The relevant section is blunt. “The Software is licensed to you, not sold,” the EULA states. “You are granted a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and personal license to play or use the Software for your private, non-commercial use on the system or device it was intended for.”
The terms also restrict renting, modifying, or obtaining games through unauthorised means. Nothing in there is new, technically. Sony’s EULA has always said this. The timing is what makes it land differently right now.
If buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing.
license to play or use the Software for your private, non-commercial use
Does “non-commercial” mean all those people who make money by playing games on a monetized livestream, posting monetized gameplay videos, or playing e-sports for prizes are filthy pirates?
Nintendo’s tried arguing this for decades
Reminder that the same EULA applies to the software on a physical disk, too. The difference is you will still have the disk if they decide to revoke your ability to run that disk.
Sad really. Been a PlayStation fan since I was a kid. PS1 on Christmas w/ Metal Gear Solid is easily one of my favorite core memories. As with everything else in modern era, these companies have really lost their bearing and the spark / soul that made them cherished through most of our lifetimes.
I’ve switched to PC gaming long ago so I’m not really in their target audience anymore, but when the day comes that I want a machine for the living room it’ll certainly not be a PS.
Same. I loved the PS1 and PS2.
It’s been easy enough to set up a gaming PC in the living room for both desk and couch gaming (my gaming rig automatically switches to the TV if the TV and receiver inputs are on). Sony exclusives just aren’t what they used to be, and I haven’t really cared much since the PS2/PS3 era. I sold my consoles in 2012 and haven’t looked back, still more games than I’ll ever have time to play.
Sony can go fuck themselves. Honestly if they are going to make purchases this restrictive then I guess I won’t buy them anymore.
Afaik this a fairly standard software licensing model. Pretty much all paid videogames are like that, physical or not. Sony just started to act on it in the hopes of making even more moneyz
One thing I’m sure is that I’ll never buy a Playstation again. Even if they backtrack.
I love my country because I can pirate whatever I want and all they can do is send stupid emails saying “plz stap”
Consoles have been a joke for a long time now, it’s just a PC in a walled garden now.
obtaining games through unauthorised means
If games are going to have DRM, collect our data through unauthorized means, and be randomly taken away without our authorization, then exactly what social contract are we upholding?
then exactly what social contract are we upholding
The one where criminals, thieves, scammers, and pedophiles are free to commit whatever crimes they want, as long as they operate on behalf of capital.
None. Literally none. Just corporate greed
They are going to stop using ‘buy’ and ‘own’ in their advertising then, right?
🤣
Don’t buy PlayStation, got it.
Pirate all Sony games you like to play, maybe even those you don’t. Share. Got it.
It’s in the EULA for every piece of software, including physical.
If it wasn’t, then buying a single copy would legally allow you to sell an infinite amount of copies.
Because that’s what actually owning software means.
And video games are software.
PlayStation:
The Software is licensed to you, not sold
Windows 95:
The software product is licensed, not sold
https://www.scribd.com/document/478767349/Windows-95-License-Agreement
I know it’s a joke no one ever read them…
But you all really never knew this?
Edit:
Don’t make me wheel out the 1980s CRT TV for the class…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up863eQKGUI
There’s always been freeware and shareware (yes, they’re different) but if you as an individual paid money for software at any point, you’ve never owned it.
Businesses can’t even justify the expense of “owning” basic stuff like Microsoft Office and collectively spend billions. “Owning” software is fucking expensive, and usually means you coded it.
It’s in the EULA for every piece of software,** including physical.**
Bolded for those that aren’t getting it.
Even if you buy a disc, that does not guarantee you can play the game in the future. Often games have to be authenticated on install, and if that authenticating server is no longer online, you can’t play the game–even if you have all the files required to play it.
Europe had a whole “Stop Killing Games” initiative that would require companies to unlock games they are no longer supporting, but that mysteriously vanished from the legislative docket after meetings with game companies that organizers weren’t invited to.
Stay mad, but you need to be mad at the right things.
