"Digital Licenses" Sony's License Agreement: What do they mean for the consumer?

99% of that is legal boilerplate. I imagine you'd find the same kind of language with Nintendo and MS systems as well as various PC services.

You shouldn't lose access to your games on PS4 as long as your system is set to be the primary console; in that regard I think it's the same as it was with the 360. If you didn't have to be online in order to play content on a non primary system, the system would be ripe for exploitation.
 
One more reason to only pay a minimum amount for digital games. Everything you buy is effectively able to be revoked from you at any time.

If you are banned from a network can mean years of purchases become unavailable to you.

Personally, I think that stinks.

The day digital is the only way to buy games, I will reduce my my purchases to less than 10% of what I spend currently. Quite frankly, they can piss off.
 
serversurfer said:
You don't buy software; you buy permission to use it. This has been the case since people started arguing about who owns it. The answer is always, "The creator."

If you have a publisher-produced physical copy, the permission to use the contained software is transferred along with the container itself. The new owner is then subject to the same licensing terms.
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Times 1000.

Why do you think publishers are pushing to get rid of second hand sales? As it stands now, Game Stops business model is in an illegal grey market. The publishers would likely win in court but they don't want to be the first to tip the dominos on consoles.

You do not own the game even if it is on a disc. You own the disc and license the software. Just look at the second hand PC game market it's pretty much dead.

A lot of people who were up in arms around MS' plan had their own reasons but it didn't mean they were correct in the assumption that they ever owned the game.
 
faceless007 said:
Including physical? No. Books are not licensed. DVD movies are not licensed. Music CDs are not licensed. None of these come with license agreements. They are sold and subject only to the first-sale doctrine.
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Music is 100% licensed. You cannot redistribute or replay without permission and/or royalties.
 
gamechanger87 said:
Times 1000.

Why do you think publishers are pushing to get rid of second hand sales? As it stands now, Game Stops business model is in an illegal grey market. The publishers would likely win in court but they don't want to be the first to tip the dominos on consoles.
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Well, that's not true. You have the right to sell a physical possession, and if that possession has copyrighted data on it that you legally obtained, that license transfers with the physical item.
 
Sounds like people have never read an EULA. This is the same kind of stuff that has been in software EULA (both disk and digital) for eons.

I guess they are starting to now with all the paranoia towards DRM. Guess that's a good thing? :)
 
faceless007 said:
Including physical? No. Books are not licensed. DVD movies are not licensed. Music CDs are not licensed. None of these come with license agreements. They are sold and subject only to the first-sale doctrine.
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Definitely not true.
Just because you've bought David Bowie's album doesn't mean his music belongs to you, if you know what I mean. You just merely bought the license to listen to it.
I'm not 100% on books, but it's obvious that buying a book doesn't mean the words written in it are yours, you've just bought the right to read the words.
 
serversurfer said:
You don't buy software; you buy permission to use it. This has been the case since people started arguing about who owns it. The answer is always, "The creator."

If you have a publisher-produced physical copy, the permission to use the contained software is transferred along with the container itself. The new owner is then subject to the same licensing terms.
Click to expand...

KJRS_1993 said:
Definitely not true.
Just because you've bought David Bowie's album doesn't mean his music belongs to you, if you know what I mean. You just merely bought the license to listen to it.
I'm not 100% on books, but it's obvious that buying a book doesn't mean the words written in it are yours, you've just bought the right to read the words.
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The 2 best posts that sum it up the best imo. It's been this way for as long as I can remember.
 
This kind of stuff really doesn't bother me, I see games as (for want of a better description) disposable entertainment. I.e. I play them, I enjoy them and then they are worthless to me. I am really not a collector at all, if I lost access to all the games I had completed really would't be that fussed (although of course that would be a dangerous precedent, how long would I get to finish a game before its taken away?!).

The one area where potentially I might be fussed is resell although as I know mostly buy my games in steam sales rather than on console anyway it's not such a big issue.
 
serversurfer said:
You don't buy software; you buy permission to use it. This has been the case since people started arguing about who owns it. The answer is always, "The creator."

