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.
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.