1. Balance the revocation economically, for both parties, while leaving the decision to the "seller".
2. The trade becomes the time-value of money vs. the time value of access. Inherently fair. The seller nets interest, and the inflation drop on the original price. What an accountant would come up with, yet automatic.
3. Provide users the remunerative recourse for "resuming" their "perpetual" license with another provider.
4. Motivate the avoidance of revocations, as who wants to have anti-sales.
Maybe there are good reasons for revocations. Fine, but purchasers should not "Get" randomly screwed, while the seller who had control of their sourcing arrangements loses nothing.
"Get" instead of "Buy" does not address the problem. If "Get" requires the user to gamble, it should be "Gamble". "Get for five years" or "Get for 5 viewings" would be ok. But "Get" without a clear definition is inherently misleading. Another dark pattern.
(Also: By law, contracts must be something given for something taken. A one-sided uncompensated nullification-at-will option is a sneaky way around that. Companies that nullify without compensation, or less than full price where the licensing agreement made no refund amount declaration, should be required to return customer money with interest to reflect the bad faith contract. IANAL, just a believer in justice, especially where simple accounting provides answers.)
Of course it should. If Sony are not doing that then it sounds like grounds for a class action?
I remember when Google shut down Stadia. To their credit, they automatically refunded everything I’d ever purchased on the platform. Nice little windfall.
The lawsuit would have to prove that Sony didn't abide by it's T&Cs, which it seems like they may well have. The issue then is whether it's OK to have T&Cs that seemingly conflict with the "buy" characterization that customers are presented with.
Consumer protection laws can prevail over terms and conditions, it's true. Are there any consumer protection laws that disallow terms and conditions like the ones Sony used?
Plus interest makes no sense and is unnessary. Adjusting for inflation is so the person can buy the same movie at today's prices. At that point, the person is made more than whole already because they got to see the movie for free and they can chose to get it again.
When people say inflation they normally mean CPI which is a poor indicator for inflation and considering it so ignores the time value of money.
Sellers should be forced to label DRM rentals with specific time frames and penalties for violating these time periods.
The way it is done currently assumes the buyer wouldn't have bought something else that would have gained value if they knew the full terms of the sale. Instead they "purchased" an indefinite rental. Imagine if these selling practices where adopted all across the economy. It would be a mess but somehow we tolerate it because the product is digital.
If they are able to prove it somehow transparently that movie was watched at least once, reduce the amount of renting it based on the time when it was bought. Is that fair? Return the rest with inflation adjustments.
That's not enough. If I purchase something, I expect to rely on being able to keep it. Its value to me could well be much higher than just the purchase price.
Revocation should come with consequential damages together with the cost of recovering them.
This presumes that it is reasonable for a seller to remove the capacity in principle to buy the digital good. They might refuse ever to sell a copy again, and only permit renting it. Since copyright grants a long monopoly this opens up scope for crazy market distortion - you could, for instance, delete the Beatles discography from the entire world until the price doubles. This tends not to happen, but there is nothing preventing it, and it seems inherently wrong.
1. Proration for a "lifetime" access (87 years) denied. In many cases probably close to 90% refunded.
2. irrespective, a Full refund for those who had never viewed the purchase.
3. A refund equal to the purchase price on the streaming platform newly acquired. Or a lifetime access (87 years) of the monthly billed streaming platform.
Or get this - you get a drm free copy and they let you redownload/stream it for and undefined (hopefully long) period of time. After that you can play your copy or use a copy from elsewhere.
Sony is obviously the villain here (and pretty much always) but I think this points to an unsolved problem with our model of digital ownership: it's based on the media company providing a service...forever? People in this thread are saying customers should get refunds and I disagree - customers should get video files!
We need a model of digital ownership that does not involve the media owner forever delivering that media on demand. Doing away with that requirement would be good for all involved. Sony has been a bad actor here and deserves every possible sorrow - and also I would like a model that retains the balance of physical media: companies give you a copy that works 'til it wears out and it's your job to keep it in working condition.
This is how it now works with music, I believe. Apple, Amazon, Bandcamp, etc. all sell you access to DRM-free files along with the ability to download or stream them in perpetuity.
California Assembly Bill 2426 (AB 2426), effective 1 January, 2025. Expands the state's false advertising laws to explicitly ban companies from using words like "buy," "purchase," "own," or "keep" if what the customer is actually getting is a revocable digital license governed by shady T&Cs.
A comedian with a dustbin on their head (Count Binface) would probably have a much more consumer focussed view that their contemporaries. Binface's policies do include such things as reducing the price of a 99 Flake ice cream to 99p and capping the cost of croissants - joke policies, but better than politicians just kow-towing to corporate interests.
That reads to me like a hand wavy an excuse for not asking what we can do to make our system more representative of the voters’ will when it should be.
Power in numbers is with the people. Power in votes is with whoever has the votes. Power in money is with the billionaires. Power comes in many forms and isn't fungible.
No, Money, Votes, etc has value because the general public gives it value. All billionaires could be instantly broke if the general public decided they were broke. Votes are ultimately a method of control not an inherent power unto themselves.
Societies have gotten really good at convincing people they don’t have power so it’s rarely exercised but it’s always worth remembering the difference between abstraction and the underlying reality.
If I stop believing that money has value, men with guns will come to my house and force me out of it and change the locks.
If they stop believing money has value (so they wouldn't want to come to my house), men with guns will come to their house, force them out of it and change the locks.
This isn't a voluntary system, it's a forcibly imposed one.
> If they stop believing money has value (so they wouldn't want to come to my house), men with guns will come to their house
You’re assuming there’s going to be large groups of people that believe money still has value. However, there’s nothing inherently different about the first group of people with guns and the second group of people with guns.
If hypothetically there’s a large moon heading to earth so everyone is going to die, everyone is responding to the same situation.
Less extreme situations result in societal collapse, and that’s just one of many options.
I believe the parent was referring to the power to do something with the money. (Not in what one owes). In a decent society there are things no amount of money can buy, and things that take inordinate amounts that would only corrupt a sick fraction of the populace. That is part of what is gross about Epstein's scale, it made many of us realize that there is a price on those specific things and it wasn't just a sociopathic microslice of society, but seemingly "all" (lots, most, too many -- choose your term) of the people in power.
Additionally Lobbying shows us the amount of money for corruption is surprisingly low.
Any of the above, the world could just decide arbitrarily everyone with 1+B is suddenly broke. That’s not likely but it doesn’t break the laws of physics or anything.
If you haven’t been paying attention lately, laws are only as good as they are enforced and it has become obvious that the ruling class is not going to enforce laws against themselves.
The solution here is not something most people are willing to inconvenience themselves over
Rewind a bit over 100 years and the robber barons had an iron grip over the US economy, US politics, and people who understood the mechanisms despaired at ever prying it away from them.
Then the wind shifted and, suddenly, we could and we did. It took them decades to undo that progress and decades more to reassert their grip.
Don't self-sabotage by imagining that it is impossible to achieve change through democracy. We've done it before and we can do it again.
Can we though? There is marked difference in how the government reacts to populist demands. Notably, they learned from Vietnam how to manipulate the population to divide public opinion. I am not sure people today can overcome such organized machinations.
Using foreign wars to prosecute domestic agenda is a strategy that predates written history, let alone Vietnam. Rulers have always understood which levers were available to them, this is not a modern discovery. Classical history in particular is full of this sort of thing and worse in a democratic context, which is comforting in the sense of where we stand and concerning in the sense of where things could go.
Machinations were always organized. I'm reading about Louis Brandeis and I'm struck by how familiar the robber baron talking points are; they are exactly the talking points I heard from neoliberals growing up. Time is a flat circle when it comes to antitrust. Also: they tried to coup FDR! They got themselves a strongman figurehead and everything, it just didn't work.
I'd actually give us the advantage today: the information environment is messier and more difficult to control and machine politics is barely starting to form rather than firmly established everywhere at every level.
I would say the information environment makes it easier to control the population, because the goal isn’t necessarily to get everyone to agree on a desired agenda but rather to prevent us from reaching consensus on pursuing any opposing agenda. The goal is to divide and prevent unity.
Laws are meaningless de jure. Especially where megacorps are concerned, the de facto law (ie the only one that matters) is the text, multiplied by the enforcement mechanism, multiplied by the political will to enforce, multiplied by the 10-15 year process of the megacorps draining their legal warchests into challenges and appeals. Then, after all that, maybe… you get a change to corporate behavior.
The laws in this country are primarily written by and for large corporations. They’re not going to meaningfully practically restrain them just because something got passed.
Laws are great and all. But what we really need is a massive boycott. Stop buying shit manufactured or sold by Sony for a year. That alone will probably force them to backtrack every single anti consumer decision they've made recently.
You are not going to get the guy at 7-11 or the cashier at Target who just bought a PS5 for her son to boycott watching movies on it. Boycotts only work if it is demonstrably going to make their life worse if they don't. Losing access to a movie that interested you 15 years ago when you were still in high school is not one of those things.
For me, it was when they removed the Linux capability from the PS3 (or technically, they removed the ability to have it be able to run Linux and also use it to play PS3 games). I wasn't personally affected by the rootkit fiasco as I was pirating music back then (I mean I still do, but I did back then as well). I should have taken that as a warning as I was fully aware of what kind of company they were, but was attracted by the shiny PS3 games. Nowadays, I mainly play games on my SteamDeck and do appreciate Valve's treatment of customers - the hardware is mine and I can do what I want with it such as easily upgrade the NVM drive (I'm glad I put a 2TB disk in it back when the prices were lower).
There's a reason why they teach the prisoner's dilemma on day 1 of business school: a group which is more fragmented has less power. From the consumer perspective, this is why monopolies are bad and this is why boycotts don't work. From the slimy businessman perspective, this is why monopolies are good and boycotts are the only way consumers should be allowed to push back. Boycotts are empirically understood to be an ineffective strategy -- which, of course, is usually exactly what the people proposing them as an alternative to legislation are usually after.
For the love of god please understand 80% of people are trying to just get on day by day. They don't give a shit about any of this. They probably don't even realize it's happening. Some subset of them might be hit by this but most just don't care.
The point of a government in society is for people who give a shit to guide this kind of thing.
No, I won't understand. These people who don't give a shit, they are the problem. They're the ones who finance these corporations and enable their abusive practices.
They are indeed part of the problem, but you cannot blame them. You have to blame those who caused their situation to be so dire, making them lack support.
These people work 2 jobs, have a young kid, a demented parent or a bedridden sister that need constant support. If they take the time to give a shit about politics, their dependent dies. You don't seem to know how incredibly stressful and exhausting the life of some people is.
Do something about their situation that gives them the time to participate in real life. Don't blame them for trying to survive with all their might, and not go to council hall twice a week.
Boycotts don't work nearly as well nowadays because
a) Consumers don't have enough money already, so they're both stressed out and getting fewer things for themselves. These combine to mean that they're less likely to be willing to give up what little luxuries they have left, even if you're just asking them to substitute one media property for another.
b) The companies being targeted are just too damn big. The consolidation that began in the '80s has reached truly ludicrous levels in 2026, meaning that the company can just...ignore drops in profits for months or even years while consumers get worn out.
You painted an accurate picture about how people act in this case and for boycotts in general but let’s be honest, not buying movies from Sony and its store is the last thing most people would “suffer” from. There’s such a large supply of content today that ditching one source for another has almost no real impact.
How much content really is only on Sony’s store, and how much of it would wear you down if you didn’t consume it within X years?
There are truly painful boycotts (try boycotting the only ISP in your area), and boycotts that are an inconvenience. This one is a far cry from losing a luxury or getting worn out.
You seem to have either misunderstood my point (a), or you have a misguided idea of how important small luxuries are to people, especially people who do not have the means to procure larger luxuries on a regular basis.
I mean, sure; it's much more painful to boycott the only ISP around, or the only grocery store within a 30 mile radius, but just because there are things that could be worse doesn't mean that this can't be bad.
Completely different circumstances as the protest was very organised and the target far smaller than a multi national company and the reason was far more important than access to a few films
Boycotts are one thing, people simply not buying because a company's reputation is ruined is another. What I think we really need is simply to spread the word about how sony is a shitty company, let people know the stuff they buy from them gets deleted. That's enough to really smash up sony's revenue. Tech people naturally assume other people are highly informed about tech stuff, but they aren't, they're watching tiktok ai sexy cat videos and assume the reason grandma lost her copy to Alien: Resurrection was because grandma isn't very good at computers, not that sony deleted it. Indeed, I think, because sony is concurrently removing physical media the outrage probably will effect their bottom line in some ways when the next playstation comes out.
Look at how the firestone tire scandal in 2000 effected their company's bottom line. Or how the click of death effected the fortunes of the owners of Iomega. Reputation actually does matter sometimes.
In democracy, power comes from demos.
In capitalism, power comes from capital.
Demos doesn't have capital.
People never had power.
Whenever they've thought they won ... they just damaged position of someone powerful for someone even more powerful without even knowing it.
I don't think this type of legislation will have any kind of real world effect. Apple App store labels all their buttons with "Get". Google Play Store just prints the price on the button for paid apps/games.
In a thread about movies, it's perhaps more relevant to talk about how those two platforms handle movies.
In a browser, the top category on Google's "Movies & TV" is "New to buy or rent". The buttons on the page for a movie are labeled "$X.XX Buy" and "$X.XX Rent". In the Google TV app on my android phone, the two buttons are "Rent 4K // $X.XX" and "Buy 4K // $X.XX".
The splash images in the Apple TV app iOS say "Buy or rent it now.", and the buttons on the page for an individual movie are labeled "Buy $X.XX" and "Rent $X.XX".
Not to defend this, just to further observe the different nature of their marketing -- games also haven't historically had similar "rent" options in the first place. Timed demos are a newer trend, demos in general have usually been smaller sections of the content, and they typically aren't something you're paying for.
There needs to be a carrot or stick to discourage this kind of practice. Perhaps when companies sue users for piracy, the valuation of what was "stolen" should be dependent on the nature of that company's sales practices. e.g. A company that merely "rents" media in a deceptive way would only be eligible to claim small fractions of a penny on the dollar were stolen when prosecuting a pirate. This way companies would be encouraged to respect user ownership rights if they want their own rights to be respected.