If you have a publisher-produced physical copy, the permission to use the contained software is transferred along with the container itself. The new owner is then subject to the same licensing terms.
Click to expand...
thread over, I understand most don't take the time to read EULA's but seriously this is nothing new. Sony is not trying to throw you or anyone else any curve balls. I unplugged my ethernet so my PS4 wouldn't keep trying to sign in and was able to play all my digitally bought games with no issues.
 
So...Dead topic is dead?
I mean there is no point in talking about EULA/TOS since it has existed for so long, and no one wants to challenge it.
Congress won't do anything about it since the copyright/trademark/license/patent laws are already a mess in trying to protect the original ownership...but in the end, it is actually degrading advancement and progress.

Hell, I don't even know who is charge of these laws anymore...Office of Copyright/trademark/ect?
Or can the Library of Congress overrides everything?
Can any Gaf lawyer write a summary on who actually able to make/override these thing, and why the hell is everything in separate government branches?
 
Now I have another excuse to not buy download. Not only is DD always more expensive, they never reduce in price... no Sony, a sale is not $2 off.

Discs for this guy. The reality is gaming is moving to DD... even worse if it goes streaming.
 
A license is largely intended to reserve rights of the copyright holder that are not already held by the consumer via the first sale doctrine.

A consumer is also very different, legally, from a business. Worth mentioning because a business holds different rights when purchasing a product for resale.
 
I've posted many many times trying to tell everyone that we don't own our games. Ever. Technically even our physical ones.

As far back as the NES we've only bought the license to play the game. They've just had no way to police it until the emergence of online gaming.

But I doubt they'd dare do it to physical right now even though they can, because as we've seen, the backlash would be too huge.
 
RexNovis said:
But read closely. The agreement also treats retail physical media as licenses as well. Physically purchased media is not exempt either.
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My physical games will work forever, while the digital games will function until the day Sony shuts down the servers. When that day comes, we better not break our harddrives. I think thats a huge difference.
 
Indiedevs said:
My physical games will work forever, while the digital games will function until the day Sony shuts down the servers. When that day comes, we better not break our harddrives. I think thats a huge difference.
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Your discs are indestructible? They rot eventually too you know.
 
Indiedevs said:
My physical games will work forever, while the digital games will function until the day Sony shuts down the servers. When that day comes, we better not break our harddrives. I think thats a huge difference.
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When Sony shuts down the servers you won't be getting any patches if you don't already have them so I hope your retail games are in good shape. Also onlines not going to be working but that'll be beside the point since you won't be able to download the patches you'd need to actually go online with them anyway.
 
saunderez said:
When Sony shuts down the servers you won't be getting any patches if you don't already have them so I hope your retail games are in good shape. Also onlines not going to be working but that'll be beside the point since you won't be able to download the patches you'd need to actually go online with them anyway.
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Yeah I have to suffer trough more bugs. Im pretty much stuck with the review copy. Still better than shut down.
 
The masses wont ever care until there is a reason to care, then everyone will care. Preventative/proactive steps for possible fubar happening is rarely something that happens. Currently everything appears to be working fine(ish) people are getting what they want and they get to, seemingly, keep their games forever barring a perma ban from somewhere where it effects your ability to play the game(but these are very low % of consumers).

Digital Property laws will probably not update until almost everything is purely digital, until then it will be business as usual.
 
Here's another shocker: You can buy some Steam games on a disc, and the only thing you can do with them is tie them to your Steam account. Once that's done, no one else can ever play the game, except you. Sure, you still have a right to sell the physical disc to someone else, but even if they bought it, they couldn't play the actual game. They can maybe install it, but they'd have to buy their own full-priced license from the Steam store to actually play it. So you have this physical game that you bought, but you effectively can never sell it to someone else. This has existed since 2004!

Valve is anti-consumer!
I don't seriously believe that, but according to the "anyone who restricts my physical resale rights is anti-consumer" line of logic...
 
