PlayStation once operated a video-on-demand service that allowed users to purchase and rent movies, but due to "changes in user behavior," the service was officially discontinued in 2021. To put it bluntly, as streaming media has become mainstream and digital sales have plummeted, the business has become unprofitable. Sony promised users at the time that the purchased content could still be viewed normally, but what you bought was never the movie itself, but a playback license.
Now, the cruel reality in the details of this agreement is finally on the table. PlayStation announced that 551 movies will be permanently removed from user accounts starting September 1 due to the expiration of distribution agreements. Sony explained: "You will no longer be able to watch previously purchased StudioCanal content, and the related videos will be removed from your video library."
Without any refunds, more than 500 videos were wiped from consumers' media libraries. Affected movies include classic horror films such as "The Evil Dead", iconic science fiction works such as "The Terminator", and timeless comedies such as "Hot Fuzz" - as long as you purchased them through PlayStation, you will not be able to watch them in the future.
This incident is a serious indictment of the digital media model and should serve as a wake-up call. Currently, manufacturers such as Sony are pushing for purely digital consoles without optical drives, selling optical drives as separate accessories; while industry giants such as Rockstar and Take-Two Interactive are also completely abandoning physical discs and turning to "boxed download codes". "GTA 6" is a typical example.
You don't really own the content digitally. As stated in the "Steam User Agreement" - which is also the common terms of most digital stores - all purchases are essentially a "non-exclusive license" and can be revoked by the platform at any time without any compensation. PlayStation's discontinued video service is a living example. This is why physical media is so important, it’s about true ownership and the preservation of content.
After all, Sony wouldn't send someone to break into your house with a bat and smash your Blu-ray discs. Of course, there are also many publishers, such as Ubisoft, who stipulate that if the game is discontinued, users must "uninstall the product and destroy all copies." Fortunately, if you have a physical version, you can completely ignore this requirement: no one will come to check whether you really smashed your "The Crew" disc.
Consumer-initiated movements such as "Stop Killing Games" are trying to address ownership issues in an increasingly digital industry environment, especially as digital rights management becomes more and more popular - even stand-alone games must be connected to the Internet to run. Gone are the days when you could just plug in a cassette and you could turn it on and play. Thirty years later, you could plug the same cassette into the console and still be able to play. Gone are the days.
However, although the campaign has collected more than one million real-name petitions, it has had little success in the EU. The European Commission determined that it "cannot legislate to compel games to remain playable after they cease commercial operation."
Clearly, the digital model is the future of the gaming industry, which is following the same path as the music industry, but relevant legislation is far from keeping up. For now, abandoning physical media means fully accepting these practices that harm consumer rights, and also dooming a large amount of historical content in the gaming industry to be erased - whether it is the expiration of licenses that cause works to be removed from the shelves, store closures that completely disappear digital exclusive content, or server outages. Today's news that more than 500 movies have been deleted from the user library should sound a warning to everyone: in the future of digital ownership, there may be no so-called ownership at all.