Apple does the same thing as Google, the button is only labeled "Get" for free apps, for paid apps it's labeled with the price.
Paid apps largely failed as a business model though (why would a consumer take a risk on buying a paid app that they can't try before they buy) so most apps that you pay for are free apps with IAP subscriptions... which I guess makes it a little more explicit that you're renting the app, for better or worse.
I think we've also moved towards subscriptions as apps become clients for a backend service.
EG. A mapping app that includes a one time bundle of maps that don’t get updated can be sold as a one time purchase. If you provide continuous updates, which most people expect now, pulling off a one time purchase business model is HARD. The other option is versioned access or time limited support, which is really just a subscription model by a different name. That said I wish versioned access was still a thing. Photoshop CS is still fine for what I want, I’m happy to pay for an upgrade when it makes sense, but a continuing subscription to software that hasn’t substantially changed in a decade sucks.
I've wondered how they'll draw the line on this. If Amazon or Apple has a buy button and it means you get to have ongoing access to the content for as long as Amazon/Apple is around, then for a 30 year old person there's a decent chance that's as good as buying the thing. But if it's hazier, as in the case of Sony's revocation based on losing rights in later years, then you're obviously not getting the same thing. How does CA's law apply to this continuum of circumstances?
What makes you think that this is "as good as" buying when the original post itself demonstrate clearly that it's nowhere close to actually buying something?
Is there something in Apple or Amazon terms which say they can't under any circumstances deprive you of accessing the content you have bought with their "Buy" buttons? I don't see why you are trying to assign a difference between them and Sony here?
We have words like leases, licenses, or renting for a reason and they are not new.
The companies which shifted their business model to renting in the digital age have perpetuated the "buy" buttons to make their customers think the transaction was the same as when they purchased a physical media... but clearly, and it's by far not the first case, these companies will deprive their customers of their "purchase" for many reasons that shouldn't be any concern for someone who actually "bought" something... like the companies suddenly deciding to stop paying for the rights of the thing that they alledgly "sold" to you.
So just as clearly, theses were not actual purchases but just licenses, non-transferable, allegedly "perpetual" but unilaterally revocable at any time with no refund.
I really don't see why you seem to think there is anything hazy about this, or hard to delineate. This law seems to cover the cases in which these companies abuse the language in question, Amazon and Apple are not "selling" you anything digital, you acquire a pretty limited license on all of these services.
I said "a decent chance that's as good as buying the thing". If these mega companies stick around and continue to offer access to the content, then it is as good as buying it (arguably better if you don't have to store it and can download onto many devices over decades). But note that this was all preceded by "a decent chance". There is also a chance that it won't turn out to be as good as buying, if the company goes under, gets out of that line of business, or loses access to the relevant rights.
One important question, which I don't know the answer to, is whether Sony is nuking stuff from your devices. If not, then they could claim that you bought the thing and can keep using it on your existing devices. If you can move the content from a PS5 to a PS6 in 5 years, then arguably it's fine to say you "bought" it. But if they're wiping the content from your local devices, then you've definitely not bought the thing.
> I said "a decent chance that's as good as buying the thing".
I didn't think I would need to quote more of your message, its essence is that you think these kinds of licenses *can be* "as good as buying" when they demonstrably have never been close to it... and it's by design.
> If these mega companies stick around and continue to offer access to the content, then it is as good as buying it (arguably better if you don't have to store it and can download onto many devices over decades)
But the really don't, they regularly cut access to content they pretend to have "sold" to you with a "buy" button. They have redefined the words "buy" and "purchase" to match an old model of sales where you actually had an irrevocable access to the content. All this law says is that it should be made clear to the end user.
Currently companies hide this to customers in pages-long EULAs and behind misleading "Buy" buttons. It shouldn't be so hard to be honest about their business model... unless maybe they think people would reconsider "buying" all these things if they knew they can be taken away from them so easily, without refunds, often without even warning them.
> or loses access to the relevant rights.
In most cases the companies don't "lose" anything, they decide that continuing to pay the copyright holders for this content is not profitable for them anymore (or fail to negotiate it within their acceptable margins), so they stop paying, and remove the content from their catalog. Without any regard, consultation, or compensation for the customers who paid to access it.
> If you can move the content from a PS5 to a PS6 in 5 years, then arguably it's fine to say you "bought" it. But if they're wiping the content from your local devices, then you've definitely not bought the thing.
Many of these services stream the content to you on-demand and don't even allow local copies... or if they do, they gate the local copy behind online renewable keys limited in time. Sony does this by forcing you to connect your console every few days if you want to be able to continue to play "offline".
And to be honest Sony's case is interesting but not very significant, both Amazon and Apple have been caught removing content (removed books from Kindle, removed songs/albums from iTunes, if my memory serves me well, you can easily google the cases), they got class action lawsuits against them and both settled. More than once. They settle because they know their customers expectation of "buying" is not the one their EULAs guarantees, and they really don't want courts to rule on these EULAs or whether "Buy" is a misleading term. That's why lawmakers have to do it. It's really not a matter up for discussion that these companies will remove content sooner or later, the OP demonstrates so, the previous settled cases too... so unless you provide a framework in which these companies can offer an access that is actually as good as actually buying a physical media, it's just wishful thinking to believe they "can" do it, there is literally no incentive for them to do it and they've designed the current business model this way on purpose, removing all control from their customers.
Can customers continue to use the content Sony is removing from their accounts, if they have previously downloaded it? I assume that "buy" doesn't require the vendor to continuously maintain the content on their servers, to be available for free download, forever.
Of course, customers would also need a way to transfer the content from their existing devices to later-purchased devices. If that is possible now, but becomes impossible later (like if Sony goes bankrupt), then does that ruin the "buy" characterization that seemed legit at the beginning?
So they avoided having a "rent" button by using the technically correct "add to cart", "continue to payment" instead of "buy this game", "buy all games in cart", and just have a separate sentence in small grey text that is confusing to most people.
Clearly this law needs to be worded harsher, so the button MUST say "rent" if you are renting.
In my experience it's a pretty clear warning, but I might not be the best person to judge. The thing to remember is "buying" a revocable license is pretty different from "renting" a temporary license, and those words have pretty different connotations.
No renting of copyrighted works for money. The customer owns a copy or GTFO.
That immediately destroys several useful and viable business models that actually work in that they provide more access to more creative work to more people while the rights holders also make a return.
I am in favour of copyright reform but not of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
> That immediately destroys several useful and viable business models that actually work in that they provide more access to more creative work to more people while the rights holders also make a return.
Does it though? The incremental revenue from customers renting something and then renting it again is going to be very small. The "loss" from providing them with a permanent copy instead would be a rounding error, especially for a product with no marginal cost.
Meanwhile rentals are an attempt to cheat the public out of a bunch of rights they would otherwise have under First Sale etc. Which turns your access argument on its head, because the thing they're being denied is the ability to sell their copy when they're done with it, which in turn denies less well off customers the ability to buy a cheaper copy second hand.
Does it though? The incremental revenue from customers renting something and then renting it again is going to be very small. The "loss" from providing them with a permanent copy instead would be a rounding error, especially for a product with no marginal cost.
It destroys the library model used by Spotify, Netflix, and all the other similar services for one example. Those are clearly not working on the same basis as selling permanent copies of everything you might want to listen to or watch. They clearly do make a lot of revenue from subscribers enjoying the long tail of music and programmes and often that includes repeats. Many more people enjoy many more works that aren't the big headliners under this model. People can also try something they might enjoy without committing to the cost of buying it and therefore don't have to feel bad if it's not for them and they give up after a few minutes. And yet obviously the subscribers individually spend far less in many cases than it would cost them to buy permanent copies of everything they'd listened to and watched. Given the popularity and financial success of the streaming services this is evidently an alternative model that works for both sides. So I would challenge your claim that the loss from always providing permanent copies is insignificant.
I don't really buy the other argument you're making either. With digital works there isn't much reason for a "second hand" market where copies would be significantly cheaper than a "new" copy direct from the supplier. When people used to trade used works on physical media there was a degree of degradation in those media that justified a price reduction. Why would someone who had bought a copy of the latest summer blockbuster sell it for 30% of its original purchase price if it's a flawless digital reproduction identical to a new one? Naturally this shifts the dynamics in the market and the price of buying a true permanent copy that can legally be sold on afterwards would tend to increase because of this effect. Meanwhile the library services I mentioned above work on almost the opposite basis and it tends to push the price per work accessed down because the subscribers aren't effectively subsidising other people who are enjoying identical works to themselves but without paying the original source anything to access those works.
I think there is demonstrably room enough in a world of billions of people with access to orders of magnitude more content than any of us could experience even once in our lifetimes for multiple economic models. What matters is that people get to create useful works and other people get to enjoy those works and the financial arrangements make this worthwhile for everyone. There are certainly flaws in the current copyright model that is established in most of the world. There are rights that I think people who have bought (or believe they have bought) permanent copies of works should enjoy with the force of law behind them if necessary.
I don't have a great answer yet to the problem of rights holders not wanting to make anything available permanently at all so that everyone is locked into some form of temporary arrangement. Clearly market forces haven't always sorted that one out effectively and some sort of adjustment is warranted. But I'm also wary of relying on some form of government regulation that distorts the market and potentially excludes arrangements that everyone actually involved might find worthwhile. Maybe you could somehow require that once any work has more than a certain number of licensed copies in circulation or has been available to a certain number of people from authorised sources for a certain (relatively small) number of years then it must also be available for sale as a permanent licence - regardless of any other continuing and still legitimate ways to access it from authorised sources - but with some recognition that a fair price to buy a permanent copy that comes with all the associated rights today might be significantly higher than what these things used to cost in the days when physical media were required.
Apple was sued for having revoking access to hundreds of movies that a customer purchased. They tried to claim that "No reasonable consumer would believe' that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely".
Not even a defense of Apple here… but I think most everyone does know. We just agree to bury our heads in the sand and not to do anything about it as long as service continues in good faith.
It comes up occasionally ever few years, whenever Amazon claws back an ebook or something like this (particularly egregious) thing happens. But then we just go back to normal.
Blurays are obscenely customer hostile too, but I decided a long time ago that they’re as close as I’m getting to owning a copy.
At least I have way to inoculate myself against this scenario without outright stealing.
But now even Blurays are getting harder to buy. Some of the bigger titles I try to buy aren’t being made… or never were (streamer exclusives).
I think many made the same assumption that I made: A movie can be withdrawn from iTunes or an eBook from Amazon, but if you already bought it you'll retain access, it's just that no new sales can be made.
Regarding BluRays, and to some extend DVDs, I'm in the same boat. I have season one of a TV show, but season two never made it to DVD and now it's locked away in the vaults of some production company, you can't even stream it. There are so many movies and shows that will just be lost in the future.
They'll argue you're "buying" a license that they can revoke when they feel like it.
My feelings on the matter have been summed up by someone else more clever than me as:
If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
Then the button should say "Buy Revocable License."
Inevitably people will ask what that means. That will lead to a FAQ on the company's site somewhere, and various videos on the social media explaining it periodically with lots of comments. That will be a good thing.
Corporate marketing teams will eventually settle on something better sounding but technically legal, something like "Premier Anytime Access" for specific movies (versus "Bronze 24-hr Access"), or similar.
Selling someone a license, and then revoking it is like destruction of property. The injured party is owed a refund in the amount of the present day replacement cost.
It's the same as if someone sold you a toaster with a remote self-destruct feature, and then invoked the self-destruct. They owe you a new toaster.
- If the license terms include a section on termination, and termination is done in accordance with the license terms, it's fine legally.
- Licenses can be transferable but that doesn't make them non-terminable.
I could be wrong, though.
It's pretty crappy that we got to the point that overly simple actions (like clicking on buttons or breaking stickers on packages) can be considered accepting license terms. Is that really a "meeting of the minds"?
Sure; if the fine print sticker on the bottom of the toaster says that the toaster may be remotely deactivated at any time, without a refund being issued, then it's fine. After all, you agreed to the sticker by breaking the tape seal on the box.
They will argue that, but this is unlikely to hold up in front of court even in the US.
The problem isn't it being illegal.
But they instead bank on most people not having the means (money/time) or will to sue them over this. Especially given that the actual "damages" you can effectively sue for often relatively small for most users (likely <15€ per movie, so for most account <100€ per person "per situation where you could sue").
And if there is an exception (someones losing hundreds of movies or class action law suite) settling is likely still cheaper for Sony.
This is the problem with many laws the cost of breaching them is often too small (but only IFF you are a huge company with their own lawyer department etc.).
If management would be personally liable with _mandatory prison sentences_ for the CEO/Company Owners if it seems the law was knowingly breached because penalties are cheaper then benefits (or repeated offenses etc.) things probably would look quite different.
Other approaches to counter this includes things like penalties of base+%of yearly revenue, %yearly Profite etc. The problem here is this approaches are often a mix of unfair (e.g. same revenue with large profit margin is penalized way less) and/or can be fudged/circumvented (e.g. if based on profit, but even if based on revenue it can be partially circumvented in some situations. So I think making executive personally liable might be the only way to fix this.
But actual piracy has always been about stealing, so maybe it was not a smart move to label the movement after thieves and murderers, while insisting it is not about theft.
Because yes, it is copying. Nothing gets taken away. But when a pirate took a ship and it's gold away, it was gone.
yes digital piracy was never stealing, but a mixture of contractual breach, copyright infringement and (illegally) causing financial damages through (illegally) causing lost sales.
Hence why you don't get tried for theft when you commit digital piracy. Which, as absurd as it might sound, sometimes (/in some cases) would be better to be tried for due to very unbalanced laws.
But also it should be pretty obvious that this isn't what people mean when they say "if buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing" and a intentionally misinterpretation of statements based by nitpicking formulations is neither contributing anything meaningful nor is it appreciated (in most situations).
The problem is that we've always been buying licences, it's just that the licence used to be attached to a physical object, so transferring the licence was as easy as transferring ownership of that physical object.
It's never been legal to copy a book, film, or music album and sell the copies, for example, because the licence doesn't allow it. Hence freeware, shareware, and copyleft licences.
That is false. It is legal to copy materials that you own, provided you don't redistribute the copy, like for protection against loss. A notable exception of this is the USA DMCA. If, to make a copy, you have to break a copy protection scheme, then you are violating the DMCA.
