GamesJust in time for them to take physical discs away!
What an excellent way to convince aging gamers to just never buy from Sony again.
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.
Good. Fuck everyone and everything.
I can't use my account anyway since they're insisting that I used an authenticator app for account verification when I absolutely did NOT, and they won't give me access to my shit now.
Time to take your ps5 offline. Obligatory fuck Sony
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.
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
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
"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.
You will eat nothing and you will be happy
if youre not even connected to a line, what they gonna do? wait til youre connected then trash you?
The condition doesn't appear in some countries, but that doesn't mean that they won't eventually expand it:
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.
As per another comment, I didn't know Gmail can delete an account after 2 years of inactivity. Proton mail is only 12 months on the free plan. With so many things being related to email I feel like I should have a more robust system.
I've been a hardcore PlayStation guy since I was about 9 when I got my first console the PS1.
Crash team racing is better than Mario Kart 64
Spyro the Dragon is the best 3D platformer of the late 90s.
I've had a PS2.. That still works 22 years later.
I was in the great wars of PS2 vs XBOX.
I like Halo 1 and 2, I like Killzone 1, 2 and 3.
I was there at the beginning.
I was there when Sony moved their PlayStation HQ from Japan to America.
I was there when the quality of good JRPGs and adventure games plummeted so we could be fed a new call of duty and FIFA every year.
These days I'm PC, PS5 and switch. I will not be buying a PS6 or a Switch 2.
It should be mentioned that.. I'd rather throw myself down a cliff than buy an Xbox.
I'm PS5, Switch 2, and PC tertiary. Honestly, I regret buying the Switch 2 since I can nearly play all the same games on SW1 still.
Ill probably still get a PS6 since I already only buy digital, but having an account deleted after only 3 years is complete BS, and makes me rethink everything.
It's not just them. I accidentally ended up in prison for 5 years and lost my Google account, and because I had 2FA set up with email and the phone number I had at the time on pretty much everything that means I also lost my steam account and pretty much every single digital account I had. Thousands of games on different storefronts.
Ironically the only single place that helped me recover my account was the kind folks at Roberts Space Industries. I was an initial backer... Maybe one day the game will be done.
Everything else I pirate now. If you don't own it physically, you don't own it.
An initial backer of Star Citizen who still believes in the project is worth his weight in gold-pressed latinum to Roberts Space Industries.
... I mean, I don't. They've done some cool shit, but they haven't made one actual good game much less a billion dollars worth of good games. But after losing steam, GOG, PlayStation, and Microsoft accounts I just sort of got desperate.
"Maybe one day the game will be done," is more grace than that game deserves, as you probably are aware.
I just found out about Luanti, a voxel-engine with a bunch of different implementations. It's free. I'm going to try that this week.
the only playstations i will be buying are ones with old and outdated firmwares and hen support
The formatting of my message got ruined.. I had to use two returns or it all ended up in a giant wall of text..
(For people under 30, Return is what the Enter key is called.. I don't know what it's called on phones.. the icon on your phone that is going down and has an arrow pointing left).
Hey now, I know what it is and I am only..... Oh god....
'Return' is a typewriter holdover for new line + carriage return, since a new line just went down without returning all the way to the start. The arrow to the right means its a 'return' key ;) Just turned 33 too
Ok, but the problem is the wavelength of blue light. You can't have 4K textures and large roaming worlds and fit it on media limited to 128GB.
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Has nothing to do with deleting accounts.
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Your disk is your fully transferable proof of purchase license. You do the base install from your disk and download the rest of the game online, as it has been for decades. We don't really GAF about the loss of the disk, it's the loss of the transferrable license, which they coud EASILY fix. But they won't. They made this bed.
And what does this have to do with Sony deleting accounts?
Note that technically the agreement says that Sony reserves the right to delete the account after 36 months, not that they'll actually do it. It might "just" be a stupid bit of legalese to cover Sony's ass in case they're required to delete older data.
