Big news, according to
Sony's blog post, quote,
"In response to shifting trends in
consumer preference,
new games will be
released on PlayStation Store
and at retailers in
digital formats only."
That's right, Sony's done
producing disc-based games.
And now if you wanna buy
PlayStation 5 games at GameStop,
you're gonna be buying
an empty plastic case
with a license key that you can redeem
on the PlayStation Store.
Make no mistake about it,
shifting trends in consumer preference
is how they choose to frame.
We took away the poor's
ability to play disc-based games
so that we can make it
look like people want
to download their
games instead of own them.
It's yet another euphemism
that the boot-licking
corporate crat stooges,
I mean, C-suite executives employ
on their unending quest
to enshitify everything.
But Gardner, I prefer
to download my games.
Great, get a PC,
Steam will get you there.
And so will GOG and Zoom platform,
and they'll get you
there faster and cheaper too.
And not to mention, if a
game ever gets delisted
from one of these
platforms, you can still play them.
But Sony in particular has
a long and storied history
of stealing your purchases long after
the refund window has closed.
And that means that this move
should have you very worried
about your PlayStation library
and the games industry as a whole.
Let me explain.
When you purchase something
through the PlayStation Store,
you don't own it.
That's something
probably everyone knows by now.
You own no stake, you have no control,
and you get nothing in
exchange for your hard-earned money.
And there are a bunch
of examples of this.
Exhibit A, the most recent
one, the Studio Canal Theft.
So on Sunday, "High-Tech
Low Life", "Games Revealed"
and I discussed on our
podcast "Off the Console",
featuring Noah from
"Steam Deck HQ" this week,
we discussed Sony proudly announcing
through their website
that due to the end of a
content license agreement,
some movies are gonna be removed
from the PlayStation Store.
They shared a list of 551 movies,
including "Terminator 2",
published by Studio
Canal on PlayStation Store.
And not only are these 551 films
being removed from sale though,
they're also being removed from
customers' media libraries
after September 1st, 2026.
Put another way, if you
purchased "Terminator 2"
through the PlayStation Store,
you will no longer be able to watch the
movie that you bought,
the 20 something bucks that
you put down to own the film.
Poof, gone.
You own nothing.
Your right to download or
stream that film entirely,
arbitrarily revoked
through no fault of your own.
You won't be getting a refund
and PlayStation's Senior Vice President
of Media Licensing and
Public Relations said,
"Thanks for your
hard-earned money, sucker."
Now, of course, I'm
reading between the lines
and inferring that quote.
I don't even know if PlayStation has a
Senior Vice President
of Media Licensing and Public Relations,
but the truth is, this is
exactly what every executive
at PlayStation is
probably thinking right now.
Exhibit B, the Warner Discovery rug pull.
The same thing happened
back in December of 2023,
when 1,318 seasons of
Discovery Channel shows
were quote unquote,
"delisted" from the PlayStation Store.
This delisting meant that paying
customers were robbed
of their content that they purchased
without receiving a refund and with
absolutely zero recourse.
Exhibit C, Funimation.
Now, Sony revoked paying customers access
to Funimation series
on the PlayStation Store back in 2024.
Now, I believe that this is actually the
most damning of all of these,
because get this, Sony owns
Funimation and all of its IP.
When they acquired
Crunchyroll from AT&T back in 2021,
they decided to roll all their existing
IP into Crunchyroll.
Meanwhile, Sony unilaterally decided to
literally steal your content
from your library, make
it inaccessible to you,
and not because of a
license agreement expiring.
No, they thiefed this media
because they wanted to force
their already paid customers to pay for
an endless subscription to Crunchyroll.
And that is genuinely the
most generous interpretation
that I can offer for this decision.
So when Sony says that going forward,
you're only going to be able
to buy games through their store.
Well, you should be very, very, and I
must emphasize here, very worried.
And look, I get it.
Video content ain't the same thing as
games, but there's a whole website
dedicated to games that are being
delisted from
PlayStation's vertical monopoly.
I mean, store. And sure, I haven't been
able to find a documented case
of a game being delisted from the store
and thereby removed from customers'
libraries unless we're
talking about the Concord fiasco.
But back in April,
PlayStation 4 and PS5 users noticed
that Sony had
introduced a ticking time bomb.
You had to connect to the Internet in
order to validate your license
or else you would lose
your license to play a game.
This was a new and onerous requirement
that Sony suddenly implemented
without notice, and it
proves that they are in control.
It's a very public demonstration of why
these kinds of companies
can never be trusted.
The fact is, these proprietary digital
stores are less of a
shop to buy your games
and more of, you know, Darth Vader's
personal shuttle where he can show up
on your console at any time and alter the
terms of your purchase
weeks, months or years after you have
forked over your money for any reason.
And you have no choice
but to go along with it.
And what happens when
these stores go down?
Right. Sony has an impressive track
record of days long and sometimes weeks
long downtime where online games become
completely inaccessible.
Purchases aren't possible and gaming
becomes something you used to do.
And all of this is ignoring the seemingly
innumerable instances
of data leaks from Sony's headquarters.
And this is their endgame,
right? Make no mistake about it.
They don't want kids sharing games.
They don't want adults buying secondhand
copies of titles and gaming on a budget.
They want to short-sightedly maximize
every single revenue
stream to the fullest extent,
and then nickel and dime you for the
privilege of being exploited.
It's not just Sony either. It's
Microsoft, it's
Nintendo, and it's Epic too.
The truth is, something has to give.
These bold-faced corporate kratts,
swindlers, these
inhuman C-suite occupants,
and their bootlicking, carnival-barking
shellbots are blindly and firmly pushing
the gaming industry over a cliff.
I truly believe the console
market is on its last legs.
Sony is crumbling under
their own enormous girth.
Microsoft is taking two steps forward and
four steps back
seemingly every other day.
And Nintendo is decidedly in
cahoots with these DRM schemes
and ruining any goodwill
they might otherwise have.
Meanwhile, the PC market's limping along,
unable to clear the
artificial hurdle that
is the entirely manufactured RAM crisis.
Plus, the PC market is littered with
similarly dirty corporate tricksters.
All of this begs the question, what will
gaming look like a decade from now?
Hell, what will gaming
look like by December?
Honestly, I don't have the answers.
But if you give a single shit about
gaming having a future that
even remotely resembles something
fair, I believe that you should stop
buying games through
PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch.
Divest from Sony.
Divest from Microsoft and from Nintendo
today, before it's too
late, so that gaming can have
a future that's actually worth having.
Demand ethical anti-cheat solutions that
don't spy on users, or better yet,
play games that don't need
anti-cheat in the first place.
Demand DRM-free games.
Ideally, games that are created by
unionized and or
cooperatively run studios.
And whatever you do,
play more indie games.