Indiedevs said:
My physical games will work forever, while the digital games will function until the day Sony shuts down the servers. When that day comes, we better not break our harddrives. I think thats a huge difference.
Click to expand...
That isn't technically true. Optical discs have a lifespan and will eventually start to fail. Digital purchase have the potential to last longer than physical media since you can simply redownload the game. The only catch is that we don't know how long those download servers will be around. Though I think people are a bit too afraid of the servers being shut down, as I really don't think that is going to happen any time soon. The bigger digital gets and the better our infrastructure gets, the longer those servers will remain open one way or another. I wouldn't be surprised to see my PS2 games start to fail before Sony brings the PSN down.
 
soul creator said:
Here's another shocker: You can buy some Steam games on a disc, and the only thing you can do with them is tie them to your Steam account. Once that's done, no one else can ever play the game, except you. Sure, you still have a right to sell the physical disc to someone else, but even if they bought it, they couldn't play the actual game. They can maybe install it, but they'd have to buy their own full-priced license from the Steam store to actually play it. So you have this physical game that you bought, but you effectively can never sell it to someone else. This has existed since 2004!

Valve is anti-consumer!
I don't seriously believe that, but according to the "anyone who restricts my physical resale rights is anti-consumer" line of logic...
Click to expand...

Actually, it fits just about any definition of anti-consumer. This move doesnt serve the consumer in anyway. Just... people are fine with it, clearly, on the whole.
 
Hasn't recent legislation in the EU basically cemented that software ownership is ownership whether it is physical or digital, and that the owner has rights to sell said software to a third party?
 
The main difference between purchased discs and downloaded files is that with the latter, the licenser can easily enforce these agreements.
 
Matt said:
This is the way it is for...everything. Any media, digital or disk. Movies, music, etc. That's how it has always been.
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Yep. It's telling you that you aren't buying the IP and content for your manipulation and selling. You are paying for a copy. Difference is, digital that you've deleted is gone for good if they ever need to yank it from servers over legal issues of selling it (RIP Too Human, The Saboteur, and Activision's 007 games).
 
Matt said:
This is the way it is for...everything. Any media, digital or disk. Movies, music, etc. That's how it has always been.
Click to expand...

Yes. Even with physical media you do not own the software, just the media! The lincense just grants you the right to use the copy of the software.
 
womfalcs3 said:
The main difference between purchased discs and downloaded files is that with the latter, the licenser can easily enforce these agreements.
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Presumably legally. However with physical goods I dont think they can legally prevent you from selling your good. Digital property rights really have not caught up with technology yet and I dont think there is much out there in the courts(in the US) that goes one way or the other.
 
Indiedevs said:
My physical games will work forever, while the digital games will function until the day Sony shuts down the servers. When that day comes, we better not break our harddrives. I think thats a huge difference.
Click to expand...
sony could install a stealth firmware that stops physical games from playing on there console and all your game will be is a disc. You can actually own the disc and still have issues playing it offline when the psn service is acting up and you don't turn off the internet.
 
Re: Steam: While the language in the SSA is similar, it should probably be noted that Valve stopped outright banning/suspending accounts about 30 months ago now in favour of a restriction-based system that prevents you from purchasing, redeeming CD keys, gifting/trading, and, in certain cases, accessing Steam Community at all -- the point being that regardless of how you run afoul of the SSA, you no longer lose access to the games you'd previously bought or activated, and in cases of a chargeback being initiated, if you elect to not contact Valve and resolve the issue, the restrictions actually drop off automatically after nine weeks. (Inquisitive folks will no doubt notice that the SSA hasn't been updated to reflect this change in policy, however it's only been modified once since the aforementioned system was put in place.)

tghm1801 said:
That's because Steam isn't DRM remember!!!
I hate when people call Uplay and Origin """DRM"""" and then go on rants about how good Steam is. lol
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As a point of fact, Steam's DRM component ("Custom Executable Generation") isn't actually required, even for Steamworks games. There are a number of completely DRM-free games on the service. I also think you're misunderstanding why some who use Steam aren't fond of Origin and Uplay, but that's tangential and thus a discussion better suited for another thread.

I've brought up both of the above points numerous times in the past and so I wouldn't be shocked if some believe me to be some sort of Steam crusader, however the simple truth is that I comment on Steam the most because it's the service I'm most familiar with.
 
soul creator said:
Here's another shocker: You can buy some Steam games on a disc, and the only thing you can do with them is tie them to your Steam account. Once that's done, no one else can ever play the game, except you. Sure, you still have a right to sell the physical disc to someone else, but even if they bought it, they couldn't play the actual game. They can maybe install it, but they'd have to buy their own full-priced license from the Steam store to actually play it. So you have this physical game that you bought, but you effectively can never sell it to someone else. This has existed since 2004!

