I paid money for a license to use/play the PS Classics many years ago. There are only a handful of licenses I didn’t pay for on the store. I still play those games. The future of this whole “buying digital” it showings the cons of buying digital passed a certain period of time. I haven’t tested my games yet. I would imagine, if Sony wanted to be up there with Steam, they’d come up with something. Even Nintendo has issues with digital games with the 3DS/Wii U stores closing at some point.
Worst part is scrolling through the PSN Library when you want to download something. It isn’t super easy cause a lot of games aren’t listed in their store. My PS3 digital library is just under 900 items. I just wish things were easier for a consumer who didn’t pawn their PS3 or Vita away. Those who still care about their digital PlayStation libraries.
Oh okay.
Yes, that's crazy but that's based on a grey legal area: You indefinitely own the licence you buy, which by definition are licence to unlimited access and use to a copy of x game, which means you actually (at least outside of dumbistan) can torrent a copy of it if the platform (or cartridge/cd in the case of physical copy) is not accessible for any reasons, because the conditionality of the access to the platform doesn't trump the purchase and ownership right of a licence.
But unfortunately, that hasn't stopped platforms like Nintendo or Sony to discontinue access to users library, since the grey area dictates that you can play what you own and installed, but download and access to the online library is conditioned by services which may be discontinued. Well the grey area is that this condition normally should only apply to companies that are going bankrupt or discontinuing the production of a physical product, while online services depend on servers that are still active. But since no court enforced it one way or the other, yeah that sucks.
Never trust Nintendo, and obviously don't trust Sony either, only on PC do you have a 15+ years old game library service that you can always access your game on, in fact a bunch of them. Fuck console maker for not competing with PCs AND emulators.