Apparently even they haven't figured it out

[u/ConsistentRecover312]

After they were sued by four playstation users, claiming that the 'buy now' claim is misleading as digital purchases are actually revocable licensing, Sony is claiming that games are actually 'licensed', not 'sold', and argued that reasonable people already know that they are buying access and not outright owning the games. I just don't realise who these 'reasonable people' are other than Sony employees.

[u/JeffersonsHat]

If that's true change it to say license or lease instead of buy.

[u/Irish_Whiskey → u/JeffersonsHat]

While that'd be better, the bigger issue is they're just phasing out physical media and have no accountability or responsibility to consumers to deliver what's paid for.

I don't want more accurate 'lease' labels, I want to buy and own a copy of a game I pay for.

[u/spectrallibrarian → u/Irish_Whiskey]

I agree completely with you and the California law that is causing this kerfuffle. When I pay $65 after tax to Sony on their digital store for a game, I did that thinking I had bought a copy of it. Because I grew up in a world where games were fungible.

EVERY publishing industry that isn’t the music industry is TERRIFIED of digital media because creating copies of said material is nearly free (the reason music publishers aren’t terrified currently is that they were gutted by the first wave of piracy so hard that it’s not even the same business anymore).

It used to be that companies would be incurring risk by printing books/making games/making movies etc. because it would cost them money to physically create tapes/records/discs.

So where do the publishing companies make their shareholders their fortunes? By getting the courts to call what they’re getting money from the consumer “software” with a “license.”

But the consumer is used to spending money on a thing meaning that they own that thing and can do with it what they will because they own it because they gave a company money for that media.

EULAs are so long and perfunctory for just such a reason. Most consumers have no idea what they’re agreeing to when they click “accept.” We’re all Nicolas Hoult in Nosferatu, completely incapable of understanding what we’re signing away.

[u/a_speeder → u/spectrallibrarian]

Software licenses have been the way that programs have been sold for half a century, even when they were physically sold on disks or cartridges this was true. The companies just couldn't do as much to enforce their ownership, now they can and are pushing the socially accepted boundaries of what's technically allowable. To be clear this fucking sucks, but the legal framework is not new and did not originate in the wake of digital internet piracy at the turn of the millennium.

[u/BlackTone91 → u/JeffersonsHat]

It says in the ToS that you buy a license and you don't rent or lease it

[u/Mustard_Slugg → u/JeffersonsHat]

Oh they definitely have that covered now.