Kind of funny how Nintendo was here before any of this was a problem and they’ll be here after it’s all done. You put that cartridge into your console, and you can play it. It may be version 1.0, but you can play it. And every single physical Switch game that requires a download, must state so on the front of the box, so you can avoid buying them. It’ll cost $70 a decade from now, but it’ll run after you pay it lol
I will say at least with those you can still sell them, trade them, whatever. Unlike digital games.
The difference is more that they’ll be useless in 25 years or whenever Nintendo pulls the plug on the download servers.
Yeah, like I said,
And every single physical Switch game that requires a download, must state so on the front of the box, so you can avoid buying them.
Nintendo was here before any of this was a problem
Because NES locked it down at propertiary carts and still do…
That drastically increases the cost of Ninetendo games, because Nintendo is the only one legally allowed to make the blank. Even gamecube used tiny discs.
If you wanted to sell a NES game, you had to buy X amount of blank copies from Nintendo, then pay Nintendo to put the code on the blank, then pay Nintendo a licensing cut to sell…
Like, it’s not like Nintendo had consumers best interest at heart, they just nickle and dime developers at every step, which is why Nintendo versions costs more.
Oh yeah, I never said they had good business practices. We’re well aware of that. But, at this point, holy fuck. All they have to do is exist while Sony and Microslop repeatedly blast themselves in the balls. Luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing.
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I think a lot of the issue is when companies no longer respect their customers and abuse the fact that software is licensed to rip that license away from customers. Valve has the exact same agreement but (most) people don’t have an issue with it because they’re much better at ensuring you have access to the games you’ve bought for as long as possible.
abuse the fact that software is licensed to rip that license away from customers
A lot of it is widely outside of PlayStation or Valves hands…
The puclishers have the same deal with them, and developers have the same deal with the publishers.
If that wasn’t there at every link of the chain, then that next person no longer has to pay anyone earlier in the chain.
We kind of see the same with in-game music. That has to be licensed from the owner of the master, and possibly a couple more people. They don’t like doing licences in perpetuity out of principle. If the Beatles let a game use a song and that game eventually sells for 10¢ or free, then that’s a loss sale even 30 years from now in the way licensing works. So after 5-10 years, songs disappear.
Or like how it took Kevin Smith forever to get actual ownership of the movie Dogma due to Weinstein being involved and everyone else just wanting to bury what he’d touched.
EULA’s and ownership is a lot deeper than software. Like, you can sell a used game of monopoly, but buying a copy doesn’t mean you can make you’re own and sell, the physical material is just associated with the license for the intellectual property.
Like ship of thesus shit, if you start with a legit paid game of Monopoly, replace every single piece over 20 years, you can still sell it as a “used Monopoly game” because at some point you bought the license. If you made every piece the same way and then sold it, that’s not legal
It’s in the EULA for every piece of software, including physical.
*laughs in open source*
The Service provides users of Ubuntu with a free subscription to use the Service on up to five physical Ubuntu systems with unlimited number of VMs or containers for the eligible Ubuntu LTS versions as designated by Canonical.
https://canonical.com/legal/ubuntu-pro/personal
Why would you assume to own software if you don’t even pay to use it?
You can do a bullshit fork and then sell it, but if you owned it you could sell the exact same code with zero changes
To prove your point you’d need that example: an open source program that you can sell for profit with zero changes.
That’s just Ubuntu Pro and it’s basically longer term kernel maintenance plus applies to the universe repo not just main. The only extra functionality is the ability to live patch the kernel. The base install works fine as is but some businesses require the extended support.
By all means, find me a single example of software you actually own…
Because that’s waaaaaaaaay fucking easier than me listing every open source eula one by one
You can do a bullshit fork and then sell it, but if you owned it you could sell the exact same code with zero changes
To prove your point you’d need that example: an open source program that you can sell for profit with zero changes.
You can, though? If you find someone stupid enough to buy it, that is.
All you have to do is change the name and remove any trademarked branding from it.
All you have to do is change the name and remove any trademarked branding from it.
So…
They have to change it to legally sell it?
Then they didn’t own it.
Although, I guess thanks for explaining what a “bullshit fork” is, I thought that wouldn’t need explaining on here to be honest
I’m so glad I never got a PS5. I sure as shit won’t now.
