sony – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Sony Keeps Requiring PSN Account For Offline Games, Modders Mod It Out

from the in-mods-we-trust dept

There’s that well known adage that if you want to teach a child not to touch a hot stove, just let them touch it once and that will be all the teaching needed to have them never do so again. Whoever came up with that saying obviously has never met my children, for starters. And it appears that Sony just can’t help but continue to touch the stove.

Earlier this year we talked about Helldivers 2, a Sony title that went cross-platform. That part is all well and good. Less good was that well after the game became a hit, the developers announced that the game would be patched to require that anyone playing on their PC also sign up for a PlayStation Network account, or else the game would be unplayable. While the patch came from the developer, it was done so as a planned requirement by Sony. And it was Sony that eventually rescinded that requirement after the backlash over it was extensive.

Which makes it all the more strange that Sony then decided to do the PSN requirement thing again, this time for the PC port of God of War Ragnarok. This resulted in all kinds of backlash again over the requirement, as this is a single player offline game that required an online connection communicating with a PSN account or the game wouldn’t run. In other words: a game that has no online component and is a standalone PC port of a game was saddled with online and PSN requirements that aren’t needed and that nobody but Sony wanted.

Fortunately, an enterprising modder out there has already created a mod that removes the requirements.

The NoPSSDK mod, hosted on NexusMods, promises to “fully strip the PlayStation PC SDK runtime requirement for God of War Ragnarok.” The open source mod makes use of a simple Microsoft Detours library to get around the game’s calls to the PlayStation Network API without “touch[ing] or modify[ing] any original game code.”

The mod, which has already seen one update related to simulating offline mode, has been downloaded just under 2,000 times as of this writing. “I will try to maintain the tool even if something changes, but hopefully nothing crucial happens,” mod author iArtorias wrote in a NexusMods post.

If you’re about to go click on those links and get the mod yourself, don’t bother. The creator of the mod has already pulled it down out of fear of reprisal from Sony. And I don’t blame them. My first thought when I started looking into all of this was to wonder whether Sony would DMCA the mod over anti-circumvention concerns. It appears that it didn’t have to. Merely the fear it might do so was enough to get the mod creator to do the takedown themselves.

t was my personal decision to remove the mod since it has become way too popular and people started promoting it on Steam forums as well thus generating tons of attention.

“I just wanted to avoid the possible threats from the Sony side, even though the code has never touched any of their products in memory. You never know and it’s really a grey area to me.”

So, let’s summarize. While Sony was very upfront on the game’s store page that a PSN and internet connection would be required to run the game, the fact of the matter is that nobody except Sony wanted any of that. Then a modder came along that made the game operate in a way that the public actually did want, likely making that game more attractive for purchase to more people. Then that modder voluntarily took the thing that made people happy down out of fear of reprisal from the same Sony that was pissing people off.

Everything is bad about this. Sony’s anti-consumer behavior is bad. The chilling effect that previous enforcement has had on the modding community is bad. And the fact that buyers of this game are saddled with these requirements they don’t want is bad. And now the press’ coverage of this is bad for Sony.

Is having people get PSN accounts really beneficial enough to Sony to make up for this ongoing giant headache?

Filed Under: god of war ragnarok, mods, offline games, psn, video games
Companies: sony

RIAA’s Copyright Suit Against Verizon Just The Latest Move By The RIAA To Kick People Off The Internet

from the they-always-hated-the-internet dept

The RIAA just won’t quit in attacking users on the internet and trying to get them banned from using the internet entirely. The latest news is that all the major record labels have sued Verizon for not kicking users the RIAA accuses (but has not litigated) of being infringers off the internet.

But, there’s a long history here that needs to be understood to see why this case is so stupid and so dangerous to the internet.

Twelve years ago, we wrote about a secret plan by the RIAA to pretend that copyright law already required that ISPs shutdown the internet accounts of users caught infringing. The relevant copyright law, DMCA 512, does have an awkwardly worded section on “termination.” Specifically, it says that to be eligible for the DMCA safe harbors, a site:

has adopted and reasonably implemented, and informs subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network of, a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network who are repeat infringers; and

However, it provides no more guidance about many of the important definitions in there. What is “reasonably implemented?” What is “appropriate circumstances?” What constitutes “repeat infringers?”

While some people claim that the last question, in particular, is easy to determine, it’s not. False claims of copyright infringement are made all the time, as we’ve seen with DMCA claims (or even just YouTube’s ContentID). Sometimes, it’s for anti-competitive purposes. Sometimes it’s just to make life difficult for someone. Often, it’s because automated systems have gone haywire.

