8 ms·

What I don't understand is why Sony is the one being targeted for this when this has been the case with any digital purchase for 20 years? I don't know of a di

by nerdjon 13d ago

What I don't understand is why Sony is the one being targeted for this when this has been the case with any digital purchase for 20 years? I don't know of a digital marketplace that works differently. But instead all of the hate, the boycots, etc are all targeting Sony instead of focusing on actually figuring out how to improve digital purchase rights which extend beyond games (and far beyond Sony). I know that some online hate it when you compare this situation to PC since there is choice there, but not when it comes to this. Sure you can choose which store you want to not really own things with but its the same result. Steam did this a year ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1g19n60/steam_now_tells_gamers_up_front_that_theyre/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1g19n60/steam_now_te... Where were the boycots then.

redwall_hp 13d ago
Valve killed the previously thriving boxed game industry two decades ago and people can't get over how much they love everything about Valve. Sony follows 20 years later (in a world where internet is faster than installing from BluRay and games are outgrowing three layer discs) and people lose their mind. There's more noise about this than Microsoft's mass layoffs at the game companies they bought up.
- CamperBob2 13d ago
  Sony has a very long corporate tradition of fucking over their customers. Valve does not. People still give money to Sony for some reason, but as far as I'm concerned that's on them. Call it victim-blaming at this point, I guess.
  - FoundTheShill 13d ago
    [flagged]
- wredcoll 13d ago
  Valve was a plucky underdog against the established publishers and, while dominant today, still has reasonable competition, sony is a giant corp with a reputation and a monopoly on playstations.
  - alephnerd 13d ago
    > sony is a giant corp with a reputation and a monopoly on playstations. That's like saying Volkswagen has a monopoly on Volkswagen cars. Sony clearly does not have a monopoly on the video game industry, and a plurality of video games are cross-platform across consoles, PCs (Windows/Linux), and even MacOS.
    - nalekberov 13d ago
      If I want to move from point A to point B, I can choose from BMW, Audi or any cheaper Chinese brand. But I cannot play 'Astro Bot' on another platform.
      - dcow 13d ago
        You can't get the Volkswagen engine sound or drive experience in a BMW, though.
        nalekberov 13d ago
        Remember? Moving from point A to point B.
        dcow 13d ago
        Apples and oranges. If you goal is to simply play games, well then there's plenty of hardware out there for you to use. If you want to play Sony exclusives then you have to use their hardware. If I want to get from point A to point B then I can use any vehicle. If I want to get from point A to point B in a Volkswagen then I have to buy a one.
        nalekberov 13d ago
        A BMW and a Volkswagen are two kinds of apples. Both get you from A to B, which was the entire goal. A Sony exclusive and any other game are not two kinds of anything. If you can't tell these apart, perhaps you should go back to elementary school.
- Grombobulous 13d ago
  - Sony has a track record of removing purchased media en masse, while Valve does not. - While it could be argued that Valve runs an effective monopoly of the PC platform based on their marketshare, Valve operates on a platform with competitive options including DRM-free stores. - Game consoles have always been more attached to physical media than PCs. - Sony is the largest player in the market (disregarding mobile phone gaming) with more total marketshare than Valve and the PC platform. This makes them a much more visible target.
- ReptileMan 13d ago
  The PC has thriving piracy scene. So for any game worth playing there were lawful backups available on specialized sites. In a way it is different.
- beart 13d ago
  I disagree with the assertion that Valve is responsible for the death of physical game copies. First off, console games have gradually moved away from offering physical copies for years. This had the (probably deliberate) effect of killing the used game market. Earlier attempts to kill that market were driven by the proliferation of digital content that could not be resold. Second, physical copies on the PC have not been guaranteed for a very long time. I would suggest it was actually the wide-scale proliferation of indie games that did more to kill the physical copy market than any deliberate transition from AAA studios. There are thousands of indie games out there now. Without digital copies, it would be impossible for anyone to actually purchase any of them. And the momentum to move away from physical copies for PC gaming has been there for a very long time. No one was going to Best Buy to pick up a physical copy of minesweeper. There have been other factors as well, such as the popularization of MMORPGS which provided years of content from a single physical copy. Really though, the idea that without Valve, the PC gaming market would still be chugging along on physical game copies just isn't realistic. It goes completely against the momentum built over the last 25 years of PC gaming.
