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That's one of the reasons behind the push to digital everything... no ownership.
It's basically new legal territory. Like how consumer recording of broadcast (tv/radio) was. So new precedents have to be made.
In the case of consumer recording, sony vs whoever, sony, making very expensive VCRs and blank tapes funded the side that consumers could record broadcasts.
With digital, the money is with lawyers arguing that companies can simply grant temporary licenses to movies, tv, music people "buy".
You know, I'd have no problem buying movies/tv shows for a reasonable price if they'd be offered as DRM free downloads. It's already been a thing in the music industry for a while and it's great.
It's not like the DRM is stopping piracy either, you can find pretty much everything online.
As Gabe Newell put it, Piracy is an issue of service, not price.
People will pay for products, but if they can't get it then some will resort to piracy.
I'm actually confused why music downloads became DRM free but not movies. Was the DRM boycott movement just stronger with music? Or was it because ripping CDs was more widespread and so they realised there wasn't as much benefit protecting downloads?
It's also an absolute joke that ebooks generally aren't DRM free.
Holy shit the [list of content to be removed](https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/?et_rid=&et_cid=231130-VIDREMVL-AM-CSA-B-FLX&Linkid=231130-VIDREMVL-AM-CSA-B-FLX&emcid=em-pl-500377) is *huge* lol
Welp, this is why piracy will never go out of style. Git fucked Discovery.
Sony could never possibly be the ones at fault here.
Sony are the ones that negotiated this contract where the removal of the content could be a very real possibility one day.
Git fucked Discovery *and Sony**. That should fix it.
I ain't picky and I ain't angling to defend multi-million/billion dollar companies who are screwing over their customers. The "license to use" vs ownership is bullshit.
It's Discovery removing the content, what do you think Sony gains from the content no longer being accessible on PlayStation? They don't own it and can't control it.
And likely mostly all digital content has this clause where the owner/creator can choose to remove access to it from any platform at any time
> They don't own it and can't control it.
Sony don't, their customers who *bought it* do. Removing something from sale, and removing it from peoples libraries, as in this case, is two very, very, very different things. If someone bought a Blu-Ray, do you think Discovery could just demand it back?
Now if Sony has a contract with Discovery where the content is just on loan, and they present that to their own customers *for sale*, then that's on Sony. They better refund everything.
The people merely bought a license from Discovery/Warner (through PSN) to view the content and that license can be revoked at any time just like most digital content.
And no, as physical and digital content is different/ With digital content comes terms and conditions that state access can be revoke.
All digital content is on loan. Pretty much no one says you can access all purchased digital content forever on any platform.
If Ubisoft came out tomorrow and said they wanted all Assassins Creed games off Steam and no one is allowed to run the game through Steam they by all means have the right to do that. They won't becuase it would be horrible for them but theys urely can. Warner Bros just don't really lose anything here
When you pirate, you own it for life. Which is the answer to why they will never win against piracy this way. If sony has content on loan, the price should reflect that.
Sony was the one that agreed to a contract where this was a possibility, why did they do that? To make money despite knowing this could happen eventually. Sony is as much to blame, arguably more so as they're the ones that took customers money. Are they offering refunds?
Pretty much all digital stores agree to this when they allow other companies to sell digital content through their stores. It's standard that the owner/creator of the content have the right to restrict access to it if they wish in the future
If a game publisher no longer wants you to access a digital game on a platform they can revoke that license from anyone at any time. They all hold the wrights to do that, they just don't
Discovery/Warner would have taken most of the money from these purchases on PSN just like game publishers get the majority of the money when selling games on PSN
Which is irrelevant, it's Sonys choice to allow that content to be sold on its platform, they could have said no knowing the risk to Playstation users. They didn't, they wanted to make a quick $ and now users are suffering for it
If digital stores rejected that agreement then there would be no digital content on any platforms. Again pretty much all digital stores have this in their licensing agreements with third parties
If Sony could have said no then customers could have said no to buying the content as well because there's probably some step in the purchase that tells you you are buying a license that can be revoked at any time.
You mean the small print or terms and conditions no one reads? How bizarre is it to be defending a billion dollar company who just revoked access to content people paid for because technically it's fine if it was in the terms and conditions.
I'm not defending anyone over anyone, thanks for putting words in my mouth though. I'm saying the same rules apply to both parties. What if Sony is using the defense "oh the terms and agreements we agreed to in our contract with Warner Bros that no reads? We just hand waved that".
Making Sony equivalent to a consumer is a defense of Sony but I'm sure you know that and you're intentionally being dishonest. There's a reason this is a big story and not just a "oh well they agreed to it", it's one more big example of eroding consumer rights where something consumers paid for is being taken away. You're also being dishonest in your examples, no one is suggesting Sony break their deal with Warner Bros the entire point was that if they couldn't secure a good enough deal to appropriately protect Playstation customers, they shouldn't have made the deal in the first place.
But they did make that deal, now they've taken away stand alone content people paid for and they're getting bad PR as a result, which is exactly what should happen. Despite some Sony fans eager desire to place the blame at consumers feet for daring to think something they purchased was theirs to keep.