The only real way to know if someone is a “repeat infringer” is not based on a claimed copyright holder sending notices, but on a court ruling that an individual infringed on someone’s copyright. A service provider could have actual knowledge of infringement only after it has been adjudicated by a court.

However, some copyright holders disagree.

As is their wont, the RIAA has decided that all of these should be decided in the most extreme way possible, which is that if the RIAA sends a bunch of infringement notices to a service provider, that ISP should kick users off the internet entirely.

There are all sorts of problems with this. First, under the Supreme Court’s Packingham decision, it’s reasonable to argue any law that kicks people off the internet as a requirement is inherently unconstitutional. As Justice Kennedy wrote in that decision, citing Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, “It is well established that, as a general rule, the Government ‘may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech.’”

Yet, as we’ve described for decades, when it comes to copyright, the courts show an uncanny willingness to ignore any First Amendment concerns and to give the industry all the power (rather than the public, who copyright law is supposed to benefit).

Given all that, the recording industry sued Cox Communications for failing to “reasonably implement” a policy to “terminate… repeat infringers.” That case was kind of a mess from the very start. It involved a firm, Rightscorp, that was famous for sending piles of questionable infringement notices based on flimsy evidence of infringement. The case ended up before a famously cranky judge, Liam O’Grady, who made it clear that he did not care about the public interest, or even the purpose of the DMCA.

It didn’t help that Cox’s own policies for handling copyright complaints were a bit of a mess, but O’Grady seemed wholly uninterested in the details and nuances and ruled against Cox. The case has bounced around for years, with the 4th Circuit Appeals court occasionally making a mess of things, occasionally fixing small parts of the lower court’s nonsense.

Earlier this year, the 4th Circuit threw out the massive $1 billion award that a jury had given the labels, saying the amount was not justified. But the case is still something of a mess, as Cox still believes (correctly, in my opinion) that it’s not violating the law at all. I believe that next month, both sides are planning to request the Supreme Court take a look. The labels will want the giant damages reinstated, while Cox will be arguing that the entire thing is ridiculous and it did nothing wrong.

Either way, the record labels apparently don’t want to wait for the Supreme Court to sort all this out. They have moved forward with a similar lawsuit against Verizon, one of the country’s largest ISPs, making the same basic arguments. The RIAA is always good about telling narratives:

The scope of repeat infringement on Verizon’s network is staggering. Thousands of Verizon subscribers were the subject of 20 or more notices from Plaintiffs, and more than 500 subscribers were the subject of 100 or more notices. One particularly egregious Verizon subscriber was single-handedly the subject of 4,450 infringement notices from Plaintiffs alone.

Verizon acknowledged that it received these notices of infringement sent by Plaintiffs’ representatives. Yet rather than taking any steps to address its customers’ illegal use of its network, Verizon deliberately chose to ignore Plaintiffs’ notices, willfully blinding itself to that information and prioritizing its own profits over its legal obligations.

It is well-established law that if a party materially assists someone it knows is engaging in copyright infringement, that party is fully liable for the infringement as if it had infringed directly. Further, when a party has a direct financial interest in the infringing activity, and the right and practical ability to stop or limit it, that party also faces liability. Flouting those basic responsibilities, Verizon deliberately turned a blind eye to its subscribers’ infringement. Verizon failed to terminate or otherwise take any meaningful action against the accounts of repeat infringers of which it was aware. Instead, Verizon routinely thumbed its nose at Plaintiffs by continuing to provide its service to subscribers it knew to be serially infringing Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings. In reality, Verizon operated its service as an attractive tool and safe haven for infringement.

And, so, of course, many of the headlines will be about that kind of narrative.

But, as always, it’s way more complicated than that. Just because someone sends notices does not mean that infringement has actually happened. I mean, this is the RIAA we’re talking about, and they have a bit of a history of sending trash, bogus DMCA notices. Or, a history of suing over songs it doesn’t hold the copyright on. Or on making totally baseless accusations about copyright infringement based on whims.

It’s only natural for a company like Verizon to choose to view RIAA notices with suspicion and not immediately assume they’re proof of infringement.

Anyway, given the status of the Cox fight and the decent chance the Supreme Court will take that issue up (not guaranteed, of course, but it wouldn’t be surprising), this case might end up sitting around while we wait for the Supreme Court to (hopefully, but unlikely) get these issues sorted out in that case first.

