Sony to delete a ton of content users paid for... Kotaku

https://kotaku.com/sony-ps4-ps5-discovery-mythbusters-tv-1851066164

It would appear that Sony is in the process of removing TV content from their services that users paid for... This coming as another hot point discussion for the all digital future of media... Do we really own our content or is purchasing something off PS or Eshop or XBL simply a loan service that will change and possibly even disappear over time.... For these Sony fans it is the latter.

I don't believe a loss of licensing is a good excuse in these cases.... It's unfortunate, but in reality Sony has taken money from people who purchased content that Sony has now removed. In these events I think they should refund people. Same with Xbox or Nintendo. The safest way to digital game would be a steam account, but outside that system wars, do you trust that buying content from the big three is a winning proposition or are you OK waiting for the servers to be shut off and the content removed?

I know for me, I tightened up my digital gaming life by canceling ps, Nintendo and XBL. Xbox offers the best backwards compatible gaming solution, but I don't trust the content I bought on any of the big three.

Digital is terrible. Crazy that people want that as their future.

I think it's in a period of risk/reward... It's mad convenient and I don't miss game disks (especially now where there's no good inserts or instructions etc.) but I also don't want to embed my game collection to a service that doesn't value your purchase. The big 3 struggle with that concept.

Those that are into digital, and they think its the future, well, they deserve this kind of future🤭

Or maybe we should change the verbiage for "purchase" content to "rent" content and see how that impacts sales....?

If you think digital is the future , then this is your future. An all digital future will only exist if we allow it. This is mainly to appeal to zoomer idiots who watch countless 30 second tik tok videos all day and don't give two shits about owning anything. Don't be an idiot and don't support business practices that will ultimately cause you to own nothing. .

This is why I stick with physical media as much as possible. Especially movies/shows. I prefer to truly own my shit. Thanks.

@TheEroica: Ya, it sucks having to store discs, but not as much as having content you paid for being taken from you.

@nod_calypse: Yeah…with my movies I own them physically for my collection but on PC I just use Steam

Just saw the fuss on Twitter. Someone posted pics of their email from Sony about all Discovery content being removed. Big L for Sony. The hits keep on coming. This isn’t the first time they’ve done this either. Cows in mourning.

Wow. That definitely sucks. I’ve never purchased a movie or tv show digitally. Always get that on physical format.

Been saying for years that selling your control for convenience is a bad idea. Now here we are. And you know what?

Is anyone really surprised by this?

I refused to buy Alan Wake 2 because it was digital only and will continue to refuse to buy any game that chooses to do the same.

The only time I buy digital is for indie games when they're on sale. I have never nor would I ever buy a movie/tv series digitally.

If we do eventually go all digital, we know where to lay the blame, and that's at the feet of hermits for allowing this on PC.

Pretty much, yeah. I have like 5000 dvds/blurays/box sets. As for games, I do buy a fair amount of older games, PS1 era and so forth, but for the most part I don't mind just going Steam/GoG for games on PC. But I still buy physical on PS5.

@last_lap: Same, and it's not the first time digital libraries have been removed.

This is why you should have a backup of things you care about.

Shit, but does not surprise me in the slightest.

How many times has Valve/Steam removed content that people legitimately bought?

Even Google was nice enough to refund every single Stadia purchase.

People yelling 'digital future is hell' clearly aren't seeing the issue at hand here:

Which is that Sony is shit.

They definitely have been aspiring toward the doo-doo end of the spectrum lately.

Sony does indeed suck.

Louis Rossman (consumer rights advocate who makes every video much longer by saying the same things over and over) made a video about it.

Don't know what's going on, because I don't stream. Watching this only now.

@warm_gun: There is probably a lawsuit incoming, and hopefully a DMCA exemption.

Wow, that's terrible, and a bit surprising too, but end of the day it confirms a fear I had about digital purchases all those years ago when they first started cropping up back in the 90s.

The crux of things is that nothing we own is truly safe, not physical or digital and we should accept that. Even if you bought all physical, a natural disaster, theft, and natural degradation could make those items un playable. To top it off, all of these things have a true shelf life of about 100 years, or a human life span. Once you pass away, these things don't matter anyway. Your kids will probably not care to keep them either.