The license isn't what takes away your permission to redistribute copies; copyright law does that by default. The license is only reminding you that it's not lifting that default, not granting you that permission.
Copying is neither here or there. There is an understanding that when you buy a book, you own the physical thing.
If I sell you a toaster and then remotely cause it to self-destruct, I owe you a new toaster.
Grandparent referenced "if buying isn't owning then copying isn't stealing". I would say that "if buying isn't owning, then stealing isn't stealing".
If a toaster is offered to sale to the public which the seller can remotely destroy at any time, and not pay anyone a cent, and the law upholds that, then it's morally fine to just walk out of their store with that toaster without paying.
yes, but it was (is?) in many places legal to copy Filmes and Musik albums as backup, and iff the original is lost you can very much sell the backup alongside with the license you did buy (kinda, it gets messy practically).
It only mattered that if you sell it you lose it, i.e. you can't buy 1 sell (or gift) 10.
Similarly in analog times this where not unilaterally cancelled licenses. Which are effectively nothing more then time limited licenses where you just don't know how long. (1: un
In law areas outside of copyright this kind of license cancellation terms are often seen as predatory, fraudulent and abusive practices. And _sometimes outright illegal no matter how well you communicated what the license/contract does_ before it was acquired (in some countries).
(1: unilateral cancellable without a brach of license/contract from you side and some other special edge cases to be more precise)
Which is the crux of the problem, not that it isn't attached to physical media, but that it can be cancelled in a mostly despotic manner and you (often) can't make (relevant) backups or similar to protect the availability of the medium either.
Don't get me wrong: this system where Sony (or whomever else) just deletes stuff from your account with no recourse is absolutely batshit insane.
What I'm getting at is that people are getting the shape of the problem wrong (it was never ownership vs licensing), so the solution has to be different too. E.g. Bluray AACS revocation provides the technical means through which licences for physical media can be revoked just like purely downloadable stuff can.
Nobody has a right to have an economic value for what they sell. That is a special privilege, not a right, and harms everyone for the enrichment of the privileged
Nobody has a right to have an economic value for what they sell.
This is true. (It's true in every other industry as well.)
But the opposite side of that coin is that if you want people to spend the considerable amounts of time and money required to create new works that are actually any good then you need to have some viable model for compensating them that makes it worthwhile for them to do that. Whatever else you can say for it - copyright has been far more effective than any other model ever tried at the scale of human society in achieving that.
Copyright has generally been extremely effective at giving money to trillion-dollar companies while giving artists almost nothing. This incentivises companies to hire artists and churn out slop. It doesn't incentivise artists to make art. For that, something other than copyright is needed.
Nobody has any right/privilege at all, except what a system of rights/privileges spells out.
Behind a system of rights there is always a philosophy, which either postulates rights, or certain primary rights, as being somehow inherent or "inalienable", or else somehow justifies the establishment of rights without circular reasoning ("we need these rights so we can have nice things").
I'm hoping someday this will go the same way as other companies trying to redefine "unlimited", "free", or "lifetime". I hope lawyers reclaim "buy", "own", and "purchase" from shitbag marketers back into contract law, where they have English meanings.
A $10m fine for mobile telcos is a rounding error. “Softer quarter due to outstanding legal and regulatory obligations…” The fines need to be a standard percentage of income or the personal assets / freedom of officers needs to be on the line if we want those punishments to change behavior.
It really should be fines plus ALL money gained through the illegal activity. If you steal a car you don't get to pawn the stereo, give back the money gained and then drive off into the sunset.
Not even "Rent". Rentals are priced by the time you rent for. If you want to rent something for 30 years, you can, and you'll keep paying for 30 years.
This is a one-time cost and you just don't know when they're going to snatch it back from you. They won't tell you. They won't even give you a notice period. They don't know themselves. They only find out when the licensor they're sublicensing from demands "too much" for ongoing licensing and they just give up and pretend they didn't sell you that and take your money.
The button would have to be "Licence, subject to unilateral revocation at any time."
This is always a cute proposal, but what are people expecting to happen? If such a law actually rolled out with strong enforcement, all the buttons would just change from "Buy" to "Rent", which wouldn't meaningfully improve access to and fair usage of media.
It would create consciousness about the whole affair and not just in some nerd circles, but in the general population. People know the difference of buying and renting and they will be enraged if found out they have been scammed.
Laws like that are just going to give rise to new tortured wording. You're buying a revocable license to view the content under certain conditions. It was already in that territory even with physical media; that's what region locking is. Likewise, if bitrot set in and your disc became unplayable, the distributor didn't send you a new one. You never had a perpetual, irrevocable, and otherwise unrestricted license to view that content.
I'm not saying that it is not worth trying to fix this, but now that the technology enables content owners to more fully control your access, they're not going to be keen to relax that only to leave that money on the table.
What? "You never had a license" - no, of course not, that's not what buying is. You had a phonograph record or whatever, and it didn't get replaced when worn out in the same way that the shoe manufacturer doesn't replace your worn out shoes which you have bought. Region locking, what about it? It's interference with ownership too.
Things you can buy have to be accurately described as what you actually get, so "buy this" ought to be an accurate description of what the deal actually is, too.
It’s good but will ultimately end up like the GPDR popups. Everything will say rent, won’t change the fact that you can’t actually own anything. The law should instead give us real ownership.
At the same time, I expect consumers to have a skosh of sense - I would never expect a third party to hold any sort of digital media remotely for me, in perpetuity, just because I gave them a few bucks. I know they should, based on allowing consumers to “buy” movies but, at the same time, I have a good enough understanding of the world to know that’s not likely.
If Walmart sold you a lawnmower, but you had to leave the lawnmower in their store, would you consider it your property just because they let you start it up and hear it rumble?
If you wouldn't do that for Walmart, why would you do it for Sony?
I read recently that PlayStation users are moving to PC en masse, and also Xbox has been gutted by layoffs, and there's a backlash against Nintendo for the switch 2 pricing.
Is the age of the console finally coming to an end?
It's just loud Internet people. The Switch 2 is the second fastest selling game system of all time, and is keeping up with the trajectory of the first Switch, which shipped the most units of any gaming system. It'll probably get further boosts as Splatoon Raiders comes out (Splatoon is huge in Japan) and other anticipated titles.
I can't say I know anyone IRL who has any interest in leaving PlayStation. Nobody buys movies there and people who care about physical games are a minority...there are already Slim models without optical drives and GameStops are mostly Funko Pops because most people buy games online. It's too soon to have actual concrete data besides useless internet sentiment reporting though. And a lot of that is just vague anger about prices for all computing hardware being up...and everything else in the US.
We're also at the ending stages of the PS5 lifecycle, but before a PS6 announcement. (With an unprecedented price increase this late in the cycle.) So there's no buzz about what's next, a large base of people who already have the existing thing, and an expectation that it will cost more.
Meanwhile, the anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 is on the way, and a PC release isn't on the table anytime soon.
>I can't say I know anyone IRL who has any interest in leaving PlayStation
As a counterpoint to that. Most of my 30+ year old dad gamer friends (all of us are the type to own a PC, switch and ps5 pretty much) all are considering whether this will be our last sony generation as most of us are either physical copy people or suspect the pricing will be bad without a second hand market to compete.
I don't think there is a mass exodus coming up, but a slow decline in console gaming for certain types of gamers, peaking in ps6 and digital only coming out is possible - whether that is more of a hit than the control of the market Sony will get from digital only is another question though.
For example I doubt it'll stop many playing GTA 6, but general purchases on Sony vs PC may be weighted to the latter a bit more now than previously as that physical collection part is dead now for Sony, and arguably worse than the PC market in terms of there being only one store front for digital.
When I was a PS3 guy I remember the prices in Playstation Store typically being $10 or more higher than what you could get physical copies for, and things never went on sale. Having one storefront for all game sales seems like an absolutely terrible deal for consumers.
Part of what I've always hated about consoles is the inevitable push toward an entirely new generation of hardware when the current hardware is more than capable.
The best games I've played in the last year would run on a PS4 and probably even a PS3 with a little optimization, yet we're already at the "end" of the PS5. It's so disingenuous. We should be squeezing everything we can out of the wonderful hardware we have today instead of chucking it for the new shiny thing, but instead we're force fed a new box, with a new exclusive title, with graphics you can barely distinguish from what we already have and more restrictions on what you can do.
Microsoft already switched its release support to the "series" model. There are still big games coming out on PS4. With the PS6 expected to be very expensive, we may very well see games simultaneously released on the 4, 5, and 6. We may be moving away from discrete console generations. Older consoles still have a massive library you can cycle through as well.
Yeah, the console companies want to be profitable, but consumers are pushing for new stuff, too. I don't care a whole lot about graphics improvements, but going from HDDs to SSDs was a huge improvement and worth the upgrade for me. And software engineers as a whole have long favored requiring new hardware over optimization for current hardware. I hope the great electronics crunch will curtail that.
John Carmack said it in about 2011, if you cannot make your game vision work on a 360 or PS3 you are doing something wrong.
I get that we have made huge strides in rendering tech, but the broad idea behind that I can still get behind.
Other than higher res assets, shaders and cleaner rendering; I havent seen anything that probably couldnt be done on those systems and still broadly have the same overall feel.
I do agree that gameplay is king, but a counterexample would be Cyberpunk 2077 that can't meaningfully run on hardware that old. It runs really nicely on my SteamDeck however.
I don't think you really understood my point then, maybe I didn't make it clearly.
What I meant was we abandon perfectly good console hardware, not because it's outdated or obsolete, not because games demand the cutting edge, but because profit margins demand the consumer spend 500+ on new hardware every 5 years or whatever. It's nothing to do with the software and everything to do with shareholders.
The PC is the exact opposite of this.
There are no PC games that force you to buy a whole new device. There are games that your 5 year old PC might struggle with, but they're still compatible.
The top games on steam are mostly things that would run on 15 year old gaming rigs.
Backwards compatibility! I can still play games from decades ago on my current PC. On a console you're in luck if the game you played on the last generation is rereleased on the next one
You're not locked into a store, a network, or even an operating system.
It's true the AAA devs don't optimize much but my point is that Microsoft don't decide that you have to buy a new PC every five years and there are a bunch of new games coming out for it that are literally unavailable on your old one.
(Well ok technically they do exactly this but it's called an Xbox and it's a failure right now)
I would argue that in some spaces it has gotten better. Ever since the Steamdeck became popular, that kind of set a lower bound on hardware. Games have ended up being optimised a little to run on that because it is another potential 5 million+ customers.
Splatoon is mainly a competitive multiplayer shooter but the new Raiders game is a more traditional adventure game, I expect the sales for it will be insignificant as far as actually pushing new consoles.
Consoles made sense as a product category where specialized graphics hardware was not generally available for consumer PCs.
We have this now, every PC has some kind of graphics hardware, and has for many years. Consoles have been riding on their momentum of their brands, but the technical justification for their product category hasn't existed for 15+ years now.
The main thing consoles have going for them, imo, is the standardization of hardware. It's very easy to say "Yes this game will run on my console at 60 FPS because its identical to the other consoles where it runs at 60 FPS." Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world, where-as they are in the PC world.
Some console gamers seem to think PC gaming requires hours of fiddling with settings and drivers. I think we've all had that experience on PC (cough Bethesda cough), but I doubt to the degree the console-side would have you believe. Most AAA games will self-optimize their settings to a playable state, and indie games don't tend to demand more than your standard gaming laptop can provide...but I'm sure we've all been burned some 10-odd years ago buying a Steam game that just wouldn't run on your iGPU...that experience sticks around in the brain a while
That's one thing. The other is price. Consoles can be sold at a loss, particularly early in their 10-year cycle, when early on the loss is high, but close to the end of the cycle the loss is minimal, and so they appear much cheaper.
Given recent price rises for console hardware I think they're struggling with that too though. The model doesn't work as well if the components get more expensive over time and not less?
Yeah I mean specifically the "sell at a loss, wait for costs to get lower over the generation" thing. if it's at a loss at the start of the generation and component costs only rise, it'll still sell for a loss at the end but also it'll be more expensive for customers. this puts the company in a hard position. a lot of gamers are also used to waiting until the end of the life of a console and getting games used, which might no longer be an option
Oh, for sure! It's not getting any better with PC part prices lately either...
I've never considered that my old 360 was probably sold at a loss, knowing I'd buy LIVE and all the games they take a cut/license fee off of, but that makes complete sense to me
This cycle is different. Prices have increased for both Sony and Microsoft’s consoles and no higher efficiency versions have been released (ala the PS3, X360).
During college, before I switched to linux, the DRM packaged with Spore bricked my computer in the middle of a semester. That's what turned me off of PC gaming.
This is a nitpick, but "to brick" means that hardware becomes totally unusable, like an expensive brick. You turn it on, and it does nothing. I'm going to assume that this is not what you meant, and that the OS just got hosed, requiring a reinstallation.
"Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world"
Let me tell you, as someone that repairs a TON of XBox 360s, this comment is very, VERY wrong. The GPU isn't even the same revision between the same batch runs. Did you get Xenos? Zeus? Jupiter? That determined one set of things needed for install/refurbish. Is that a Valhalla motherboard in your hands? That just limited you to a very narrow and specific set of hardware you could utilize.
Oh and performance between all of those models varied WILDLY. Silicon lottery is a fucking JOKE on the XBox 360.
I'm not trying to disagree with you, I'm not too knowledgeable in this field.
Even assuming what you said is true, I don't think it aligns with the public image of consoles. The general non-technical gamer doesn't know the difference.
There's a ton of differences that matter to refurbishing, no doubt. Different eMMCs, different chips on the board, different cooling needs, different board layouts, different ports, and more.
What really mattered to end users though was "this disc says Xbox 360. Can I put it in the box at home that says Xbox 360 and have the game run properly?" This didn't really matter if it was a Jasper motherboard or not. The game ran practically the same from a user perspective regardless of which board revision you had. I can go pick up any generation of 360 that still powers on and any 360 game off the shelf and it'll work pretty much how the developer intended.
