Just in time for them to take physical discs away! Edit: This is only in EU! For now.
their next decision is always the worst
This is sad just because of the old names disappearing. A friend of mine killed themselves back in 2017, but we played a few games on ps4 together online back in the day. So I still scroll down to look at that old gamer tag every now and then. Its sad to think of that going away.
An important detail nobody is mentioning is that this is EU only due to privacy laws there. Sony still sucks, etc., but it’s important to get the facts straight.
There’s totally no EU law forcing companies to delete stuff you bought.
It’s this. I don’t feel like looking up the relevant part, but feel free to if you like.
The relevant bit is this one here:
It’s hard to argue that buying something on a digital platform is not a contract between the user and the platform.
Thanks! The 3 year time limit isn’t mandated and was chosen by Sony. I believe other companies have chosen even lower ones.
Which is, of course, wrong: The duration of contract for a store like Sonys is the whole time the store is up and running.
Well, they did it due to the GDPR regulations for some reason, since they don’t do it in not-EU places.
They are deliberately misinterpreting that law. This law only applies for data that they no longer have a legitimate reason to retain. It’s not just a rolling 3-year counter that starts every time you log out and gets reset every time you log in.
I haven’t logged into Facebook in well more than 3 years they haven’t deleted my data and that isn’t a violation, I haven’t deleted my account (I can’t I’ve forgotten the password and no longer have access to the original email, it’s my problem).
It’s only for things now lapsed gym memberships, or car dealerships keeping your data after you purchase a vehicle from them. They can keep that data for 3 years and then they have to delete it.
What would be the point of misinterpreting it? They have no such limit in the US; if it were for some nefarious purpose you’d think they’d implement it everywhere.
No other online store is doing this. The only one that comes close afaik is Ubisoft (who couldve guessed), but only if you own zero games on that account.
They are required to delete certain data about you if its no longer necessary for their service, but not everything, especially since you have an ongoing contract with them. They either couldn’t be bothered to only delete parts of data they consider useless already and instead chose to just wipe everything, or that’s their way of malicious compliance.
Under the GDPR, every organisation must:
Define how long each category of personal data is stored Justify each retention period with a legal or operational basis Ensure data is deleted or anonymised once the purpose ends Document all retention rules in a clear and accessible format Apply retention rules consistently across all data systems Ensure third-party processors comply with the organisation’s retention instructions They can define their own reasonable terms. Sony chooses to delete that stuff.
Yeah, that. Other companies have even lower time limits.
No, I will lose access to Fat Princess!
What an excellent way to convince aging gamers to just never buy from Sony again.
Yup, although I haven’t purchased a Sony product in over a decade because they started charging a monthly fee for online services I got free on PC. Funny because I was a fanboy like no other during the console wars.
I was considering buying one for GTA VI. I’ll wait for the PC release, thanks.
i bought portal2 when it came out on ps3… it also let me set up a steam account through my ps3, because that was going to be the next big thing (this was before ps+ and multiplayer was still free)
12 years later i got a PC, i downloaded steam… and when i logged in, there was portal2 waiting for me to download it.
sony can go fuck themselves
This is a good thing, companies shouldn’t hoard people’s data forever.
Did you actually play Portal 2? And what did you think of it?
Also not OP: It was fun. More backstory, more mechanics. I didn’t have a family to play the multiplayer co-op stuff, but it also looked fun.
Not the original commenter, but I really enjoyed it. A little bit longer than Portal with some real gems in the dialog. I would say if you enjoyed the first one, then play the second. I did not do any of the couch-co-op stuff, just the main story, so I have no idea if it’s decent.
Coop is fun, especially when you’re messing with your partner
It requires some experience with first person camera controls, though. I found out that can be a real challenge for people who don’t play a lot of video games.
Huh. That’s actually a little disappointing. I have a couple of exclusives on there that I would prefer not to lose. But I also no longer own any modern PlayStation consoles, nor am I likely to in the future. So trying to decide if this is going to be the thing that makes me leave Sony for good, or if I should just make a little effort to login from time to time.
