The Japanese company is responsible for some of the greatest advancements in the world of technology, with brilliant contributions to the progress and improvement of the tech and gaming industry. However, as we’ll see now, it also demonstrates that modern times can indeed be quite dark.
As you’re aware, as we’ve been reporting on the issue, PlayStation has started banning thousands of users without apparent justification, with all that it entails.
And if that weren’t enough drama, they’ve also started warning that a considerable amount of digital content from their library will begin to become unavailable for customers, even if they had purchased it previously. Due to these measures, The Verge has dedicated a rather harsh editorial to them today.
A digital world where nothing is truly ours, only borrowed
In less than a week, Sony has given us two timely reminders of the fragility of digital “ownership,” and both are related to PlayStation.
Last week, Sony announced that, due to “licensing agreements,” users would no longer be able to access Discovery content they had purchased, and these items would be removed from their libraries starting December 31, 2023.
The list of programs that will suddenly disappear due to corporate agreements is quite extensive. The disappearance of shows from streaming services is common, but in this case, people are losing access to programs they purchased to watch on demand whenever they wanted.
Moreover, on Monday, many users were unexpectedly banned from their PlayStation Network accounts, which meant not only being barred from playing multiplayer games or using cloud streaming but also being locked out of games they had digitally purchased from Sony’s PlayStation store.
Affected users, who might have spent years building up a large and diverse digital library, suddenly found themselves without access to the content they had purchased, without any fault of their own.
It seems that Sony has restored access to the accounts of people who were accidentally blocked, but the company hasn’t explained what happened or how it might prevent similar unexpected bans in the future.
This is the nature of the digital world. Nothing is truly yours; everything is borrowed. Despite all the money you might spend on buying movies and video games, they will never truly be yours, unlike the physical format. That Blu-ray is the difference between renting and owning.
