5 ms·
List of references on Sony websites to players "owning" their digital games
- haunter 28d agoHN trunks the url https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Sony_PlayStation_digital_game_ownership_lawsuit#List_of_references_on_Sony_websites_to_players_%22owning%22_their_digital_games https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Sony_PlayStation_digital_game_...
- voidUpdate 28d ago> "Were that the case, then Plaintiff Edward Heycock would not have been able to obtain the game Resident Evil Requiem on February 25, 2026 for $69.99 from the PlayStation Store after Plaintiff Jason Mendoza had obtained Resident Evil Requiem on February 14, 2026, because Mr. Mendoza, not Sony, would have owned it then" I buy a book. I now own the copy of that book. My friend buys the book. They also own a copy of that book. We do not own the same copy of that book
- stetrain 27d agoAh, you could not have purchased a bag of Lays potato chips from the store on February 25th because I myself purchased a bag of Lays potato chips from that very same store the day previously!
- RIMR 27d agoTo be fair, this example doesn't work because those chip bags are two physically different objects that one can consume. Sony is trying to argue that because they are selling digital copies, that consumers cannot be granted rights to their copy because they can't transfer the intellectual property rights, which is complete nonsense. I have a 1999 DVD copy of The Matrix that I have owned for 27 years, and short of the physical disc-rot, I will be able to play that DVD until the day I die, and Warner Bros can't do anything about it unless I try reselling new copies, or claiming authorship because, despite owning the disc, I do not own the rights to the movie... A download isn't any different just because it lacks a physical form.
- aucisson_masque 27d agoEveryone understand what Sony lawyers are trying to say, and it’s still incredibly stupid. That’s the point.
- pixelatedindex 27d ago> We do not own the same copy of that book Why not? If you hash the book, it’ll match. It’s word for word the same book (editions not withstanding). It’s not the same if you tie in account permissions, of course. Or is this on a philosophical level? Edit: the downvotes make no sense, aren’t we talking about digital copies here?
- inknight 27d agogames are actual physical bits stored somewhere.
- pixelatedindex 27d agoI’m not denying that? What is the argument here?
- ratelimitsteve 27d agothat even if they form the same pattern, one pile of bits on one storage medium and another pile of bits on a different storage medium are two separate things and it's possible for one person to own one of the piles and another person to own the other one.
- deleted 27d ago[deleted]
- shevy-java 27d agoIt is a distinct physical object. Whether anyone stored digital information about it in a bit-wise manner, does not change that fact of a physical object being unique. The same book can not co-exist at the very same place and location and time in this universe. That makes no sense.
- pixelatedindex 27d agoI thought we were talking about digital copies.
- deleted 27d ago[deleted]
- josephg 27d agoEh “buy” vs “license” is a distraction. The real problem with online stores & licenses is that they charge the same amount of money for a worse product. If I buy a game on a disc, I can play the game, then resell it and someone else can play it. Or I can lend my copy of the game to a friend. When the online store eventually goes offline, I can still play all the games I have on disc. If I lose access to my online account, I still own the game. I can just get another console and play it. If digital purchases let you do all that, I’d be all for them. They’re more convenient and better for the environment. But Sony and friends want to take these rights away from us, without choice. And without a corresponding drop in game prices. I want the PlayStation store (and steam and Nintendo and so on) to let me remove a game from my account and give it to someone else. Let me do that and I wouldn’t have a problem with any of it. But the current online store system is too greedy. It sounds like a pipe dream, but this is how physical copies have worked for decades. My license moves with the game disc or cartridge. Why don’t we have a digital equivalent to this? If Sony stopped trying to push a worse product on their customers, their customers wouldn’t be mad about it.
- AlexandrB 27d ago> Why don’t we have a digital equivalent to this? This is the one place where NFTs make some sense. Ideally, such an ownership mechanism would be open and not tied to the lifespan of a particular publisher - something that's hard to achieve in practice without a distributed system like blockchain.
- Sohcahtoa82 27d agoChanging how the ownership of a digital asset is tracked is completely moot when the digital asset is no longer retrievable.
- rrrhys 27d agoA guid works fine
- LocalH 26d agoI wouldn't say NFTs per se, but I do think a blockchain could help here. If you can point to a specific block that documents that you purchased a copy of a piece of media, you should also be able to transfer that block to another person.