I have one and every game I own is physical, like every other console I own. Now whether the games are in a workable state in the future without access to patches is another story, but I can lend, sell, trade my games and also never use PSN again if I want. From the state of things, it looks like I won’t every be buying another console and I can live with that.
I went this route as a compromise with my PS4 years ago. Even imported some harder to find games over time. Then the drive died and I discovered Sony ties some hardware ID on it to the serial number of the motherboard and restricts service to “authorized repair shops”. So fuck all of that, I’m sticking to PC 100% and pirating the hell out of exclusives for emulation down the road. My backlog is impossible to complete anyway.
I’d like to remind Sony that this is why I do not and will not own a PlayStation.
Luckily the EULA doesn’t apply when obtaining it through unauthorized means since the EULA would never have been accepted upon a purchase that didn’t happen.
(It is though copyright infringement, but you still have more ownership over the bytes on your own disk since DRM would have been removed or neutered)
Old school was “shrinkwrap eula”.
When you took the literal shrinkwrap off the box, you agreed.
Then it switched to “use eula” and the box that pops up containing the EULA that says “click to accept” and there’s no other option but to accept…
That’s the point you agree.
I don’t think it’s ever been “at purchase” at least in America. Because obviously gifts are a thing and purchasers aren’t always users and more importantly users aren’t all purchasers
A cracked game might circumvent those popups and/or screens, but I honestly don’t know why they would put the effort in or if it would matter. And if it mattered probably varies a lot by country.
EU is very adamant that you can only present contractual terms before entering an agreement (purchase) not after. All those EULAs showing up in the game before you are shown the main menu are void in EU.
If the EULA is instead embedded in the purchase flow with an “I agree” checkbox then the UsedSoft vs. Oracle case is likely still precedence to argue that you own the copy. Reason is that the purchase flow uses the “Buy” terminology and nowhere outside of the EULA it mentions rental/lease/limited/etc. This would breach the “reasonable consumer expectations” as the storefront didn’t make it clear in their purchase experience that it was only a limited license you obtained and that a normal consumer doesn’t expect “limited” when reading “Buy”. This part has though not been tested in court yet but most legal scholars agree that this would be the likely outcome should someone bring it up.
The logic was:
If I took home a $200 box of software in 1995, installed it, and then drove back to Circuit City in the morning and returned it, there was no way for anyone to tell.
Like, across all aspects of American media, profits skyrocketed with CDs because consumers couldn’t easily copy them. With cassettes and floppy discs, piracy was just accepted. And when they got to start over with CDs/DVDs they wanted to do everything possible to break the piracy habit in the window they could.
American Neoliberalism kicked off with Clinton in 1992, which is when all this was happening and corporate profits were prioritized over all else in the pursuit of campaign donations.
Like, this shit didn’t happen accidentally, we didn’t just stumble into it.
There’s reasons for why our shit is so fucked and it’s not in the EU.
Sony’s EULA has always said this.
EULA’s have been saying it since before discs were invented…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement
If any EULA didn’t say that, everyone who bought it could sell their own copies for $1 less then they bought it. Eventually the price of every piece of software no matter what it was, would be the hosting costs based on sheer size.
What’s wild is so many people never knew this, and are hyper fixated on the wrong part.
Back in the day updates just weren’t really a thing. There may be additional software (DLC except you bought it physical) in between editions, but for the most part the program was the program. So as long as you kept your install discs, you could always install that program.
That is what you were buying, the physical means to install the program, and that has always been just a license and definitely not duplicatable. Selling used games/software was valid because you’re handing over the physical means to install/run that software.
The parallel would be selling a “used digital game” and it disappears from your library. And Sony could even take 10% or whatever as a fee, even tho it would cost money.
Consumers could trust that any used game was 100% the exact same as new tho, there’s be zero advantage to every buying new if a single used license was cheaper.
That would be free market capitalist software, but the oligarchs don’t want.
Are there physical Playstation games that DOESN’T Have EULA?
Because I’m not dealing with this shit