Meanwhile, if you don't really know anything about computer specs, who knows if a game will run on your computer? This was a $3,000 gaming PC, it should run anything! I bought it in 2002 though, is that a problem? The Radeon 9700 Pro from that red GPU company, probably better than that Radeon RX9070 right? Bigger number and all, and after all its Pro. And its got 128 MEGA bytes, probably better than that other card's 16 something or other.
> It's very easy to say "Yes this game will run on my console at 60 FPS because its identical to the other consoles where it runs at 60 FPS." Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world, where-as they are in the PC world.
It used to be a selling point of console indeed, however nowadays console are separated by Pro/Non-pro, different revisions and you aren't really guaranteed on how well your game is going to run unless you watch a Youtube let's play of the game you want.
That doesn't really make sense. Consoles have always occupied a different space to PCs, not least because they plug into living room TVs. Very few people are going to trade that for a (considerably more expensive) PC.
Gaming PCs also require specialized knowledge, more maintenance, etc etc. Consoles are pick up and go. I very much doubt they're dead yet.
You'll likely see a lot more Steam Machine-like PCs because of this. SteamOS fixes most of the problems you mention. Price is the new normal and you should expect next gen consoles to come closer to it. It's not a bad deal anyway when you consider the bigger library, cheaper games, and no subscription required.
But why? The Steam Deck and Machine are pick up and go like consoles by default. Only a small minority care that it's actually a PC you can use for things other than games.
The only thing that sets them apart is Steam's hardware isn't locked down.
I think they still make sense for the non technical user. Having an idiomatic control makes setup far easier than on a PC and the UI for a console is designed to be used with a controller instead of a keyboard and mouse. This makes dealing with a television easier. I don't see consoles disappearing ever for those reasons.
Also isn't a huge (maybe the largest?) audience for gaming these days children playing games like Roblox and Minecraft and Fortnite etc? For whom it's parents buying the equipment, so unless you have a tech-savvy parent they're likely to just buy a console.
The largest gaming market, by about an order of magnitude, is mobile games like Candy Crush. But we should differentiate the market further because most of us probably don't want to be making Candy Crush.
I think those games are mostly played on tablets these days.
But there might be a generational change coming. Basically the entire cohort of parents in my kids’ kindergarten is much more intentional about what kinds of games they’re playing and how they’re spending their “screen time.” I see a lot more people just giving their kids retro-consoles and emulation rather than setting them loose on the kiddie grooming and dopamine receptor-frying skinner-boxes.
I suppose it’s one of the benefits of having a generation of parents who grew up with formative memories of playing video games themselves combined with a growing awareness of UI dark patterns and their long term impacts on cognitive development and well-being.
I don’t think the appeal is just to the less technically inclined masses. I’m a developer with a MacBook Pro and a Linux workstation. Proton has come a long way, but consoles just work for the most part; I never have to question whether the game will function and perform well on the console (setting aside the random buggy messes we see).
Then there’s the convenience. I don’t want to play games where I work. I want to play on my TV. I have no interest in moving my workstation into my living room. Streaming with Moonlight works well enough, but there’s still lag. Even if I wanted to move my PC to the living room, the setup isn’t as nice. The Steam Machine has HDMI CEC and can power on with a controller — all the major consoles have had that for years.
Even if I accepted all that, no one else in my household could play anything while I’m working on my computer.
Things are a little weird now. If I’m going to have to go all digital, Steam Family is by far the best option of those with DRM. But, due to the astronomical cost of components, consoles are still pretty attractive.
Can you please elaborate? The recent moves I’ve seen have been announcing a shift to digital-only and another about clawing back movie purchases. Neither are appealing to me, but also aren’t related to game performance or compatibility.
I was talking about game compatibility and you brought up an utterly unrelated point and referenced non-specified “recent moves by Sony”. Forgive me for giving you the benefit of the doubt and inquiring if there were platform changes that would affect compatibility.
Clawing back games isn’t a particularly new risk. If you issue a chargeback, Sony bans your account, losing your library and any wallet funds you may have. And I already indicated that if I have to go all digital, then Steam is far more attractive. But there’s no guarantee any given game I buy on Steam is going to play on any given device. If I purchase a PS5 game I can be fairly certain it will run on a PS5 and what the performance is going to be like.
But, yeah, thanks for reminding me: physical games are still a major benefit for consoles. I buy Switch cartridges almost exclusively because Nintendo's DRM implementation is horrible for a family library. I lend games to friends and family members. I've even sold games and bought used ones. Steam Family is great, and the best of the current DRM options. But, while physical still exists, it's a good reason for favor consoles that has nothing to do with technical acumen.
How does that relate to "I never have to question whether the game will function and perform well on the console"?
The point being, if the game says its made for that generation of Playstation, it will run well on that generation of Playstation. There's no comparing specs to figure out if it'll run well on your specific hardware arrangement.
When I get a new Switch game, I know it will play perfectly fine on my Switch as how the developers intended it to be experienced. When I try and play a new game on my PC-gaming handheld, who knows how well it'll run until I try it or spend time reading reviews from others with similar hardware trying to play the same game.
> Consoles made sense as a product category where specialized graphics hardware was not generally available for consumer PCs.
This has almost never been true. GPUs existed, and were being used, before the N64.
Your comment also begs the question that the console consumer has transitioned to a gaming pc. They haven't. Gaming PC sales (and hardware) are at all-time lows, except for GPUs, which should probably be renamed to Model Training Units.
I would posit that what we're seeing is a reflection of a content problem, not hardware. Video games have gone the way of Hollywood, with sequels and derivatives, and an uninterested consumer base. People would rather watch a YouTube video of someone playing a video game than play a video game.
> GPUs existed, and were being used, before the N64.
Video cards existed, but 3D accelerators didn't really catch on until the 3dfx Voodoo, which came out about the same time as the N64. Even Quake II which came out a year later still offered software rendering.
> Your comment also begs the question that the console consumer has transitioned to a gaming pc. They haven't.
I'm only a single point of data, but I was a console gamer that transitioned to PC gaming, but that transition happened during the N64/PSX era. It was near the end of the PS2 cycle that I was full PC.
> Gaming PC sales (and hardware) are at all-time lows
Because prices are at all-time highs. I have a monster PC that I probably spent around $6,000 building, but with prices skyrocketing, it'd run me $10,000 to build it today. A few months ago, it would have been $11,000.
> Video games have gone the way of Hollywood, with sequels and derivatives, and an uninterested consumer base.
In the AAA world, this is true. So many gamers that only play Call of Duty, Fortnite, Minecraft, or a sports game. For CoD and the sports games, they reliably buy the latest release every year despite the lack of anything really being different.
But the Indie world is huge and full of innovation. Balatro, Stardew Valley, Disco Elysium, Slay the Spire, Cuphead, I could go on.
> People would rather watch a YouTube video of someone playing a video game than play a video game.
I don't think that's true at all. Maybe for high-level play, or if the streamer has highly entertaining commentary, but otherwise definitely not true.
Consoles don't have true 'generational leaps' any more either, the huge leaps forward in tech used to drive excitement/sales.
Now we get incremental improvements, cross-generation games, and backwards compatibility. And AAA game development isn't exactly doing well these days.
>Consoles have been riding on their momentum of their brands
This is entirely wrong. Consoles have been riding consistency and ease of use. Sure, if you look just at the spec sheet consoles make no sense. But when you look at the whole experience combined with price, this is where consoles have always won. It's always been easier to hook my console up to the TV and start playing. The Steambox closes this gap with the overall experience, but still loses out on price.
If consoles continue to enshittify, this might change.
The thing with PCs is... they are open. Open means piracy and more importantly it means cheats.
A console is a far easier thing to defend against cheaters than a PC - absent true hardware vulnerabilities (which become more and more expensive, now that stuff like voltage glitching, clock cutting and whatnot is all known and accounted for), you are basically limited to botted input and AI-assistance based on what can be seen on the screen.
Specialized graphics hardware hasn’t been the selling point of having a console since at least 2002 with the first XBox.
The selling point of consoles is that they’re a software platform, with development incentives, standardized hardware, standardized UI conventions, and a centralized storefront to be able to conveniently and natively play stuff on your TV without fussing about.
Valve has barely started to muscle in on the platform benefits of gaming on a PlayStation or XBox, but the more they start to do so the more they end up making design trade-offs that start to look like another console.
I get where you are coming from but that is a little reductionist.
PlayStation I think is just going to have a slow bleed as the benefits to the platform seem to be... A new God of war in a few years?
Xbox is being scrapped for parts and is now a zombie console. I suspect they are going to try the 3DO model and try to out source the hardware to any company that wants to buy their SOC and OS licence.
Switch 2, actually doing damn well. Credit to Nintendo, they can be a little rough on pricing something's but they know how to stick to the core of the business. They have managed to keep the momentum between generations and that is difficult to do.
It is a shame, if it wasn't for the high hardware costs, the Steam cube could have made a real don't in Sony/MS but that is not the world we are in. But a PC in a box that isn't locked down can never achieve the same kind of margins that a console can.
PC is even more digital-only than Playstation. No one buys physical games on PC. The only difference is that Valve has been a very good steward over Steam. Theoretically, PC can get as enshittified as PS.
I guess there are other DRM-based purchasing platforms, and there's also DRM free ones like GOG so PC gamers have choice, but those feel niche mostly.
The thing about PC though is that there is no exclusivity. Steam built an extremely well respected brand but if that were to turn, the moat is shallow, install a competing client and buy games from there instead. The only internal competition for consoles is digital or physical retail (Or I guess buying game codes could be pseudo-digital).
The difference is that there is no one steward. You don't need steam, there are lots of other ways to get your games. GoG, Itch.io, Windows Store, or just the developers webpage.
On PlayStation, switch, or Xbox you have only one gatekeeper, and they do not respect you
I wouldn't be surprised if consoles got replaced by video game streaming. Not the next generation and probably not even the generation after that, but that will be most likely it.
Video game streaming requires a high quality internet connection to a nearby data center. It can work in certain places but there's always going to be places where it doesn't work, and consoles don't have that problem.
Well Sony is actively working on that problem- the plebs in these internet-starved countries won’t be playing anyway, as with no optical drive in the future ps6 users are going to be tied to PSN which isn’t available on half the planet.
Jokes aside I do agree that streaming doesn’t work reliably for all game genres and client geographies, mostly due to latency
The question is, when does the market that does have that access start to completely crowd out the market that doesn't have that access?
In a lot of the metro area where I live cloud gaming over 5G wireless is actually very feasible. I do it from time to time. I've tried it in a few other cities as well, with generally positive results.
There are some games that just don't work well over cloud streaming though.
PC gaming isn't exactly in a healthy place either (at least when it comes to hardware pricing/availability). Post-Covid GPU prices were bad enough even before the AI bubble ruined everything.
Yeah. I gave up a couple of years ago after Epic broke my account and I lost my purchases irrecoverably. I have actually started playing board games with people now. This is so much better for me. And cheaper. And you can't taken them away.
Retro gaming is an increasingly popular option, too. These days I have more fun messing with Amigas, C64s, and cheap emulation handhelds than big modern games.
Retro hardware prices have been going up fairly significantly though, especially for Amiga stuff.
That backlash was nearly entirely on that other social media website that HN hates being compared to. And yet again, not representative of actual people. The xbox part may be true. I’d be extremely surprised if any PlayStation users in volume move to PC, that might be another loud opinion from that crowd due to the physical disc outrage. They would pay twice as much, have a less seamless experience, and still have worse graphics/performance.
I say this as a primarily pc gamer. It’s not for most people.
People age out of wanting to sit in their bedroom with a handheld and become adults who have living rooms. For home gaming there will always be demand to play games on a real sized screen.
I haven't had enough motivation to sit on my couch and game after a long day ..
But the same game, in bed, on my deck was so much nicer..
All I can now say is having a dedicated device, that's not your laptop/computer to play games is definitely a market - be it Steam machine (/custom builds), hand held gaming, or just regular consoles..
The cloud gaming echo chamber has conveniently arrived to save the day by mimicking the solution to fix the problem the same industry created. Problem, Reaction, Solution.
Phone gaming with a USC-C display or simply cast to the TV, and Bluetooth remotes. It might not be as bad as it sounds. My phone has 12GB RAM, 256GB NVME SSD, a decent GPU and a dedicated AI chipset as well.
Sure, it won’t beat a tricked out gaming PC with some $4000 GPU in it, but it will probably be competitive with console gaming. Granted, the PS5 is 5-6 years old by now, but my phone has more power in every measure.
My “dream” everyday device is still a phone that docks with a display, keyboard and mouse, and magically transforms into a desktop OS. On the to mobile apps would allow access to the same data, but touch optimized instead.
These are basically different markets that only compete with each other because there are finite hours in the day to engage with media, not because they’re offering variations on the same thing.
It’s similar to comparing Netflix to the Criterion Streaming platform. Technically you’re doing the same thing, sitting on the couch watching a big screen, but the experience being pitched is a totally different one and the target customer doesn’t really overlap.
There was a time when regular families had desktop computers at home. The marketing was intense, the machines were expensive, and the sales numbers were real. The PC was the gateway to all of the spoils of the internet and things were booming.
Now families tend to have a collection expensive personal pocket supercomputers, instead. It's hard to justify the cost of a properly-stodgy computer when everything is online and the machines that everyone already has in their pockets are Good Enough to get things done (including entertainment).
Gaming on a phone is definitely not for me. I've been using PCs for several decades; it's possible that mobile gaming will never be my jam.
But I can accept that I'm not everyone.
I suspect that we'll have whole generations of people who manage to grow up and grow old and without ever having, or even seeking, the opportunity to spend quality time gaming on PCs.
I think that's alright. Things are allowed to change.
I'm pretty sure it's just exposure and time. Mobile is a great format for keeping yourself entertained on a subway. Desktop or console is a great format for actual games. People have more phones now because you need phones and you don't need desktops - that has nothing to do with the enjoyment you have gaming on each.
You used to be able to dial TIM on a landline phone to check the time (for free?). Then you (if you were a computer nerd) checked it on your computer, then on your cellphone. Because that's what was available. There was no connection between knowing the time and landline phones - people just had landline phones so it was a convenient way to deliver the service. That's how it is with mobile games now.
Remember Java and Flash applets? You could make anything you wanted as a native application, but RuneScape took off because you didn't have to install it.