Valve is anti-consumer!
I don't seriously believe that, but according to the "anyone who restricts my physical resale rights is anti-consumer" line of logic...
Click to expand...

In EU you are allowed to sell the license on too. Or seperately, if you wanted.

The snag right now is no system in place to let you sell it on. At some point I expect Steam to offer resales, only they'll take a cut of it for using Steam marketplace.

I'm not sure what would happen if someone tried selling their licenses right now, they'd probably need go to court about Steam allowing it somehow, since Steam is currently blocking that consumer right.

I'm sure Valve have snuck an 'agree not to sell licenses' line into the EULA by now, but that means dick.
 
EASTC0AST_GH05T said:
sony could install a stealth firmware that stops physical games from playing on there console and all your game will be is a disc. You can actually own the disc and still have issues playing it offline when the psn service is acting up and you don't turn off the internet.
Click to expand...

I dont think this would ever happen though, then some financially loaded person would care enough and take them to court, setting precedent.
 
cr_blah_blah said:
Are you sure you have it set as primary? Seemingly most people could play all their games as long as their console was primary already. I was playing Counter Spy and Rogue Legacy during the outage and even the people who got kicked from games seemed to be able to get right back in after skipping the logging into network stage (from that TLOU thread).
Click to expand...

Yes I'm sure I had it set as primary. I did not disconnect the internet and attempt to access them as I was running late for work.

But this is all besides the point. The point I'm trying to make is that the current connected ecosystem allows for "licensors" to legally lock you out of purchased content for pretty much whatever reason they want and since physical media also relies on installed data and is considered a license as well it too could be blocked by a licensor. LEGALLY. With absolutely no recourse for the consumer. The potential for corporate dickery is clear. That is what scares me. I don't like the idea of one day putting in my disc for Final Fantasy XV and getting an invalid license message.
 
unbias said:
I dont think this would ever happen though, then some financially loaded person would care enough and take them to court setting precedent.
Click to expand...
and I don't think you will ever see digital distribution servers shut down. Digital is the future wether we like it or not.
digital buyers would be up in arms the same way if there games was stripped away. If Sony wants to take a game back from you just because you bought a disc copy doesn't make you exempt.
 
RexNovis said:
In the wake of the DDoS attack on countless companies (Blizzard, Riot, Microsoft, Sony, Brazzers etc) an odd issue prevented PS4 players from accessing even their purchased Single Player games. The issue centered around the "license" function for digital purchases. This greatly concerend me so I took it upon myself to do some research on these "digital licenses." To those unacquainted with the term this is how it is explained by Sony themselves with the emphasis in bold by yours truly:
Click to expand...
I was able to access all of my games (digital downloads included) yesterday. So maybe you should add "issue prevented some PS4 players from accessing even their purchased Single Player games".
 
RexNovis said:
This is news to me. Can you point me to a source on that? I've known about digital purchases as "licenses" for a while but I have never heard or seen anything implying such a treatment for physical retail purchases. This is the first I'm seeing of physical retail purchases being treated as a license outside of Microsoft's initial proposal for XB1.
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Dude this isn't new and yes physical games have the same warning applied to them. The ONLY reason they can't truly enforce it with physical games is because the medium it comes on supersedes the license. You OWN the cart, CD, DVD, Blu-Ray. But you do not own the data that is printed on said medium; this has always been the case. Because you own the medium it comes on you can do with it what you want (short of making copies to sell). By going digital you remove that physical barrier thus the licensing is put into effect.
 
EASTC0AST_GH05T said:
and I don't think you will ever see digital distribution servers shut down. Digital is the future wether we like it or not.
digital buyers would be up in arms the same way if there game was stripped away. If Sony wants to take a game back from you just because you bought a disc copy doesn't make you exempt.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what that had to do with what I posted? Yes, the reason things are fine as is for people is because it is working out, currently. I dont see any reason for corporations to fuck it up majorly, because if they do they will get the courts involved and then they will regret it. However, being able to sell your digital goods(in the US) is a fight that I dont think is very far away.
 
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