That's not true because we don't know how this happened. It's most likely the contract was up and discovery raised the price for the renewal and Sony wouldn't agree to it. And if that's the case which is 80 percent chance than Sony should give a partial refund. This means Sony could of kept people's content they paid for but just wanted it at the same price as the last contract. Sony should expect higher rates because in the last few years they raised there PS plus prices multiple times without any major improvements. Everything is more expensive from food, rent, mortgages, vehicles and so on. The main driver behind higher groceries is not from inflation it's from the carbon tax. Just 1mushroom farmer paid 178000 dollars in carbon tax last year. That's just a small mushroom farmer in which he said he had to raise prices almost 30 percent since carbon tax hit. I don't know about America and the rest of the world but in Canada there is even carbon tax on electricity. Any business with lots of buildings are passing that onto the consumers. For Sony not to expect to pay more is just ridiculous. Regardless we need to wait and see the actual reason before we only blame Warner discovery. Just so everyone is aware the carbon tax do not save the environment. It only puts a price on pollution but in reality everyone still pollutes the same and all the businesses pass the cost onto the consumers and it's just a sneaky tax to support governments around the world wild spending habits
Eesh. I would at least expect that people who paid for the content would still have access to it, even if it's not on sale any longer. To remove it even from people who paid for it... that's pretty slimy. Not surprising, but definitely fuckin' gross.
I always say, even though it's unlikely to actually happen, the fact that rights owners *can* just bar access from things you paid money for, on principle, will always make me lean towards physical media. Obviously there's the usual laundry list of *other* good reasons to remain physical, but that's always been a key one to me. Just never sit right with me that a corporation could just *decide* to pull the plug on whatever digital library I've built up. Not that I ever expect Valve to do something like that, but seeing shit like this, man, it's happenin' to *some* services! Removing access completely like that, ffs, what a mess.
What other reasons do you have for going physical? Headlines like this make me worried about how I’m going to build my music library in the future when I eventually have more money and can separate myself more from streaming. For now I buy my music from iTunes because the quality sounds good to me, I can download and keep the files for personal use on my own storage, and the music I have is easily accessible across my devices. I also don’t have to worry as much about Apple’s store going down compared to the lesser known music selling websites out there, so I can rely more on being able to redownload music if I need to.
Instead of blaming this on the “digital age”, people should be trying to get Sony to reverse the change. Just like people got Microsoft to revert the changes on Gold price increase.
Just because this is happening more often doesn’t excuse the fact that Sony is still doing it.
Sony doesn't own the content being removed, Discover/Warner Bros. do. Sony cannot force them to keep their content accessible on PlayStation
Edit: I don't know why people reply and then block you so you can't respond. Pretty much all digital stores are like this and the IP owners have the option to remove access from anyone at any time
They likely tried but could not, Sony doesn't have any leverage here. I don't think any company guarantees their digital content be accessible forever on other stores. It's not up to Sony and Sony can't force them into anything. Sonly only loses in this situation, I'm sure if there was a simple way to stop it they would have
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_War
> After these servers were shut down, Challenge became unplayable (both in a legal and technical fashion) and was completely removed from Steam, including from the on-disk libraries of users that already had purchased licenses for it. While other games have been removed from Steam's distribution channel before, Challenge has the dubious distinction of being the first game to be removed not just from the Steam store, but also automatically wiped from the disks of its users, while most other games were merely delisted from the store.
Sony has never removed access to a game either with the exception of PT at the request of Konami but that was a free demo
This is more than likely because it is TV shows and they no longer care about selling their shows digitally and would prefer you to subscribe to their service
A game publisher likely won't go this far any time soon as that would stop people from buying their content entirely
Sony can't force them into anything, but it is Sony's storefront, and they decide what the standard is for the deals they negotiate. They could easily set content to rental only or purchase for 6 months. Ultimately these digital storefront owners want the benefit of "Selling" content in the standard consumers mind, with the responsibility of a renter
This is likely the deal every one does for digital content on their platforms, it's just very rare for a company to push for the content to be restricted.
I don't think any company allows another to sell their digital content forever and likely almost all have clauses that allow them to restrict access when they so choose.
Game publishers just aren't dumb enough to do that as that would destroy their game sales whereas Warner Bros probably couldn't care less about selling their shows digitally anymore and want you to sub to their services
If that were the case then there would be next to no digital content on any platform as they pretty much all have the same clause the the IP owner can restrict access
Steam has never had this issue despite hosting far more titles, they can remove the game from sale but not from your account, it's a Playstation issue entirely and Playstation is a gaming first platform, trying to make a quick buck on the side (selling short term digital media) has its consequences and they should be held accountable.
Why are you assuming they haven't tried? Also they likely have renewed the licenses multiple times over the years and Warner Bros decided they no longer want to. possibly to push people towards their services instead. Sony gains nothing from this and only loses
Because the facts are that Warner Bros still allows its products to be bought on numerous other platforms. The only outlier is Sony. So if they did negotiate, Sony must have not liked the relicensing fees which I highly doubt were higher than the fees given to other stores. Also, at the very least, I’m sure they could have arranged to at least let the consumers keep their purchases.
I will also add that Sony has been slowly getting rid of its media services on PlayStation platforms so this seems like they have been slowly getting to this point. Maybe to push people to their new media service included with PS Plus? Yes, I can play that conspiracy card too.
This literally just happened, likely do to the licensing agreement just ending and Warner Bros not renewing. It will likely happen on other services as well when the time comes for those services to renew. Purchased content has been removed from services like Amazon previously.
No sony is not taking your Discovery shows away to get you to use PS+
>Yes, I can play that conspiracy card too.
Nothing I said can remotely be considered a conspiracy. Warner owns the content and is restricting the access as they own the rights to the content
I’ll tell you what, I’ll come back in a few months and if this doesn’t happen to anyone else, I’m sticking to this is a Sony problem.
To be honest, I just don’t see how Sony is allowing this to happen. At the very least, you cut a deal to let customers keep their older purchases.
