REACTION - PlayStation delisting purchased video content is a step in the wrong direction
Pakled logic.
By Jonathan Garrett
04/12/23
Servers getting switched off in Battlefield 1943 is one thing (which continues to sting even now) but Sony’s recent announcement that certain content from their media store is being nuked seems like an overreach. The notion that owned digital items that have been purchased and downloaded can subsequently be removed from your video library feels like a bridge too far, and yet here we are.
I’m sure it’s buried in the T’s & C’s, but it doesn’t sit well. It’s one thing to suspend the sales of an item due to a license expiring, but this move by PlayStation adds further fuel to the debate around content preservation, which in turn amplifies the need for physical media to be supported. It’s not necessarily financially or logistically viable for every publisher and studio to produce a hard copy of their work, but decisions like this certainly make the case for its importance.
We’re entering an unprecedented age of digital migration where your purchases are tied to specific accounts and should theoretically carry forward into new generations of tech. But decisions like this hamper our ability to secure a grip on the art we choose to buy, and in turn relegate the work of creators to oblivion.
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