Reminds me, I have an old ps3 with a broken disc drive in need of being jailbroken. I should get on that.
Super straightforward. Best thing you can do. Load a usb drive with ISOs and you are set. Its the best homebrew/emulation console you could hope for. If your disc drive was working it would be the cheapest bluray player you could hope for
I wonder if logging into the app on your phone would take care of that requirement.
Yes.
also found out switch deletes your cloud saves after a while if you stop paying
My decade old Sony boycott looks more & more prescient every week.
I should’ve listened to the haters. I got way too leveraged into Sony’s ecosystem and so now I suffer.
The good is I still have enough PC games that I actually own (well, control) to last me for years and years and years.
The last good product Sony made was the Walkman.
Trinitron, Vaio, Mini-Discs, Cybershots, FF/ASPC Cameras, WH-1000X headphones. They have had some decent stuff, less so recently.
It’s almost like Sony doesn’t want to have a PlayStation division anymore.
It’s odd timing given that microsoft seems to be giving up on Xbox
The Xbox people have a better grasp of things. Consoles have little reason to exist… and the writing was on the wall when the PS3 stumbled out the gate. Really, in the PS2 era, all those Renderware / id Tech 3 / Unreal 1 games running the same on every platform was a big hint that there was no longer a benefit to having different platforms. Now there’s just various badges over x86 PCs and smartphones - and the smartphones are starting to run Steam games.
None of which is to say that Microsoft has conducted their grand scheme to computer-ify the console market with any degree of finesse, consistency, or follow-through. They’re still idiots for setting successful studios on fire, and for refusing to shit or get off the pot vis-a-vis whether there’s gonna be an Xbox The Next One.
tbh, the big thing that made PS2 great for me when I was young is that I could just plug in the disc and play the game… well, at least most of the time. “Please insert a PS2 disc” was definitely a pain.
Back then, the PS2 was graphically-superior to the PC, at least in terms of cost per dollar. They designed console motherboards to integrate to the different components in ways to make them much faster at video games specifically.
Nowadays, consoles are just glorified PCs, and they have no technological advantage. No technological advantage, no public appetite for console exclusives, no reason to exist.
Like HL2 running on your browser
I wouldn’t be surprised.
The whole tech industry is very overtly hell bent on pushing through an ai controlled dystopia.
What good would the current model of gaming be?
Have a bunch of people work very hard on a game and all that work “loses it’s value” after a year or so. (In their eyes, shit’s gotta sell).
When you can have ai just dream/hallucinate up a game and stream that instead? (It’s nowhere near that yet, but holy shit would they love it)
Now you have an endless stream of stuff to sell that costs you zero manpower.
Now the good peasants go work and can have half an hour of slop per day as a reward. And if they revolt, you just cut them off.
Where this breaks down is where the AI tech is in this decade/century. Between running out of RAM and the fact these agents barely get marginally difficult tasks (programming wise) done, they won’t be outputting the slop AAA games are today. When you have people making games and most players are pissed at how bad they are and how expensive, we all know that AI built games will be way, way worse and stild as expensive.
do they have any other lines of business that make them money??
i know the camera business is supplies sensors to the majority of cellphones… but the tv business is dead, the phone business is dead (or might asd well be, since it’s asia only), the movie studio can’t buy a hit, what does sony do if it doenst have paystation??>
The phones are not Asia only
You will eat nothing and you will be happy
Notably, the clause is conspicuously absent from terms governing Mexico, the United States, and several other regions, meaning players there are not currently subject to the policy. By contrast, the provision has been enforceable in the United Kingdom and various European countries for years, though it largely escaped public notice until the recent physical-format debate brought renewed scrutiny to Sony’s digital practices.
I logged into steam after like 15 years and it still worked.
how is that even legal?
we need better consumer protection for digital purchases.
Read the EULA sometime on a game you “own” on steam (or any platform for that matter).
