I have content I purchased on steam 19yrs ago. Shit was built for completely different hardware but I can go install and play it right now. The physical console games I bought that year only work in consoles that have long since broken. I can go play HL2 whenever I want, to play my copy of THPS3, I have to find and buy a PS2 that still works.
Digital ownership can apparently work just fine
Sony is reminding us that Sony is a shitty company. The company that bought you amazing technology like the memory stick ™ probably cannot be trusted.
Agreed. Physical ownership is the shelf of old DVD and CDROM PC and XBOX classic game boxes in my basement that take up space, collect dust, will never work again, and will only be a remembrance of nostalgia for a bygone day. Plus I’ll probably never seriously want to play them again… let’s be honest. I can watch a video of someone else playing, it scratches the same itch, and saves me the trouble.
I like digital ownership, but there needs to be protections so we can’t be screwed.
I agree. It’s hard to draw lines though right. Say your country made a law that companies could not pull the sort of shit Sony is pulling here. They would have to put a timeline on it right? It’s unreasonable that they should support a 10$ digital purchase for centuries. But 10yr old content disappearing is also horseshit. So what is a good line? What expectations is it reasonable to have as a consumer?
What can I reasonably expect when I pay a few bucks for a downloaded movie. I feel like that is what we are really debating here. To me, getting 20+ yrs of support for a game on steam seems like an insanely good deal. I never got that for physical games. I am forced to admit that digital games on steam are a better deal than any physical games I have ever bought.
Digital ownership CAN work but you have to decide who you trust. I would never trust Sony (or other console manufacturers) to maintain my digital library over the long term. But I guess trusting valve worked out. Shit, all my old ebooks still work too, and that’s Amazon, hardly a paragon of ethics.
The problem isn’t digital ownership, it’s the companies that are selling stuff and/or the regulatory structure that they operate in.
I’ve never even owned a PlayStation but I’ve owned enough absolute shit made by Sony that I started boycotting them like 15 years ago. They really are a truly shit company. It always amazes me they are considered a quality brand.
Sony spent 20 yrs completely committed to proprietary storage media. They sold memory sticks and the like at vastly inflated costs compared to the media built to standard specs. The PS 2 was smack in the mix with that shit. Remember memory cards? They used special Sony developed encryption, for no reason but to maximize vendor lock in.
The PS4 and 5 being storage manufacturer agnostic is a really big deal and I will give them credit for it.
Like I said, I never owned a PlayStation. What made me boycott Sony is buying many products, things like headphones, and paying double or triple the price of comparable products which probably were better than the more expensive Sony version. I know I had some shitty koss headphones I bought for $30 that were better than $200 Sony ones.
And I know someone is going to question this and ask me what model, etc. I don’t know or care. It wasn’t just the headphones it was just several times in a row of thinking I paid more and got something nice and later finding out it was shit.
there’s been instances of issues with steam games. like paid characters and skins in games being removed after the ip owners decided it was worth more money. dead by daylight did this multiple times.
Im not arguing that all digital ownership works great for consumers. But it can work. Shitty companies will always be shitty and it doesn’t matter how you possess the goods, you bought them from shitty companies.
As a general rule which applies to all products: if the company you are paying has to pay another company a license fee for your product to work, it’s not going to work for very long. Be it a Blu-ray Disc or a marvel skin, your vendor will stop paying their vendor as soon as they can.
It’s still PC architecture. May not be 64 bit, but there’s nothing stopping a modern x86-64 processor from directly running software made for an IBM PC from the 1980s without a VM or emulation. Backwards compatibility on PC is amazing. Drivers are a different story.
With dedicated consoles, the hardware is often bespoke and completely changes with each iteration of the console. In order to remain backwards compatible, emulation is required to recreate the previous environment so older games will run. That or they literally just stuff a miniature subsystem of the old console into the new one.
It’s not just PCs and Steam. I can still play my original Xbox games from 20+ years ago on my Series X (they predate Xbox Live, let alone the Xbox Live Store), and I can still play the digital and physical Xbox 360 and Xbox One games that I bought in those eras as well.
Gamers (and legislators), give Sony and Nintendo way too much of a pass for shitting on backwards compatibility.
In all fairness, PS1s and PS2s still work fine (albeit, some may need a laser replacement, and you might need an HDMI adapter) but it’s not like it’s impossible to play old PS games.
I have content I purchased on steam 19yrs ago. Shit was built for completely different hardware but I can go install and play it right now. The physical console games I bought that year only work in consoles that have long since broken. I can go play HL2 whenever I want, to play my copy of THPS3, I have to find and buy a PS2 that still works.
Digital ownership can apparently work just fine
Sony is reminding us that Sony is a shitty company. The company that bought you amazing technology like the memory stick ™ probably cannot be trusted.
