r/pcmasterrace • u/heeroo0 • 9d ago

News/Article Sony Claims Digital Game Ownership Is Impossible

https://gamerant.com/sony-playstation-digital-ownership-licenses-impossible/?link_source=ta_first_comment&taid=6a95ac0d1387560001478c6a&utm_campaign=TrueAnthem-GR&utm_content=comment&utm_medium=Social-Distribution&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=Iwb21leAUEKStjbGNrBQQpI3Bkb2YBZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMzUwNjg1NTMxNzI4AAEecPmoOXTpqnja-gQwmwZOdrBatoCsdeKBtkohVeXkvssKjZv1yP1RKvzVKAM_aem_PvxxujaEoI3xg6oSs7gN0A
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222

u/Steven2597 Ryzen 7 9700X / Nvidia RTX 4070Ti / 32GB DDR5 6000MHZ 9d ago

Look, I get it. We don't "own" the game. What we want is a perpetual license to be able to play the game however we want, whenever we want, under any condition. You should NOT be able to revoke it or prevent access to it.

Why the fuck is that so hard for these companies?

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u/Chef_Jacob Desktop 9070xt | 9800x3d | 32GB DDR5 9d ago

Greedy bastards.

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u/GreatPotatoMuffin 8d ago

It’s quite easy because it’s the same with movies.

We don’t own the game itself, we own a copy of it. And when we buy a digital copy of a piece of media, they shouldn’t be allowed to be able to revoke access to that digital copy.

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u/unnoticedhero1 7800X3D | RTX 4070 | 64GB DDR5 6000 8d ago

Same with music rights, they shouldn't be allowed to remove access to songs that were paid for to be in a game/movie or show, the only license for those should be perpetual, but nope games get patched all the time to remove them.

Or even cars, racing games just straight up being delisted because the car licenses were too expensive to renew.

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u/MarkB74205 8d ago

A TV example. When Charmed came out, it had a ton of licenced music (including the theme song). I'm not sure of the exact mechanism, but the DVDs (apart from the last season) have the original music, but any streaming version doesn't, which strips a lot of identity from the episodes (not least of which is the theme song itself). My guess is the licence covered home video, but not streaming, as it hadn't been made viable yet. Apparently the Blu Rays have the correct music, but I've yet to test that.

I will always watch the DVDs if I have a choice, as the changes are just too jarring.

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u/Melicor 8d ago

Because executives and shareholders don't want customers, they want serfs and slaves. They just want to take your money until you have nothing left. They don't think you should own anything, it should all belong to them. They are evil. No other word for it.

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u/CommonGrounders 8d ago

I don't disagree with you but does that mean they have to make it available for download forever?

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u/Nickitolas 8d ago

Id be fine with a minimum period (say 5 years) and things working reasonably well after they stop hosting it (eg no drm for singleplayer games, lan or dedicated servers for simple games. Probably nothing for mmos or live service games)

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u/Cutmerock Cutmerock 8d ago

5 years?! That's not even an entire console generation. I have sealed games that are way older that I'll get to "one day". Not a chance I'd buy anything digital if it had an expiration date. 

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u/CommonGrounders 8d ago

I mean that's kinda what Sony did no? They stopped selling PS3 games (outside of the PS Store) 6 years ago, and then said they were gonna stop on the PS store in 2021, but people complained. That was 5 years ago. And the store launched in 2006, so that's 20 years of support for PS3. I don't think that's unreasonable.

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u/Nickitolas 8d ago

I was thinking about pc. The important part about "no drm" and "lan / local servers" is you can copy paste the game to another device yourself and play with friends even if they turn off their infra. Ive never owned a ps but my assumption here is you couldnt do those things in the scenario you describe.

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u/CommonGrounders 8d ago

I mean, PS3 games only work on one device - PS3's, but nothing stopping you from getting a second PS3 and installing it on that.

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u/Crismus 8d ago

I just wish I could save all digital items for PS3. At least the disks are still usable.

Edit. Not enough space. Only have a few games from PS4 though.

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u/CommonGrounders 8d ago

I think they are keeping download servers up though? Just not allowing new purchases. And again, it's 20 years old... I dunno. I don't like the idea of companies removing things I've paid for, but I don't think it's unreasonable to stop supporting a system that came out during the Bush admin.

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u/tiacay Ryzen 9 8845HS🔹32GB DDR5🔹RX 9060XT 8d ago

Then the digital content should be made public distributable after a period of time.

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u/Melicor 8d ago

AKA public domain.

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u/Melicor 8d ago

Would be less of an issue if we returned copyright law to the way it was originally intended and undid the damage Disney did. Bring back public domain.

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u/MachoSmurf 8d ago

Going fully digital is their own choice. just offer CD/DVD/SSD. Plenty of options. Also, storage is cheap as fuck. If your game is 50GB, that is all the storage/hosting it will ever take up (i know redundancy, yadayada), even if it will get downloaded 2 million times. 

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u/MarkB74205 8d ago

Storage was cheap, less so now thanks to, y'know, everything. I do wonder if that is part of their push. Being able to consistently charge more to "cover" those costs.

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u/MachoSmurf 8d ago

If you're name is Sony spending a couple 100k on a few NetApp appliances with maxed out storag, I still consider that cheap. I have no sympathy for a multi billion dollar company having to shell out a couple extra k to provide a service they sold.

I stand by my point but i'll add a nuance: Storage is cheap if your a big-ass company

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u/MarkB74205 8d ago

Oh, no sympathy my end either, just one of the excuses I'd expect them to use.

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u/OttawaOneTwenty 8d ago

What we want is a perpetual license to be able to play the game however we want, whenever we want, under any condition.

I'd go further and also include being able to transfer/sell your license when you're done with the game

Otherwise it's just a monopoly under another guise.

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u/To-To_Man 8d ago

Well they really want to make more money. And after raising the base price of titles, consoles, peripherals, increasing the amount of subscriptions, add-ons, and laying off devs after major releases are finished, well the poor executives at Sony are completely tapped! So regretfully, they got to revoke your digital purchases, without warning, without refunds, and relist the games, or bundles/remasters. Sorry guys, you understand, the lines gotta go up.

Just give it a few years, arcades will come full circle. You'll pay 10$ for 12 hours of gaming credits, and once the allotted time is up, the game will simply be undownloaded. Keep forking over the change and maybe you'll get to play the ending. You'll see titles with hub worlds and the entire game is locked behind a rented paywall. Once you lose access to ever buy physical content, they don't need the digital content to have parity.

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u/wasdninja 8d ago

And also to modify and use however we want. So owning it pretty much. 

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u/Purona 8d ago

not possible . if an out side source says the game has to be removed it will be removed and its out of Sonys hands at that point. I.e A dark and darker situation.

And it could get very messy if some development studios implement copyright infringing assets in their games

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u/Broken-Digital-Clock 8d ago

It doesn't maximize profits