- johen8 27d agoYeah I'm not sure what they are trying to argue with that defense. It's also clear that this is not the point that the plaintiffs are trying to make. We don't care if you call it a license or whatever, if we purchase something (like a digital movie), we should be able to at least maintain access to it for an indefinite amount of time. "oh but that's not feasible", that's not really my problem, you are the ones ditching physical
- crest 27d agoNo reasonable person has ever argued that a consumer buying a (digital) copy of a game obtains the exclusive rights to the game. This is such a cheap embarrassingly stupid attempt to come up with a straw man. I'll listen to Sony management and lawyers whining about copyright after they paid the damages and fines and get out of jail for every rootkit they deployed. Should be any century now.
- b3lvedere 27d agoDefine or clarify the use of the word 'copy' please
- opan 24d agoIn software [copyright] terms I think this would be like you both have a license to use those books but you don't own the copyright to that book as you are not the author, so you can't change its license and you are somewhat limited in what you can do with it (plagiarism being one thing you can't get away with I guess). Whether something is physical or not seems to change how we think about things, and perhaps which laws/protections apply. "own" kind of seems buzzwordy and divisive here. I noticed on re-reading my own post I said you "have" a license. I guess I could say you "own" a license, but that seems a bit weird. Do you own it if it can be revoked? Police/TSA can take your possessions legally. I'm not on Sony's side here but I think fighting over "ownership" of intangible goods may be the wrong fight. It's a shame more games aren't free software and free culture as that seems easier to reason about and a better cause to fight for. When you go from the free software community bubble to the major video game bubble it feels like regressing 100+ years. I guess the issue is that in Sony's walled garden they have near total control and we have to chip away at that control with legislation until it's closer to what we expect in other contexts.
- rf15 28d agoSony's lawyers really picked a strange hill to die on here... even if they win, the precedence will screw over Sony, at least in marketing.
- embedding-shape 27d agoNot so strange, there is lots of money to be made by people not owning things anymore. Especially getting rid of physical second hand sells/buys will force consumer to buy the games straight from Sony again, who is the only store you will be able to buy Playstation games from. But yeah, hopefully the community and ecosystem is aligned enough to massively fuck Sony over this, vote with your wallets people.
- tancop 27d agoXbox already lost one console war over plans to stop the second hand market so they know how important it is to players. Their new disc to digital feature is proof they are looking at Sony's mistakes and slowly moving in the opposite direction. It basically removes the most serious thing that made physical games less convenient. If the PS6 is digital only and Xbox doubles down on discs it might be a slam dunk victory. Not all players understand or care about it now, but if they explain it well in the launch window and combine that with their back compat history I think they have a good chance to win. Even Microsoft knows that gaming is a competitive market and pulling customers from PlayStation is better than trying to extract as much as possible from your existing user base. One Game Pass sub is worth more than marketplace fees from 3 extra games you would normally buy used.
- nottorp 27d ago> Their new disc to digital feature is proof they are looking at Sony's mistakes and slowly moving in the opposite direction. It basically removes the most serious thing that made physical games less convenient. Heh, isn't that a move against resale as well? The disc will only work once for disc-to-digital won't it? And possibly get tied to a specific xbox account.
- 27d ago
- gwbas1c 28d agoSeems like we need some copyright reform WRT issues like this. We need a true way to have digital ownership; including putting assets in escrow and a way for access to continue after the store is shut down or the item removed from the store.
- Jcampuzano2 28d agoYour access to a digital product you have "purchased" should not be tied to the continued existence of the store you also bought it from. Similar to physical products. If I bought a game at GameStop we aren't required to continuously reach back out to them every once in a while to check that they're okay with me playing the game I bought from them. And if GameStop goes out of business they aren't going to come knocking on my door to make sure I never play the game again or take it back from me. Once a game or any other product is purchased from a digital store, it should not require the stores continued existence or permission. Yes there are some drawbacks in that maybe they could argue then that they could stop allowing redownloading a game you've already purchased but so be it, they'd just be offering a worse experience and users would move away. We also need to stop allowing unclear language. When we lease a car at a dealership they never use the term "buy" or "own". That's strictly reserved for ownership. We should require the same for other licensed/leased products.
