen consoles, GTA 6 costing $80 for part of the game for a case which does not contain a disc, and alleged reports of digital dynamic pricing. It hasn't been a good few months for anyone in the games industry. Even Nintendo is begrudgingly increasing prices by end of summer.
adolph 3mo ago
This isn't surprising given how different businesses may value a payment against an ongoing obligation to customers. @patio11 had a good podcast about this "Cash received is not revenue earned" last April. What the GoDaddy CEO said in many interviews and investor presentations is: "Look, since we're not going out of business, and since the cost of serving domain names is essentially the same whether we're serving a million of them versus a hundred million of them, you should really treat this as a cash-and-carry business. So all of the money that comes in this year is our revenue, regardless of this massive balance sheet item that says deferred revenue." What sophisticated investors looking at GoDaddy said was, "Well, no. You do have to still keep running the business. And so from my perspective, it looks like GoDaddy is incredibly levered. You've got so much debt on the books. The debt isn't to a bank or to a private credit fund–it's just to your customers. But oh goodness, is there a lot of debt. And since that debt must get satisfied before US equity holders get the residual value of the company, we are not willing to extend equity investment at the valuation you think you're worth." https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/cash-received-is-not-revenue-earned/ https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/cash-received...
- RugnirViking 3mo ago
  what debt does the comapny owe, given his observation that the marginal cost of serving another customer is zero? sure, if they stopped serving them, theyd have a problem, I agree there. But when you try to value the liability here, its surely not very big? Thats what he's saying. Same here with these games. All sony has to do is not delete your games. They still keep your account, and your payment info and a hundred other things. but the cost of keeping a binary "owns/doesnt own" on their database is suddenly too much?
  - adolph 3mo ago
    Maintenance isn't cost-free. As an example, the operating system and other software dependencies of the game depends will eventually be depreciated and not supported. If a security vulnerability is discovered in software still available from company servers but the teams that built it have moved on, what is the company's liability for recomposing teams in order to make a fix that does not negatively affect other aspects of the software?
golemotron 3mo ago
I'd just be happy if companies were required to call them licensed and forbidden to call them sold or owned by the buyer.
hoppp 3mo ago
I hope they send warning letters to log in. Mine been idle for over a year and I don't have it right now.. but I paid for those games so it would be scammy to remove without warning. Does it cost them money to keep my purchases logged? I don't think so.
- opan 3mo ago
  Is logging in from a browser good enough?
nephihaha 3mo ago
You will own nothing and be bitterly unhappy. Maybe.
charcircuit 3mo ago
Just like how Mojang deleted my Mojang account taking away my copy of Minecraft I legitimately purchased. Don't think these ToS are just theoretical.
wkjagt 3mo ago
I just checked the drawer where I keep my NES games. Haven't played in a long time, but they're all still there.
j45 3mo ago
Sony is really motivated to turn away it's customers to other platforms.
ornornor 3mo ago
It’s as if they were working super hard to obliterate their domination of the consoles market. Xbox is in shambles but if Sony keeps pulling these braindead moves and annihilating any goodwill they have, Xbox might come out on top despite their best efforts.
thewileyone 3mo ago
I bought the Orange Box years and years ago and to install this Steam launcher to play Counter-Strike, what a pain in the a$$. Stop playing, promptly forgot about it. Years passed, and wanted to play something else that was on sale on this Steam thing that seemed familiar so reinstalled it. To my surprise, my old Orange Box games were still there. That has led to an unhealthy 20 years of hoarding on-sale games like Smaug. Thanks, gaben! P.S. Sony is screwing their fans.

286 points by thewebguyd 3mo ago

I'm not in the EU, but had 2 accounts with Sony/Playstation (I'm pretty sure both sat unused for more than 3 years). I tried to delete one and it seemed impossible. The FAQ said to call support. I called, waiting for 45 minutes, and they said they couldn't help me and hung up before I could respond. While I believe they would delete a user's games, I don't know if they would actually willingly give up holding on to customer data. My guess is this is more of a CYA incase they want to clean up accounts at some point, rather than something they actively do.

throwaway2027 3mo ago
> While I believe they would delete a user's games, I don't know if they would actually willingly give up holding on to customer data. So basically you get worst of both worlds, great.
- al_borland 3mo ago
  And on top of that, Sony will probably get hacked again, as has already happened a couple times. That was a primary reason why I actually wanted my account gone, not just inactive.