Agreed. Physical ownership is the shelf of old DVD and CDROM PC and XBOX classic game boxes in my basement that take up space, collect dust, will never work again, and will only be a remembrance of nostalgia for a bygone day. Plus I’ll probably never seriously want to play them again… let’s be honest. I can watch a video of someone else playing, it scratches the same itch, and saves me the trouble.
I like digital ownership, but there needs to be protections so we can’t be screwed.
I agree. It’s hard to draw lines though right. Say your country made a law that companies could not pull the sort of shit Sony is pulling here. They would have to put a timeline on it right? It’s unreasonable that they should support a 10$ digital purchase for centuries. But 10yr old content disappearing is also horseshit. So what is a good line? What expectations is it reasonable to have as a consumer?
What can I reasonably expect when I pay a few bucks for a downloaded movie. I feel like that is what we are really debating here. To me, getting 20+ yrs of support for a game on steam seems like an insanely good deal. I never got that for physical games. I am forced to admit that digital games on steam are a better deal than any physical games I have ever bought.
Digital ownership CAN work but you have to decide who you trust. I would never trust Sony (or other console manufacturers) to maintain my digital library over the long term. But I guess trusting valve worked out. Shit, all my old ebooks still work too, and that’s Amazon, hardly a paragon of ethics.
The problem isn’t digital ownership, it’s the companies that are selling stuff and/or the regulatory structure that they operate in.
Public domain should be 20 years not 80
I’ve never even owned a PlayStation but I’ve owned enough absolute shit made by Sony that I started boycotting them like 15 years ago. They really are a truly shit company. It always amazes me they are considered a quality brand.
Word! The nastiest vendor lock in bullshit you’ve ever seen. My bitchin’ yellow Walkman aside, bad products top to bottom.
deleted by creator
You’re hyperbolizing. The Playstation 2 is the best selling video game hardware of all time. It was the opposite of a “bad product” objectively.
Sony spent 20 yrs completely committed to proprietary storage media. They sold memory sticks and the like at vastly inflated costs compared to the media built to standard specs. The PS 2 was smack in the mix with that shit. Remember memory cards? They used special Sony developed encryption, for no reason but to maximize vendor lock in.
The PS4 and 5 being storage manufacturer agnostic is a really big deal and I will give them credit for it.
What about the PS3 era of Sony made you go “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!”
Like I said, I never owned a PlayStation. What made me boycott Sony is buying many products, things like headphones, and paying double or triple the price of comparable products which probably were better than the more expensive Sony version. I know I had some shitty koss headphones I bought for $30 that were better than $200 Sony ones.
And I know someone is going to question this and ask me what model, etc. I don’t know or care. It wasn’t just the headphones it was just several times in a row of thinking I paid more and got something nice and later finding out it was shit.
there’s been instances of issues with steam games. like paid characters and skins in games being removed after the ip owners decided it was worth more money. dead by daylight did this multiple times.
Or GTA getting patched to remove music from a game you already “own”.
As is tradition at this point, those that pirated the game get a better experience
Im not arguing that all digital ownership works great for consumers. But it can work. Shitty companies will always be shitty and it doesn’t matter how you possess the goods, you bought them from shitty companies.
As a general rule which applies to all products: if the company you are paying has to pay another company a license fee for your product to work, it’s not going to work for very long. Be it a Blu-ray Disc or a marvel skin, your vendor will stop paying their vendor as soon as they can.
There’s nothing about owning physical media that would prevent that.
It’s still PC architecture. May not be 64 bit, but there’s nothing stopping a modern x86-64 processor from directly running software made for an IBM PC from the 1980s without a VM or emulation. Backwards compatibility on PC is amazing. Drivers are a different story.
With dedicated consoles, the hardware is often bespoke and completely changes with each iteration of the console. In order to remain backwards compatible, emulation is required to recreate the previous environment so older games will run. That or they literally just stuff a miniature subsystem of the old console into the new one.
It’s not just PCs and Steam. I can still play my original Xbox games from 20+ years ago on my Series X (they predate Xbox Live, let alone the Xbox Live Store), and I can still play the digital and physical Xbox 360 and Xbox One games that I bought in those eras as well.
Gamers (and legislators), give Sony and Nintendo way too much of a pass for shitting on backwards compatibility.
In all fairness, PS1s and PS2s still work fine (albeit, some may need a laser replacement, and you might need an HDMI adapter) but it’s not like it’s impossible to play old PS games.
Most PS2 Games don’t have copy protection. You can just run them on a PC via an emulator like PCSX2.
Anakin Skywalker agrees: A monarchy is great if you have a really nice and competent ruler, we just had unusually bad luck with those in the past!