- simiones 28d agoOne fun thing I remember from reading some EULAs for physical games I bought in the past: the EULA for StarCraft at least explicitly said that you are required to obtain prior written permission from Blizzard Entertainment before lending the disk to a friend. Obviously this is not practically enforceable, but it shows that nothing of this kind is new from these companies' perspectives. The way the law is structured, you are never buying copies of digital goods, regardless of the format in which you obtain them. Instead, you buy a license to use the digital good under the specific terms and conditions of that license. That is why if you get a disk with GNU utils on it from the FSF, you are still bound by the GPL in what you can do with the data on that disk.
- saghm 27d ago
- deleted 28d ago[deleted]
- Jcampuzano2 28d ago> In the digital age, it is not plausible to allege that reasonable consumers believed they were obtaining "ownership" of a digital game. So their argument really is that it is unreasonable for anybody to believe they own any of the things they download or purchase digitally? What a leap there. I mean thats as plain english as you can get to an official rubber stamp on "you will own nothing and you will be happy". And then they want to have it both ways by interchangeably using the words "revocable license" and "ownership" when it suits their needs. License in small writing/text, but "own" in anything the user might actually reasonably read.
- croes 28d agoDoes Sony believe in ownership of digital money?
- 4thguy 27d agoNo of course not, they merely license it from the government /s (or not /s? this whole thing is confusing)
- intrasight 27d agoAll ownership is temporary. Even Earth's ownership of its atoms is really a lease granted temporarily by the Solar system.
- excalibur 28d ago[dead]
- NSUserDefaults 27d agoYou own the license. The license can be revoked. Don’t look for ways to prove them wrong. Just don’t buy it.
- micromacrofoot 27d agoyeah the outcome here is "we're sorry, here's your 0.50 class action settlement payment" and updated terms of service... it's not going to reverse anything, people need to stop buying
- titzer 27d ago> own > revoked I think the dispute is right here.
- tancop 27d ago> The motion says the PlayStation Terms of Service put a binding arbitration agreement and a class action waiver in Section 14, and quotes the opt-out clause: ... > The clause requires a user who does not wish to be bound to notify Sony in writing within 30 days of accepting the agreement. Binding arbitration on individuals should be illegal, full stop. The only use case is taking away people's rights as consumers and workers. Or dodging responsibility for deadly mistakes like the Disney+ incident. This "opt out" mechanism is made to let Sony lawyers argue that accepting it was your choice so it can't be struck down as forced, even if 99% of users have no idea it exists, by design. Evil all the way down.
- Jcampuzano2 27d agoThis is also one of those scenarios similar to subscription or membership cancellation where we should not allow accepting/signing up for something require using an entirely different method of communication to cancel/opt out. Requiring written notification while the TOS being accepted entirely via digital means should be illegal. Not to mention I think its insane that we allow companies to be able to dictate how citizens are allowed to utilize their legal system.
- mtlynch 27d ago> Binding arbitration on individuals should be illegal, full stop. The only use case is taking away people's rights as consumers and workers. Or dodging responsibility for deadly mistakes like the Disney+ incident. Hijacking to link to another website that has good information about how binding arbitration is stacked against the consumer/employee: https://arbitrationinformation.org/ https://arbitrationinformation.org/
- j1elo 27d agoAs a society we need to sort out this simple scenario: * 16 years old Joe buys a $70 cartridge/disc game, already assuming and counting on the $35 that he'll get back on second-hand sell. That's it. A simple idea that should never cease to be possible, regardless of the medium. This particular example made games affordable, and it also inadvertently put a concrete price on several other factors like how much it costs to be a first owner vs. wait for a second-hand purchase, and how much it costs to keep it for your collection vs. allowing the product to flow back into the community.
- gdulli 27d agoSteam trained a whole generation of gamers not to expect real ownership with resale rights. It's sad. The population old enough to even know this is how it used to be is shrinking.
- tancop 27d agoPC gamers know piracy is always an option. There's even a reliable Denuvo bypass now if you're willing to play on Linux. The real power Steam has over its customers is a lot less than console makers, even if it's legally the same.
- wao0uuno 27d agoThis is very different on PC since Valve does not have the same iron grip on the platform that Sony has. If Steam becomes evil and tries to take my games away I'll just download a pirated copy instead. I purchase my games for convenience and to give some money to the creators. I don't need to purchase games to play them. I also can back up my Steam game files and use a crack on them if necessary.