- philipov 13d ago
  Valve doesn't randomly remove stuff I've payed for from my library. Even when the ability to purchase something goes away, people who already bought it keep access to it.
  - redwall_hp 13d ago
    They patched CS:GO away, a game I paid retail price for, with "Counter-Strike 2" and overnight dropped support for my platform (MacOS). Sony has never stolen a game from me, unlike Valve. The closest incident was that movie thing, which was more a failure on their part to negotiate perpetual licensing with the rightsholder.
    - Telaneo 13d ago
      CS:GO is still accessible via the beta feature. Not sure if you can still play it on MacOS. I agree that that's the wrong way to do it, but at least you still have access to it in theory.
    - scheeseman486 13d ago
      Valve pivoting away from MacOS is a consequence of choices Apple has made for their platform, many of which made it a more hostile place for Steam to exist. This is baked into the long standing Apple model of software distribution, where API and architectural changes inevitably obsolete software with Apple usually providing only a limited time window for cross compatibility. You can still play your purchases on an operating system that isn't actively fighting against you running them.
- scheeseman486 13d ago
  Physical PC games weren't great in the 2000s. Online activated serial keys, optical disc based DRM that caused problems during both the 9x>NT and XP>Vista transitions, the only thing that made PC gaming tolerable for me was gamecopyworld. Valve (eventually) offered something better than that. PC games can still be physical. Burn some discs or copy the files onto a USB stick and put it in a box. I think it's crazy that boutique companies like Limited Run Games completely avoid the platform when it's the only one left that isn't actively hostile to the core principles of the company. Admittedly PC does have the image of being a digital distribution only platform these days, but it's illusory and breaking that illusion is a marketing problem. People were pretty pissed about the xbox layoffs, it's just that things move fast and this was the next thing.
- vel0city 13d ago
  > Valve killed the previously thriving boxed game industry two decades ago Boxed PC games were practically dead by the time Valve started selling 3rd party games on their marketplace. Most game stores around me had stopped selling them or massively shrunk the shelf space for them. Xbox, Gamecube, Playstation 3, they had whole walls of the store dedicated to their stuff. PC games had a couple of shelves in the middle of the store, if even that. Sales for PC games had massively fallen between 1999 and 2005 while the rest of the game industry exploded. The industry had shrunk over a third in five years before Valve started selling online. You can't say it was "thriving".
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expedition32 13d ago
Sony is just handling this stupidly. What they should do is just stay silent and stay the course. Everyone fucking knows in 10 years time physical media will be dead and all of this is water under the bridge.
swiftcoder 13d ago
> when you compare this situation to PC since there is choice there, but not when it comes to this They may not be playing in the same league as Steam, but PC folks do have the choice of GoG and itch, which both sell DRM-free binaries.
- nemomarx 13d ago
  steam also sells drm free binaries. the steam drm is optional and the publisher or Dev can choose to go without it of course it's better that gog requires you go without it for the customer, but I'm not sure it helps in terms of legal rights. If gog shuts down you'll need to have your games backed up and downloaded to still own them and you won't have any license to a new download or etc
- nerdjon 13d ago
  I honestly keep forgetting GoG exists but fair, maybe saying there is no choice is a bit much but if you want to play a given game it may not be available there meaning your choice is to not play it or deal with this.
  - Telaneo 13d ago
    > it may not be available there meaning your choice is to not play it or deal with this. On PC, there are always other options [pirate flag emoji]. Steam (in many, but not all cases) competes with free. Sony doesn't on the PS5.
nemomarx 13d ago
Sony announced they're not going to print more physical discs for games. So far no one else in the big three has confirmed they're doing this, so obviously the controversy goes to them
jjice 13d ago
I think it's because they're a huge player in the space and the PS5 appears to be the dominant player in the console space this generation. This affects so many people in their faces right now, where as the switch to "buying" movies on an online platform was more gradual as it was a new platform offering and not one that had had ownership from day one (arguably since 1994 with the PS1). So in short, I think it's because they're the big guy making a very visible change to the broader public, instead of a new platform with a new way of doing things (how Steam was).
