https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/06/sony-erases-digital-...
https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/an-update-on-playsta...
This is a weird marketing strategy. They must feel free to do as they please since they know consumers are trapped.
Gaming is a luxury good. We can all just walk away.
I wish NFTs had taken off as a system for managing decentralized transferrable digital purchases instead of being another investment scam.
My entire Steam library is backed up to LTO tapes. I can get most everything running without needing Steam.
I will continue to support this business model, because I retain the power to own the system and the data.
I thought most Steam games relied on remote activation/verification? Can you install and run them on a non-networked machine? If not, your LTO tapes are close to worthless because Valve (or its buyer) can still pull the same trick that Sony did here, with the same effect.
If you have invested into Sony platforms and games, you're stuck. You either write it off and move now, buying hardware during a component crisis, or you keep investing moving forward. On a PC, I might lose access to games on Steam but my hardware will allow me to buy new games on a different storefront.
If you want to guarantee that you can backup your PC games and run them without a client, then there is always https://www.gog.com/
People have been talking about "walking away" for at least that long.
The soles of those walking shoes are as thick and un-worn as they've ever been.
Like all things, this too shall pass.
Unlike Valve who has never taken away what people have bought without a refund (to my knowledge), Sony doesn’t deserve that benefit of the doubt:
https://www.techradar.com/streaming/entertainment/this-shoul...
Monopolies, anti-competitive behavior, and anti-consumer behavior in general are all bad bad bad. You have to be a very interesting individual to disagree with that.
8 years is roughly the lifespan for a games console though.
And I say this as someone who hates Sony perhaps more than most, having lived through their the CD rootkit and PS3 OtherOS debacles. And been burned by their substandard yet overpriced audio equipment.
They are tools, toys, they are devices. I can still play my PS1 as before, I just need to pop in a CD and I'm good to go.
I’m a retro gamer. I have around 20 systems all hooked up and ready to play from the Atari 2600 through to modern systems like the PS4. In fact I bet I have systems you hadn’t even heard of, and machines that are older than you are.
So I know better than most that consoles can live for decades. But that’s not what people mean when they talk about a consoles life.
What that term means is the period of time that a console is the current generation (and yes, “generation” is the technical term here and not something I made up).
Also decay isn’t a phenomenon exclusive to biology. Plenty of things which aren’t organic can have a life and decay, even though we know they’re not technically a life form. For example stars. But even technology can decay. Capacitors and batteries are the biggest two killers of old technology, and common problems I’ve had to repair in my old hardware. The laser in your PS1 is also a consumable. I’ve had to replace the laser in my PS1 for that very reason. Solder can crack. Any moving parts like motors, fans, and CD/DVD trays can seize up over time too. There’s also sun-bleaching that happens to white and grey casing too, which is thankfully a very easy fix.
You can be a tiny company and still be a monopoly. If you're the only grocery store in a (walkable) town where many elderly people don't own a car, you're a monopoly. If you're the only company allowed to sell beer at a football game (that doesn't allow fans to bring liquids into the stadium), you're a monopoly. If you're a school cantine, and school rules forbid students from walking out during the school day, you're also a monopoly.
Both iOS and Android both generate more in gaming revenue than Sony. The PC gaming market is only slightly smaller than the entirety of the console market. It's going to be very difficult to make an argument that customers don't have reasonable choice, and the recent case against Apple set precedent that owning the single channel of distribution to a product and platform you own isn't monopolistic unless you do shady things like Google did.
Sony's exclusive rights to distributing games on its owned platform and console will not give it pricing power (won't pass SNNIP) or exclude competition.
Sony can be called a dick for what they're doing without it also having to be monopolistic. People are right to be angry and calling them a monopoly over it is being cathartic.
'1: exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action specifically : exclusive control of a particular market that is marked by the power to control prices and exclude competition.'
That definition doesn't define any boundaries on to what market a company has control over. A hardware platform like Playstation only has one store, run by the company who sells the platform; explicit control of the particular market, that market being Playstation games. By going digital only, they now have total command of supply. They also explicitly deny competition from participating. They even have a hand in pricing the games sold on the platforms, an ability they're able to leverage because they hold a vertical monopoly.
The issue isn't me or anyone else defining the word "monopoly" too broadly, it's that the frog has so thoroughly been boiled on what we once considered monopolies that we can no longer see a monopoly for what it is even when it's self-evidently obvious. I agree that anti-trust enforcement has become lax, I'm not arguing that it hasn't... but it shouldn't have. It's been about 30 years of letting big tech and media conglomerates do whatever they want and it is time for that to stop, and not just for video games.
They've always had control by licensing who can publish games on their platform. Now that contract with publishers has changed who can distribute. Publishers are still free to distribute on other platforms in whatever formats those platforms allow.
> that market being Playstation games
This is arbitrarily narrowing the definition of market as far as possible while ignoring reasonable (legal) thresholds. Case in point how Apple's App Store was not ruled a monopoly while Google's Play Store was - there are reasonable tests to pass, and Sony's case will land closer to Apple than Google. And a monopoly is not the only form of anti-competitive abuse.
Might as well claim Domino's has a monopoly on Domino's pizza.
No it isn't, it's literally a market.
Dominos pizzas aren't created and sold by third parties. If you're going to make a comparison, try something doesn't so obviously miss the point (though if you want to talk about commercial food supply chains and how that's become almost entirely monopolized in the United States...).