I've got college-age extended family members who don't have any memory of a desktop PC like thing being in their home. Parents might have brought home a work laptop from time to time, but outside of that by the time they were like five the family machine had already been scrapped.
The Steam Deck is basically a way to play PC games on mobile. You can imagine a world where people can just plug their smartphone into a KVM and just use it as a gaming PC. Modern phones have enough computing power to play most games being produced today since a lot of them are indie or B titles that aren’t actually that intensive. And even the intensive AAA ones, if developers were willing to optimize for it and go for lower res graphics they could do those too. And they can definitely play any game that’s more than 10 years old.
If cloud means AWS then probably, but I think the serious cloud gaming people are generally trying to get you connected by fiber to a data center in the same city.
Obviously media permanence is the best solution, but in the absence of that we just need laws that say that if the purchase isn’t time limited to something a reasonable user would consider a rental (48hrs? a week?) then companies that withdraw access rights need to refund in full the purchase cost.
There are services like Movies Anywhere and UltraViolet (now defunct) that store a licence when the user purchases one from an in-network licensor. Then the user can access the content via any supported platform.
The problem is that these are not legally mandated, so they can shut down (as UltraViolet did). If the ability to move the licence to another platform is mandated by law as a condition of continued copyright protection, this problem would largely disappear.
In practical terms, the logistics of many-years-later refunds would be unwieldy at best. Do the purchase records still exist? What if I no longer have that credit card or email address? How can you prove you're the heir of the deceased? What if I now live in a country where the "deletion" status is different? And how could you stop all the scammers who smelled free money?
Alternative: The gov't randomly picks 24 citizens from a pool of applicants who reasonably prove that they were harmed by the deletion. Those 24 are given legal authority to fiat-revoke all copyright protection on a "reasonable and proportional" number of the deleting corporation's currently copyrighted works. Or upstream of them, as "appropriate".
Doesn't matter. It should be up to the corporation to figure it out or else it's illegal and they get fined 300% of their total yearly revenue for each affected person.
Similarly, we should put in a law to force consumers who post bad reviews to prove they actually transacted with the business. If they can't, they have to go to every person who saw the review and personally retract it.
Can't figure out who saw it? Tough. It's up to you to figure out, or else it's illegal and they get 5000 years in prison for every view it got.
If both of these were implemented, I think the companies would come out behind. You'd just have no more online reviews without proof and that would be not a very big loss. The law is already like you say in Germany.
The most frustrating thing about all of this is that if I'd published a game on PlayStation and then told Sony to rip it out of people's libraries, they'd tell me to pound sand. The contracts you sign to ship games on PlayStation specifically include redownload rights. So Sony knows this is a problem, and yet for whatever reason decided NOT to secure the rights they'd need for the digital purchases to actually work like a purchase.
"If buying digital media isn't ownership, then piracy isn't stealing."
I'm all for buying media. People worked hard on that stuff. They deserve to be compensated.
But if I buy something and then it can randomly be taken away from me at the whims of the publisher or copyright owner or whoever the hell, then I don't "own" that. And if ~I can't~ they won't let me own digital media, I have no qualms over acquiring such media in other ways, given the ongoing war against physical media anyway
So Sony is simultaneously announcing that all purchases will be digital from now on while actively demonstrating that digital purchases aren't actually purchases. They're clearly communicating that they believe in a future where no one owns games any more.
> They're clearly communicating that they believe in a future where no one owns games any more.
They've been foreshadowing that future for years, but the gamers keep on bending right over and even squeezing the lube bottle for them. They haven't, and likely won't, be given a reason to stop marching toward that future.
First, I think people should buy from GoG for exactly this reason.
But also, the difference is that Steam has as far as I can tell never yanked a game from someone's account and failed to refund them for it. Games either get delisted and you retain access to them or they're removed entirely and they refund you. The only exception is online-only games whose developer stops maintaining the server, but I think it's reasonable for steam to not claim responsibility for the developer's malfeasance.
So Steam has this model of licensing-not-ownership on paper but in practice treats purchases as much closer to ownership. Sony clearly does not.
Has Sony yanked a game? I know they have delisted some but I have not heard of one ever being removed from a user’s library and couldn’t find a reported instance of that happening. Sony’s agreement with game publishers does not leave them the right to do this.
I do not think there is any online platform that can make such guarantees for movies.
They've yanked movies, and there are reasons (which they won't tell us) they've banned physical delivery of games. It's extremely likely they will yank games in the future.
I know I'm not the only one here who remembers the Sony rootkit debacle in the age of CDs. One of the all-time worst companies I can think of when it comes to mistreating customers.
Yes, but there's a lot of old media available on torrents that is not available elsewhere such as on on streaming services. I'm a bit of a datahoarder and will often download obscure films/tv just because they are obscure and difficult to find. It's surprising how media from the 1980/90s is only available on a couple of torrents. A more recent example (early 2000s) would be the BBC series Monkey Dust that only had the first series released on DVD due to issues with the music licensing and possibly the content which was contentious.
Looking in search, it seems there's a Sony hate thread almost every day over the last month, and many of them are just reposts of the same thing (eg >10 submissions about Sony's decision to stop manufacturing game discs in 2028). It's also odd that these stories are attracting hundreds of comments every time; for comparison several submissions about about Xbox laying off ~5000 people have attracted less than 10 comments between them.
It's looking like astroturf at this point. I don't have any connection to Sony, direct or indirect; it's just a weird pattern on HN.
As bad as this is, it’s worth noting that this is the same incident that was widely reported earlier this month. Sony has only rugpulled hundreds of purchased titles from customers once this year.
if you cant hold it your hands, you don't own it. used dvd and bluray on ebay are cheaper anyway. another underutilized resource - the public library - mine has a huge catalog of movies you can borrow for free.
> another underutilized resource - the public library
As an indication of where things are going on this front, from the same publisher: Sony announced that games are not going to get distributed as physical copies anymore. So no new video games to be borrowed from public libraries, and even if you can borrow older games the new Playstations probably won't even have a disk tray to read them.
Whatever your stance on video games being something that is worth having in a library is, if they could get away with it that's probably their ideal end game for movies as well.
Which is a bit tricky on a Playstation. Sure you can scrounge up some Jellyfin-ish sort of thing, but most people buy on the console platform because they specifically don't want to jump through hoops.
Curious what others use to store media for home/remote use.
I naively assumed my purchases from [company A] would mean I have permanent/immutable access. Even in the case of access not being revoked, I've found content itself changes over time. Usually related to jokes which have "not aged well" let us say.
I'm not here to champion leaving in that content. Or defend nostalgic rewatching. It just feels strange to not acknowledge.
> Curious what others use to store media for home/remote use.
A limited selection of CD/DVD/BluRay, a large collection of songs in mp3 & other formats (many ripped from CD myself @ some point, others downloaded), a bunch of movies in h264/h265 etc (mostly via torrents).
Books / documentation / retrogames & more on various devices.
Generally when adding anything, I look for replay value. Play/watch/listen once & never revisit stuff I save to /dev/null.
In common between all the above: storage media under my control, and useable offline.
Sony and other vendors got to remove the concurrency problem of tangible items, and it's only fair the internet of file sharing gets to solve the concurrency problem of a public library in the same way.
This anti-consumer stuff also applies to physical Blu-rays: each BD can contain a revocation list of player keys and distributor keys, and official players are required to update their keylists from that. Every time you insert a new disc in your player, you're playing russian roulette with your existing library.
Blu-Ray key revocation does not work that way. Players with revoked keys simply can't play discs that were encrypted to disallow them.
Discs that worked with a player will continue to work, as long as the physical mechanisms are still good.
Technically, maybe, since the player authenticates with the drive, if you updated the firmware on the drive you could lockout the player. I could see windows update potentially helpfully pushing a bd-rom drive firmware update, but it's not happening on a standalone player.
It's not ideal that your existing player might not read new discs, but hopefully you use your discs soon after purchase and you could return them if you can't get a firmware update with a new key. (Of course, I'm guilty of buying discs to watch eventually; will be annoying if my keys were revoked)
Each disc contains the latest revocation list at the time of its creation. If you put in a disc with a newer revocation list, your player updates. Same thing was done on the Nintendo Wii.
Without laws to force companies to honor this, The only reasonable answer to this ownership issue will end up being piracy. Also, “Buying” the movie and making a copy of it for personal use shouldn’t be illegal.
> Also, “Buying” the movie and making a copy of it for personal use shouldn’t be illegal.
Unless I missed something recently, it's not illegal. You've always had the right to make backups of content that you purchased legally. It's the distribution that has been illegal.
If you bought movies on a digital platform that would later go under (could be Sony one day), what would happen to your collection? Is it transferable in any way? If not, it's already a risk no matter which platform you use.
Well I'd say these are different risks. It's either tied to the agreement Sony has with the movie provider, or with the platform itself. Either one could pull out. Or, my point, the company could also go under.
I we are heading towards a digital world, we need to solve the issue of how to ensure by legal means that in 800 years people will still be able to study current day media and arts.
Seems like a class action suit ready-made? Idk why this isn’t absolutely lawyer-crack.
I mean, on one hand you have centuries of precedent about what “buy” means, and on the other you have one party depriving another party of access to their property , without providing alternative access, defacto depriving them of their property in absolute terms.
This seems like a clear case of theft, conspiracy to commit theft, and fraudulent advertising, interstate commerce in the pursuit of an organized criminal enterprise , etc.
I've sold my PS5 several months ago. You can get a pretty gameable laptop and gog/steam prices are better. And I can install mods. Tree Sentinel Thomas Mod for example.
How do people still "buy" any movies after all these stories?
If "buy" means you can watch it on this specific device while logged in with this specific account, for some limited time, then downloading it to your disk is not "theft".
Seriously, my brain, deformed by years of file sharing, can't get it.
How is Sony not commiting piracy, ok not piracy, because a pirate at least makes an open frontal attack and says "har har har", and girls fantisise about bieng abducted by swashbucklers, but Sony is like some perv stealing peoples underware , or more accuratly a contract underware theef working for the real perv who knows where you live
and nobody else like this stuff at all, zero fantasies, 100% icky perve
Interesting also that even this article doesn't mention "DRM" anywhere despite the fact that this is exactly the worst case scenario DRM critics have always warned about.
(Personally I would consider DRM okay if Sony's behavior here was illegal without a full refund.)
This has happened since the beginning of DRM. I had a roommate who bought hundreds of dollars of music from the Walmart music store because WMAs were like 59¢ instead of 99¢ from iTunes. It seems like not even a year later they shutdown the store and the certificate expired and PlaysForSure stopped playing for sure. That was around 2003.
20 years later will anyone do anything about it? Of course not.
What is going to be the event that gets laws to change? Probably not a few movies viewable only from Sony devices.
Well - I actually think the problem is not Sony being malicious here, per se, but the legislation. There has to be a guarantee as if it were a physical copy, as-is. The right to repair movement has the same cause ultimately. You purchase something, you own it, no matter what counter-legalese is tried.
The USA really needs to stop being a corporate-country. Weren't the republicans all about the people at one point in time? Now they are all about the billionaires and family dynasties pillaging what they can, with the forerunner the mad orange king pillaging the most. And starting wars he loses by default, after promising to not start wars.
If you cared enough, I do wonder if you could win in court, if you pirated a movie that you purchased on the PS5, but Sony removed. It would cost you an ungodly amount of money to defend yourself against Sony, and I don't know the exact words of the "license", but it seems like a reasonable action to take.
Its all a bit hand wavy nonsense. Own a physical copy? How long until its unplayable because either the media corrupts or the player isn't available? The only real "ownership" is the IP, everything else is just renting.
All information is ephemeral, but I don't honestly think that argument holds much weight here.
I'm currently listening to a record which was pressed before I was born, and that will outlast me. My CDs were ripped around 2000 to a drive and i've streamed then since. I've still got the CDs though, and the last time I played one it worked fine on my 1989 vintage transport.
Why wouldn't a player be available though? CD/DVD players won't just suddenly stop working. My CDs and CD players at home from the 1990s are still working completely fine.
If they do want to posit it as this, I'd personally be fine if they said "a CD will work for 100k plays before corrupting" so you'll have 100,000 credits to stream The Wizard of Oz before you need to purchase it again.
I trust the pressing on a CD or vinyl to remain readable SIGNIFICANTLY more than I trust any corporation to do literally anything, including "continue to exist".
The DVDs I got in my childhood 20 years ago still work just fine, the drives to read them are $20 or less, and ripping them to a format I can use more conveniently and backup however I want is a single button click.
Plastic discs are the optimum data distribution format. They degrade in the same time frame as a paper book, essentially lifetime, you retain legal rights like the first sale doctrine, you can easily format shift for safety and storage, and nobody can take any of that from you ever, and you can use that data however you like, as long as you aren't trying to sell bootlegs.
Books and plastic discs are infinitely better than the digital realm. The consumer rights are so much stronger and better.
boolean bought = true;
boolean owns = false;
if (bought && owns) {
System.out.println("Purchase resulted in ownership.");
} else if (bought) {
System.out.println("Purchase did not result in ownership. You have rented.");
That would:
1. Balance the revocation economically, for both parties, while leaving the decision to the "seller".
2. The trade becomes the time-value of money vs. the time value of access. Inherently fair. The seller nets interest, and the inflation drop on the original price. What an accountant would come up with, yet automatic.
3. Provide users the remunerative recourse for "resuming" their "perpetual" license with another provider.
4. Motivate the avoidance of revocations, as who wants to have anti-sales.
Maybe there are good reasons for revocations. Fine, but purchasers should not "Get" randomly screwed, while the seller who had control of their sourcing arrangements loses nothing.
"Get" instead of "Buy" does not address the problem. If "Get" requires the user to gamble, it should be "Gamble". "Get for five years" or "Get for 5 viewings" would be ok. But "Get" without a clear definition is inherently misleading. Another dark pattern.
(Also: By law, contracts must be something given for something taken. A one-sided uncompensated nullification-at-will option is a sneaky way around that. Companies that nullify without compensation, or less than full price where the licensing agreement made no refund amount declaration, should be required to return customer money with interest to reflect the bad faith contract. IANAL, just a believer in justice, especially where simple accounting provides answers.)
Of course it should. If Sony are not doing that then it sounds like grounds for a class action?