- sensanaty 27d agoPirating has literally never been easier than it is today. Even Denuvo's been defeated for the most part, both via VM bypasses and through actual cracks in some cases. If it weren't so sad, it's hilarious that the games even run better without the Denuvo crapware running on top of the game process. If Steam/Valve decides to turn evil one day, it'll be trivial to just pirate whatever game you want to keep playing on the PC. Not to mention that Steam already allows you to backup all your game files if you so wish. Steam won because of convenience and all the other features they bring to the table like the community markets, guides, achievements, cloud saves, Steamworks for lobbies/friends etc. Like Gabe said himself, piracy is a service issue, so if Steam itself enshittifies things will correct themselves, which can't be said and done for a closed platform like Sony/MS have.
- shevy-java 27d agoI've noticed something interesting here. Sony claims it does not disown people because even when they purchased a physical hard copy, Sony still would own it. Naturally this is wrong - people could re-sell it if they want to and Sony could not remote-control anything else. But it is interesting that Sony TRIES to go that route now. I think the courts will have to make a very simple decision as to what ownership constitutes. IMO when there is a physical hardcopy, things have to stay as they are for decades - this is the only logical conclusion. So, Sony trying to prevent physical hardcopies, as means to dis"own" future sales, should be closed down by the court system. I'd even think legislation should change so that Sony would be required to make these as a copy. That could be as simple as on a USB stick for instance (does not even have to be provided by Sony, could be purchased elsewhere by the buyer). Sony's way to try to argue here makes no sense to me. We need better right to ownershiper by customers laws, in addition to right to repair laws in favour of the customers. These corporations bribed legislation to their favour - that must stop.
- encrypted_bird 27d agoWhat's with all the line breaks?
- titzer 27d agoIf 30 years ago someone suggested breaking into your house to take away your Nintendo games or remotely disabling them by sending something over the network to the console, it would have absolutely been beyond the pale. But 30 years of boiling the frog and now we have a megacorp that has absolutely no qualms about maximizing their profits by doing the moral equivalent. The popular conception of what constitutes a transaction, what constitutes ownership, and what is fair use has swung so far away from what consumers want and expect, that I can't believe they're arguing, stupidly, in court, that ownership is "not possible" because one person can buy a game, and then a second person can! Whatever happened, I dunno. I hate that consumers have become so powerless in the face of relentless erosion of basic transactional norms. It just reinforces how much I will not be participating in that economy.
- buran77 27d ago> "Were that the case, then Plaintiff Edward Heycock would not have been able to obtain the game Resident Evil Requiem on February 25, 2026 for $69.99 from the PlayStation Store after Plaintiff Jason Mendoza had obtained Resident Evil Requiem on February 14, 2026, because Mr. Mendoza, not Sony, would have owned it then" That's a very interesting defense. I wonder if it opens up a door maybe Sony would rather keep shut. If I can't own a copy of content because someone else has another copy, how does this play out for piracy? According to Sony's own argument, pirating a copy of the content is fine because others can/do still "buy" or "own" (rent/lease) it.
- zenoprax 27d ago> pirating a copy of the content is fine because others can/do still "buy" or "own" (rent/lease) it. Piracy is not theft. It is an infringement on another's right to distribute intellectual property. This lawsuit is wasting a lot of time by not simply addressing the long-standing norm of buying a physical object which bundles the content, the license, and it many cases the copyright protection mechanisms. Selling a used DVD is possible because the DVD contains the license — it is transferable and irrevocable by dint of its format. Digital goods lack these distinct features but the language looks the same so people are now feeling the rug pull. Hence, the pushback against abandoning disc sales.
- buran77 27d ago> Piracy is not theft. It is an infringement on another's right to distribute intellectual property. That wasn't the direction I was going towards. Sony treats digital copies as if only one can have the ownership rights attached to it. This logic can be extended to any other right. > Selling a used DVD is possible because the DVD contains the license — it is transferable and irrevocable by dint of its format. The format does not make it irrevocable, it makes the revocation impossible to enforce. The license is attached to the content of the DVD, not the plastic disc per se. This license gives me the right to read that disk and send that digital copy to my output device. It's also why I can't just copy the content to a disc I own and call it a day. So a digital copy read straight from Sony's storage and sent to my output device can very well have the same license attached to it. To be honest, I think it's a stupid defense but one that may just fly in places with the best justice money can buy. And there's a lot of money trying to buy a carte blanche to not give ownership rights to digital content, coming from every producer or distributor of such content.