Either way, the RIAA is up to their usual anti-internet tricks. While they frame it as Verizon somehow ignoring notices, don’t believe that narrative. This is about the RIAA overclaiming copyright powers and trying to get people kicked off their entire internet connection (which is so necessary these days) for daring to download some songs.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, isps, repeat infringer, termination policy
Companies: cox, riaa, sony, sony bmg, umg, universal music group, verizon

Sony Briefly Snatches ‘Helldivers 2’ From The Jaws Of Victory With Stupid PSN Account Requirement

from the hell-to-pay dept

For all the pissing and moaning I did during the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft — principally over the latter’s routine desire to talk about non-exclusivity in its games only to make them exclusive — Sony sure does know how to shit the bed when it comes to cross-platform titles and how to treat its customers well. On the more general side, the company has an unfortunate habit of disappearing all kinds of content from its published games and other media on a whim. And while Sony is happy to gobble up console exclusives itself — making the whining over Microsoft’s actions fall at least partially flat — the company also has found itself backtracking on occasion when it takes some dumb anti-customer action that it then has to walk back.

Which brings us to Helldivers 2. If you aren’t at least familiar with that game title, then you clearly have very little interest in gaming generally. The game launched with some issues, certainly, but was an absolute hit from the get go, including for PC gaming. Then, in the last few days, the development studio announced that the game would be patched to require that those playing the game on the PC would, for some reason, need to sign up for a PlayStation Network account or the game would be unplayable.

Last week, Arrowhead Studios announced that an upcoming update to its hit co-op shooter Helldivers 2 would require existing PC players on Steam to make a PlayStation Network account to continue playing. If they didn’t, they’d lose access to their Helldivers accounts, and that news did not land well. The move was bad for a litany of reasons, not least of which was the fact that Steam is supported in more countries than PSN, meaning that many players in some regions of the world would have no viable way to play the game they’d already owned on PC for months. As Helldivers 2 began getting delisted from several countries over the weekend, its community took to the offensive and review-bombed both the game and its ten-year-old predecessor.

Now PlayStation has predictably reversed course on its decision, and Helldivers 2 will no longer receive the aforementioned update. On its face, this appears like a wonderful development for the community, which won a decisive victory over PlayStation. However, this error also spells out that for all its success, PlayStation simply does not know what it’s doing when it comes to cross-platform titles, and will either continue to stumble upwards or accidentally burn itself time and time again at the repeated cost of its developers.

That last bit is really, really important. While there was plenty of ire saved for Sony from customers in this instance, far more of it was directed at Arrowhead Studios. To be clear, the account requirement was always part of the plan for this game and it was documented as such. But, that it was planned this whole time neither means it was ever a good idea, it certainly doesn’t mean it was a good idea given how the eventual rollout of the game went. It’s no exaggeration to say that people have been playing this game on their PCs for months and months. Why in the world you would suddenly press this PSN account requirement on them, the earliest adopters of the game, is beyond me.

And the reaction from the public is both telling and part of this overall problem. Sure, it’s good that Sony eventually decided it didn’t want to be pelted with digital rocks any longer and caved to the review bombing pressure it suffered. But it’s also true that nobody wants to show just how easy it is to weaponize the reviews for games for some vocal minority, or even majority, to get its way in all cases.

And again, this hurts the smaller Arrowhead Studios much, much more than it does a goliath like Sony. With the gaming giant so willing to risk the reputations of its studio partners, this really should cause potential future partners to wonder seriously whether such a partnership is a good idea.

To the outsider who doesn’t know about any of the drama of this weekend and decided to check out Helldivers 2 on Steam on a whim, its reviews likely made it seem like a bad purchasing option. Arrowhead community managers were taking hits in forums and getting chastised for doing a poor job of communicating the terms of PlayStation’s sudden policy change. Arrowhead’s CEO spent the weekend apologizing for initially disabling the PSN requirement to help support a bigger player audience, and he was the internet’s whipping boy for it. Not only did PlayStation force an otherwise beloved studio into this position, but its constant kowtowing to tactics such as review-bombing continues to legitimize bad actors.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is never what you want to be known for, but that is starting to be Sony’s reputation when it comes to cross-platform games and its consumer practices in general. Perhaps the company could actually listen to its customers, rather than trying to dictate to them?

Filed Under: cross platform, helldivers 2, psn accounts, video games
Companies: arrowhead studios, sony

Sony, Paramount Explore Merger As Streaming Sector Runs Completely Out Of Original Ideas

from the merge-ALL-the-things! dept

Tue, May 7th 2024 05:27am - Karl Bode

As the streaming sector has consolidated and new subscriber growth has slowed, it has increasingly started chasing the bad habits of the industry it once disrupted: cable TV. Gone is stuff like encouraged password sharing and risk-taking programming. In its place is endless price hikes, weird efforts to nickel-and-dime users, lower-quality programming, annoying new consumer restrictions, and layoffs.