Mindwipe 3mo ago

"Sony correctly implements GDPR requirements in the EU" is a less exciting headline I guess.

guax 3mo ago
That is not how gdpr works. If you have a legitimate reason to hold the data. You can. Ensuring people have access to purchases is a very legitimate reason.
- cccbbbaaa 3mo ago
  And that data must be held for a limited amount of time under GDPR article 5(1)e. Sony’s policy is very much a consequence of this.
- computomatic 3mo ago
  Is there evidence that European courts have sided with that? “We’re holding onto all your data indefinitely just in case you log in again several years from now” seems to be the antithesis of GDPR and I can’t discern the difference between that and what you’re suggesting. I believe EU has dug their own hole here. And the best move would be to pass more legislation to explicitly require the retention (and transfer, ideally) of purchased digital goods.
  - cccbbbaaa 3mo ago
    No need to wait for the courts’ opinions: controllers must keep the data for a limited amount of time (which can be something like “3 years after the last connection”) under GDPR article 5(1)e.
    - crote 3mo ago
      To save everyone a click: > Personal data shall be: kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed. (..) Note that this does not say "it must be stored for a limited amount of time" - it says "no longer than necessary". Your basic account data (such as username and password, or an email for password recovery) is still necessary to log in to the platform and make use of your purchases. As long as there is no clear indication that the user will never log in again (such as due to death, or because they explicitly deleted their account), it would be reasonable to keep it around. On the other hand, it may make sense to delete some data. For example, it may make sense to store your full name and address info to make checkout more convenient. If a user hasn't bought stuff in a while, it makes sense to delete it and have them re-enter it in the future. There might be a bit of a gray space for things like game achievements (especially when there's a public profile) or savefile backups, but reading it as "you MUST delete all digital purchases because GDPR" is just not true.

Xeoncross 3mo ago

You know, all those people making new n64, playstation, and gameboy titles might be onto something. Apart from steam, I don't think I've heard anything but bad news from modern consoles.

amiga-workbench 3mo ago
Honestly, there's never been a better time to be writing games for those platforms. The SDK's are much improved from the proprietary stuff available at the time and the hardware is very well understood. People have been pulling off some utter witchcraft on the N64.
- echelon 3mo ago
  Kaze and James Lambert are amazing. Kaze's new Mario game looks better than a first party Nintendo title, and James's engines pushes the console to its absolute limits. I've been thinking about giving it a go myself. It's such a fun and nostalgic console, and the limitations are fun constraints. The code archeology is really cool too. Seeing Rare's Dinosaur Planet boot up and play after being a lost title. Decompiling all the original titles. Building sequels to Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. It's such a fun scene. Then there's Analogue 3D and ModRetro too, which make it fun to play as physical hardware.
  - RajT88 3mo ago
    Even crap emulator handhelds are getting pretty dang good (if you can get the right software stack).
    - opan 3mo ago
      Seconding this. Look for something with ROCKNIX support and put that on there.
  - dml2135 3mo ago
    Wait, someone actually brought N64 Dinosaur Planet to life? I gotta check this out...

glimshe 3mo ago

I was surprised to come back to my XBOX account after 10 years in the US and see that very old digital purchases from previous console generations were not only still available, but actually playable on the latest console through transparent emulation! They did a pretty good job with that.

PaulHoule 3mo ago
Whatever you think about Microsoft, they are a good steward of their platforms and go to extremes to maintain backwards compatibility -- even if they are always moving your cheese in the UI.
- amlib 3mo ago
  Except for the hundred thousands if not millions of people who lost their Minecraft account due to the way Microsoft handled multiple successive account migrations, also including the many accounts that were stolen due to lax security. And since digital ownership legislation is a joke consumers have pretty much no recourse.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 3mo ago
    Beat me to it. I am still incredibly salty about losing my “lifetime” license to Minecraft. I really am curious to see some of the changes that have happened since I last played (when still owned by Notch), but I refuse to repurchase it.
    - galleywest200 3mo ago
      > I am still incredibly salty about losing my “lifetime” license to Minecraft. I kept my Minecraft license after migrating to a Microsoft account. Unsure how it got messed up for you.
      - NekkoDroid 3mo ago
        > Unsure how it got messed up for you. If you didn't transfer it from your Mojang account to your Microsoft account in time (before the account was shut down) you just straight up lost access to it.

ChrisArchitect 3mo ago

Related: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48745456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48745456

homeslice69 3mo ago

While Microsoft may not be as bad on this as Sony so far, they have certainly shown a willingness to revoke access to digital games. For example- in an effort to push users to the newer fifa titles with microtransactions, they quietly removed the ability to redownload purchased digital copies of older fifa games. For anyone who might've temporarily uninstalled the game to free up space, there was suddenly no way to get the game on your machine again.