deleted 13d ago
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chrisfosterelli 13d ago
> What I don't understand is why Sony is the one being targeted for this when this has been the case with any digital purchase for 20 years? Examples: literally two days ago Sony permanently removed access to over 500 movies for people who had "purchased" them, and only a couple months ago Sony announced their plan to permanently shutter physical media production for Playstation. I agree with you that it's a systemic issue but it also doesn't surprise me that Sony is seen as the lead boogeyman. I think if you asked the average gamer what their opinion of Valve's business practices was vs. Sony you'd get a very different answer even if the legalese in the TOS is similar.
- nerdjon 13d ago
  I maybe should have phrased that better since I do understand their announcement around disks and removing the movies is a reason why they are the current target. I just find it hypocritical, people keep saying they are going to move to xbox or pc next gen and its like. Their policy is exactly the same. You have the same risk and not really ownership. And I am not defending Sony, they have a long history of getting cocky with their consoles and pulling some shit. But in this particular case they are following the trend that we allowed by going all digital on PC and buying digital games on consoles. Sony isnt going to be the one that changes this, the only way to expect change would be targeting all of them including Valve. But everyone, like this article, just seems to gloss right over that and seem to imply its only Sony that is the problem here.
  - nemomarx 13d ago
    Nintendo still has pretty good physical. Move to them if you can imo
    - greenowl 13d ago
      and much better franchise
  - antiframe 13d ago
    > You have the same risk and not really ownership. You don't, though. When I download a game on Steam or GOG, I have the files on my PC. I can back them up. I can modify them. Yes, live service games still have an online component I don't control, but I do still control the files on my computer. I don't on a console. Actually, I don't own any consoles for reasons of software freedom but I hear they are much more difficult to do things like back up your data, etc.
spike021 13d ago
Even disc-based games in boxes have mostly required online connectivity to download most game files for a long time. It doesn't make it right but I feel like the writing has been on the wall for ages.
zehaeva 13d ago
I think the difference here is that sony is in the middle of taking down their ps3 store, and while they say you'll be able to download the games for the "foreseeable future" I don't think many folks have a great deal of confidence in this being true for for that long. Valve has spent the better part of 20 years fostering a good relations with the gaming community and pretty much every gamer has a great deal of confidence that they'll protect your purchases.
riffruff24 13d ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA Because they did a whole marketing stunt over it. Granted it was more than a decade ago, so probably just a remnants of old console war.
kobalsky 13d ago
> Where were the boycots then. 1. steam does not have a monopoly on distribution rights for PC games. if steam were to go bankrupt publishers could honor your keys and even other marketplaces could do it. steam themselves let you bring your own key. 2. steam has been a benevolent marketplace leader, even though DRM itself plays against customers, the rest of the stuff they pushed while leading, like game sharing, play and refund, offline playing, are pro consumer. 3. why would your knee jerk reaction to this is pointing a finger to steam, what's your endgame?
- nerdjon 13d ago
  Why is your knee jerk reaction to defend steam? Sure they have said and claimed a lot of things, but their TOS says the same thing that Sony is arguing. Its suddenly this big shock now but no one cared before? Sure the way Sony is handling this is fumble after fumble but thats PR. My problem is that Valve for some reason gets a free pass because "they are the good guys" when their own policy means they could do the exact same thing. I own a lot of games on Steam, but I am not nieve to assume that there is not a chance that at some point I could loose all or some of those games. People are for some reason in a false sense of security about Steam and that is a problem. They have to be part of the conversation when it comes to digital ownership. Ignoring them means we can't actually solve the issue.
- dcow 13d ago
  Yeah, right XD
rolph 13d ago
When You rootkit people, it tends to be unforgettable.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
frollogaston 13d ago
Nintendo is the only one still selling video games that you own practically speaking, ie you own the cartridge and it has the game on it or at least has the key. Unless I'm out of the loop on that.