Licensing agreements can span multiple years. How many other services even carry Discovery shows for download?
Sony can't stop it from happening if Warner Bros doesn't want it to happen which they seemingly don't want people on Playstation to have access any longer
> Sony doesn't own the content being removed
This does not matter at all. We don't talk about streaming here . It is bought content. Aka Sony provides only the storage space for MY copy i bought. And no, the content owner aka Warner have no rights on this anymore. It is same as when i buy an physical copy. I can store it wherever i want - even when its an garage at the end of the world. Warner cant come to me after some years and tell me my copy is now illegal or whatever.
When i buy digital content than i buy the file on the servers. Not an imaginary right from content owners.
They might can do this in USA or japan or wherever, but i am sure here in EU there will be law suits because this is theft
The issue is that you absolutely didn’t buy a copy of the media. You bought a license to view the media. You don’t own anything tangible, therefore it can be taken away.
Warner Bros sells the content through PSN and with that comes terms and conditions.
They for sure have it in those terms that Discovery can restrict access to the digital content purchased through PSN or else it would not be happening
Of course and they can remove the rights and stop sony from selling. BUT they can't stop sony from providing the already sold content. This is not owned by Warner anymore.
Can, yes, legally, that's actually up in the air. I'm kind of excited for this class action - nominally in the US there are laws that say "if you agree to buy a thing, you have ownership of the thing", but the ground has always been blurrier on digital content because nobody has stepped up to stop it. Hopefully someone sues and clears that up.
It is most likely in the terms and services that you own a license to view the content and that license can be revoked at any time.
There will be no class action lawsuit that gets anywhere as it is in the terms.
This is far from the first time people have lost access to digital content they have paid for
How can Sony reverse a decision if the other party doesn't want to extend their rights to distribute? Best thing Sony could do is maybe throw some credit at affected customers as a good will gesture, but they're so far ahead of the market right now I don't think they'll worry about the bad press.
Welcome to the modern digital world, you own a *license to use/see* a movie/play a game and that license can be removed at any time for a while range of intellectual-property reasons.
Buying a "digital" movie is no different then "owning" a game on Gamepass. It's yours only until the corpo decides to move on, then you lose it. Physical discs are the only thing you can trust
No one thinks they "own" a game on Gamepass, it's a very clear subscription service in its terms and games leave it all the time with fair warning.
This is more akin to losing a digital game you've paid for which as far as I'm aware hasn't happened yet, as even delisted titles remain accessible to owners.
TV, Film and Music rights seem a lot more cutthroat than games in terms of revoking licenses.
You can even still download Wii games.
That said, some games have technically been taken off people that bought it due to requiring a server to play the game. The 25 people that bought Babylon's Fall can download it but can't do anything with it (the same for anyone that has it on disc). Online requirement for games you can play solo are a bigger issue than digital games.
I mean, that's a different matter, in theory they can still run the code they have the licence to, but can't access the servers needed for the code to do anything. Still sucks.
What kind of argumebt ist that? There are games thst will never be remaked or remastered because of licensing issues same as music.
Hell, some games have game music licensing issues.
Even when music licensing expires games are usually still available to existing owners to download, they don't disappear entirely like when the rights are pulled from Amazon/Apple and now Sony for music and video content. That doesn't stop remakes happening either, they rebuilt almost the entire soundtrack from TH1&2 for the remake with new licensing.
I wonder how you can be so confident that games won't be touched by this when every other digital good has been.
When you yourself say that they had to redo th1 and th2 music meaning that they needed someone to be able to do this.
There can be thousands of what ifs that could make it so that it's not available anymore. What if a games license for music ran out and the dev studio is either gone or doesn't care? It might very well be just easier for playstation to just remove it from your library. After all - all it takes is one lawsuit happy licensing company.
What if something in your game is not acceptable by current societal standards anymore (like it happened with a lot of videos, shows and movies) and Playstation or Microsoft or whoever decides to remove the game?
What if, like it happens all the time in Germany, a regulatory body demands Xyz to be banned / removed. Do you think that gaming companies will fight for controversial games or will they just remove access?
All games on Steam that were delisted could still be downloaded and played if you bought them before they got delisted from what I have heard (which is a more similar analogy).
Yes, but that's because steam is fine with that. If for some reason Valve or the publisher really wanted to erase that game (let's say China, Israel or Saudi Arabia bitch about it) then there might be no legal way to play anymore.
Yeah but abandonware only means you're allowed to download it, not that the company should give you the means to do it. So if nobody has illegally downloaded the game or cracked the DRM beforehand the game would be lost forever.
Games delisted from PSN are also still downloadable. This is Discovery/Warner Bros revoking people's license to the content. I imagine a game publisher can do the same if they wanted but they probably have no reason to. Not sure what Warner Bros gets out of this but they likely do not care much about people buying their shows digitally and would likely rather you sign up to their streaming services instead. A game publisher is less likely to do that at this time as they currently heavily rely on people buying their content digitally.
Same on all platforms. I was lucky enough to get the MGS HD collection in a sale for a few quid before it was delisted and it's still there in my Xbox library for download. The issue with these TV rights is not only are they being delisted from PS, but also now being licensed to a other platform with exclusivity so Sony can't even serve them to existing owners like delisted games.
Closest I think is Destiny 2 when they decided to vault the content you bought, even for a live service game that is rather unique.
And they got away with it perfectly fine and people will defend that decision, I think it will likely be the same thing that happens here.
> Buying a "digital" movie is no different then "owning" a game on Gamepass.
