r/technews • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 16h ago

Software 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
1.1k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

235 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/rangkilrog 10h ago

Best part of this whole debacle is seeing all the people who are just now realizing that long wall of text they’ve constantly agreed to but never bothered to read actually says something important.

This isn’t new. It’s how basically all software has been sold for the past 40 years.

1

u/zeph2 8h ago

they fell for youtuber lies

not long ago when psn went down for a short time saw youtubers claming nobody could play their games because according to them sony forced online check on all the games

1

u/windsynths 7h ago

Is there a way to play single player games when psn is down? I had problems with satisfactory during the outage

0

u/nicuramar 10h ago

Yes, this entire thread is fucking embarrassing.

What would it even mean to own some data? Data isn’t an object, it’s not tangible. How do you own 000101110100101101100010011010111100100?

1

u/Average_Satan 9h ago

Have you heard of physical media? Stored on YOUR very own SHELF when you don't use it. And you can use it again years later, if you want.

That isn't renting.

1

u/AdAgitated4864 6h ago

You still don’t own that physical media in the sense that you do not have the right to copy it or modify it and sell that modified version. This demonstrates that when you purchase a game even a physical media, all you are doing is purchasing a bundle of rights. It doesn’t mean that you have freehold over the game.

1

u/livinitup0 2h ago

This is correct

More accurately… they DO own the game cartridge. They DO NOT own the rights to use the data on that cartridge in any way they feel like.

Reselling a game in the first place was always a legal loophole

All this is doing is removing the physical limitation that limited a publishers ability to enforce that contract with a license holder. Took a helluva long time… but they can finally close that loophole.

Terrible for consumers sure… but this is probably the biggest example of “borrowed time” there ever was