Almost without a doubt you’re being granted a license to one copy of the game used the way they say it can be used. Most of the licenses are revokable for violating the conditions, many just outright say “hey we can take this away at any time for any reason and you can suck it” which is in a legal gray area I suppose.
As far as how it’s legal, you don’t have to do business with any of these various entities and you’re agreeing to their terms when you get their product. Plus, like you said, there is very little consumer protections in place.
I agree we need more consumer protections on general and particularly for digital purchases. However, at least in the USA, the prevailing political winds are heavily in favor of companies and anti consumer. The Trump admin basically dismantled the bureau of consumer protection so … That should tell you their priorities.
I know, no digital purchase actually has the product, just a license, unless you get a drm free product.
Yeah I’m just saying like … It’s been anti consumerist from the very beginning. Particularly when games started to get made by studios, publishers got involved etc.
I agree with the premise that it should not be like this.
It’s literally because of consumer protection laws. GDPR requires the deletion of unused data, to ensure companies aren’t just holding onto your data indefinitely. This is simply the consequence of that, because Sony has apparently determined that three years is enough of a threshold to be considered “unused”.
GDPR only requires that, if there is no legitimate use for keeping the data. Ongoing software license is a legitimate use.
Yes, but not every single PSN account has any software licenses. Some people are just playing F2P games or subbing to PS+.
But, it’s trickier to word their clause in such a way that it only specifically applies to free accounts.
Whether it’s trickier or not doesn’t matter. Sony is an enormous company, any difference in lawyer fees would be miniscule.
No, it’s not for GDPR compliance. It’s like this talking point “stupid data protection laws, all those cookie banners”. Nobody is forcing any company to use all those shitty tracking cookies ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Why lie about something like this?
Because it isn’t a lie. Companies need to justify why they are retaining personal information after they stop using it. If they can’t justify it, they need to delete it.
And you think Sony is going to put their neck on the line to try and argue that keeping old unused accounts open is a justifiable reason? They have literally zero incentive to do so, and a large profit incentive to delete accounts as soon as they can reasonably argue that they are too old. Because that will push people towards re-buying games they already purchased once before.
Companies need to justify why they are retaining personal information
And the justification is “this person holds a perpetual software license with us and we need to be able to grant them access unless they tell us otherwise”. Case closed.
Do they?
Please prove that every single PSN account has digital software purchases on it. EVERY single one.
If you fail, you’re liable for GDPR and are holding customer data past its use!
It’s totally easy to check if an account has a digital software purchase on it or not. That’s just one database query. Sony is totally able to solve that.
Easy on a technical level, yes, but also harder to define in a legal document level.
A game counts - obvious. Does a game demo count? Does one piece of microtransaction DLC count in a F2P game? How does a legal document define those things?
Now that scrutiny is on it, it seems like people would’ve preferred they define this granularly. But at the time, I’m going to guess they decided it wasn’t worth legal risk of having people they did not reserve the right to delete, but also needed to delete for GDPR.
BS. You only have to prove it for the individual account. They obviously don’t have to delete my data because you have no software purchases on your account.
I’ve honestly had it with all the anti GDPR fearmongering and propaganda. It’s not some eldritch horror that will eat your company if it notices you. It’s a powerful and at the same time pretty reasonable customer protection tool. As long as companies don’t take more data than they need to do the business the customer actually came to them for and make sure only people who need to work with the data can acces it they are in the clear 100% of the time.
It absolutely is a lie.
It really reveals the nature of your purchase, doesn’t it? Apparently you are just buying some entries in a database. Sadly any software we can’t use offline can just be deleted like this. The pendulum swung too far towards the cloud, hopefully it comes back down to earth soon.
yhea, that is 100% bullshit.
GDPR isn’t new, and no company was forced to do that.
Might as well block the highway with my car saying that the law forces me to do that, because I cannot pass cars on the left lane, and I point to the “right” lane (opposite direction traffic) on the other side of the barrier.
But good news, according to EU regulations you should just a toilet in your house, you are meant to spew shite into it.