One of the favorite tweaks of sectors that have run out of ideas is consolidation and megamergers. Such deals almost always result in layoffs, lower-quality product, large debt loads, price hikes, and consumer dissatisfaction. But such deals also goose stock price, generate big tax breaks, and let fail-upward brunchlord executives put “savvy big boy dealmaker” on their resumes, so they continue apace.

As predicted, with the streaming sector all out of fresh ideas and Wall Street demanding impossible quarterly revenue growth at any cost, it’s time for a bunch of pointless consolidation. The first wave was the disastrous AT&T—>Time Warner Cable—>Discovery megadeals, which resulted in wave upon wave of chaos, layoffs, price hikes, and pissed off creators.

Now Paramount (CBS) is looking to follow suit. First the company discussed potentially merging with Time Warner Discovery, but once that idea was laughed out of the room they moved on to a potential deal with Skydance Media. But that deal also appears to have fallen apart, with a $26 billion acquisition by Sony looking like the most likely outcome.

As the New York Times notes, there’s some dwindling concerns about a Japanese company owning an American broadcaster (CBS), given that what’s left of our media consolidation regulations still restricts foreign ownership of a major broadcaster (for now!). So it’s probably going to be a joint-purchase between Sony and U.S.-based Apollo Global Management:

“Any deal between the Sony group and Paramount faces hurdles. Government regulations restrict foreign ownership of broadcast networks and could prevent Sony’s parent company, based in Japan, from owning CBS outright. The bidding group would probably push for Apollo, which is based in the United States, to hold the rights to the CBS broadcast license, according to two people familiar with their strategy.

At the heart of this dysfunction sits Wall Street’s need for improved quarterly growth at any cost. It’s not just good enough to provide a profitable, high quality product, people like. The need for impossible, unlimited quarterly growth inevitably results in a sort of corporate cannibalism, most recently popularized by Cory Doctorow’s term enshittification.

What interests me as a media and consolidation critic is that absolutely none of the press coverage (Deadline, Axios, Variety, The New York Times) can muster so much as a single mention of the long, long history of harmful media consolidation, or how such deals almost always result in rampant layoffs, lower quality product, price hikes, endless distraction, cancelled programs, and tons of debt.

Even with the downright comical Time Warner Discovery megadeal right there in the rear view mirror (which, if we’re being honest, extends back to the pointless and somehow even more disastrous AOL Time Warner merger), these outlets just genuinely don’t think any of that history is useful reader context. The harm of mindless consolidation is just completely memory holed in the industry’s coverage of itself.

That said, I imagine Sony would be a better caretaker of the CBS family of brands than many suitors, given that (unlike, say, AT&T), they’re at least familiar with running a media company. But it’s still painfully obvious that this sort of consolidation never really benefits employees, consumers, or the overall health and quality of the company and brands. It’s just a game of pointless brunchlord patty cake.

I wouldn’t expect a consolidated media sector to linger too long on the harmful history of “growth for growth’s sake” consolidation when covering itself, but an occasional, fleeting nod at history and factual reality might be nice.

Filed Under: competition, consolidation, layoffs, media, megadeals, mergers, streamingg
Companies: cbs, paramount, sony

LittleBigPlanet: Now You Don’t Own What You’ve Created, Either

from the poof-it's-gone dept

For several years now, we’ve had a running series of posts discussing how, when it comes to digital goods, you often don’t own what you’ve bought. This ugliness shows up with all kinds of content, including purchased movies, books, and shows on digital platforms. But it has reared its head acutely as of late in the video game industry. The way this goes is that a publisher releases a game in whole, people buy it, and at some later date the publisher decides to shut down backend servers that render the game partially or totally unplayable for those that bought it. This has the effect of deleting pieces of culture, a real problem for those interested in the preservation of this artform, and a real problem for the entire bargain that is copyright, where all that culture is eventually supposed to end up in the public domain.

But all of that is just on the topic of not owning what you’ve bought. With more games allowing for creative expression within them, spearheaded in part by titles like LittleBigPlanet, it’s also the case that you don’t own what you’ve created. Well, with the full shutdown of the LittleBigPlanet servers, all of the user-created content in the game is being whisked away along with the ability to purchase the game itself.

Sony has indefinitely decommissioned the PlayStation 4 servers for puzzle platformer LittleBigPlanet 3, the company announced in an update to one of its support pages. The permanent shutdown comes just months after the servers were temporarily taken offline due to ongoing issues. Fans now fear potentially hundreds of thousands of player creations not saved locally will be lost for good.