0cf8612b2e1e 3mo ago
That sounds like deletion by proxy. If there is no way to redownload it, seeing the title listed on your account does little good.
thewebguyd 3mo ago
That's almost certainly due to EA's licensing agreement with FIFA rather than Microsoft's decision. Similar to how you can no longer purchase older Forza games due to the licensing for use of the cars expiring.
- forestry 3mo ago
  Ultimately it’s the same thing. If it can be taken away, you didn’t buy it.
- diego_sandoval 3mo ago
  But it was bought on Microsoft's Store (a walled garden) on a Microsoft platform, so the ultimate responsibility towards the customer lays on Microsoft.
charcircuit 3mo ago
Also as a part of forcing Minecraft users onto Microsoft accounts they threatened, and carried out deleting everyone's Minecraft and Mojang accounts. If you refused to comply or happened to take a break from the game during that time, now you have to buy the game again and you lost anything on any multiplayer tied to your old account.

BiteCode_dev 3mo ago

And consumers will cry about it for about 5 minutes, then go back to reward the company. When HP started making printer cartridges that expired even when they were still full, people complained—then bought more. When Microsoft let the web stagnate with IE6, people complained, then turned around and did the same thing with Chrome. When Apple deliberately put a bug in the iPhone that caused the Home button to fail, pushing people to buy the next model, people got upset—and then bought the next one anyway. I'm amazed nobody remembers that one; it was such a huge deal at the time. And there is not a single link to articles about it anymore. When Adobe switched to mandatory Creative Cloud subscriptions, plenty of users protested, but most professionals stayed. When Amazon remotely deleted books from people's Kindles (including 1984), it was a scandal for a month, and then... nothing. When we found out PRISM existed, users were worried for a few months, then went right back to filling those platforms with their personal data. When Google allowed fraudulent DMCA takedowns, shut down accounts with no appeal, and censored its search engine, there was a brief outcry, then it was back to business as usual. When Sony put a bloody ROOTKIT on its music CDs (!!!!), people grumbled for five minutes and kept giving them money. These companies have no reason to stop. We never make them regret anything. I should make a website to save those for posterity, so that at least we have a track record of all the things they get away with because we let them. We're screwed—and we deserve it.

handoflixue 3mo ago
Switch to Brother laser jet printers - I hear about them every time HP comes up, I've had mine for years, it is a lovely solution Tons of people switched from IE6 to Chrome; IE is a dead browser. These days I'd recommend Firefox. Is there something wrong with the iPhone as of today? It sounds like the bug got fixed in response to outcry, especially if they went and scrubbed all traces of the event - that seems like a good outcome? Adobe stock is down almost 50% (42.24%) in the past year - I dare say a lot of people got sick of their shit. I have no clue what professionals use, but GIMP works fine for my amateur edits. Like, c'mon, change very clearly does happen. It's just slow and uneven. If you actually cared about change, I feel like you'd maybe list a few of the cool alternatives out there and actually help people make that transition. https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ - people do actually have to be taught about these things, not everyone knows what the alternatives are!

surcap526 3mo ago

[dead]

mindcrash 3mo ago

Closing inactive accounts in the EU is due to (interpretation of) certain provisions set in the GDPR (e.g. article 5 - https://gdpr-info.eu/art-5-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-5-gdpr/) and Sony is not alone, many services in the EU automatically close and delete orphaned accounts after a given amount of time, and if they are international ones even when they don't outside of the EU. If implemented correctly the affected person is also warned/notified several times by email before this is going to happen, so you have enough time to log in at least once and prevent it (and also extend the time frame again).

fabian2k 3mo ago
Those articles don't require deletion in this case, in my non-lawyer opinion. There is still a purpose to keeping the user's personal information here. Sony needs that information to be able to grant the user access to the content they bought. There's a difference here between an account that hasn't been used and doesn't hold anything of value and an account like this that holds items that were bought.
handoflixue 3mo ago
The problem with email is that it's an email address from 3+ years ago, which means there's a much higher chance of it being out of date - are you still using XxCoolDude67xX from high school? Consoles area also marketed heavily towards older teenagers and younger adults, who are exactly the ones unlikely to maintain a consistent email address. And of course if your email provided decides to cut you off, or goes out of business, or you used a university email...
- ndsipa_pomu 3mo ago
  The solution to that is to allow people to set an additional email address for the account and then maybe allow them to disable the original after a period of time.
tencentshill 3mo ago
Good, customer data should be a liability and they should be incentivized to delete it as early as feasible, or not store it at all when possible. It's your data, not theirs.

