JWS1980 @Willibrad1980 - Twitter Profile

On the same day Sony told a billion gamers to embrace digital forever, it quietly showed them the catch. Two announcements, one blog, an hour apart. First: from January 2028, no new PlayStation game will ship on a disc, digital only. Second, buried below: Sony is closing the online stores for the PlayStation 3 and Vita, so you will no longer be able to buy games there at all. Read together, they are not two stories. They are the whole argument about what you actually own. A disc is the last thing in your home a Silicon Valley company cannot reach. A PlayStation game from 1994 still works today, and the law lets you resell it, lend it, keep it forever. That is ownership. It is protected by something called the first-sale doctrine, and it applies to physical objects. It does not apply to digital purchases. That is not Sony being cruel. That is the quiet legal truth underneath the whole shift. Sony's own spokesperson said it plainly today. With all digital content, you are not buying the game. You are buying a personal license for non-commercial use. Not the thing. Permission to use the thing, which depends on the company's servers and goodwill. They once pulled a game called Concord two weeks after launch. Buyers got refunds, but the game itself simply vanished. This was never really about discs versus downloads. It is about moving the largest entertainment medium on Earth from a world where you own an object the law protects, to one where you hold access the law treats as rented. Convenient, cheaper, and easier for almost everyone. Also revocable in a way a disc never was. The click of a disc into a console was ownership. The download is permission. Sony just showed you, in a single morning, how differently the two age. Do you agree with what Sony did??