That's the thing about material possessions, it's over rated lol. Once your dead, it's all gone anyways.

Back on point, Sony should either refund customers or make these things available to download.

@blaznwiipspman1: In some cases it might be nice to hand them down to those who enjoy them, or re-use them by passing them on to others.

As the creator of Steam aka Valve once said, "Piracy isn't a pricing issue, it's a user experience issue.", and "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates."

Why blame PC gamers? Sony is the one who's doing this removing stuff from consumers' library. Steam/Valve don't do that. Even when games get delisted from the store and when purchased that game still belong to me and I can reinstall it anytime. (Looking at you Transformers: War for Cybertron & Fall of Cybertron)

At least I'm glad physical is still a thing cause everyone should have options.

This is almost poetic, given the history of pro-console, anti-PC whackos on here.

Some choice quotes are:

"I don't like digital, because Valve {Steam} could just take your purchases away from you"

"This is because of piracy, which is mostly PC's fault"

Pretty rich how PC is thriving and we are watching Sony, likely the last company these people expected to pull a stunt like this, essentially stealing back content from people that purchased it. Buddies, they should have been the first company you expected to pull this shit.

Oh, there's pirates out there folks. Corporate pirates, taking the consumers' booty from them! AHOY MAYTEE! THAR BE INCREASED SHARE PRICES OVER YONDER! ARGGGGGGH!

I tell you what, I'm never trusting a Japanese company with digital content after this. I went through a similar experience with a Japanese video site not too long ago, lost my entire collection. Now Sony is pulling this move? We are done, Japan. I'll still eat me some Japanese food, though, you can't take that back from me.

Great vid.

This is why I DON'T give up on physical media.

@mrbojangles25:It seems like this is something that can happen on both PC and console. Isn't the conversation more about physical vs digital rather than a particular platform?

You dont even own your physical content, wth would you think you own your digital? How you gonna download the rest of your physical game when servers are close? Nintendo is only of big 3 that puts all its games 100% on the cart.

Firstly, you don't own content. You pay to license content. Something that people perpetually miss. Digital allows for backup and digital is no different from "physical" despite the frequent differentiate that is made. Both "physical" and "digital" are data stored in varying mediums. A download only future for games, movies and any virtual content is inevitable. Whining on the forums isn't going to change that reality. It is more hilarious that console gamers are the ones bitching about this when they literally support gaming that is restricted to specific hardware.🤷🏽‍♂️ Unlike PC gaming, you are not restricted to hardware or arbitrary generations. In meantime, I will continue to watch the visceral reactions to download only future.😎

With that said, all companies that offer downloadable content such as games would face the reality that digital games have the same rites for transferring of licenses. It is just unfortunate that it has not been challenged but they will have to concede to a users' right to transfer.

EDIT: Interesting side note, I was able to transfer my games between accounts with EA😮

Hermits allowed the fat man in Gaben to take away your options to physical media, you know the options you say it's nice to have. You hermits made digital the norm, and consoles are catching up to the point there will be no options other than digital on consoles too. And when digital is the only way to play games, then we will see these companies selling you a season of a game and once that season is up you will need to purchase the next season etc, and it will be a slippery slope.

Sony should not be allowed to take away from what you have purchased, and I see another incoming lawsuit against Sony for stealing what someone legally purchased. And I hope they get railed for it.

This is just further proof that a digital only future is not a future at all, it's just another way of companies to restrict your ability to do with what you want with what you purchased.

@Pedro: It's worth noting new hardware that faithfully plays old physical versions of console games continues to come out (even official hardware such as Atari's), and there are repair services for old hardware. There is also the possibility of backwards compatibility in some cases, allowing multiple platforms to be compatible with certain libraries, or adapters that allow cross compatibility. There are adapters for retro games as well to stay compatible with hardware like the mister to play physical games.

It doesn't solve the situation completely but it allows options to keep playing these.