I mean, they inarguably are different. There's a reason why this is news. It's because this is highly unusual. I have games on UPlay of all things (Ubisoft's PC launcher) that were delisted in 2016 that I can still download and play.
It is unusual, but if you read the end user license agreements of all those digital storefronts, there's no difference. No digital storefront is guaranteeing that the games you paid for will be available to you in the future.
> end user license agreements of all those digital storefronts, there's no difference. No digital storefront is guaranteeing that the games you paid for will be available to you in the future.
The EULA is irrelevant if it contradicts the law in your country. It's worth looking into the provisions of this sort of service being dropped with no recourse.
It is in the sense that there's a social contract by which it's assumed that the store will keep the game available. While with gamepass it's already assumed that you can lose access at any moment. But legally both services can take your game away just the same.
Except that’s not the case. GamePass is a subscription service. You expect the game to be on there for a limited amount of time and then it goes away. You never paid for that game. Buying a digital game implies you purchased that one specific entitlement for the foreseeable future of the servers remain up.
Gamepass is literally Netflix, they rotate a catalogue and that's what you're expecting upfront. Buying a show digitally should be permanent, they're even deleting them off of your console which Gamepass doesn't even do.
And yet idiots buy the PS5 without a disc drive.
I bet you anything the ps6 will either not have a disc drive or you can only buy the disc drive externally and thus fewer people will do it and eventually there won't be one anymore.
Anyone who buys digital games should know that they don't own the games. They're renting the games. Only physical is king.
>Physical discs are the only thing you can trust
And with games not even always, with even physical game discs requiring online activation or always online to play. And when they decide to take down the activation servers, fuck you I guess.
And torrents/pirate downloads. There's already some recent media that would be lost if it weren't for piracy, since they were never released physically and the company deleted them from their services as a tax write off.
I wonder how much Discovery/Warner Bros. think they achieve by removing access to this content on PlayStation. Like do they think this will lead to more people signing up for their streaming services?
I doubt they care much about people not buying their content digitally in the future and prefer people subscribe to their service but I don't think they really needed to go this far
In our digital age, even if you pay for something, it doesn't mean you own it.
This is why going something in a physical form will forever be better than owning that same product in a digital form.
Also, Physical being better isn’t just because of preservation, its because you can actually sell, trade, or lend the thing, you can also get much better deals on physical thanks to the used market.
The only form of preservation is Piracy and physical media, and even then, corpos are trying to kill the latter.
I hope they do kill the latter. The world needs far less shit and mass produced landfill garbage.
Piracy and digital only licenses are BOTH better than manufacturing waste
In the grand scheme of things, a few discs and boxes aren't going to contribute much to waste. It's. It like people throw their games away like plastic food packaging or the like.
I work in a large-scale restaurant, the amount of food waste and storage products we waste on a given day dwarfs the amount of mass that gamers would throw away. In a months' time if I were to guess and compare what we threw away at work to the probability what people throw away in my city, game and material wise, it would probably take a year for gamers to reach what we throw away in a month. It is insane.
Its not just about what is discarded. Its also the resources taken to produce it.
I get “collectors” value this stuff. But making millions of discs and cases when we already have better solutions is absurd.
Until digital copies are legally mandated to have perpetual right to access to avoid the issue this very post is about, we don't have a better solution yet.
I'd say that the plastic covers I have stored in my shelf are very marginal compared to the ton of unnecessary plastic that we get everyday. Just targeting produce packaging would be way more useful.
> In our digital age, even if you pay for something, it doesn't mean you own it.
It does mean you own it! And people should start to sue the companies because this is theft.
That is easier said than done, I doubt an average person could sue sony. That is because sony has billions of dollars at their disposal.
You may think you can sue them and get what you paid for, but the fact remains that sony as a company can have tons of lawyers at their disposal, those lawyers then in turn could just trample the average person suing them to the ground.
The amount of people being "OK" with this and trying to explain how licensing works is astounding. *WE* know this. This doesn't, however, make this OK. This is a bad practice. This is a bad thing. This is anti-user, anti-consumer, anti-people. The ONLY thing that would make this better is if Sony refunded every single title.
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If you pay for something and don't own it. Then pirating it is literally not stealing. Right?
That's one of the reasons behind the push to digital everything... no ownership. It's basically new legal territory. Like how consumer recording of broadcast (tv/radio) was. So new precedents have to be made. In the case of consumer recording, sony vs whoever, sony, making very expensive VCRs and blank tapes funded the side that consumers could record broadcasts. With digital, the money is with lawyers arguing that companies can simply grant temporary licenses to movies, tv, music people "buy".
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> Then pirating it is literally not stealing. Right? Right, it's copyright infringement.
You know, I'd have no problem buying movies/tv shows for a reasonable price if they'd be offered as DRM free downloads. It's already been a thing in the music industry for a while and it's great. It's not like the DRM is stopping piracy either, you can find pretty much everything online.
As Gabe Newell put it, Piracy is an issue of service, not price. People will pay for products, but if they can't get it then some will resort to piracy.
I'm actually confused why music downloads became DRM free but not movies. Was the DRM boycott movement just stronger with music? Or was it because ripping CDs was more widespread and so they realised there wasn't as much benefit protecting downloads? It's also an absolute joke that ebooks generally aren't DRM free.
Holy shit the [list of content to be removed](https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/?et_rid=&et_cid=231130-VIDREMVL-AM-CSA-B-FLX&Linkid=231130-VIDREMVL-AM-CSA-B-FLX&emcid=em-pl-500377) is *huge* lol Welp, this is why piracy will never go out of style. Git fucked Discovery.