by nerdjon 13d ago

redwall_hp 13d ago

Valve killed the previously thriving boxed game industry two decades ago and people can't get over how much they love everything about Valve. Sony follows 20 years later (in a world where internet is faster than installing from BluRay and games are outgrowing three layer discs) and people lose their mind. There's more noise about this than Microsoft's mass layoffs at the game companies they bought up.

CamperBob2 13d ago
Sony has a very long corporate tradition of fucking over their customers. Valve does not. People still give money to Sony for some reason, but as far as I'm concerned that's on them. Call it victim-blaming at this point, I guess.
- FoundTheShill 13d ago
  [flagged]
wredcoll 13d ago
Valve was a plucky underdog against the established publishers and, while dominant today, still has reasonable competition, sony is a giant corp with a reputation and a monopoly on playstations.
- alephnerd 13d ago
  > sony is a giant corp with a reputation and a monopoly on playstations. That's like saying Volkswagen has a monopoly on Volkswagen cars. Sony clearly does not have a monopoly on the video game industry, and a plurality of video games are cross-platform across consoles, PCs (Windows/Linux), and even MacOS.
  - nalekberov 13d ago
    If I want to move from point A to point B, I can choose from BMW, Audi or any cheaper Chinese brand. But I cannot play 'Astro Bot' on another platform.
    - dcow 13d ago
      You can't get the Volkswagen engine sound or drive experience in a BMW, though.
      - nalekberov 13d ago
        Remember? Moving from point A to point B.
        dcow 13d ago
        Apples and oranges. If you goal is to simply play games, well then there's plenty of hardware out there for you to use. If you want to play Sony exclusives then you have to use their hardware. If I want to get from point A to point B then I can use any vehicle. If I want to get from point A to point B in a Volkswagen then I have to buy a one.
        nalekberov 13d ago
        A BMW and a Volkswagen are two kinds of apples. Both get you from A to B, which was the entire goal. A Sony exclusive and any other game are not two kinds of anything. If you can't tell these apart, perhaps you should go back to elementary school.
Grombobulous 13d ago
- Sony has a track record of removing purchased media en masse, while Valve does not. - While it could be argued that Valve runs an effective monopoly of the PC platform based on their marketshare, Valve operates on a platform with competitive options including DRM-free stores. - Game consoles have always been more attached to physical media than PCs. - Sony is the largest player in the market (disregarding mobile phone gaming) with more total marketshare than Valve and the PC platform. This makes them a much more visible target.
ReptileMan 13d ago
The PC has thriving piracy scene. So for any game worth playing there were lawful backups available on specialized sites. In a way it is different.
beart 13d ago
I disagree with the assertion that Valve is responsible for the death of physical game copies. First off, console games have gradually moved away from offering physical copies for years. This had the (probably deliberate) effect of killing the used game market. Earlier attempts to kill that market were driven by the proliferation of digital content that could not be resold. Second, physical copies on the PC have not been guaranteed for a very long time. I would suggest it was actually the wide-scale proliferation of indie games that did more to kill the physical copy market than any deliberate transition from AAA studios. There are thousands of indie games out there now. Without digital copies, it would be impossible for anyone to actually purchase any of them. And the momentum to move away from physical copies for PC gaming has been there for a very long time. No one was going to Best Buy to pick up a physical copy of minesweeper. There have been other factors as well, such as the popularization of MMORPGS which provided years of content from a single physical copy. Really though, the idea that without Valve, the PC gaming market would still be chugging along on physical game copies just isn't realistic. It goes completely against the momentum built over the last 25 years of PC gaming.
philipov 13d ago
Valve doesn't randomly remove stuff I've payed for from my library. Even when the ability to purchase something goes away, people who already bought it keep access to it.
- redwall_hp 13d ago
  They patched CS:GO away, a game I paid retail price for, with "Counter-Strike 2" and overnight dropped support for my platform (MacOS). Sony has never stolen a game from me, unlike Valve. The closest incident was that movie thing, which was more a failure on their part to negotiate perpetual licensing with the rightsholder.
  - Telaneo 13d ago
    CS:GO is still accessible via the beta feature. Not sure if you can still play it on MacOS. I agree that that's the wrong way to do it, but at least you still have access to it in theory.
  - scheeseman486 13d ago
    Valve pivoting away from MacOS is a consequence of choices Apple has made for their platform, many of which made it a more hostile place for Steam to exist. This is baked into the long standing Apple model of software distribution, where API and architectural changes inevitably obsolete software with Apple usually providing only a limited time window for cross compatibility. You can still play your purchases on an operating system that isn't actively fighting against you running them.
scheeseman486 13d ago
Physical PC games weren't great in the 2000s. Online activated serial keys, optical disc based DRM that caused problems during both the 9x>NT and XP>Vista transitions, the only thing that made PC gaming tolerable for me was gamecopyworld. Valve (eventually) offered something better than that. PC games can still be physical. Burn some discs or copy the files onto a USB stick and put it in a box. I think it's crazy that boutique companies like Limited Run Games completely avoid the platform when it's the only one left that isn't actively hostile to the core principles of the company. Admittedly PC does have the image of being a digital distribution only platform these days, but it's illusory and breaking that illusion is a marketing problem. People were pretty pissed about the xbox layoffs, it's just that things move fast and this was the next thing.
vel0city 13d ago
> Valve killed the previously thriving boxed game industry two decades ago Boxed PC games were practically dead by the time Valve started selling 3rd party games on their marketplace. Most game stores around me had stopped selling them or massively shrunk the shelf space for them. Xbox, Gamecube, Playstation 3, they had whole walls of the store dedicated to their stuff. PC games had a couple of shelves in the middle of the store, if even that. Sales for PC games had massively fallen between 1999 and 2005 while the rest of the game industry exploded. The industry had shrunk over a third in five years before Valve started selling online. You can't say it was "thriving".