Of course the idea is worrying nonetheless.
note my myself: whenever entering a contract with u/ChairmanMeow@programming.dev just tell him those terms that are not in his favor are just legalese for some edge case and I certainly will voluntarily not make any use of those terms that are totally in my favor and they should not worry.
I feel like this would actually work on most people
if they can delete someones account and potentially make them buy everything again (at least that is how i think the executives must view it) why wouldnt they?
Seems illegal.
ill be sure to tell my siblings to sign into my account every 3 years. gee thanks sony. whats the fucking point of this
Preventing the recovery of temporarily abandoned accounts (like from a family member that stopped gaming some time ago), and saving a few cents in storage.
*millicents
I logged into steam after like 15 years and it still worked.
There are doing a speed run no one wants.
how is that even legal?
we need better consumer protection for digital purchases.
It’s literally because of consumer protection laws. GDPR requires the deletion of unused data, to ensure companies aren’t just holding onto your data indefinitely. This is simply the consequence of that, because Sony has apparently determined that three years is enough of a threshold to be considered “unused”.
GDPR only requires that, if there is no legitimate use for keeping the data. Ongoing software license is a legitimate use.
Yes, but not every single PSN account has any software licenses. Some people are just playing F2P games or subbing to PS+.
But, it’s trickier to word their clause in such a way that it only specifically applies to free accounts.
yhea, that is 100% bullshit.
GDPR isn't new, and no company was forced to do that.
Might as well block the highway with my car saying that the law forces me to do that, because I cannot pass cars on the left lane, and I point to the "right" lane (opposite direction traffic) on the other side of the barrier.
But good news, according to EU regulations you should just a toilet in your house, you are meant to spew shite into it.
No, it's not for GDPR compliance. It's like this talking point "stupid data protection laws, all those cookie banners". Nobody is forcing any company to use all those shitty tracking cookies ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Why lie about something like this?
Because it isn’t a lie. Companies need to justify why they are retaining personal information after they stop using it. If they can’t justify it, they need to delete it.
And you think Sony is going to put their neck on the line to try and argue that keeping old unused accounts open is a justifiable reason? They have literally zero incentive to do so, and a large profit incentive to delete accounts as soon as they can reasonably argue that they are too old. Because that will push people towards re-buying games they already purchased once before.
Companies need to justify why they are retaining personal information
And the justification is "this person holds a perpetual software license with us and we need to be able to grant them access unless they tell us otherwise". Case closed.
Do they?
Please prove that every single PSN account has digital software purchases on it. EVERY single one.
If you fail, you’re liable for GDPR and are holding customer data past its use!
BS. You only have to prove it for the individual account. They obviously don't have to delete my data because you have no software purchases on your account.
I've honestly had it with all the anti GDPR fearmongering and propaganda. It's not some eldritch horror that will eat your company if it notices you. It's a powerful and at the same time pretty reasonable customer protection tool. As long as companies don't take more data than they need to do the business the customer actually came to them for and make sure only people who need to work with the data can acces it they are in the clear 100% of the time.
It absolutely is a lie.
It really reveals the nature of your purchase, doesn't it? Apparently you are just buying some entries in a database. Sadly any software we can't use offline can just be deleted like this. The pendulum swung too far towards the cloud, hopefully it comes back down to earth soon.
It's almost like Sony doesn't want to have a PlayStation division anymore.
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
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.
Like HL2 running on your browser
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.
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.
This is for UK and EU due to GDPR that requires companies delete all user data for inactive accounts. It's a unintended consequences of the law and other gaming companies including Xbox have similar clauses.
https://playfront.de/en/psn-kontoloeschung-sony-loescht-inaktive-accounts-asutomatisch-nach-3-jahren/
The law says they can’t keep your PII after you stop being a customer, not anything about linking your email address to purchases for an entirely legitimate ongoing reason.
The law covers personal data not PII and is much broader than PII that is defined under the US Office of Privacy and Open Government which has no bearing on the GDPR.