I remember when Google shut down Stadia. To their credit, they automatically refunded everything I’d ever purchased on the platform. Nice little windfall.
Sellers should be forced to label DRM rentals with specific time frames and penalties for violating these time periods.
The way it is done currently assumes the buyer wouldn't have bought something else that would have gained value if they knew the full terms of the sale. Instead they "purchased" an indefinite rental. Imagine if these selling practices where adopted all across the economy. It would be a mess but somehow we tolerate it because the product is digital.
They've stolen the property. It’s not “fair” if you replace it, let alone only replace it with a lesser than value as “it was second hand”.
On the other side, a user that watched a movie 1000 times should not get less compensation.
All users are being impacted exactly the same way (loss of future access), so should be compensated the same way.
Original-price refund is both simple, and (by linking the time-value of money for both parties) fair.
That's not enough. If I purchase something, I expect to rely on being able to keep it. Its value to me could well be much higher than just the purchase price.
Revocation should come with consequential damages together with the cost of recovering them.
1. Proration for a "lifetime" access (87 years) denied. In many cases probably close to 90% refunded.
2. irrespective, a Full refund for those who had never viewed the purchase.
3. A refund equal to the purchase price on the streaming platform newly acquired. Or a lifetime access (87 years) of the monthly billed streaming platform.
We need a model of digital ownership that does not involve the media owner forever delivering that media on demand. Doing away with that requirement would be good for all involved. Sony has been a bad actor here and deserves every possible sorrow - and also I would like a model that retains the balance of physical media: companies give you a copy that works 'til it wears out and it's your job to keep it in working condition.
If not, should we change the law?
If the people decide to elect a comedian with a dustbin on their head, they can do. That apples to Chicago as much as Clacton
Societies have gotten really good at convincing people they don’t have power so it’s rarely exercised but it’s always worth remembering the difference between abstraction and the underlying reality.
If they stop believing money has value (so they wouldn't want to come to my house), men with guns will come to their house, force them out of it and change the locks.
This isn't a voluntary system, it's a forcibly imposed one.
You’re assuming there’s going to be large groups of people that believe money still has value. However, there’s nothing inherently different about the first group of people with guns and the second group of people with guns.
If hypothetically there’s a large moon heading to earth so everyone is going to die, everyone is responding to the same situation.
Less extreme situations result in societal collapse, and that’s just one of many options.
Additionally Lobbying shows us the amount of money for corruption is surprisingly low.
Are we taking about abolishing the fiat currency system or bringing back the guillotines ?
If you haven’t been paying attention lately, laws are only as good as they are enforced and it has become obvious that the ruling class is not going to enforce laws against themselves.
The solution here is not something most people are willing to inconvenience themselves over
Then the wind shifted and, suddenly, we could and we did. It took them decades to undo that progress and decades more to reassert their grip.
Don't self-sabotage by imagining that it is impossible to achieve change through democracy. We've done it before and we can do it again.
Using foreign wars to prosecute domestic agenda is a strategy that predates written history, let alone Vietnam. Rulers have always understood which levers were available to them, this is not a modern discovery. Classical history in particular is full of this sort of thing and worse in a democratic context, which is comforting in the sense of where we stand and concerning in the sense of where things could go.
Machinations were always organized. I'm reading about Louis Brandeis and I'm struck by how familiar the robber baron talking points are; they are exactly the talking points I heard from neoliberals growing up. Time is a flat circle when it comes to antitrust. Also: they tried to coup FDR! They got themselves a strongman figurehead and everything, it just didn't work.
I'd actually give us the advantage today: the information environment is messier and more difficult to control and machine politics is barely starting to form rather than firmly established everywhere at every level.
The laws in this country are primarily written by and for large corporations. They’re not going to meaningfully practically restrain them just because something got passed.
The point of a government in society is for people who give a shit to guide this kind of thing.
These people work 2 jobs, have a young kid, a demented parent or a bedridden sister that need constant support. If they take the time to give a shit about politics, their dependent dies. You don't seem to know how incredibly stressful and exhausting the life of some people is.
Do something about their situation that gives them the time to participate in real life. Don't blame them for trying to survive with all their might, and not go to council hall twice a week.
a) Consumers don't have enough money already, so they're both stressed out and getting fewer things for themselves. These combine to mean that they're less likely to be willing to give up what little luxuries they have left, even if you're just asking them to substitute one media property for another.
b) The companies being targeted are just too damn big. The consolidation that began in the '80s has reached truly ludicrous levels in 2026, meaning that the company can just...ignore drops in profits for months or even years while consumers get worn out.
How much content really is only on Sony’s store, and how much of it would wear you down if you didn’t consume it within X years?
There are truly painful boycotts (try boycotting the only ISP in your area), and boycotts that are an inconvenience. This one is a far cry from losing a luxury or getting worn out.
I mean, sure; it's much more painful to boycott the only ISP around, or the only grocery store within a 30 mile radius, but just because there are things that could be worse doesn't mean that this can't be bad.
Is it? What’s the most effective boycott you can think of ever achieved?
Completely different circumstances as the protest was very organised and the target far smaller than a multi national company and the reason was far more important than access to a few films
Look at how the firestone tire scandal in 2000 effected their company's bottom line. Or how the click of death effected the fortunes of the owners of Iomega. Reputation actually does matter sometimes.
Demos doesn't have capital. People never had power. Whenever they've thought they won ... they just damaged position of someone powerful for someone even more powerful without even knowing it.
By this logic, in consumerism power comes from consumers, but maybe it's more complicated than that?
In a browser, the top category on Google's "Movies & TV" is "New to buy or rent". The buttons on the page for a movie are labeled "$X.XX Buy" and "$X.XX Rent". In the Google TV app on my android phone, the two buttons are "Rent 4K // $X.XX" and "Buy 4K // $X.XX".
The splash images in the Apple TV app iOS say "Buy or rent it now.", and the buttons on the page for an individual movie are labeled "Buy $X.XX" and "Rent $X.XX".
Movies, on digital marketplaces, have had this kind of distinction for a lot longer than games have.
Paid apps largely failed as a business model though (why would a consumer take a risk on buying a paid app that they can't try before they buy) so most apps that you pay for are free apps with IAP subscriptions... which I guess makes it a little more explicit that you're renting the app, for better or worse.
EG. A mapping app that includes a one time bundle of maps that don’t get updated can be sold as a one time purchase. If you provide continuous updates, which most people expect now, pulling off a one time purchase business model is HARD. The other option is versioned access or time limited support, which is really just a subscription model by a different name. That said I wish versioned access was still a thing. Photoshop CS is still fine for what I want, I’m happy to pay for an upgrade when it makes sense, but a continuing subscription to software that hasn’t substantially changed in a decade sucks.
Strangely, some kindle books actually do meet california criteria of "buy" by allowing a download of the book in .pdf or .epub format.
But when you go to buy them, it still seems to say:
There is no other indication in the item description of this difference.It is only later in your library that it quietly says:
Is there something in Apple or Amazon terms which say they can't under any circumstances deprive you of accessing the content you have bought with their "Buy" buttons? I don't see why you are trying to assign a difference between them and Sony here?
We have words like leases, licenses, or renting for a reason and they are not new.
The companies which shifted their business model to renting in the digital age have perpetuated the "buy" buttons to make their customers think the transaction was the same as when they purchased a physical media... but clearly, and it's by far not the first case, these companies will deprive their customers of their "purchase" for many reasons that shouldn't be any concern for someone who actually "bought" something... like the companies suddenly deciding to stop paying for the rights of the thing that they alledgly "sold" to you.
So just as clearly, theses were not actual purchases but just licenses, non-transferable, allegedly "perpetual" but unilaterally revocable at any time with no refund.
I really don't see why you seem to think there is anything hazy about this, or hard to delineate. This law seems to cover the cases in which these companies abuse the language in question, Amazon and Apple are not "selling" you anything digital, you acquire a pretty limited license on all of these services.
One important question, which I don't know the answer to, is whether Sony is nuking stuff from your devices. If not, then they could claim that you bought the thing and can keep using it on your existing devices. If you can move the content from a PS5 to a PS6 in 5 years, then arguably it's fine to say you "bought" it. But if they're wiping the content from your local devices, then you've definitely not bought the thing.
I didn't think I would need to quote more of your message, its essence is that you think these kinds of licenses *can be* "as good as buying" when they demonstrably have never been close to it... and it's by design.
> If these mega companies stick around and continue to offer access to the content, then it is as good as buying it (arguably better if you don't have to store it and can download onto many devices over decades)
But the really don't, they regularly cut access to content they pretend to have "sold" to you with a "buy" button. They have redefined the words "buy" and "purchase" to match an old model of sales where you actually had an irrevocable access to the content. All this law says is that it should be made clear to the end user.
Currently companies hide this to customers in pages-long EULAs and behind misleading "Buy" buttons. It shouldn't be so hard to be honest about their business model... unless maybe they think people would reconsider "buying" all these things if they knew they can be taken away from them so easily, without refunds, often without even warning them.
> or loses access to the relevant rights.
In most cases the companies don't "lose" anything, they decide that continuing to pay the copyright holders for this content is not profitable for them anymore (or fail to negotiate it within their acceptable margins), so they stop paying, and remove the content from their catalog. Without any regard, consultation, or compensation for the customers who paid to access it.
> If you can move the content from a PS5 to a PS6 in 5 years, then arguably it's fine to say you "bought" it. But if they're wiping the content from your local devices, then you've definitely not bought the thing.
Many of these services stream the content to you on-demand and don't even allow local copies... or if they do, they gate the local copy behind online renewable keys limited in time. Sony does this by forcing you to connect your console every few days if you want to be able to continue to play "offline".
And to be honest Sony's case is interesting but not very significant, both Amazon and Apple have been caught removing content (removed books from Kindle, removed songs/albums from iTunes, if my memory serves me well, you can easily google the cases), they got class action lawsuits against them and both settled. More than once. They settle because they know their customers expectation of "buying" is not the one their EULAs guarantees, and they really don't want courts to rule on these EULAs or whether "Buy" is a misleading term. That's why lawmakers have to do it. It's really not a matter up for discussion that these companies will remove content sooner or later, the OP demonstrates so, the previous settled cases too... so unless you provide a framework in which these companies can offer an access that is actually as good as actually buying a physical media, it's just wishful thinking to believe they "can" do it, there is literally no incentive for them to do it and they've designed the current business model this way on purpose, removing all control from their customers.
Let's not broaden this definition in favor of the vendor.
Of course, customers would also need a way to transfer the content from their existing devices to later-purchased devices. If that is possible now, but becomes impossible later (like if Sony goes bankrupt), then does that ruin the "buy" characterization that seemed legit at the beginning?
Clearly this law needs to be worded harsher, so the button MUST say "rent" if you are renting.
No, there is a much better alternative.
No renting of copyrighted works for money. The customer owns a copy or GTFO.
The customer has to know what they're getting. Either they own it, or they're renting for a certain period. Nothing ambiguous.
That immediately destroys several useful and viable business models that actually work in that they provide more access to more creative work to more people while the rights holders also make a return.
I am in favour of copyright reform but not of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Does it though? The incremental revenue from customers renting something and then renting it again is going to be very small. The "loss" from providing them with a permanent copy instead would be a rounding error, especially for a product with no marginal cost.
Meanwhile rentals are an attempt to cheat the public out of a bunch of rights they would otherwise have under First Sale etc. Which turns your access argument on its head, because the thing they're being denied is the ability to sell their copy when they're done with it, which in turn denies less well off customers the ability to buy a cheaper copy second hand.
It destroys the library model used by Spotify, Netflix, and all the other similar services for one example. Those are clearly not working on the same basis as selling permanent copies of everything you might want to listen to or watch. They clearly do make a lot of revenue from subscribers enjoying the long tail of music and programmes and often that includes repeats. Many more people enjoy many more works that aren't the big headliners under this model. People can also try something they might enjoy without committing to the cost of buying it and therefore don't have to feel bad if it's not for them and they give up after a few minutes. And yet obviously the subscribers individually spend far less in many cases than it would cost them to buy permanent copies of everything they'd listened to and watched. Given the popularity and financial success of the streaming services this is evidently an alternative model that works for both sides. So I would challenge your claim that the loss from always providing permanent copies is insignificant.
I don't really buy the other argument you're making either. With digital works there isn't much reason for a "second hand" market where copies would be significantly cheaper than a "new" copy direct from the supplier. When people used to trade used works on physical media there was a degree of degradation in those media that justified a price reduction. Why would someone who had bought a copy of the latest summer blockbuster sell it for 30% of its original purchase price if it's a flawless digital reproduction identical to a new one? Naturally this shifts the dynamics in the market and the price of buying a true permanent copy that can legally be sold on afterwards would tend to increase because of this effect. Meanwhile the library services I mentioned above work on almost the opposite basis and it tends to push the price per work accessed down because the subscribers aren't effectively subsidising other people who are enjoying identical works to themselves but without paying the original source anything to access those works.
I think there is demonstrably room enough in a world of billions of people with access to orders of magnitude more content than any of us could experience even once in our lifetimes for multiple economic models. What matters is that people get to create useful works and other people get to enjoy those works and the financial arrangements make this worthwhile for everyone. There are certainly flaws in the current copyright model that is established in most of the world. There are rights that I think people who have bought (or believe they have bought) permanent copies of works should enjoy with the force of law behind them if necessary.
I don't have a great answer yet to the problem of rights holders not wanting to make anything available permanently at all so that everyone is locked into some form of temporary arrangement. Clearly market forces haven't always sorted that one out effectively and some sort of adjustment is warranted. But I'm also wary of relying on some form of government regulation that distorts the market and potentially excludes arrangements that everyone actually involved might find worthwhile. Maybe you could somehow require that once any work has more than a certain number of licensed copies in circulation or has been available to a certain number of people from authorised sources for a certain (relatively small) number of years then it must also be available for sale as a permanent licence - regardless of any other continuing and still legitimate ways to access it from authorised sources - but with some recognition that a fair price to buy a permanent copy that comes with all the associated rights today might be significantly higher than what these things used to cost in the days when physical media were required.
Sadly the case was settled, see: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/apple-settles-alleg...
It comes up occasionally ever few years, whenever Amazon claws back an ebook or something like this (particularly egregious) thing happens. But then we just go back to normal.