“Due to ongoing technical issues which resulted in the LittleBigPlanet 3 servers for PlayStation 4 being taken offline temporarily in January 2024, the decision has been made to keep the servers offline indefinitely,” Sony wrote in the update, first spotted by Delisted Games. “All online services including access to other players’ creations for LittleBigPlanet 3 are no longer available.”

Again, to be clear, the game will still work offline. And if users who created content saved that content locally, they’ll still have it. But many, many gamers saved their creations in the online game servers and used that online component to share what they created with other players. Sony spit out social media content to let the public know the servers were simply never coming back online. Absent from that communication was any plan, method, or capability for those who bought, played, and created content for the game to access any of that content. It’s just, poof, gone.

“Nearly 16 years worth of user generated content, millions of levels, some with millions of plays and hearts,” wrote one long-time player, Weeni-Tortellini, on Reddit in January. “Absolutely iconic levels locked away forever with no way to experience them again. To me, the servers shutting down is a hefty chunk bitten out of LittleBigPlanet’s history. I personally have many levels I made as a kid. Digital relics of what made me as creative as i am today, and The only access to these levels i have is thru the servers. I would be devastated if I could never experience them again.”

Then devastated ye shall be, it seems. I get that technical difficulties can arise. But come on, now. No backups? No way to restore the servers temporarily? Or would there be too much time, energy, and effort required precluding Sony from wanting to do that? We don’t know, because the company hasn’t said. Instead, all this content goes away by fiat, the customers who forked over money and put time into creating within the game be damned.

If companies like Sony are going to be so pernicious with their own centralized servers in this manner, the least they could do would be to instead move to some decentralized and/or user-driven hosting solution. You know, so that a decade’s worth of culture doesn’t simply go away on the whim of one company.

Filed Under: digital ownership, littlebigplanet, ownership
Companies: sony

Sony Is Trying To Clean Up Its Crunchyroll Mess, But It’s Still Messy Indeed

from the clean-up-on-aisle-Sony dept

The mess is getting a little messier. We had talked days ago about Sony’s decision to shutter its Funimation platform in favor of a more recent acquisition in Crunchyroll. Anyone with a Funimation account would be transitioned into a Crunchyroll account, which sounds all good until you realize that Funimation users had plenty of digital streaming copies of content they had bought and which were promised to be available “forever” which are instead simply going away. As in deleted. Another example of people thinking they were buying and owning something, only to find out that their purchases live solely at the pleasure of the seller that could disappear them.

After some public outcry, Sony said it would offer Funimation users “an appropriate value” for these lost digital libraries. What does that mean? Who the hell knows! Here is Crunchyroll President Rahul Purini on the matter, speaking on the Decoder podcast.

The executive claimed that Funimation is “working really hard directly” with each affected customer to “ensure that they have an appropriate value for what they got in the digital copy initially.” When asked what “appropriate value” means, Purini responded:

“It could be that they get access to a digital copy on any of the existing other services where they might be able to access it. It could be a discount access to our subscription service so they can get access to the same shows through our subscription service. So we are trying to make it right based on each user’s preference.”

The thing is that all of the “could bes” and “trying” isn’t really a plan. It doesn’t offer the people that paid for something thinking they owned it clarity on whether they are still definitely going to get access to the content they paid for or not. And discounts to a subscription service to get access to content already paid for is unlikely to placate the majority of customers anyway.

And it appears that Purini’s comments are at least slightly premature, since tests for getting “appropriate value” for this content through Funimation’s support, which is where customers are required to inquire about all of this, haven’t exactly gone off without a hitch.

But even if you did happen to demand some sort of refund from Funimation, you might not have been offered any relief. The Verge’s Ash Parrish, who has a free-tier Funimation account, reported today on her experience trying to receive the “appropriate value” for her digital copies of Steins;Gate and The Vision of Escaflowne. Parrish noted that Steins;Gate isn’t available to stream off Crunchyroll with a free subscription, meaning she’d have no way to watch it digitally come April 2. Parrish said Funimation support responded with two “boilerplate” emails that apologized but offered no solution or compensation. She followed up about getting compensated for a premium subscription so that she’d be able to stream what she used to digitally own through Crunchyroll but hadn’t received a response by publication time.

Following up with Funimation’s PR department didn’t provide any clarity. Brian Eley, Funimation’s VP of communications, reportedly told Parrish via email: “Funimation users who have questions about digital copies can contact Funimation here. A Funimation account associated with a digital copy redemption is required for verification.” Ars Technica reached out to Crunchyroll for comment but didn’t hear back in time for publication.

