If you want to own your games, do not buy closed platforms like Playstation or Nintendo, do not buy games infected with Denuvo or any other malware/DRM that prevents you from backing it up, and do not buy games that require you to use a company’s servers with no option to host yourself.
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2026
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So in other words, just go the piracy route.
They never did anyway. Check the EULA.
Maybe not legally. My drive has copies and cracks that I "own".
I have 5 generations of PlayStation consoles, i probably won't have the 6th.
We're overloading the term "ownership".
- When a company says "ownership" they mean over the property itself. Copyright. Only the rights holders "own" the game, only they can make a sequel to the game.
- When a player says "ownership" they're referring to their copy of their game, i.e. their license. No copyright. They do not own the game, they just own a license to experience it, they cannot make a sequel.
People then try to say "well the issue isn't ownership, it's DRM". No. DRM that makes the experience worse for paying customers is annoying, but it's not the issue at hand. Virtually all your games for all your consoles have some form of DRM, and yet you consider them "owned" in your collection.
What we need to demand is: ownership of a license that grants perpetual access.
- We don't want the license to expire.
- We don't want it to change what it grants us access to after we've purchased it.
- We don't want them to stop making the content available because they don't want to host their servers anymore.
- We want the ability to play without needing an internet connection.
If all of that can be guaranteed, then the license is on par with a physical copy.
But until we have legislation forcing it to be the case, we have to assume they fully intend to take your money and one day not be willing to provide what you paid for.
Console software has been licensed for decades at this point. You never owned it.
Pirates own their games.
Sony is so bad at digital ownership that it was apparently easier for some dude in Brazil to claim my account than for them to double check I didn't move halfway across the globe overnight. Also the recovery process is absolutely terrible. It's literally the only moderately important account that guy was able to "hack" into.
And I did reset the reused password after it got leaked but I guess the guy was able to force his way through customer support simply by knowing the old password and the mail address (that they never had access to, mind you. It's still secured and regularly checked). Even fucking reddit did a better job at securing my old account.
"My home builder is totally useless! I left my door unlocked and someone stole all my shit!"
I changed the password to all my accounts, including the Sony one (and the other ones still in use, and all the remotely important/"meaningful" security-wise unused ones) before they somehow got access to this one. I just got to see them bounce off a few others, which is how I guessed they were in Brazil, from the related security mails infos.
I used a different, secure password for every account this time. Idk what I could have done better and it seems to have worked for all my other accounts so far.
You could have protected your account info in the first place...
At this point, I wonder why a Playsation is even worth to buy?
For what it's worth I'm 100000% never buying a sony product again
I'm afraid it'll be for xbox too. If you havent already you'll need a PC and start a pirate treasure hoard.
This kind of news should be paired with the pre-order numbers of GTA6. To better understand how many of the Sony users actually care about this.
Hint: it's not a lot.
Well yeah, pretty much no one cares. I hate this move by Sony mostly because used physical games are so cheap, even cheaper than steam sales. I used to resell games I stopped playing to get some of my money back too.
But just look at PC gaming. It's been digitized for almost 20 years and no one stopped gaming on PC. So of course the console companies saw that and decided to do the same.
The outrage feels a bit hypocritical considering how many PC gamers constantly defend valve. It isn't quite the same situation but valve is still responsible for killing physical PC games. Gamers literally helped them do it out of sheer convenience.
Of course valve did strong arm us, especially in the beginning with HL2. The controversy over HL2 ended up being nothing more than a fart in the wind and people barely remember it now. The same will likely happen with Sony.
If the ps6 fails it'll be because of other reasons.
Although pc is only digital, there is athuge difference between it and consoles: you don't have to buy from steam to get your games cheap, There is a huge amount of stores that sell steam keys at a fraction of their cost. There's bundles and if you don't want steam, there's also gog, itch...
If sony goes all digital, you'll only have sony to buy games.
I'll just add the tangent: imaging pre-ordering a digital-only release.
"Pretty please, Take Two, can I give you my money in exchange for nothing at all of value?"
What even is this world. What have they done to us.
That you think strips of paper, or numbers on a screen have an equivalent value to your time and labor is not Sony's fault...
What if they run out of bytes because everyone is downloading at the same time? Preordering allows you to have your bytes to download already assigned., right?
I like to imagine that this is the answer they give if you ask the reason to preorder a digital game several months ahead its launch.
You don't need a lot of people. I don't remember the exact percentage but it's something like if 10% of the population is willing to show support your cause it's enough to get a law passed. Just look at SKG initiative. It took a million Europeans to get the political ball rolling not just in the EU but also in California. What we need is a continuation of SKG where digital purchases of products actually gives us ownership over said product and not just a use license where companies like Sony can do whatever they want with your purchase.
So... stop buying them?
Yes
Exactly this. It's not like there're no alternatives
I'm sure they are so upset that they'll go and rent another $70 game from them to cope.
I won’t. I won’t buy any games from Sony for the foreseeable future
I can live without their consoles for the rest of my game playing life. My God, it isn't like they do anything daring like Nintendo or Sega.