Blurays are obscenely customer hostile too, but I decided a long time ago that they’re as close as I’m getting to owning a copy.
At least I have way to inoculate myself against this scenario without outright stealing.
But now even Blurays are getting harder to buy. Some of the bigger titles I try to buy aren’t being made… or never were (streamer exclusives).
Regarding BluRays, and to some extend DVDs, I'm in the same boat. I have season one of a TV show, but season two never made it to DVD and now it's locked away in the vaults of some production company, you can't even stream it. There are so many movies and shows that will just be lost in the future.
If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
Inevitably people will ask what that means. That will lead to a FAQ on the company's site somewhere, and various videos on the social media explaining it periodically with lots of comments. That will be a good thing.
Corporate marketing teams will eventually settle on something better sounding but technically legal, something like "Premier Anytime Access" for specific movies (versus "Bronze 24-hr Access"), or similar.
It's the same as if someone sold you a toaster with a remote self-destruct feature, and then invoked the self-destruct. They owe you a new toaster.
- If the license terms include a section on termination, and termination is done in accordance with the license terms, it's fine legally.
- Licenses can be transferable but that doesn't make them non-terminable.
I could be wrong, though.
It's pretty crappy that we got to the point that overly simple actions (like clicking on buttons or breaking stickers on packages) can be considered accepting license terms. Is that really a "meeting of the minds"?
The problem isn't it being illegal.
But they instead bank on most people not having the means (money/time) or will to sue them over this. Especially given that the actual "damages" you can effectively sue for often relatively small for most users (likely <15€ per movie, so for most account <100€ per person "per situation where you could sue").
And if there is an exception (someones losing hundreds of movies or class action law suite) settling is likely still cheaper for Sony.
This is the problem with many laws the cost of breaching them is often too small (but only IFF you are a huge company with their own lawyer department etc.).
If management would be personally liable with _mandatory prison sentences_ for the CEO/Company Owners if it seems the law was knowingly breached because penalties are cheaper then benefits (or repeated offenses etc.) things probably would look quite different.
Other approaches to counter this includes things like penalties of base+%of yearly revenue, %yearly Profite etc. The problem here is this approaches are often a mix of unfair (e.g. same revenue with large profit margin is penalized way less) and/or can be fudged/circumvented (e.g. if based on profit, but even if based on revenue it can be partially circumvented in some situations. So I think making executive personally liable might be the only way to fix this.
Because yes, it is copying. Nothing gets taken away. But when a pirate took a ship and it's gold away, it was gone.
Hence why you don't get tried for theft when you commit digital piracy. Which, as absurd as it might sound, sometimes (/in some cases) would be better to be tried for due to very unbalanced laws.
But also it should be pretty obvious that this isn't what people mean when they say "if buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing" and a intentionally misinterpretation of statements based by nitpicking formulations is neither contributing anything meaningful nor is it appreciated (in most situations).
It's never been legal to copy a book, film, or music album and sell the copies, for example, because the licence doesn't allow it. Hence freeware, shareware, and copyleft licences.
The license isn't what takes away your permission to redistribute copies; copyright law does that by default. The license is only reminding you that it's not lifting that default, not granting you that permission.
Copying is neither here or there. There is an understanding that when you buy a book, you own the physical thing.
If I sell you a toaster and then remotely cause it to self-destruct, I owe you a new toaster.
Grandparent referenced "if buying isn't owning then copying isn't stealing". I would say that "if buying isn't owning, then stealing isn't stealing".
If a toaster is offered to sale to the public which the seller can remotely destroy at any time, and not pay anyone a cent, and the law upholds that, then it's morally fine to just walk out of their store with that toaster without paying.
It only mattered that if you sell it you lose it, i.e. you can't buy 1 sell (or gift) 10.
Similarly in analog times this where not unilaterally cancelled licenses. Which are effectively nothing more then time limited licenses where you just don't know how long. (1: un
In law areas outside of copyright this kind of license cancellation terms are often seen as predatory, fraudulent and abusive practices. And _sometimes outright illegal no matter how well you communicated what the license/contract does_ before it was acquired (in some countries).
(1: unilateral cancellable without a brach of license/contract from you side and some other special edge cases to be more precise)
Which is the crux of the problem, not that it isn't attached to physical media, but that it can be cancelled in a mostly despotic manner and you (often) can't make (relevant) backups or similar to protect the availability of the medium either.
What I'm getting at is that people are getting the shape of the problem wrong (it was never ownership vs licensing), so the solution has to be different too. E.g. Bluray AACS revocation provides the technical means through which licences for physical media can be revoked just like purely downloadable stuff can.
Yes, physical media being de facto irrevocable is the important part, but even that has caveats (such as Bluray AACS revocations).
Full House: Angelina Jolie reboot (Starring Angelina Jolie baby clones)
This is true. (It's true in every other industry as well.)
But the opposite side of that coin is that if you want people to spend the considerable amounts of time and money required to create new works that are actually any good then you need to have some viable model for compensating them that makes it worthwhile for them to do that. Whatever else you can say for it - copyright has been far more effective than any other model ever tried at the scale of human society in achieving that.
Behind a system of rights there is always a philosophy, which either postulates rights, or certain primary rights, as being somehow inherent or "inalienable", or else somehow justifies the establishment of rights without circular reasoning ("we need these rights so we can have nice things").
https://retailwire.com/t-mobile-att-verizon-fined-10-2m-for-...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/lawsuit-t-mobile...
At the very least, if Sony yanks your purchase, they should merely refund it in full.
This is the obvious solution to most problems but of course they're the ones writing the laws so it'd never happen in a trillion years.
This is a one-time cost and you just don't know when they're going to snatch it back from you. They won't tell you. They won't even give you a notice period. They don't know themselves. They only find out when the licensor they're sublicensing from demands "too much" for ongoing licensing and they just give up and pretend they didn't sell you that and take your money.
The button would have to be "Licence, subject to unilateral revocation at any time."
I'm not saying that it is not worth trying to fix this, but now that the technology enables content owners to more fully control your access, they're not going to be keen to relax that only to leave that money on the table.
Things you can buy have to be accurately described as what you actually get, so "buy this" ought to be an accurate description of what the deal actually is, too.
If you wouldn't do that for Walmart, why would you do it for Sony?
I propose, let's see..
Definitely Isn’t Legal Doctrine, Obviously
or.. Based Only On Basic Speculation
perhaps Consult Official Counsel, Kindly
or more succinct, This Isn’t Trained Solicitor Advice
I don’t understand what is wrong with NAL/NLA not a lawyer/not legal advice.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747389 - "Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For" (reclaimthenet.org)
636 points | 15 days ago | 304 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48730904 - "Sony erases digital content from libraries" (arstechnica.com)
184 points | 16 days ago | 76 comments
Long live offline physical media, and The Pirate Bay.
Is the age of the console finally coming to an end?
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2026/06/switch-2s-first-ye...
I can't say I know anyone IRL who has any interest in leaving PlayStation. Nobody buys movies there and people who care about physical games are a minority...there are already Slim models without optical drives and GameStops are mostly Funko Pops because most people buy games online. It's too soon to have actual concrete data besides useless internet sentiment reporting though. And a lot of that is just vague anger about prices for all computing hardware being up...and everything else in the US.
We're also at the ending stages of the PS5 lifecycle, but before a PS6 announcement. (With an unprecedented price increase this late in the cycle.) So there's no buzz about what's next, a large base of people who already have the existing thing, and an expectation that it will cost more.
Meanwhile, the anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 is on the way, and a PC release isn't on the table anytime soon.
As a counterpoint to that. Most of my 30+ year old dad gamer friends (all of us are the type to own a PC, switch and ps5 pretty much) all are considering whether this will be our last sony generation as most of us are either physical copy people or suspect the pricing will be bad without a second hand market to compete.
I don't think there is a mass exodus coming up, but a slow decline in console gaming for certain types of gamers, peaking in ps6 and digital only coming out is possible - whether that is more of a hit than the control of the market Sony will get from digital only is another question though.
For example I doubt it'll stop many playing GTA 6, but general purchases on Sony vs PC may be weighted to the latter a bit more now than previously as that physical collection part is dead now for Sony, and arguably worse than the PC market in terms of there being only one store front for digital.
The best games I've played in the last year would run on a PS4 and probably even a PS3 with a little optimization, yet we're already at the "end" of the PS5. It's so disingenuous. We should be squeezing everything we can out of the wonderful hardware we have today instead of chucking it for the new shiny thing, but instead we're force fed a new box, with a new exclusive title, with graphics you can barely distinguish from what we already have and more restrictions on what you can do.
Yeah, the console companies want to be profitable, but consumers are pushing for new stuff, too. I don't care a whole lot about graphics improvements, but going from HDDs to SSDs was a huge improvement and worth the upgrade for me. And software engineers as a whole have long favored requiring new hardware over optimization for current hardware. I hope the great electronics crunch will curtail that.
I get that we have made huge strides in rendering tech, but the broad idea behind that I can still get behind.
Other than higher res assets, shaders and cleaner rendering; I havent seen anything that probably couldnt be done on those systems and still broadly have the same overall feel.
What I meant was we abandon perfectly good console hardware, not because it's outdated or obsolete, not because games demand the cutting edge, but because profit margins demand the consumer spend 500+ on new hardware every 5 years or whatever. It's nothing to do with the software and everything to do with shareholders.
The PC is the exact opposite of this.
There are no PC games that force you to buy a whole new device. There are games that your 5 year old PC might struggle with, but they're still compatible.
The top games on steam are mostly things that would run on 15 year old gaming rigs.
Backwards compatibility! I can still play games from decades ago on my current PC. On a console you're in luck if the game you played on the last generation is rereleased on the next one
You're not locked into a store, a network, or even an operating system.
It's true the AAA devs don't optimize much but my point is that Microsoft don't decide that you have to buy a new PC every five years and there are a bunch of new games coming out for it that are literally unavailable on your old one.
(Well ok technically they do exactly this but it's called an Xbox and it's a failure right now)
We have this now, every PC has some kind of graphics hardware, and has for many years. Consoles have been riding on their momentum of their brands, but the technical justification for their product category hasn't existed for 15+ years now.
Some console gamers seem to think PC gaming requires hours of fiddling with settings and drivers. I think we've all had that experience on PC (cough Bethesda cough), but I doubt to the degree the console-side would have you believe. Most AAA games will self-optimize their settings to a playable state, and indie games don't tend to demand more than your standard gaming laptop can provide...but I'm sure we've all been burned some 10-odd years ago buying a Steam game that just wouldn't run on your iGPU...that experience sticks around in the brain a while
I've never considered that my old 360 was probably sold at a loss, knowing I'd buy LIVE and all the games they take a cut/license fee off of, but that makes complete sense to me
If something runs on a Steam Deck, you can be sure it will run on your >= Steam Deck-equivalent device.
Let me tell you, as someone that repairs a TON of XBox 360s, this comment is very, VERY wrong. The GPU isn't even the same revision between the same batch runs. Did you get Xenos? Zeus? Jupiter? That determined one set of things needed for install/refurbish. Is that a Valhalla motherboard in your hands? That just limited you to a very narrow and specific set of hardware you could utilize.
Oh and performance between all of those models varied WILDLY. Silicon lottery is a fucking JOKE on the XBox 360.
What really mattered to end users though was "this disc says Xbox 360. Can I put it in the box at home that says Xbox 360 and have the game run properly?" This didn't really matter if it was a Jasper motherboard or not. The game ran practically the same from a user perspective regardless of which board revision you had. I can go pick up any generation of 360 that still powers on and any 360 game off the shelf and it'll work pretty much how the developer intended.
Meanwhile, if you don't really know anything about computer specs, who knows if a game will run on your computer? This was a $3,000 gaming PC, it should run anything! I bought it in 2002 though, is that a problem? The Radeon 9700 Pro from that red GPU company, probably better than that Radeon RX9070 right? Bigger number and all, and after all its Pro. And its got 128 MEGA bytes, probably better than that other card's 16 something or other.
It used to be a selling point of console indeed, however nowadays console are separated by Pro/Non-pro, different revisions and you aren't really guaranteed on how well your game is going to run unless you watch a Youtube let's play of the game you want.
Gaming PCs also require specialized knowledge, more maintenance, etc etc. Consoles are pick up and go. I very much doubt they're dead yet.
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine
The only thing that sets them apart is Steam's hardware isn't locked down.
But there might be a generational change coming. Basically the entire cohort of parents in my kids’ kindergarten is much more intentional about what kinds of games they’re playing and how they’re spending their “screen time.” I see a lot more people just giving their kids retro-consoles and emulation rather than setting them loose on the kiddie grooming and dopamine receptor-frying skinner-boxes.
I suppose it’s one of the benefits of having a generation of parents who grew up with formative memories of playing video games themselves combined with a growing awareness of UI dark patterns and their long term impacts on cognitive development and well-being.
Then there’s the convenience. I don’t want to play games where I work. I want to play on my TV. I have no interest in moving my workstation into my living room. Streaming with Moonlight works well enough, but there’s still lag. Even if I wanted to move my PC to the living room, the setup isn’t as nice. The Steam Machine has HDMI CEC and can power on with a controller — all the major consoles have had that for years.
Even if I accepted all that, no one else in my household could play anything while I’m working on my computer.
Things are a little weird now. If I’m going to have to go all digital, Steam Family is by far the best option of those with DRM. But, due to the astronomical cost of components, consoles are still pretty attractive.
Thanks to recent moves by Sony, this is no longer the case!
I was talking about game compatibility and you brought up an utterly unrelated point and referenced non-specified “recent moves by Sony”. Forgive me for giving you the benefit of the doubt and inquiring if there were platform changes that would affect compatibility.
Clawing back games isn’t a particularly new risk. If you issue a chargeback, Sony bans your account, losing your library and any wallet funds you may have. And I already indicated that if I have to go all digital, then Steam is far more attractive. But there’s no guarantee any given game I buy on Steam is going to play on any given device. If I purchase a PS5 game I can be fairly certain it will run on a PS5 and what the performance is going to be like.
But, yeah, thanks for reminding me: physical games are still a major benefit for consoles. I buy Switch cartridges almost exclusively because Nintendo's DRM implementation is horrible for a family library. I lend games to friends and family members. I've even sold games and bought used ones. Steam Family is great, and the best of the current DRM options. But, while physical still exists, it's a good reason for favor consoles that has nothing to do with technical acumen.