- ratelimitsteve 27d agoThis thing where companies can use custom definitions of words in order to intentionally build ambiguity into their agreements is designed to induce just this type of problem. Words have meaning outside these agreements and that outside meaning influences people's interpretation of the agreement. Words are, unfortunately, also ambiguous. So when we make these agreements we allow them to add more detail to definitions in an effort to clear up that ambiguity, but we end up with people trying to argue blatant contradictions like "any reasonable person would understand that own doesn't mean own"
- m000 27d agoAlso, the definition of what a "reasonable person" is capable of understanding varies from case to case, depending on the interests of the companies involved. E.g. meat and milk industry want us to believe that a "reasonable person" is dumb enough to be confused by labels like "soy milk" or "vegan burger".
- ratelimitsteve 27d agoeveryone believes something different, everyone knows a different set of facts, everyone thinks of themselves as reasonable, and the law depends on what a reasonable person might believe. absent some objective standard of reasonability it's all just places where you can inject ambiguity and then leverage that ambiguity to make the law shift like sands in the wind while still thinking of it as absolute and immutable. "Reasonable people understand that words don't always mean what their common definition would imply and it's on the consumer to know the difference" for Sony immediately followed "reasonable people assume words mean what is implied by their common definition and it's on the producer to account for that" for the California Dairy Council, then when we accuse them of crafting separate laws for separate clients they can say "well we just applied the reasonable person standard here the same way we would for anyone else".
- dofm 27d agoI am deeply ambivalent about Sony. I have had three mirrorless Sony cameras (albeit two secondhand), and I think they made what is one of the low-key best hobbyist cameras of its class ever [0], and I don't even much mind their current camera software, which I installed somewhat reluctantly. But back on the distributable content side, this is a company that hacked customers' PCs with a rootkit. They are a big enough and clumsy enough company to make bad decisions regularly. [0] the NEX-6, a true joy that I would recommend to anyone who wanted an old knockabout camera even now, though even fourteen years since it was released, its used prices hold up almost too well because I am clearly not the only person who thinks it is lovely
- stronglikedan 27d agoDon't cut off your nose to spite your face. Buy and enjoy their cameras while avoiding their software as much as humanly possible.
- dofm 27d agoOh, I do. I mean part of what is so great about these cameras is their everyman quality — plus secondhand availability. There is a Sony mirrorless camera at essentially every secondhand price point you can imagine. At heart, I am a Nikon guy. My wallet, though, is a proper little Sony fanboi.
- OroPla 27d agoI guess it's worth pointing out that Sony (the conglomerate) isn't one company. It's a whole lot of companies. The gaming related part is called Sony Interactive Entertainment (headquartered in San Mateo, California). Movies are done by Sony Pictures Entertainment (headquartered in Culver City, California). The ones making cameras are Sony Corporation (headquartered in Tokyo). As far as my understanding goes, the Japanese part is pretty good, while the people in California have lost the plot.
- bluefirebrand 27d ago> the people in California have lost the plot I say this constantly about many topics. Californians are a super different breed
- xyst 27d agoAll digital content, from e-books to games, should be DRM free. I bought a few e-books on Apple’s Draconian Store over the years and discovered its ".epub" format is some DRM protected trash. The whole industry needs correction. Not just Sony.
- anigbrowl 27d agoAnother day, another Sony hate thread. It's not that I endorse Sony's legal/business practices, but rather than these sort of hyper-asymmetric claims are the norm in modern commercial contracts. Perhaps its coincidence that the tech community has decided to choose Sony as the epitome of all corporate greed, but I can't help wondering if this is an example of astroturfing. It'd be interesting to do a comparative Study of Sony's practices vs other publishers/platform operators.
- Timwi 27d agoI'm not sure what this lawsuit is going to accomplish. Even if Sony loses, they will pay a nominal fine, and then they'll just change “Buy now” to “Play now” and “game you already own” to “game you already have” or something and it'll make zero difference.
- ang_cire 27d agoIf the plaintiffs are smart, they'll use Sony themselves calling digital licenses "owned" items, to say that Sony understood that licenses should be treated as other owned objects -which would naturally entail the non-revocability of a purchase outside exigent circumstances like malfeasance- but are now trying to change that post-hoc, and argue the court should not let them.
- Timwi 21d agoYes, and that might help some people who always bought the game, but it won't change the situation going forward is what I'm saying.
- vatcqqiswdegizm 21d agoamazon japan psn Gift Card on how it work it say After purchase, this item with redemption instructions will be available on Your Games and Software Library and email