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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
also found out switch deletes your cloud saves after a while if you stop paying
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.
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.
You will eat nothing and you will be happy
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
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.
“How do we squander 3 decades of consumer goodwill in a week and a half?” Seriously wtf are you doing Sony
‘We need to replicate the success of Betamax and minidisc, immediately’ - exec that was never told.
I logged into steam after like 15 years and it still worked.