The point being, if the game says its made for that generation of Playstation, it will run well on that generation of Playstation. There's no comparing specs to figure out if it'll run well on your specific hardware arrangement.
When I get a new Switch game, I know it will play perfectly fine on my Switch as how the developers intended it to be experienced. When I try and play a new game on my PC-gaming handheld, who knows how well it'll run until I try it or spend time reading reviews from others with similar hardware trying to play the same game.
This has almost never been true. GPUs existed, and were being used, before the N64.
Your comment also begs the question that the console consumer has transitioned to a gaming pc. They haven't. Gaming PC sales (and hardware) are at all-time lows, except for GPUs, which should probably be renamed to Model Training Units.
I would posit that what we're seeing is a reflection of a content problem, not hardware. Video games have gone the way of Hollywood, with sequels and derivatives, and an uninterested consumer base. People would rather watch a YouTube video of someone playing a video game than play a video game.
Video cards existed, but 3D accelerators didn't really catch on until the 3dfx Voodoo, which came out about the same time as the N64. Even Quake II which came out a year later still offered software rendering.
> Your comment also begs the question that the console consumer has transitioned to a gaming pc. They haven't.
I'm only a single point of data, but I was a console gamer that transitioned to PC gaming, but that transition happened during the N64/PSX era. It was near the end of the PS2 cycle that I was full PC.
> Gaming PC sales (and hardware) are at all-time lows
Because prices are at all-time highs. I have a monster PC that I probably spent around $6,000 building, but with prices skyrocketing, it'd run me $10,000 to build it today. A few months ago, it would have been $11,000.
> Video games have gone the way of Hollywood, with sequels and derivatives, and an uninterested consumer base.
In the AAA world, this is true. So many gamers that only play Call of Duty, Fortnite, Minecraft, or a sports game. For CoD and the sports games, they reliably buy the latest release every year despite the lack of anything really being different.
But the Indie world is huge and full of innovation. Balatro, Stardew Valley, Disco Elysium, Slay the Spire, Cuphead, I could go on.
> People would rather watch a YouTube video of someone playing a video game than play a video game.
I don't think that's true at all. Maybe for high-level play, or if the streamer has highly entertaining commentary, but otherwise definitely not true.
The draw of consoles was the ease of use. N64 problem solving was just off/on
N64 came out in the USA in September 1996.
3dfx Voodoo was released to consumers in October 1996.
Now we get incremental improvements, cross-generation games, and backwards compatibility. And AAA game development isn't exactly doing well these days.
This is entirely wrong. Consoles have been riding consistency and ease of use. Sure, if you look just at the spec sheet consoles make no sense. But when you look at the whole experience combined with price, this is where consoles have always won. It's always been easier to hook my console up to the TV and start playing. The Steambox closes this gap with the overall experience, but still loses out on price.
If consoles continue to enshittify, this might change.
A console is a far easier thing to defend against cheaters than a PC - absent true hardware vulnerabilities (which become more and more expensive, now that stuff like voltage glitching, clock cutting and whatnot is all known and accounted for), you are basically limited to botted input and AI-assistance based on what can be seen on the screen.
The selling point of consoles is that they’re a software platform, with development incentives, standardized hardware, standardized UI conventions, and a centralized storefront to be able to conveniently and natively play stuff on your TV without fussing about.
Valve has barely started to muscle in on the platform benefits of gaming on a PlayStation or XBox, but the more they start to do so the more they end up making design trade-offs that start to look like another console.
PlayStation I think is just going to have a slow bleed as the benefits to the platform seem to be... A new God of war in a few years?
Xbox is being scrapped for parts and is now a zombie console. I suspect they are going to try the 3DO model and try to out source the hardware to any company that wants to buy their SOC and OS licence.
Switch 2, actually doing damn well. Credit to Nintendo, they can be a little rough on pricing something's but they know how to stick to the core of the business. They have managed to keep the momentum between generations and that is difficult to do.
It is a shame, if it wasn't for the high hardware costs, the Steam cube could have made a real don't in Sony/MS but that is not the world we are in. But a PC in a box that isn't locked down can never achieve the same kind of margins that a console can.
PC is even more digital-only than Playstation. No one buys physical games on PC. The only difference is that Valve has been a very good steward over Steam. Theoretically, PC can get as enshittified as PS.
I guess there are other DRM-based purchasing platforms, and there's also DRM free ones like GOG so PC gamers have choice, but those feel niche mostly.
On PlayStation, switch, or Xbox you have only one gatekeeper, and they do not respect you
Jokes aside I do agree that streaming doesn’t work reliably for all game genres and client geographies, mostly due to latency
In a lot of the metro area where I live cloud gaming over 5G wireless is actually very feasible. I do it from time to time. I've tried it in a few other cities as well, with generally positive results.
There are some games that just don't work well over cloud streaming though.
Source? Is that reddit?
It simply doesn't make sense.
Retro hardware prices have been going up fairly significantly though, especially for Amiga stuff.
I say this as a primarily pc gamer. It’s not for most people.
I speak from experience
I haven't had enough motivation to sit on my couch and game after a long day ..
But the same game, in bed, on my deck was so much nicer..
All I can now say is having a dedicated device, that's not your laptop/computer to play games is definitely a market - be it Steam machine (/custom builds), hand held gaming, or just regular consoles..
Sure, it won’t beat a tricked out gaming PC with some $4000 GPU in it, but it will probably be competitive with console gaming. Granted, the PS5 is 5-6 years old by now, but my phone has more power in every measure.
My “dream” everyday device is still a phone that docks with a display, keyboard and mouse, and magically transforms into a desktop OS. On the to mobile apps would allow access to the same data, but touch optimized instead.
It’s similar to comparing Netflix to the Criterion Streaming platform. Technically you’re doing the same thing, sitting on the couch watching a big screen, but the experience being pitched is a totally different one and the target customer doesn’t really overlap.
There was a time when regular families had desktop computers at home. The marketing was intense, the machines were expensive, and the sales numbers were real. The PC was the gateway to all of the spoils of the internet and things were booming.
Now families tend to have a collection expensive personal pocket supercomputers, instead. It's hard to justify the cost of a properly-stodgy computer when everything is online and the machines that everyone already has in their pockets are Good Enough to get things done (including entertainment).
But I can accept that I'm not everyone.
I suspect that we'll have whole generations of people who manage to grow up and grow old and without ever having, or even seeking, the opportunity to spend quality time gaming on PCs.
I think that's alright. Things are allowed to change.
You used to be able to dial TIM on a landline phone to check the time (for free?). Then you (if you were a computer nerd) checked it on your computer, then on your cellphone. Because that's what was available. There was no connection between knowing the time and landline phones - people just had landline phones so it was a convenient way to deliver the service. That's how it is with mobile games now.
Remember Java and Flash applets? You could make anything you wanted as a native application, but RuneScape took off because you didn't have to install it.
The "big family computer" became an iPad.
If you are a games studio and have resources for three projects this year, do your investors want to see a phone, PC, or console game?
The problem is that these are not legally mandated, so they can shut down (as UltraViolet did). If the ability to move the licence to another platform is mandated by law as a condition of continued copyright protection, this problem would largely disappear.
In practical terms, the logistics of many-years-later refunds would be unwieldy at best. Do the purchase records still exist? What if I no longer have that credit card or email address? How can you prove you're the heir of the deceased? What if I now live in a country where the "deletion" status is different? And how could you stop all the scammers who smelled free money?
Alternative: The gov't randomly picks 24 citizens from a pool of applicants who reasonably prove that they were harmed by the deletion. Those 24 are given legal authority to fiat-revoke all copyright protection on a "reasonable and proportional" number of the deleting corporation's currently copyrighted works. Or upstream of them, as "appropriate".
Similarly, we should put in a law to force consumers who post bad reviews to prove they actually transacted with the business. If they can't, they have to go to every person who saw the review and personally retract it.
Can't figure out who saw it? Tough. It's up to you to figure out, or else it's illegal and they get 5000 years in prison for every view it got.
To put it in perspective, I bought Get Him to the Greek on Prime video shortly after it came out.
A month later, the "exclusive broadcast rights" changed, and I was no longer able to access it.
I'm all for buying media. People worked hard on that stuff. They deserve to be compensated.
But if I buy something and then it can randomly be taken away from me at the whims of the publisher or copyright owner or whoever the hell, then I don't "own" that. And if ~I can't~ they won't let me own digital media, I have no qualms over acquiring such media in other ways, given the ongoing war against physical media anyway
Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation (797 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48745456
So Sony is simultaneously announcing that all purchases will be digital from now on while actively demonstrating that digital purchases aren't actually purchases. They're clearly communicating that they believe in a future where no one owns games any more.
They've been foreshadowing that future for years, but the gamers keep on bending right over and even squeezing the lube bottle for them. They haven't, and likely won't, be given a reason to stop marching toward that future.
But also, the difference is that Steam has as far as I can tell never yanked a game from someone's account and failed to refund them for it. Games either get delisted and you retain access to them or they're removed entirely and they refund you. The only exception is online-only games whose developer stops maintaining the server, but I think it's reasonable for steam to not claim responsibility for the developer's malfeasance.
So Steam has this model of licensing-not-ownership on paper but in practice treats purchases as much closer to ownership. Sony clearly does not.
I do not think there is any online platform that can make such guarantees for movies.
Heck, I even wrote a player for this [1] The problem is that licensed media like this are always going to become inaccessible over decades.
It happened with Apple[2] and Microsoft (PlaysForSure[3]) as well.
1 - https://musicsync.ashishb.net/ 2 - https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/you-dont-own-your-di... 2 - https://www.cnet.com/culture/playsforsure-officially-dead/
Previously:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48730904
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747389
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48691346
and several others.
Looking in search, it seems there's a Sony hate thread almost every day over the last month, and many of them are just reposts of the same thing (eg >10 submissions about Sony's decision to stop manufacturing game discs in 2028). It's also odd that these stories are attracting hundreds of comments every time; for comparison several submissions about about Xbox laying off ~5000 people have attracted less than 10 comments between them.
It's looking like astroturf at this point. I don't have any connection to Sony, direct or indirect; it's just a weird pattern on HN.
They don't even offer refunds.
So far.
As an indication of where things are going on this front, from the same publisher: Sony announced that games are not going to get distributed as physical copies anymore. So no new video games to be borrowed from public libraries, and even if you can borrow older games the new Playstations probably won't even have a disk tray to read them.
Whatever your stance on video games being something that is worth having in a library is, if they could get away with it that's probably their ideal end game for movies as well.
Physically holding things in the digital age, where someone can remotely change your software, or render it unusable, isn't true ownership.
I naively assumed my purchases from [company A] would mean I have permanent/immutable access. Even in the case of access not being revoked, I've found content itself changes over time. Usually related to jokes which have "not aged well" let us say.
I'm not here to champion leaving in that content. Or defend nostalgic rewatching. It just feels strange to not acknowledge.
A limited selection of CD/DVD/BluRay, a large collection of songs in mp3 & other formats (many ripped from CD myself @ some point, others downloaded), a bunch of movies in h264/h265 etc (mostly via torrents).
Books / documentation / retrogames & more on various devices.
Generally when adding anything, I look for replay value. Play/watch/listen once & never revisit stuff I save to /dev/null.
In common between all the above: storage media under my control, and useable offline.
Guess it will be an upswing of BlueRay movies. Already happening with LPs and CDs
Discs that worked with a player will continue to work, as long as the physical mechanisms are still good.
Technically, maybe, since the player authenticates with the drive, if you updated the firmware on the drive you could lockout the player. I could see windows update potentially helpfully pushing a bd-rom drive firmware update, but it's not happening on a standalone player.
It's not ideal that your existing player might not read new discs, but hopefully you use your discs soon after purchase and you could return them if you can't get a firmware update with a new key. (Of course, I'm guilty of buying discs to watch eventually; will be annoying if my keys were revoked)
Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For (294 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747389
Sony erases digital content from libraries (74 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48730904
Unless I missed something recently, it's not illegal. You've always had the right to make backups of content that you purchased legally. It's the distribution that has been illegal.
I would have assumed it would have at least been against whatever TOC you agreed to when signing up to itunes.
What is the agreement tied to?
I mean, on one hand you have centuries of precedent about what “buy” means, and on the other you have one party depriving another party of access to their property , without providing alternative access, defacto depriving them of their property in absolute terms.
This seems like a clear case of theft, conspiracy to commit theft, and fraudulent advertising, interstate commerce in the pursuit of an organized criminal enterprise , etc.
If "buy" means you can watch it on this specific device while logged in with this specific account, for some limited time, then downloading it to your disk is not "theft".
Seriously, my brain, deformed by years of file sharing, can't get it.
(Personally I would consider DRM okay if Sony's behavior here was illegal without a full refund.)
20 years later will anyone do anything about it? Of course not.
What is going to be the event that gets laws to change? Probably not a few movies viewable only from Sony devices.
The USA really needs to stop being a corporate-country. Weren't the republicans all about the people at one point in time? Now they are all about the billionaires and family dynasties pillaging what they can, with the forerunner the mad orange king pillaging the most. And starting wars he loses by default, after promising to not start wars.
Sony's lawyers would argue about how things are, while your defense has to argue about how things should be.
Which way it goes likely depends on how sympathetic the judge is rather than actual arguments being made.
I'm currently listening to a record which was pressed before I was born, and that will outlast me. My CDs were ripped around 2000 to a drive and i've streamed then since. I've still got the CDs though, and the last time I played one it worked fine on my 1989 vintage transport.
I think i'm good.
If they do want to posit it as this, I'd personally be fine if they said "a CD will work for 100k plays before corrupting" so you'll have 100,000 credits to stream The Wizard of Oz before you need to purchase it again.
But they need to say that upfront.
Plastic discs are the optimum data distribution format. They degrade in the same time frame as a paper book, essentially lifetime, you retain legal rights like the first sale doctrine, you can easily format shift for safety and storage, and nobody can take any of that from you ever, and you can use that data however you like, as long as you aren't trying to sell bootlegs.
Books and plastic discs are infinitely better than the digital realm. The consumer rights are so much stronger and better.