deleted 13d ago

[deleted]

expedition32 13d ago

Sony is just handling this stupidly. What they should do is just stay silent and stay the course. Everyone fucking knows in 10 years time physical media will be dead and all of this is water under the bridge.

swiftcoder 13d ago

> when you compare this situation to PC since there is choice there, but not when it comes to this They may not be playing in the same league as Steam, but PC folks do have the choice of GoG and itch, which both sell DRM-free binaries.

nemomarx 13d ago
steam also sells drm free binaries. the steam drm is optional and the publisher or Dev can choose to go without it of course it's better that gog requires you go without it for the customer, but I'm not sure it helps in terms of legal rights. If gog shuts down you'll need to have your games backed up and downloaded to still own them and you won't have any license to a new download or etc
nerdjon 13d ago
I honestly keep forgetting GoG exists but fair, maybe saying there is no choice is a bit much but if you want to play a given game it may not be available there meaning your choice is to not play it or deal with this.
- Telaneo 13d ago
  > it may not be available there meaning your choice is to not play it or deal with this. On PC, there are always other options [pirate flag emoji]. Steam (in many, but not all cases) competes with free. Sony doesn't on the PS5.

nemomarx 13d ago

Sony announced they're not going to print more physical discs for games. So far no one else in the big three has confirmed they're doing this, so obviously the controversy goes to them

jjice 13d ago

I think it's because they're a huge player in the space and the PS5 appears to be the dominant player in the console space this generation. This affects so many people in their faces right now, where as the switch to "buying" movies on an online platform was more gradual as it was a new platform offering and not one that had had ownership from day one (arguably since 1994 with the PS1). So in short, I think it's because they're the big guy making a very visible change to the broader public, instead of a new platform with a new way of doing things (how Steam was).