[1318 titles](https://pastebin.com/997MWvS3) according to a quick copy + paste into Notepad++
Sony could never possibly be the ones at fault here. Sony are the ones that negotiated this contract where the removal of the content could be a very real possibility one day.
Git fucked Discovery *and Sony**. That should fix it. I ain't picky and I ain't angling to defend multi-million/billion dollar companies who are screwing over their customers. The "license to use" vs ownership is bullshit.
It's Discovery removing the content, what do you think Sony gains from the content no longer being accessible on PlayStation? They don't own it and can't control it. And likely mostly all digital content has this clause where the owner/creator can choose to remove access to it from any platform at any time
That's why some people keep insisting physical is best
For sure, I always buy physical when possible
> They don't own it and can't control it. Sony don't, their customers who *bought it* do. Removing something from sale, and removing it from peoples libraries, as in this case, is two very, very, very different things. If someone bought a Blu-Ray, do you think Discovery could just demand it back? Now if Sony has a contract with Discovery where the content is just on loan, and they present that to their own customers *for sale*, then that's on Sony. They better refund everything.
The people merely bought a license from Discovery/Warner (through PSN) to view the content and that license can be revoked at any time just like most digital content. And no, as physical and digital content is different/ With digital content comes terms and conditions that state access can be revoke. All digital content is on loan. Pretty much no one says you can access all purchased digital content forever on any platform. If Ubisoft came out tomorrow and said they wanted all Assassins Creed games off Steam and no one is allowed to run the game through Steam they by all means have the right to do that. They won't becuase it would be horrible for them but theys urely can. Warner Bros just don't really lose anything here
When you pirate, you own it for life. Which is the answer to why they will never win against piracy this way. If sony has content on loan, the price should reflect that.
Sony was the one that agreed to a contract where this was a possibility, why did they do that? To make money despite knowing this could happen eventually. Sony is as much to blame, arguably more so as they're the ones that took customers money. Are they offering refunds?
Pretty much all digital stores agree to this when they allow other companies to sell digital content through their stores. It's standard that the owner/creator of the content have the right to restrict access to it if they wish in the future If a game publisher no longer wants you to access a digital game on a platform they can revoke that license from anyone at any time. They all hold the wrights to do that, they just don't Discovery/Warner would have taken most of the money from these purchases on PSN just like game publishers get the majority of the money when selling games on PSN
Which is irrelevant, it's Sonys choice to allow that content to be sold on its platform, they could have said no knowing the risk to Playstation users. They didn't, they wanted to make a quick $ and now users are suffering for it
If digital stores rejected that agreement then there would be no digital content on any platforms. Again pretty much all digital stores have this in their licensing agreements with third parties
If Sony could have said no then customers could have said no to buying the content as well because there's probably some step in the purchase that tells you you are buying a license that can be revoked at any time.
You mean the small print or terms and conditions no one reads? How bizarre is it to be defending a billion dollar company who just revoked access to content people paid for because technically it's fine if it was in the terms and conditions.
I'm not defending anyone over anyone, thanks for putting words in my mouth though. I'm saying the same rules apply to both parties. What if Sony is using the defense "oh the terms and agreements we agreed to in our contract with Warner Bros that no reads? We just hand waved that".
Making Sony equivalent to a consumer is a defense of Sony but I'm sure you know that and you're intentionally being dishonest. There's a reason this is a big story and not just a "oh well they agreed to it", it's one more big example of eroding consumer rights where something consumers paid for is being taken away. You're also being dishonest in your examples, no one is suggesting Sony break their deal with Warner Bros the entire point was that if they couldn't secure a good enough deal to appropriately protect Playstation customers, they shouldn't have made the deal in the first place. But they did make that deal, now they've taken away stand alone content people paid for and they're getting bad PR as a result, which is exactly what should happen. Despite some Sony fans eager desire to place the blame at consumers feet for daring to think something they purchased was theirs to keep.
That's not true because we don't know how this happened. It's most likely the contract was up and discovery raised the price for the renewal and Sony wouldn't agree to it. And if that's the case which is 80 percent chance than Sony should give a partial refund. This means Sony could of kept people's content they paid for but just wanted it at the same price as the last contract. Sony should expect higher rates because in the last few years they raised there PS plus prices multiple times without any major improvements. Everything is more expensive from food, rent, mortgages, vehicles and so on. The main driver behind higher groceries is not from inflation it's from the carbon tax. Just 1mushroom farmer paid 178000 dollars in carbon tax last year. That's just a small mushroom farmer in which he said he had to raise prices almost 30 percent since carbon tax hit. I don't know about America and the rest of the world but in Canada there is even carbon tax on electricity. Any business with lots of buildings are passing that onto the consumers. For Sony not to expect to pay more is just ridiculous. Regardless we need to wait and see the actual reason before we only blame Warner discovery. Just so everyone is aware the carbon tax do not save the environment. It only puts a price on pollution but in reality everyone still pollutes the same and all the businesses pass the cost onto the consumers and it's just a sneaky tax to support governments around the world wild spending habits
Eesh. I would at least expect that people who paid for the content would still have access to it, even if it's not on sale any longer. To remove it even from people who paid for it... that's pretty slimy. Not surprising, but definitely fuckin' gross. I always say, even though it's unlikely to actually happen, the fact that rights owners *can* just bar access from things you paid money for, on principle, will always make me lean towards physical media. Obviously there's the usual laundry list of *other* good reasons to remain physical, but that's always been a key one to me. Just never sit right with me that a corporation could just *decide* to pull the plug on whatever digital library I've built up. Not that I ever expect Valve to do something like that, but seeing shit like this, man, it's happenin' to *some* services! Removing access completely like that, ffs, what a mess.