The moves they pull with digital TV and movies is bullshit, and **** Sony and Discovery for not offering people their money back for the purchased content if that's the case. With the phasing out of physical media, this is the future we have to look forward to where the IP holders can control the content 100 percent down to how you view it. It's the scenario the studios have wanted for the past 50 years

@BenjaminBanklin: It is indeed a totaliarian-esque nightmare. Anybody cheering this crap on is a straight bootlicker.

Yikes, no bueno for users who downloaded this content from Sony. That's a bad move all around.

@nod_calypse said:

@last_lap said:

Hermits allowed the fat man in Gaben to take away your options to physical media, you know the options you say it's nice to have. You hermits made digital the norm, and consoles are catching up to the point there will be no options other than digital on consoles too. And when digital is the only way to play games, then we will see these companies selling you a season of a game and once that season is up you will need to purchase the next season etc, and it will be a slippery slope.

Sony should not be allowed to take away from what you have purchased, and I see another incoming lawsuit against Sony for stealing what someone legally purchased. And I hope they get railed for it.

This is just further proof that a digital only future is not a future at all, it's just another way of companies to restrict your ability to do with what you want with what you purchased.

He said the biggest insult toward pc gamers i've read on SW. He said that the only thing pc is good for is to print shit. Can you imagine that? This is above and beyond infuriating.

What exactly makes you think steam is above that? Steam still has DRM

GOG is the safest digital platform out there cause its DRM free.

Valve is not publicly traded. They are only beholden to customers.

CD Projekt (owners of GoG) are publicly traded, and we have seen them flip-flop multiple times on multiple projects concerning their stance on DRM. Granted, they tend to be pro-consumer for the most part, but the fact they've changed stances is worrisome.

Better to go with the devil you know (that is Valve, in other words) that is more reliable than a publicly traded company like CD Projekt that could literally be taken over by hostile takeover or whatever tomorrow. It's not enough for them to be profitable; they have to GROW. Quarter after quarter. If they have too many quarters without growth, well...they might find themselves sold the owners that are less consumer friendly.

Steam, on the other hand, is ALWAYS profitable. And they don't have to grow. They're the safer investment.

True, I was just pointing out that the people championing one platform over another had the thing they were critical of happen to them.

Basically they were like "PC is lame because it's almost all digital, that's why I like my platform better because---HEY WTF SONY WHERE MY MOVIES GO!!??!"

It was a bit of schadenfreude on my part, that's all.

@mrbojangles25: Makes sense, it's SW, well done

@last_lap: So just pointing PC gamers are we? Maybe you should take the complaints towards MS, Sony as they are the ones jumping into the digital world, PC does its own thing, so don't blame us for your love of Physical media going away soon...but NOT in the distant future if ever.

In case you didn't know, physical PC games still do exist. Look at CP2077 getting its PC physical for the Ultimate Edition.

After enough corpos do this kind of stuff, governments will start implement laws requiring a lifetime access to provided for the purchased digital content (in EU at least).

As for Steam, users get to keep access to their purchases games even the game itself is delisted from the Steam Store for whatever reason. I remember that Steam used to sell movies as well, but I don't know if the users who bought them can download/watch them today.

This is why I won’t go Sony. Even Google offered refunds on Stadia….hopefully Sony will have yet another class action lawsuit on their doorstep which makes them treat their customers better.

Dumbest thing i ever read, honestly. At least Sony is selling you games instead of basing their whole business about renting, and not owning.

Did hermits allow Gaben to open a storefront and kill physical media on the PC, why yes they did, you are a part of that. I didn't make any of that up, it's just factual.

Now MS/Sony/Nintendo would love to do the same. Digital only future is the worst kind of future imaginable.

The odd PC game getting a physical release for a special edition is nothing.

Like I said I hope Sony gets taken to court for stealing people's property that they paid for. They should not be allowed to get away with it.

@nod_calypse: Damn dude your obsessed over my posts lately. Did I crap in your Corn Flakes or something?

The absence of the resident c'L'ow'N's who criticised MS over giving less free stuff are missing in action here.

Sony shlong slurpers