Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jigsy | Hacker News Reader

I don't own a PS5, I do own a PS4 however and still buy physical copies of games - some of which of late have been secondhand from CeX - because 1. I don't like renting content, 2. I hate DRM, 3. physical copies are harder to censor.

Sony recently expunged copies of movies people had bought, so I honestly don't trust them not to do the same with games.

Also, they announced the closure of the PS3 store, so that's even less reason to trust that I won't be able to reobtain the games I've bought digitally in the future...

View on HN

Though you have a physical copy of the game, I don't discount a future where a console refuses to load a physical copy of the game because DRM impedes it. Much like when short-lived TLS certificates expire on their own, even by being offline.

Physical copies of games have in their EULA that the game is licensed to you, so theoretically they could still disable it.

Precedent? BlackBerry phones refused to connect to WiFi if you didn't pay for your mobile data plan. It became a 2G brick.

They have easier options. For one, just don't put a drive in the newer ones.

Actually, thinking about this now, I tried to play PS1 games on my PSP about two years ago, but couldn't because they needed to be (re-)authenticated.

Sadly, there's NO way to authenticate PS1/PSP games on PSP anymore. Even connecting it to the PS3 via USB and trying to authenticate it didn't work.

(At least PS1 games still work on PS3 for now, though.)

I think about how much hardware and software is tied in to internet activation or fragile software like ios apps that need constant updating or they will be delisted.

All of this stuff is just starting to be shut down and deactivated now, the amount of ewaste is going to be massive. I now refuse to buy anything that requires an app or the interenet to use.

Supposedly you can still redownload your PSN purchases directly on the PSP itself (log in with a "Device Setup Password")? Unless like me you have a PSP Street, which sadly has no Wi-Fi.

Physical copies aren’t harder to censor nowadays, unfortunately. All they have to do is push a “you can’t start this game without the latest update, and the latest update is unavailable” update and it’s gonzo.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com