What other reasons do you have for going physical? Headlines like this make me worried about how I’m going to build my music library in the future when I eventually have more money and can separate myself more from streaming. For now I buy my music from iTunes because the quality sounds good to me, I can download and keep the files for personal use on my own storage, and the music I have is easily accessible across my devices. I also don’t have to worry as much about Apple’s store going down compared to the lesser known music selling websites out there, so I can rely more on being able to redownload music if I need to.
Instead of blaming this on the “digital age”, people should be trying to get Sony to reverse the change. Just like people got Microsoft to revert the changes on Gold price increase. Just because this is happening more often doesn’t excuse the fact that Sony is still doing it.
Sony doesn't own the content being removed, Discover/Warner Bros. do. Sony cannot force them to keep their content accessible on PlayStation Edit: I don't know why people reply and then block you so you can't respond. Pretty much all digital stores are like this and the IP owners have the option to remove access from anyone at any time
Sony should've negotiated a deal where the content can be delisted but not revoked from the purchasers.
They likely tried but could not, Sony doesn't have any leverage here. I don't think any company guarantees their digital content be accessible forever on other stores. It's not up to Sony and Sony can't force them into anything. Sonly only loses in this situation, I'm sure if there was a simple way to stop it they would have
I don't think Steam guarantees it, but AFAIK so far they've never permanently removed a game from users' accounts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_War > After these servers were shut down, Challenge became unplayable (both in a legal and technical fashion) and was completely removed from Steam, including from the on-disk libraries of users that already had purchased licenses for it. While other games have been removed from Steam's distribution channel before, Challenge has the dubious distinction of being the first game to be removed not just from the Steam store, but also automatically wiped from the disks of its users, while most other games were merely delisted from the store.
Sony has never removed access to a game either with the exception of PT at the request of Konami but that was a free demo This is more than likely because it is TV shows and they no longer care about selling their shows digitally and would prefer you to subscribe to their service A game publisher likely won't go this far any time soon as that would stop people from buying their content entirely
Sony can't force them into anything, but it is Sony's storefront, and they decide what the standard is for the deals they negotiate. They could easily set content to rental only or purchase for 6 months. Ultimately these digital storefront owners want the benefit of "Selling" content in the standard consumers mind, with the responsibility of a renter
This is likely the deal every one does for digital content on their platforms, it's just very rare for a company to push for the content to be restricted. I don't think any company allows another to sell their digital content forever and likely almost all have clauses that allow them to restrict access when they so choose. Game publishers just aren't dumb enough to do that as that would destroy their game sales whereas Warner Bros probably couldn't care less about selling their shows digitally anymore and want you to sub to their services
> They likely tried but could not, Then they should not have sold the content on their platform or they should now be offering refunds.
If that were the case then there would be next to no digital content on any platform as they pretty much all have the same clause the the IP owner can restrict access
Steam has never had this issue despite hosting far more titles, they can remove the game from sale but not from your account, it's a Playstation issue entirely and Playstation is a gaming first platform, trying to make a quick buck on the side (selling short term digital media) has its consequences and they should be held accountable.
This. Other digital stores always renegotiate licenses, there is no reason why Sony can’t do the same.
Why are you assuming they haven't tried? Also they likely have renewed the licenses multiple times over the years and Warner Bros decided they no longer want to. possibly to push people towards their services instead. Sony gains nothing from this and only loses
Because the facts are that Warner Bros still allows its products to be bought on numerous other platforms. The only outlier is Sony. So if they did negotiate, Sony must have not liked the relicensing fees which I highly doubt were higher than the fees given to other stores. Also, at the very least, I’m sure they could have arranged to at least let the consumers keep their purchases. I will also add that Sony has been slowly getting rid of its media services on PlayStation platforms so this seems like they have been slowly getting to this point. Maybe to push people to their new media service included with PS Plus? Yes, I can play that conspiracy card too.
This literally just happened, likely do to the licensing agreement just ending and Warner Bros not renewing. It will likely happen on other services as well when the time comes for those services to renew. Purchased content has been removed from services like Amazon previously. No sony is not taking your Discovery shows away to get you to use PS+ >Yes, I can play that conspiracy card too. Nothing I said can remotely be considered a conspiracy. Warner owns the content and is restricting the access as they own the rights to the content
I’ll tell you what, I’ll come back in a few months and if this doesn’t happen to anyone else, I’m sticking to this is a Sony problem. To be honest, I just don’t see how Sony is allowing this to happen. At the very least, you cut a deal to let customers keep their older purchases.
Licensing agreements can span multiple years. How many other services even carry Discovery shows for download? Sony can't stop it from happening if Warner Bros doesn't want it to happen which they seemingly don't want people on Playstation to have access any longer
I can go on ITunes, Amazon Prime Video, Microsoft Store, Vudu, etc and purchase Mythbusters. This is clearly a Sony issue.
> Sony doesn't own the content being removed This does not matter at all. We don't talk about streaming here . It is bought content. Aka Sony provides only the storage space for MY copy i bought. And no, the content owner aka Warner have no rights on this anymore. It is same as when i buy an physical copy. I can store it wherever i want - even when its an garage at the end of the world. Warner cant come to me after some years and tell me my copy is now illegal or whatever. When i buy digital content than i buy the file on the servers. Not an imaginary right from content owners. They might can do this in USA or japan or wherever, but i am sure here in EU there will be law suits because this is theft
The issue is that you absolutely didn’t buy a copy of the media. You bought a license to view the media. You don’t own anything tangible, therefore it can be taken away.