As for personal data, email addresses are covered and even user names could be considered personal data depending on if it's linkable to a person and since your account is linked to your email and linked to you user name potentially, when they have to delete personal data the have to delete all of those foreign keys in their database that says your email once got a receipt for that game you bought digitally.
Except they don’t have to delete any of that as long as you hold ongoing software licenses with them, as that’s a legitimate interest. This is malicious compliance posing as “well they made us do it”, same as all the GDPR banners on the web.
They need to retain financial data for way longer though, and are basically allowed to store their bookkeeping stuff for forever. So they could restore accounts from that anyways. I'd argue, they could keep the account details which can be recovered from financial data under those circumstances. Which probably would be everything necessary to keep the purchased games. They'd need to delete e.g. usage data, connection data etc.
I'm not here to defend the corporations.
Email addresses are PII under GDPR, aren't they? So linking email addresses to purchase history is explicitly retaining PII and data about someone they can identify.
You are explicitly allowed to retain PII for critical business purposes. So in this case as a key component that the software licence is attached to they can retain it forever anyway.
Hah! I guess Sony argues that "who bought what" is not a "critical business purpose"...
Pretty sure that the gdpr specifically precludes forever retention. Data should be retained as long as is necessary and whether 1, 3, 5, 10 or however many years, sooner or later deletion is appropriate, and the timeline depends on what is reasonable.
3 years is a long time to not log in and if a court decided that it exceeded a 'reasonable' period for legitimate interest the fines can go to 10% of global revenue. The law encourages risk averse behaviour.
They could make a better system where the user sets the timeline but it would be impossible to predict the return.
On this one i think its probably driven by risk management not nefarious intent.
3 years is not long at all if you factor having kids into the equation. There is not a lot, if any, time to play video games when your kids are small. Imagine having 2 kids 1-2 years apart and not finding time for gaming (on your PS) until the youngest is at least 2 years old - then you are quickly looking at 3-4 years without login.
Not something i need imagination for. Im not saying 3 years is optimal, but there does have to be a threshold somewhere. Personally i'd build it into user settings to allow users to self select a time period they accept.
3 years is not a long time at all. I've been collecting games on my steam account for 19 years, and there was a period of >2 years where I didn't use it.
i didnt touch my steam account for like 12 years...... i set it up when portal2 came out on ps3, but that never went anywhere....
literally a dozen years later, i built a gaming PC and when i logged into steam, there was a portal2 license waiting for me to press download
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.
Seeing how shit they are at securing their customers accounts, it might actually be a good thing
guys let me introduce you to chinese handhelds with 1351251351513 games on, your old shool consoles with physical disk, and remind you of ALL THOSE cool games you always wanted to play but had no time to do so.
Yeah really I have no desire for new stuff. Like, why? Ive never once cared about graphics, even when I was around 8, I remember thinking people caring about graphics was stupid, because its the game that matters. Never have I bought a game because it was "shiny" or because I could see a baseball players eyelash. Who cares. I want a game, not a reality simulator (well, I do enjoy walking/ driving simulators once in a while, but not because of graphics!)
Now flashy graphics are fine and all but not at the expense of the game.
Iif I even tried completing every game from 1975 to 1999, I'd have enough play for more than a lifetime of gaming.
New really isnt that great, for me. Some good indie games here and there, sure.
I think ps3 graphics are good enough any thing higher doesn't make me more immersed and pulling out of immersion to go "oooo pretty" is neat now and then but not that important. I'll say I do occasionally stop to be impressed by really good shadows though
I always goto Civilization as the example. One of the best games ever before the recent versions.... No emphasis on graphics....just well balanced strategy and gameplay. Civ 3 ftw
You like walking simulators? You should try DayZ
I have, it was too complex for me
It does have a bit of a learning curve but it's pretty rewarding if the gameplay clicks with you. Plus it's apparently great at modeling nature (compared to other games, that is). My lumberjack friend is constantly raving about how the trees types/placement and the forests in general are pretty realistic
Pick a direction, walk until you die. Rinse, and repeat.