So, is there plan to make this right? According to Purini, yes! A vague one, though, where it all feels like it’s half-baked and up in the air. And requires the user to initiate the request for it to be made right. And with solutions that may or may not be available, but certainly are not being offered through the support channel that the company says should be used to get this compensation.

So in the end we’re in the same place as before. Sony has ripped away paid-for content from its customers and will decide for itself exactly what those customers will get in return.

Filed Under: content, ownership, rahul purini
Companies: crunchyroll, funimation, sony

Here We Go Again: Sony Disappears Digital Content That Was Pitched To Customers As ‘Forever’

from the poof-it's-gone dept

And here we go again. We’ve had many, many posts over recent years discussing how, in the digital age, you often don’t actually own what you’ve bought. And before the comments section gets filled with perplexed but rather educated folks talking about how the all these cases involve products in which the terms of service clearly outline that this is a license and not an actual product being bought, just stop. We all know that barely anyone reads a ToS these days and the confusion and anger that occurs in the public is proof of it. So clearly companies are not doing nearly enough to inform their customers of what they are actually purchasing. And if you think that problem is easily solved by staunchly insisting that Nancy down the street steep herself in legalese, then you’re completely divorced from reality.

Which brings us to Sony. Late last year we discussed how when Sony’s deal with the Discovery network ended, it caused a bunch of content to simply disappear from PlayStation owners who bought the content in the PS Store. Due to something completely outside of the public’s control, people who bought content, or thought that’s what they were doing, suddenly lost that content. Without refunds. Or an apology.

And now it’s happening all over again, due to Sony’s acquisition of Crunchyroll all the way back in 2021. Sony-owned Funimation is shutting down its app and website in April, with the company converting Funimation accounts to Crunchyroll accounts instead. All good right? Well…

Funimation, a Sony-owned streaming service for anime, recently announced that subscribers’ digital libraries on the platform will be unavailable after April 2. For years, Funimation had been telling subscribers that they could keep streaming these digital copies of purchased movies and shows, but qualifying it: “forever, but there are some restrictions.”

But soon, people who may have discarded or lost their physical media or lack a way to play DVDs and Blu-rays won’t have a way to access the digital copies that they were entitled to through their physical copy purchase.

Funimation’s announcement is roughly as tone-deaf as it gets. They explain all of these libraries won’t carry over to Crunchyroll because that platform doesn’t support Funimation’s digital content and then makes some vague comments about how Crunchyroll is continuously looking to make itself better. Which, whatever, because that doesn’t change the fact that a bunch of people bought a bunch of digital content that was pitched mostly as being theirs “forever” only to have it all nuked into oblivion as a result of a Sony acquisition. Good times.

Here again, we see that people don’t actually own what they’ve bought, much to their confusion.

Funimation’s support page for digital copies (which, as of this writing, says it hasn’t been updated in four years) notes that Funimation’s idea of forever includes restrictions and links to Funimation’s Terms of Use. Those terms state that Funimation can “without advance notice… immediately suspend or terminate the availability of the Service and/or content (and any elements and features of them), in whole or in part, for any reason.” It also says that the Funimation website, apps, service, and all of its content are owned by Funimation and its partners.

So even if you, understandably, thought you were buying a “forever” digital copy, the wordy truth is that you never really owned it. Yet, it wouldn’t be surprising to hear that someone relying on digital copies to preserve their purchased media didn’t properly understand (or read) those terms before discarding their physical copies.

Thanks for the money, suckers! Hope you enjoyed the years-long forever!

Filed Under: digital content, digital library, license, ownership
Companies: crunchyroll, funimation, sony

You Still Don’t Own What You Bought: Purchased TV Shows From PS Store Go Bye Bye

from the you-bought-the-right-to-be-disappointed dept

Thank you for joining us for your latest lesson in how you don’t actually own the things you buy when you buy them digitally. Over a year ago, we discussed a story out of Germany and Austria where a deal expired between Sony and movie distributor StudioCanal, which resulted in 100s of movies being delisted and deleted, both from the PlayStation Store and from the PlayStations of those who bought them. Yup! People bought a thing, got a thing, and then had that thing clawed back from them once the licensing agreement wasn’t renewed. You can guess for yourself whether members of the public who “bought” these movies had any idea that them disappearing long after purchase was even a possibility, but don’t overthink it, you know the answer.

But maybe you thought, “Sucks for Germany, but that wouldn’t happen here in America.” Well, turns out it sucks for some of us, too, as the exact same thing happened here, only with shows and content produced by Discovery and purchased through the PlayStation Store.