They offer no actual advantage over my existing pc beyond IP.
Microsoft and Sony haven't really pushed gaming hardware forward, and if they are just selling software then my graphics card does better.
Xbox did try with kinect. Then they shot themselves in the face by suggesting they were going to force it to always be on, always be online and use facial recognition to force everybody present to own a copy of the game.
They backtracked quick, but the noose was already around the ki-neck by then. I'm still salty about that. The kinect was fun as heck
I'm just sick of the general population enabling this behavior.
Many gamers are like meth-heads. They just need their next fix, hence pre-orders for digital games.
Even if GTA6 would need a donation of your blood and all of your personal information, I doubt that sales figures would take a significant hit.
This is why I really want to make my own open-source console platform.
Indie developers can target it, it can have some kind of cartridges (probably flash based) which people can sell directly, and complete open-source and hackable (but with simple ways to customize, so people can buy accesssories instead of making them, if they're not maker inclined).
If enough people could use this console, then even AAA devs might consider it.
But the problem is it has to be decently powerful while staying affordable. Traditionally consoles lose money (recouped when people buy first party titles). It's a failed business model as evident by all these major studios moving away from it. First SEGA leaving the console market, then Nintendo making Game Key Cards, and now Sony removing physical all together.
I mean tbh, people could simply target the Raspberry Pi 3B as a standard platform for gaming. Those still go for $35, unlike the Pi 4 and Pi 5, and are capable of 2D games and limited 3D games (perfectly fine for Indie). It runs Linux which is easy enough to develop for both in direct code and from game engines (except Unreal which is annoying about it). Add some sort of "card hat" like those readers a few people have made, and it could be great for that world at least. Wrap it up into a product for like $50 with a controller and it could be something
But idk, the AAA world is gonna continue to shift from these models. At least PC is a bit better with its digital storefronts, but it's not perfect either, and you still don't "own" anything.
Personal ownership of games is definitely a problem we should try to solve, but I have doubts that forced use of expensive cartridges are the right way to do it. Devices are just simpler without the need to interface with those mediums. Supposedly many console failures related to the disc drive.
SKG’s approach is legislative - mandating an end of life plan for any games using servers. Even something as simple as use of Denuvo servers might need to become DRM-free if the alternative is to just takedown the servers (but honestly, it’s surprising they don’t just end the Denuvo subscriptions when sales taper off, which would basically serve the same case)
This idea is honestly pointless. PC exists and is perfect because piracy exists.
“Piracy” only as a form of conservancy, I suppose?
Im sorry if this sounds cold, because I agree with you, but I feel like it would take ALOT to ever get something like this off the ground let alone profitable enough to make sure it survives. It would take a massive injection of money by the biggest companies to create something that people would even look twice at sadly.
The closest thing to what you are proposing would be the failed OUYA console back in like 2013. It didnt invest in physical media, but it did want a store where indie developers can market exclusive games with the same hopes you had where it would get big enough to gain the attention of bigger companies. I invested in the kickstarter and had one, it was cool but needed a lot of work and fizzled out when it became clear that they were not going to make money off that model as there were not enough quality games being made to keep it afloat. On top of this the handful of really good games just ended up being ported to Steam, Switch, and even PS or Xbox which meant why bother at all buying it on OUYA. I think the biggest successful game that they had first was Towerfall.
The closest thing we have to a open source gaming console is the steam machine
But yeah, having open source gaming consoles would be cool
I wish they would exist too
The ARM nature of the Pi could make it difficult depending on Engine. Might be better to look at an x86_64 SBC to build a platform on. Those tend to be more expensive tho
Something about if you buy something but it can be taken away from you arbitrarily by the company...
The end of ownership came a long time ago for PS players. Now it's just the end of fancy boxes and discs that give an illusion of ownership.
Which is still bad, but let's not mix up facts.
Many PS5 games can be fully installed from the disk with no internet connection needed.
Technically Sony has the ability to remotely disable any game so that PS4s and PS5s don't read the disc. Though that requires the console to be connected to the internet. As long as it's not, you should be good. Not exactly 'ownership', but fairly close.
That headline seems pretty snarky lol.
The sooner people stop hanging on to "physical" ( and move on to more productive conservation initiatives ) the better. Sony's not likely to budge and frankly the medium has been dying for a while. Now DRM-free digital like gog or pirate copies still has a future I think, but relegated to a niche. I've been trying to picture the future landscape of gaming and I fear it's mostly "forever games". Both sony and ms have been pushing for live service/mobile crap ( and they still have the power to do it ) because a single mediocre skin or season pass can be as lucrative as a whole game. No need to innovate when you can make billions on slop. Take Candy Crush - it's what, 20 years old and still brings in billions. Same for roblox, despite being known as a pedo-heaven. Games as an artform looks like an increasingly niche hobby for hipster/aging gamers, because the vast majority of people just love their slop.
It's now time move on - hoard, archive and maybe still try and push for decent consumer protections.
Cringe bad take