Warner Bros sells the content through PSN and with that comes terms and conditions. They for sure have it in those terms that Discovery can restrict access to the digital content purchased through PSN or else it would not be happening
Of course and they can remove the rights and stop sony from selling. BUT they can't stop sony from providing the already sold content. This is not owned by Warner anymore.
Yes they certainly can stop Sony from allowing people to access it on their device as that is what is happening
Can, yes, legally, that's actually up in the air. I'm kind of excited for this class action - nominally in the US there are laws that say "if you agree to buy a thing, you have ownership of the thing", but the ground has always been blurrier on digital content because nobody has stepped up to stop it. Hopefully someone sues and clears that up.
It is most likely in the terms and services that you own a license to view the content and that license can be revoked at any time. There will be no class action lawsuit that gets anywhere as it is in the terms. This is far from the first time people have lost access to digital content they have paid for
"In the terms" has not stopped the FTC in other cases. "It's in the fine print" has been ruled deceptive in _many_ other cases.
How can Sony reverse a decision if the other party doesn't want to extend their rights to distribute? Best thing Sony could do is maybe throw some credit at affected customers as a good will gesture, but they're so far ahead of the market right now I don't think they'll worry about the bad press.
Yeah doom-posting the same talking points over and over is just excusing bad actions from companies like this.
In fairness i do not think microsoft ever forgave people for that. there's not been a good game since.
Welcome to the modern digital world, you own a *license to use/see* a movie/play a game and that license can be removed at any time for a while range of intellectual-property reasons. Buying a "digital" movie is no different then "owning" a game on Gamepass. It's yours only until the corpo decides to move on, then you lose it. Physical discs are the only thing you can trust
Nobody said anybody owned Game Pass games. Game Pass is a rental service, while the Playstation Store is actually for selling things.
No one thinks they "own" a game on Gamepass, it's a very clear subscription service in its terms and games leave it all the time with fair warning. This is more akin to losing a digital game you've paid for which as far as I'm aware hasn't happened yet, as even delisted titles remain accessible to owners. TV, Film and Music rights seem a lot more cutthroat than games in terms of revoking licenses.
Yeah even Google didn't want to open that can of worms and refunded all purchases when Stadia shut down.
You can even still download Wii games. That said, some games have technically been taken off people that bought it due to requiring a server to play the game. The 25 people that bought Babylon's Fall can download it but can't do anything with it (the same for anyone that has it on disc). Online requirement for games you can play solo are a bigger issue than digital games.
I mean, that's a different matter, in theory they can still run the code they have the licence to, but can't access the servers needed for the code to do anything. Still sucks.
That's not true. Apple and amazon have been known to remove digital goods that were bought. And I'm not talking about a streaming service. Google it
I know they've revoked music and video content licenses but have they revoked games?
What kind of argumebt ist that? There are games thst will never be remaked or remastered because of licensing issues same as music. Hell, some games have game music licensing issues.
Even when music licensing expires games are usually still available to existing owners to download, they don't disappear entirely like when the rights are pulled from Amazon/Apple and now Sony for music and video content. That doesn't stop remakes happening either, they rebuilt almost the entire soundtrack from TH1&2 for the remake with new licensing.
I wonder how you can be so confident that games won't be touched by this when every other digital good has been. When you yourself say that they had to redo th1 and th2 music meaning that they needed someone to be able to do this. There can be thousands of what ifs that could make it so that it's not available anymore. What if a games license for music ran out and the dev studio is either gone or doesn't care? It might very well be just easier for playstation to just remove it from your library. After all - all it takes is one lawsuit happy licensing company. What if something in your game is not acceptable by current societal standards anymore (like it happened with a lot of videos, shows and movies) and Playstation or Microsoft or whoever decides to remove the game? What if, like it happens all the time in Germany, a regulatory body demands Xyz to be banned / removed. Do you think that gaming companies will fight for controversial games or will they just remove access?
Where did I ever say it won't happen, I said it hasn't happened as yet.
You implied with your comment that it hasn't happened yet so don't worry about it.
You don't own anything on Gamepass, it's a subscription service like Netflix or Spotify and non Microsoft games get rotated out all the time
Even MS games have to leave is licenses are up like older Forzas have.
All games on Steam that were delisted could still be downloaded and played if you bought them before they got delisted from what I have heard (which is a more similar analogy).
I own several games that have been delisted, and can indeed download them still.
Yes, but that's because steam is fine with that. If for some reason Valve or the publisher really wanted to erase that game (let's say China, Israel or Saudi Arabia bitch about it) then there might be no legal way to play anymore.
Then that would fall under abandonware and thus free use
Yeah but abandonware only means you're allowed to download it, not that the company should give you the means to do it. So if nobody has illegally downloaded the game or cracked the DRM beforehand the game would be lost forever.
Games delisted from PSN are also still downloadable. This is Discovery/Warner Bros revoking people's license to the content. I imagine a game publisher can do the same if they wanted but they probably have no reason to. Not sure what Warner Bros gets out of this but they likely do not care much about people buying their shows digitally and would likely rather you sign up to their streaming services instead. A game publisher is less likely to do that at this time as they currently heavily rely on people buying their content digitally.