The latest pothole in the road to an all-digital future was discovered via a warning Sony recently sent out to PlayStation users who purchased TV shows made by Discovery, the reality TV network that recently merged with Warner Bros. in one of the most brutal and idiotic corporate maneuvers of our time. “Due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers, you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content and the content will be removed from your video library,” read a copy of the email that was shared with Kotaku.

It linked to a page on the PlayStation website listing all of the shows impacted. As you might imagine, given Discovery’s penchant for pumping out seasons of relatively cheap to produce but popular reality TV and documentary-based shows, there are a lot of them. They include, but are not limited to, hits such as: Say Yes to the Dress, Shark Week, Cake Boss, Long Island Medium, Deadly Women, and many, many more.

And MythBusters, too, which feels like that show missed an opportunity to bust the myth that you own what you bought when you purchase something digitally. The reality is that there is no good way to actually retain these shows in cases like this. Some that “bought” Discovery content are freaking out, understandably.

“Is there a way I can save this content?” asked one panicked PlayStation user on Reddit. “I use PS4…But I have bought many seasons of shows such as Dual Survival that I do not wish to lose. I was actually under the impression since I owned it, I wouldn’t ever lose it…”

Whatever else is true, it’s obvious that platforms aren’t doing nearly enough to actually inform customers of what they’re buying, leasing, renting, whatever. It would be one thing if this content was ripped away and everyone on all sides realized that was a possibility. That just isn’t the case.

And just as in the Germany instance, there’s no chance that any of this comes with any refunds or givebacks. Well-meaning customers who paid money for this content simply don’t have it anymore. And it just isn’t like having a Netflix account or something like that, where the product catalogue is constantly in flux. It’s people who are buying a show, or the season of a show. But they’re really not. They’re renting it until some combination of Sony and the licensee decides they’re not.

And that just isn’t a tenable future.

Filed Under: culture, licensing, ownership, playstation, tv shows
Companies: sony, warner bros. discovery

PlayStation Ends Its ExTwitter Sharing Integration, Likely Due To API Payment Requirement

from the X-it-stage-right dept

When it comes to the big 3 of the video game industry — Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony — the circle is now complete when it comes to integrations with ExTwitter. Late last year, Nintendo killed off parts of its own integration not just with then-Twitter, but with Facebook as well. But then ExTwitter abruptly announced earlier this year that free access to its API was going to be cut off, replaced instead by a tiered payment scheme depending on what level of integration the user would need. Almost immediately afterwards, Xbox cut off the ability to share content via ExTwitter.

And now Sony has removed the PlayStation’s integration with ExTwitter as well, almost certainly for the same reason. Somewhat interestingly, Sony’s DS4 controller came with a button specifically called the “share” button, which allows you to screencap images or videos to your console to then share on social media. That button seems to have gotten measurably less useful now.

Sony said it is removing support for Elon Musk’s X/Twitter from its PlayStation game consoles, effective next week. The company announced the change in a notice posted Monday on its website.

“As of November 13, 2023, integration with X (formerly known as Twitter) will no longer function on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 consoles,” the message on Sony’s website reads. “This includes the ability to view any content published on X on PS5/PS4, and the ability to post and view content, trophies and other gameplay-related activities on X directly from PS5/PS4 (or link an X account to do so).”

As ExTwitter’s valuation sits at somewhere around half of what it was at the time Elon Musk bought the platform, a trendline of the wider world not seeing enough value in the platform to cough up what he’s asking for to use it, well, ain’t great. The entire premise of a social media company is built upon user activity and engagement. Users have begun to leave the platform, including those that may have used it in conjunction with these 3rd party integrations that are likewise going away. Advertisers are going away, in part because of the toxic hellhole that ExTwitter has become, and in part due to the declining user base and engagement of existing users.

Musk can rail against the evil woke mind virus of death and destruction, or whatever strawman farce he wants to cook up to explain why everything he does is the bestest this week, but the platform is in decline in very measurable ways.

Musk closed his 44billiondebt−ladentakeoverofTwitterinOctober2022,afterTwittersuedhimtocompletethedealattheagreed−onterms.Thecompany,sincerechristenedXCorp.,is[nowworth44 billion debt-laden takeover of Twitter in October 2022, after Twitter sued him to complete the deal at the agreed-on terms. The company, since rechristened X Corp., is [now worth 44billiondebt−ladentakeoverofTwitterinOctober2022,afterTwittersuedhimtocompletethedealattheagreed−onterms.Thecompany,sincerechristenedXCorp.,isnowworth19 billion, according to a notice sent last month to employees eligible for stock grants.