Graphics are all cool and all, but unless the game is great, graphics to me are worthless. I never understood people that put graphics over gameplay. Such a stupid concept. To top all you said, new games are mid at best, and shit in their usual state. Rarely a game comes out that is GOOD! I tend of playing 10+ years old games recently ... and why would I need a newer console or PC ? For what ?
The problem is that most of the trillions of games suck and the ones that I had heard of often aren't on there. I also wish there was some way for multiplayer, I would pay more if they figured that out for some games.
There is a way you put your own games. Most of those handhrlds are simple emulators that you can put whatever you like up to ps3 in some cases even (hard).
There is multiplayer. Almost all modern handheld Chinese consoles have multiplayer for many games. Look it up, they are very mature.
There isn't on the one I have. What brand do you recommend?
Anbernic, ayeneo, motion mini, lots of options, and to be honest much more there if you dig deeper :)
Which one has the best multiplayer platform or do they all work the same?
I cant say much. I have seen up to 4 people play different games on these platforms. Usually Anmbernic is the most popular choice, and I would personally, but look at aliexpress etc. even their official web page is more expensive than that. Again dont take my word for it, look up youtube, there are tons of videos on those. I personally like the vertical handhelds, but I know people preffer the horizontals, and they are more powerfull.
Another coice is Odin btw, that is I think one of the most powerfull handhelds, that can even run steam no problem *others can as well but with limited capabilities because of the hardware.
The Nintendo DSi can also be made to use emulation. I play nes and snes on mine currently and also downloaded ds games
3DS is even better for that and easier to homebrew. Gives you access to a huge library, including DS and Gameboy advance games
What are you talking about
Follow the conversation idk.
Is it time for me to try to mod my ps4 so I can keep all my games? Does ps4 support soft modding yet? Cause I can't solder...
Depends what firmware you're on. If you've updated in the last year or so, you're fucked, otherwise there's a variety of options
This should explain every step
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn7ji3VsPy3FRxLrjz5ScpvpTirAxQ3me
Awesome, thank you! I'll definitely have a look at this when I can.
My biggest mistake was buying a PS4 instead of jumping to PC a generation earlier than I eventually did.
I bought my wife a ps5. Regretting that decision too.
Non-spamblog version of the same article: https://www.levelup.com/en/news/playstation-could-permanently-delete-your-psn-account-and-digital-library-for-this-reason/
That's good, dead accounts are a general safety risk for everyone.
What's bad is, that they don't (have to) refund you.
Yeah there's simply no way to disable the account without permanently removing all of their purchases from their library.
Oh well.
All in on live services.
Wow, say what you want about Microsoft but the worst I had to do with my Xbox Live was repatriate it from a Russian hacker.
Sony’s reminding me of their “599 US DOLLARS” era very heavily lately. Gaming has been in such a rough spot lately, it’s a shame.
The fact that digital everything has been such a clusterfuck of unwashed ass pushed me back to rock climbing. Thanks/go fuck yourself tech conglomerates! I’ve definitely drawn similar associations, Rick
I started playing ukulele because i did not feel like spending a years savings on a new gaming pc and nvidia fucked up gforce now. A recorder/flute is like 7 $. But its impossible to play silent.
It had the curse of being worth more than movies and television, so it attracted every "entertainment" investor around, demanding short term profits like movies do. Now we have giant corporations thinking they can even remotely understand what a creative medium is, and then being shocked when we don't buy their latest "written by HR"/microtransaction bullshit. Meanwhile Indie is doing great! Surprise, creative people make good creative products.
I jumped after PS3. I logged in one day to find a message that the Smash Brothers clone I enjoyed was removed from my library and the servers shut down. Just, out of nowhere. Also, the low frame rate and FOV in some games started giving me motion sickness consistently. I do miss the simplicity of owning consoles and the excitement of new hardware releases.
Is this an attempt to temporarily artifically inflate unique account activity metrics for self-congratulation and shareholder ego stroking?
(This month X millions players logged in to play games, which is a significant increase from before!)
I haven't logged in since my PS3 died a couple years ago.