The rest of your argument is basically "the law says so". Not an argument I'm interested in discussing since I don't care. I explicitly want legislative changes.
> our argument is basically "the law says so".
That's the only argument that matters, because monopoly is a legal matter.
Yeah, you can walk away, but let’s not pretend it’s the same thing as buying orange juice at a new grocer because your regular one only sells it with pulp now. People aren’t being irrational in being annoyed by this.
It's not a luxury to walk away from a sunk-cost, no matter what % of your past expendable income it represents (I think that was kind of what you were hinting at). Anyone can do it.
And most people probably don't replay most games after beating them once, for the handful you do want to replay, you just bust out that console occasionally, or you grab them again in a steam sale to play them on PC instead or something.
The fact that the PS store has still been supported on the console for this long is kind of incredible.
I've been on PlayStation family since PS2, and used to think I was married to it, with my game library and my player character stuff/gear/creations in various games.
But the platform no longer lets me play many of those games, anyway, whether due to console gen or server shutdowns. And nobody cares about my PlayStation gamer score or trophies. So there's little tying me to the platform for the next game I buy.
Sony, please don't make me move to "Linux" gaming, via Valve/GOG/Epic (since I don't want to endorse Microsoft hegemony over the low-level gaming "standard"). PlayStation should be a beloved brand and platform that can be trusted to keep games working -- not one that throws away history, nostalgia, and community. You already impose rules on publishers, so this is within your power.
Related: Project Aces, I was fairly highly ranked in a couple of the Ace Combat installments, but when you shut down the servers, you took away what I'd invested in. I reluctantly bought AC7, but found I didn't have the heart to invest in it, just to have it taken away again, and I won't be buying AC8 nor anything else in the franchise.
There used to be a time when PC games allowed you to connect to random servers. These days Minecraft is the only one that still allows it. And even there, Microsoft go hard on the upselling of their Realms.
Some studios kill their servers after just a couple of years. Even for games that are online first.
Contractually require (and technologically support) that the servers are kept running for n years after the last sale, for example?
Microsoft themselves support self-hosting Minecraft servers. As evidenced by the fact that the server software itself is provided as a free download from an official Minecraft (and thus Microsoft branded) site.
I picked up some ACER handheld at Best Buy and it was a complete joke, the first thing I saw looked like a Windows PC with comically small fonts. My Steam Deck looks more like a Switch or PS Vita.
I hope it's enough.
My take is somewhat difference: Sony is offloading the cost of their prior decisions onto consumers.
For things like movies, they should have negotiated a contract where sold copies are sold copies and cannot be revoked (even if their right to sell/rent copies lapse). For things like the PS3 store, it cannot be run indefinitely. That said, from my understanding, the authorization keys expire if the clock battery on the PS3 dies. That should not be permitted.
I don't think that this is a "do as they please" situation. I think it is a case of bad decisions being made in the past. For some, like the movies, there isn't much they can do to fix the problem after the fact. There is absolutely no incentive for the rights holders to let consumers continue to access previously purchased content (especially with Sony taking all of the blame). Even something like offering refunds to people who purchased the movies is problematic. In all probability, all of their contracts have similar terms. They would have to refund everyone for every purchase in the long run.
Other stuff, like access to PS3 purchases, are likely fixable. The question is: where is the incentive? They could create a patch for old consoles, but it would only affect a small number of customers who still have those consoles. (Worse yet, it wouldn't do anything for those who stored their consoles in the closet -- only to pull it out later to discover the authorization keys are invalid.) The math probably doesn't work out for them so they aren't going to do it.
That is the minimum they should do. At best they should offer the movie collections for free through competitors.
I am saying that as a reflection of reality, not to absolve Sony. Someone at Sony must have understood that their licensing agreements were incompatible with the definition of sale. Someone else likely stuck some clauses into the EULA to reflect that, fully realizing that no-one reads those things (also realizing that it is not reasonable to expect consumers to read an EULA for every transaction in their life). The someone who is now responsible for executing the outcome would also understand that there is the potential for legal action on such a matter, but they also understand that there are legal machinations that will, at worse, limit the damages to a sum that is lower than the cost of refunding the full value of each and every purchase made through their service.
This is how movies work on GOG.
In what might not be a coincidence, they haven't released any movies for many years, and the product category isn't even visible if you don't already own a movie through them.
It's difficult to see how this could ever be possible without significant legislation changes. Nobody (but nobody) offers this, and in the vast majority of the world you literally can't buy out music rights in this way for any licensed music in the titles. That's why literally no online store offers this.
Neither Sony nor Microsoft had a consumer orientation and they will likely loose against the competition.
Physical media was a method to have a "plug & play" game, although that changed in recent times. With that I don't think classic consoles can compete, especially with their new price points.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA
Now at a time when memory and storage prices are at an all time high - they pull a move that directly hurts the customer.
I'd say screwing up ownership is a much bigger issue.
this is how you don't share games on playstation :(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
Sony should not be let off the hook for its offensive (essentially criminal) behavior.
I won't even review Sony's decades-long efforts to undermine industry standards...
There doesn't seem to be a lot of clarity though around reselling digital downloads the way there is with physical media (first sale doctrine, etc.)
A less scammy terminology must be setup then.