Were PlayStation gamers using the ExTwitter integration all that much? Perhaps not. But “some” is a higher value than “absolutely none, because Sony killed it off.” And when you’re bleeding money and usership, well, this is one more data point in a story of how to kill a once-useful and potentially successful platform.

Filed Under: api, playstation, sharing, social sharing
Companies: sony, twitter, x

Former Sony CEO Discusses Risks Of Video Game Industry Consolidation And Game Preservation

from the preach! dept

There’s a lot to get to in this post, so we’re going to dive right in. Shawn Layden is a former CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, otherwise known as essentially the boss of Playstation. He has made several appearances as of late, both in a keynote speech for a video game industry summit and in a recent interview for the LAN Parties podcast, discussing two topics we’ve covered regularly here at Techdirt: video game preservation and industry consolidation. And while I’ve personally had some challenging things to say about Layden in the distant past, in both instances he’s making some very insightful points on both topics.

On the topic of consolidation, it’s important to note, as Kotaku did, that Layden has long been a critic of the traditional AAA blockbuster game. He rightly notes how that style of game has really become a stagnant piece of the industry. You can see evidence of this everywhere, from the success of indie studios and their often shorter games, to game concepts that go beyond the “amazing graphics and 70 hours of gameplay” standard and instead focus on replayability, and so-called “forever games”, such as the Minecrafts and Rimworlds that are out there.

So it’s within that larger context that he recently warned the period of studio/publisher consolidation that the gaming industry is going through brings with it a lot of risk.

“My concern around consolidation is that often it impacts creativity. For instance, it takes some kind of small, independent, wildhorse studios and brings them into a larger conglomerate and essentially time slows down the bigger you are, time slows down,” Layden said. “I’m also concerned when studios get bought and instead of enabling a way to create their game, they maybe get absorbed into a larger enterprise that’s making a larger game, you know, how many studios are involved in making blockbuster games that will stagger the mind.”

He said that in specific instances, acquisitions can save studios from shutting down and he’s glad to see that, but he remains worried about the lasting impact of the larger trend. “I’m just concerned about what it does to the creativity urge inside of the studios, and can they keep that sort of independent creativity alive or do they just get absorbed into the larger whole? Time will tell, but it’s a bit concerning. When you go from hundreds of voices to dozens of voices, you lose some voices,” Layden said.

He specifically goes on to call out the consolidation of game genres that has come along with consolidation within the industry. His overall point is that these massive acquisitions we’ve begun to see largely only make sense if the acquiring company is looking to purchase successful game franchises with an eye towards pumping out sequels and titles that mirror those successes. That means you’re not going to get free-thinking creativity in the studios that get acquired and will instead see those studios turned into gaming factory lines pumping out tried and true types of products. And as those genres continue to get stale, all that consolidation will lead to consolidated stagnation of interest from the public.

As to the topic of game preservation, well, all I can say is that Layden’s public comments on the topic are a breath of fresh air coming from someone tied to the industry.

“Preservation is important,” Layden said. “I’m hoping that more people in the industry, certainly the big players, begin to realize that there’s an obligation and responsibility. This isn’t throw-away stuff we’re making. This is stuff that should be around for a long time because future generations will enjoy it in the same way that we have and it’s criminal that we’re not doing more to protect it.”

While companies have been happy to remaster older games or sell new anthologies like this week’s Metal Gear Solid Master Collection, there’s been no larger unified campaign by publishers and console manufacturers to invest in keeping gaming’s history alive and available. As Layden points out, it rarely helps the bottom line. Culturally, though, it’s an important way for one generation of players to share their passion with the next. Besides, a medium untethered from its past might have a harder time seeing where it goes next.

It may well be impossible to frame the issue any better than that. Of course these content-producing companies are in it all to make money. That is a given. But there is a responsibility, to borrow Layden’s word, to protect the culture that is being created here and the simple fact of the matter is that the industry is by and large shirking that responsibility, pretending like it doesn’t exist. Or pretending like copyright protections are more important than that cultural preservation.

And that is absolutely stupid. Imagine a world in which you could no longer legitimately watch the movie The Maltese Falcon, simply because some Hollywood studio both didn’t bother to ever put it on a medium that would survive modernity and insisted nobody else could either because of its intellectual property rights. Would we accept that from the film industry? Not willingly, I’d argue, though I’m sure we could all find some instances of that very thing occurring. So why are we by and large accepting it for the video game industry?

You really should go check out the full interview if you’re at all interested in the business of video games. At the very least, it’s nice to hear from an industry executive who seems to get it.

Filed Under: consolodation, playstation, shawn layden, video games
Companies: sony