Tried to log in to their website with my saved password. It said the password was wrong. I reset my password, entered the same one that I previously used, fully expecting it to give the frustrating answer "Previous passwords can't be re-used." But no, it let me use it! Weird.
Similar for me, a few years I tried to log back on to claim a free game giveaway just in case I bought a PS4/5.
Instead my account was deleted. This account doesn’t exist, or something like that. Can’t make a new account with that email because an account exists. Amazing. I had some stuff on there, I got the receipts.
So I’m surprised at this thread because I thought that was already the policy. Maybe for accounts in countries with no consumer protection rules this was more or less already happening.
I even logged into my Uplay because I knew it was linked to my PSN, to see if there’s a way to get any information about my PSN account. And yes, it showed the accounts were linked, and that I was unsuccessfully logging on with the correct email.
I could have bought a used PS4 during Covid and maybe later a PS5 if I got into their stuff. Alas (for Sony) I tripled down on PC. Even got a Steam deck at an extortionate markup when I felt like it would be worth it for me, via a third country where it’s not officially available. Good stuff
So some password systems prepend the hash algorithm to your password hash, that way you can tell if the user has migrated to the new algorithm or not when you change your hashing scheme.
Odds are after the PSN breach they changed the algorithm and have since removed the code to check the old algorithm. So it just sees the hash didn’t match with the new algorithm even though the password is the same.
I had not used my ps3 in ages and he to redo the thermal paste on it. Once I got it back up I was able to access my downloaded games without connecting to the network. Maybe the ps4 or 5 is always online requirement?
I think it does affect PS3, because I booted mine up a couple months ago and it would not let me log in or play my downloaded games. I have to reactivate my account or some bullshit. Should have just left its network cable unplugged
So sign into your PS account on their website or your old console once every three years? If it's something you care about that's really not a big ask.
this is a horrible take. if you buy something, it should stay yours even if you don't look at it for 20 years. If Sony opts for not selling CDs any more (asshole move) they should at least carry to burden of storing a few kB per customer. Forever.
And they will keep your account until the company is no longer profitable if you care enough to remember you have one. It costs you 5 minutes every 3 years to maintain your collection. Y'all are blowing this out of proportion with all this wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Agree with overall point but doesn't cd's expire as well?
Everything expires, but deleted is not expired. Some day the sun will burn out of fuel and earth will be history. That still does not mean, that if you buy something it shall be taken from you by choice of the vendor.
Wow this seems like a gross overstep of boundaries . Fuckin, oh well i guess
It's updates like this that make me wish for a 'git diff' of those changes.
Best we can get is Internet Archive of previous versions of the page if we're lucky.
Oh no... anyway
Or if you are from Russia. Apparently that was never about the war 🥴
They can only do that because Microsoft dropped the ball and there is no real competition in sight.
Err.. What about Steam. Steam Machine, plenty of portable options are available with not only SteamOS now, Steam Frame is inbound, and I'd expect to see a lot of Steam machine clones.
I'm still playing games I purchased 10+ years ago still (finally trying to finish Broken Age)
The only thing going for Playstation / Xbox really is the pricing at the moment
Plex lifetime pass. $45, 2011. Can’t take that away from me. I’ve got 75 TB of fuck you, Sony.
They literally can and will take that away from you as soon as the company isn't profitable or goes bankrupt, lol.
Can’t take that away from me.
Well, if it was taken away, it wouldn't be the first time that a lifetime pass was pulled from all customers:
- https://www.wired.com/story/vpnsecure-canceled-all-lifetime-subscriptions-claiming-it-didnt-know-about-them/
Or the second, or the third, or the fourth... https://dev.to/productimpossible/lifetime-subscriptions-dont-mean-what-you-think-they-mean-1hg7
But, at least Plex has honored their lifetime pass for now. That's a good deal you got there.
once upon a time someone dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan
So, obviously, that guarantees it will definitely happen to me!
Lmao plex has been pulling anti consumer bullshit for years
Blocked
