Not the first time people “bought” digital media only to have it taken away.
Physical media or local downloads is the way to go.
Apple did it to apps I bought years ago, Microsoft has done it with Live Arcade games I can no longer redownload, and Nintendo closed their online stores to consoles they stopped supporting. The only store I can think of at the moment which doesn’t seem to fuck people is Steam (perhaps Epic but it’s too new to cast opinions on).
The only store I can think of at the moment which doesn’t seem to fuck people is Steam
Not exactly Valve’s fault
“To be fair, with the servers shutdown, the game would have been impossible to play anyways. This isn’t simply because it’s an online-only game. In fact, Order of War: Challenge has 18 single-player missions as well. But due to always-online DRM, even the single-player portion of the game requires the servers to be up and running.”
No DRM is the way to go, physical or digital. Some physical DRM can revoke the licence on the disk (like Blu-ray)
And don’t forget shit like Flexplay. The no-return rental DVD that self-destructs after ~48 hours. How ecological. Thankfully it was discontinued in 2011.
Not to be confused with Flexi Disc, which was essentially a CD-sized vinyl record with a sample track, that used to be inserted into magazines. Especially big in russia.
The sound quality left a lot to be desired. He’s a very rare Slowdive track with a banging tempo that was only released on Flexi Disc.
How? It would need an internet connection to revoke it, and you can’t write to the Blu-ray disc can you? In other words, you could just turn off internet connection from the player?
Blu-Ray discs can carry offline updates that blacklist other discs. All players must support these updates as part of licensing the technology. All your blu-rays may play today, but if an update comes along to revoke the license on a title and you play a disc that carries the update that enables that revocation, it won’t play back on your device. It’s occasionally been used to disable known pirated discs, and so far hasn’t been used on licensed materials, but “so far” is never much assurance.
when 4TBs are 50-100€, you bet your ass i’m gonna host a jellyfin server for the entire family.
I had to change my email/account with google and couldn’t port the apps in the gplay store. This was mostly due to having a google domains that did many years ago, but still didn’t get any solution when I explained that to the google customer service. It was clear to me that is not worth wasting a penny there.
Physical media or local downloads is the way to go.
PS5 games are like 90 GB. A DVD ROM stores 4.7 GB.
Its over.
Sony should invent a way for people to buy a movie, own it, and be able to store it on a shelf or something. Maybe we can even lend them to friends or start a library.
What do you mean “lend”? They won’t buy it themselves?? Corporate blasphemy!
You could even like, use a really high frequency of laser rays so that you can pack as much data on that blue disc! Maybe we could trademark this. I’ll call it High Definition DVD.
Wasn’t it SME that constantly came up with the dumbest fucking DRM garbage on their CDs that made you unable to play them in regular media players?
Sometimes they also came up with literal malware as DRM.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal
Ok, but why would I want to store digital media on a shelf? IMHO not having physical media cluttering up my physical space is a big advantage of online purchases. That, and being able to acquire new stuff at any time, day or night, without even leaving home.
So they’re promoting piracy, because that’s how you promote piracy.
I just discovered people pay series and shows on Playstation
The people who do this aren’t technologically “literate”. I don’t like using that phrase because it sounds judgy. I work with people like this. Their main computing device is their smartphone.
If this sounds foolish, it’s not really. These people struggle to make rent due to low wages in the area, so a laptop is “nice to have” but not a necessity. They’re also too time-poor to grab a used laptop or something and figure out the best way to hook it up to their tv and get the content they want. Why bother, their play station/xbox/smart tv already has Netflix or whatever.
I tried showing someone NewPipe for their android phone and I thought they were going to call me a witch or something. They didn’t trust me, and installing fdroid seemed sketchy to them so they didn’t do it. I can’t say I blamed them honestly.
Sony is awful, people should be able to use things they pay for.
I wouldn’t say tech illiterate so much as ignorant or they truly don’t care.
Unlimited plans and monthly financing means even a homeless person can get a really decent phone with great service. I’m surprised when I see anyone with more than a phone or tablet.
ISPs won’t even upgrade services is low income areas because no one buys internet service. They just don’t need it.
I’ve worked in IT for over 26 years, have my own Plex server in my home (that’s also connected directly to the TV in my living room via HDMI), and own and use several laptops.
Still, I’ve “bought” a number of movies from Microsoft largely thanks to the fact that I can sync them to multiple services using Movies Anywhere and because they were basically “free” to me because Microsoft kept giving me $5 gift cards randomly for a while there and I couldn’t think of anything better to use them on at the time.
I’d still be upset if they suddenly decided to yank those titles out of my library even though I don’t really rely on them as my only option to watch those films.
This is the unfortunate reality of current intellectual property. Anytime you don’t have a copy of something directly in your possession, either as a physical object like a BluRay, or digital file(s) on digital storage only you control, you don’t really own it. You’re just borrowing it, or more strictly speaking, you’re purchasing the right to access it until the agreement between the creator company (i.e., WarnerDiscovery) and the hosting company (i.e., Sony) expires.
When issues like this come up, there are right ways and wrong ways to handle it. This is an example of a wrong way. Google’s handling of the Stadia shutdown was an example of the right way. Any game you purchased on Stadia was refunded to the original payment method, not store credit, at the price you paid giving you the ability to reacquire the game on another platform and/or in another medium. They even refunded in-game purchases of things like premium currency (e.g. silver in Destiny 2, or crowns in Elder Scrolls Online) which was a great bonus because you got that whether you had spent the in-game currency or not so it was essentially free.
Personally, I’d like protection like what Google offered to be legally mandated for the purchase of streaming content. Sony has little choice in the matter if WarnerDiscovery won’t renew the streaming license. Legally, they must revoke access to the content, but currently they can choose to not compensate users who lose access to the content through these legal machinations and that’s what I have a problem with.