kleiba2 3mo ago

I'm getting at the top of my browser window: > Your browser is not Javascript enable or you have turn it off. We recommend you to activate for better security reason It's reassuring to know that their copy is not AI-generated.

csrse 3mo ago

I am not sure, but I feel that many of these "Sony bad" type of conversations appear close to something unfavorable being discussed about Xbox. Am I imagining it? The Playstation issue discussed here is certainly not new, but the timing is interesting.

fizwidget 3mo ago
The timing surely is due to Sony’s recent announcement that they’re retiring physical media.
johnnyanmac 3mo ago
>many of these "Sony bad" type of conversations appear close to something unfavorable being discussed about Xbox. Both console makers released some devastating news this week. Perhaps by design (But probably not. It's a new financial quarter, the usual time for big news anouncements, good and bad). And this is coming all the backs of rising memory prices driving speculations of 4 figure next gen consoles, GTA 6 costing $80 for part of the game for a case which does not contain a disc, and alleged reports of digital dynamic pricing. It hasn't been a good few months for anyone in the games industry. Even Nintendo is begrudgingly increasing prices by end of summer.

adolph 3mo ago

This isn't surprising given how different businesses may value a payment against an ongoing obligation to customers. @patio11 had a good podcast about this "Cash received is not revenue earned" last April. What the GoDaddy CEO said in many interviews and investor presentations is: "Look, since we're not going out of business, and since the cost of serving domain names is essentially the same whether we're serving a million of them versus a hundred million of them, you should really treat this as a cash-and-carry business. So all of the money that comes in this year is our revenue, regardless of this massive balance sheet item that says deferred revenue." What sophisticated investors looking at GoDaddy said was, "Well, no. You do have to still keep running the business. And so from my perspective, it looks like GoDaddy is incredibly levered. You've got so much debt on the books. The debt isn't to a bank or to a private credit fund–it's just to your customers. But oh goodness, is there a lot of debt. And since that debt must get satisfied before US equity holders get the residual value of the company, we are not willing to extend equity investment at the valuation you think you're worth." https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/cash-received-is-not-revenue-earned/ https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/cash-received...

RugnirViking 3mo ago
what debt does the comapny owe, given his observation that the marginal cost of serving another customer is zero? sure, if they stopped serving them, theyd have a problem, I agree there. But when you try to value the liability here, its surely not very big? Thats what he's saying. Same here with these games. All sony has to do is not delete your games. They still keep your account, and your payment info and a hundred other things. but the cost of keeping a binary "owns/doesnt own" on their database is suddenly too much?
- adolph 3mo ago
  Maintenance isn't cost-free. As an example, the operating system and other software dependencies of the game depends will eventually be depreciated and not supported. If a security vulnerability is discovered in software still available from company servers but the teams that built it have moved on, what is the company's liability for recomposing teams in order to make a fix that does not negatively affect other aspects of the software?

golemotron 3mo ago

I'd just be happy if companies were required to call them licensed and forbidden to call them sold or owned by the buyer.

hoppp 3mo ago

I hope they send warning letters to log in. Mine been idle for over a year and I don't have it right now.. but I paid for those games so it would be scammy to remove without warning. Does it cost them money to keep my purchases logged? I don't think so.

opan 3mo ago
Is logging in from a browser good enough?

nephihaha 3mo ago

You will own nothing and be bitterly unhappy. Maybe.

charcircuit 3mo ago

Just like how Mojang deleted my Mojang account taking away my copy of Minecraft I legitimately purchased. Don't think these ToS are just theoretical.

wkjagt 3mo ago

I just checked the drawer where I keep my NES games. Haven't played in a long time, but they're all still there.

j45 3mo ago

Sony is really motivated to turn away it's customers to other platforms.

ornornor 3mo ago

It’s as if they were working super hard to obliterate their domination of the consoles market. Xbox is in shambles but if Sony keeps pulling these braindead moves and annihilating any goodwill they have, Xbox might come out on top despite their best efforts.

thewileyone 3mo ago

I bought the Orange Box years and years ago and to install this Steam launcher to play Counter-Strike, what a pain in the a$$. Stop playing, promptly forgot about it. Years passed, and wanted to play something else that was on sale on this Steam thing that seemed familiar so reinstalled it. To my surprise, my old Orange Box games were still there. That has led to an unhealthy 20 years of hoarding on-sale games like Smaug. Thanks, gaben! P.S. Sony is screwing their fans.