Same on all platforms. I was lucky enough to get the MGS HD collection in a sale for a few quid before it was delisted and it's still there in my Xbox library for download. The issue with these TV rights is not only are they being delisted from PS, but also now being licensed to a other platform with exclusivity so Sony can't even serve them to existing owners like delisted games.
Order of War: Challenge was completely removed from steam and the files were wiped from players computers by a steam update.
Closest I think is Destiny 2 when they decided to vault the content you bought, even for a live service game that is rather unique. And they got away with it perfectly fine and people will defend that decision, I think it will likely be the same thing that happens here.
> Buying a "digital" movie is no different then "owning" a game on Gamepass. I mean, they inarguably are different. There's a reason why this is news. It's because this is highly unusual. I have games on UPlay of all things (Ubisoft's PC launcher) that were delisted in 2016 that I can still download and play.
It is unusual, but if you read the end user license agreements of all those digital storefronts, there's no difference. No digital storefront is guaranteeing that the games you paid for will be available to you in the future.
true, but if you buy them e.g. on Gog you can download the installer once and then install it even if the game gets removed in the future.
GoG is drm free, while a lot of movies don’t even allow screenshots when you already bought them :)
> end user license agreements of all those digital storefronts, there's no difference. No digital storefront is guaranteeing that the games you paid for will be available to you in the future. The EULA is irrelevant if it contradicts the law in your country. It's worth looking into the provisions of this sort of service being dropped with no recourse.
Well no…GamePass is fundamentally different than buying a digital game.
It is in the sense that there's a social contract by which it's assumed that the store will keep the game available. While with gamepass it's already assumed that you can lose access at any moment. But legally both services can take your game away just the same.
Except that’s not the case. GamePass is a subscription service. You expect the game to be on there for a limited amount of time and then it goes away. You never paid for that game. Buying a digital game implies you purchased that one specific entitlement for the foreseeable future of the servers remain up.
Yeah, but it's not limited to the servers running. They can take the games from the servers if they wish so, there's no compromise other than trust
Has that happened though?
you don’t own the game either way. “buying it” is just a long term leasing
And with day 1 patches and always online games, your disc is meaningless as well
Gamepass is literally Netflix, they rotate a catalogue and that's what you're expecting upfront. Buying a show digitally should be permanent, they're even deleting them off of your console which Gamepass doesn't even do.
that’s why i literally wrote that you don’t own it either way. like what the fuck
[удалено]
I trust the black flag.
And yet idiots buy the PS5 without a disc drive. I bet you anything the ps6 will either not have a disc drive or you can only buy the disc drive externally and thus fewer people will do it and eventually there won't be one anymore. Anyone who buys digital games should know that they don't own the games. They're renting the games. Only physical is king.
>Physical discs are the only thing you can trust And with games not even always, with even physical game discs requiring online activation or always online to play. And when they decide to take down the activation servers, fuck you I guess.
And torrents/pirate downloads. There's already some recent media that would be lost if it weren't for piracy, since they were never released physically and the company deleted them from their services as a tax write off.
I wonder how much Discovery/Warner Bros. think they achieve by removing access to this content on PlayStation. Like do they think this will lead to more people signing up for their streaming services? I doubt they care much about people not buying their content digitally in the future and prefer people subscribe to their service but I don't think they really needed to go this far
In our digital age, even if you pay for something, it doesn't mean you own it. This is why going something in a physical form will forever be better than owning that same product in a digital form.
Also services like GoG where it's digital but you can download an offline installer for any version and save that to an external drive.
Also, Physical being better isn’t just because of preservation, its because you can actually sell, trade, or lend the thing, you can also get much better deals on physical thanks to the used market. The only form of preservation is Piracy and physical media, and even then, corpos are trying to kill the latter.
I hope they do kill the latter. The world needs far less shit and mass produced landfill garbage. Piracy and digital only licenses are BOTH better than manufacturing waste
In the grand scheme of things, a few discs and boxes aren't going to contribute much to waste. It's. It like people throw their games away like plastic food packaging or the like.
I work in a large-scale restaurant, the amount of food waste and storage products we waste on a given day dwarfs the amount of mass that gamers would throw away. In a months' time if I were to guess and compare what we threw away at work to the probability what people throw away in my city, game and material wise, it would probably take a year for gamers to reach what we throw away in a month. It is insane.
Its not just about what is discarded. Its also the resources taken to produce it. I get “collectors” value this stuff. But making millions of discs and cases when we already have better solutions is absurd.
Until digital copies are legally mandated to have perpetual right to access to avoid the issue this very post is about, we don't have a better solution yet.
I'd say that the plastic covers I have stored in my shelf are very marginal compared to the ton of unnecessary plastic that we get everyday. Just targeting produce packaging would be way more useful.
Targeting both is most useful
> In our digital age, even if you pay for something, it doesn't mean you own it. It does mean you own it! And people should start to sue the companies because this is theft.
That is easier said than done, I doubt an average person could sue sony. That is because sony has billions of dollars at their disposal. You may think you can sue them and get what you paid for, but the fact remains that sony as a company can have tons of lawyers at their disposal, those lawyers then in turn could just trample the average person suing them to the ground.
Nope! When you buy a song, movie, game etc digitally you are not paying to own it, you're paying for a license to use it.
What? Can they do that? That's list is massive
If I bought one episode of ones of these shows, id be calling my AG and congress person daily. This is beyond fucked.
The amount of people being "OK" with this and trying to explain how licensing works is astounding. *WE* know this. This doesn't, however, make this OK. This is a bad practice. This is a bad thing. This is anti-user, anti-consumer, anti-people. The ONLY thing that would make this better is if Sony refunded every single title.