deleted 13d ago

[deleted]

chrisfosterelli 13d ago

> What I don't understand is why Sony is the one being targeted for this when this has been the case with any digital purchase for 20 years? Examples: literally two days ago Sony permanently removed access to over 500 movies for people who had "purchased" them, and only a couple months ago Sony announced their plan to permanently shutter physical media production for Playstation. I agree with you that it's a systemic issue but it also doesn't surprise me that Sony is seen as the lead boogeyman. I think if you asked the average gamer what their opinion of Valve's business practices was vs. Sony you'd get a very different answer even if the legalese in the TOS is similar.

nerdjon 13d ago
I maybe should have phrased that better since I do understand their announcement around disks and removing the movies is a reason why they are the current target. I just find it hypocritical, people keep saying they are going to move to xbox or pc next gen and its like. Their policy is exactly the same. You have the same risk and not really ownership. And I am not defending Sony, they have a long history of getting cocky with their consoles and pulling some shit. But in this particular case they are following the trend that we allowed by going all digital on PC and buying digital games on consoles. Sony isnt going to be the one that changes this, the only way to expect change would be targeting all of them including Valve. But everyone, like this article, just seems to gloss right over that and seem to imply its only Sony that is the problem here.
- nemomarx 13d ago
  Nintendo still has pretty good physical. Move to them if you can imo
  - greenowl 13d ago
    and much better franchise
- antiframe 13d ago
  > You have the same risk and not really ownership. You don't, though. When I download a game on Steam or GOG, I have the files on my PC. I can back them up. I can modify them. Yes, live service games still have an online component I don't control, but I do still control the files on my computer. I don't on a console. Actually, I don't own any consoles for reasons of software freedom but I hear they are much more difficult to do things like back up your data, etc.

spike021 13d ago

Even disc-based games in boxes have mostly required online connectivity to download most game files for a long time. It doesn't make it right but I feel like the writing has been on the wall for ages.

zehaeva 13d ago

I think the difference here is that sony is in the middle of taking down their ps3 store, and while they say you'll be able to download the games for the "foreseeable future" I don't think many folks have a great deal of confidence in this being true for for that long. Valve has spent the better part of 20 years fostering a good relations with the gaming community and pretty much every gamer has a great deal of confidence that they'll protect your purchases.

riffruff24 13d ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA Because they did a whole marketing stunt over it. Granted it was more than a decade ago, so probably just a remnants of old console war.

kobalsky 13d ago

> Where were the boycots then. 1. steam does not have a monopoly on distribution rights for PC games. if steam were to go bankrupt publishers could honor your keys and even other marketplaces could do it. steam themselves let you bring your own key. 2. steam has been a benevolent marketplace leader, even though DRM itself plays against customers, the rest of the stuff they pushed while leading, like game sharing, play and refund, offline playing, are pro consumer. 3. why would your knee jerk reaction to this is pointing a finger to steam, what's your endgame?

nerdjon 13d ago
Why is your knee jerk reaction to defend steam? Sure they have said and claimed a lot of things, but their TOS says the same thing that Sony is arguing. Its suddenly this big shock now but no one cared before? Sure the way Sony is handling this is fumble after fumble but thats PR. My problem is that Valve for some reason gets a free pass because "they are the good guys" when their own policy means they could do the exact same thing. I own a lot of games on Steam, but I am not nieve to assume that there is not a chance that at some point I could loose all or some of those games. People are for some reason in a false sense of security about Steam and that is a problem. They have to be part of the conversation when it comes to digital ownership. Ignoring them means we can't actually solve the issue.
dcow 13d ago
Yeah, right XD

rolph 13d ago

When You rootkit people, it tends to be unforgettable.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

frollogaston 13d ago

Nintendo is the only one still selling video games that you own practically speaking, ie you own the cartridge and it has the game on it or at least has the key. Unless I'm out of the loop on that.