What the hell they talking about? Digital ownership is amazing. I can stream all my content from my server and keep it forever as long as I backup regularly. What sucks is buying shit digitally because then you don’t own it at all
Yeah they’re not talking about ownership here. They’re talking about custodial “ownership”. Like when you buy bitcoin and keep in on an exchange - you down actually own it.
Some people think if you buy a movie from Sony or any other online only marketplace you actually own it….
I have content I purchased on steam 19yrs ago. Shit was built for completely different hardware but I can go install and play it right now. The physical console games I bought that year only work in consoles that have long since broken. I can go play HL2 whenever I want, to play my copy of THPS3, I have to find and buy a PS2 that still works.
Digital ownership can apparently work just fine
Sony is reminding us that Sony is a shitty company. The company that bought you amazing technology like the memory stick ™ probably cannot be trusted.
Don’t find yourself in a false sense of security.
Your games on Steam are just as ephemeral as any other digital content purchased online.
Dude it’s been 20yrs. I bought a game 20yrs ago and I can still play it. The physical media that I OWN did not last that long.
Any day it could go away. Just like my PS2 games went away when the only hardware on earth allowed to play them died.
A quarter of a human lifetime and counting is ephemeral? You think you are going to be able to get a blue ray player in another 20yrs? You know that making one requires paying fees to Sony, right? If you want media that lasts for generations, buy paintings and sheet music.
Have you ever come across the idea of making digital backups of the physical media you owned?
All the physical games i ever owned went up in flames when my house burned down. I can still play games i bought on steam in 2008
You could have made digital backups of your physical games and stored that somewhere safe.
You cannot make backups of DRM’d Steam games that work without Steam.
Incorrect. Steam games are licensed to you. If the dev or publisher want to remove the game from Steam, it will still be in your library.
Even then in a worst case scenario due to the open platform piracy is a possibility. That’s where some of the peace of mind comes from compared to purchasing of digital goods for a closed system.
Pirates are the librarians of the new age. But I caution you, much media cannot be found as soon as you step of the path of the big releases. So it really isn’t the final solution.
Shit was built for completely different hardware
It’s still PC architecture. May not be 64 bit, but there’s nothing stopping a modern x86-64 processor from directly running software made for an IBM PC from the 1980s without a VM or emulation. Backwards compatibility on PC is amazing. Drivers are a different story.
With dedicated consoles, the hardware is often bespoke and completely changes with each iteration of the console. In order to remain backwards compatible, emulation is required to recreate the previous environment so older games will run. That or they literally just stuff a miniature subsystem of the old console into the new one.
I’ve never even owned a PlayStation but I’ve owned enough absolute shit made by Sony that I started boycotting them like 15 years ago. They really are a truly shit company. It always amazes me they are considered a quality brand.
Word! The nastiest vendor lock in bullshit you’ve ever seen. My bitchin’ yellow Walkman aside, bad products top to bottom.
You’re hyperbolizing. The Playstation 2 is the best selling video game hardware of all time. It was the opposite of a “bad product” objectively.
Like I said, I never owned a PlayStation. What made me boycott Sony is buying many products, things like headphones, and paying double or triple the price of comparable products which probably were better than the more expensive Sony version. I know I had some shitty koss headphones I bought for $30 that were better than $200 Sony ones.
And I know someone is going to question this and ask me what model, etc. I don’t know or care. It wasn’t just the headphones it was just several times in a row of thinking I paid more and got something nice and later finding out it was shit.
Agreed. Physical ownership is the shelf of old DVD and CDROM PC and XBOX classic game boxes in my basement that take up space, collect dust, will never work again, and will only be a remembrance of nostalgia for a bygone day. Plus I’ll probably never seriously want to play them again… let’s be honest. I can watch a video of someone else playing, it scratches the same itch, and saves me the trouble.
I like digital ownership, but there needs to be protections so we can’t be screwed.
I agree. It’s hard to draw lines though right. Say your country made a law that companies could not pull the sort of shit Sony is pulling here. They would have to put a timeline on it right? It’s unreasonable that they should support a 10$ digital purchase for centuries. But 10yr old content disappearing is also horseshit. So what is a good line? What expectations is it reasonable to have as a consumer?
What can I reasonably expect when I pay a few bucks for a downloaded movie. I feel like that is what we are really debating here. To me, getting 20+ yrs of support for a game on steam seems like an insanely good deal. I never got that for physical games. I am forced to admit that digital games on steam are a better deal than any physical games I have ever bought.
Digital ownership CAN work but you have to decide who you trust. I would never trust Sony (or other console manufacturers) to maintain my digital library over the long term. But I guess trusting valve worked out. Shit, all my old ebooks still work too, and that’s Amazon, hardly a paragon of ethics.
The problem isn’t digital ownership, it’s the companies that are selling stuff and/or the regulatory structure that they operate in.
It’s not just PCs and Steam. I can still play my original Xbox games from 20+ years ago on my Series X (they predate Xbox Live, let alone the Xbox Live Store), and I can still play the digital and physical Xbox 360 and Xbox One games that I bought in those eras as well.
Gamers (and legislators), give Sony and Nintendo way too much of a pass for shitting on backwards compatibility.
there’s been instances of issues with steam games. like paid characters and skins in games being removed after the ip owners decided it was worth more money. dead by daylight did this multiple times.
Im not arguing that all digital ownership works great for consumers. But it can work. Shitty companies will always be shitty and it doesn’t matter how you possess the goods, you bought them from shitty companies.
As a general rule which applies to all products: if the company you are paying has to pay another company a license fee for your product to work, it’s not going to work for very long. Be it a Blu-ray Disc or a marvel skin, your vendor will stop paying their vendor as soon as they can.
Not sure why anyone at this point is stoked to own a Playstation. Literally all of their games are going to be on PC, GTA6 will eventually be on PC, not to mention all of the cross platform games on PS5 that are, you guessed it, also on PC.
Between digital storefronts removing content you paid for and the price tag on all new releases, it just doesn’t make sense to engage with this new generation of “you don’t actually own your games now”.
Because it costs like a quarter of an equivalent gaming PC, and there’s actually an option for physical disc ownership unlike PC.
Lots of reasons to enjoy having a Playstation. Having a full PC setup is expensive when you factor in more than just the case build. It’s nice to have something you can boot up and get right into. Everyone acts like their system is superior but the superior system is whatever one best suits your needs. I personally would absolutely love a PS5 varient that didn’t require internet and just let me play my single player games in peace.
I think the big cost savings on PC come from a lack of subscription fees. Plus a huge variety of storefronts to choose from so prices tend to be low. Games get cheap fast if you wait a little bit.
It’s pretty easy to match console performance with a budget PC, but it definitely isn’t as easy. I can’t wait until I can pause/resume games on my desktop like I can on the Steam Deck. Huge quality of life feature.
DVDs are also digital though. I cannot really imagine analog video games
After the spyware disclosure and consent form on launch of Horizon Zero Dawn, I ceased getting anything Sony.
But the recent discontinuation of service shows us the ethic of piracy is (and always was) one-sided. Sony takes what it pleases, and no one is going to enforce otherwise.
We are justified in taking whatever action is necessary to ensure our own survival and fair benefit including violent terrorism so long as the state’s agencies are not going legislate or adjudicate fairly but in the favor of plutocrats and corporations.
The whole point of the social contract is equal treatment and preventing the bloodshed of natural disagreement resolution (typically intergenerational family feuds)
Sony can appreciate we just want our shows and tunes and games with little hassle, and not revenge for being a traitor to the peace.
Sony will totally download a bear.
