Sometimes a story so ridiculous lands in your lap that you have to question if it’s actually real. It’s hard to imagine a company doing everything in its power to tell its customers that it doesn’t care about them, but that’s just a reality for Sony in 2026.
As reported by Game File this morning, in a recent filing, Sony’s primary defense in an upcoming lawsuit about ownership sees the company stating “reasonable consumers would not be misled” into thinking they own any digital games they purchased. Yes, the company that is killing physical media in 2028 is now saying you don’t own any of the games you might wind up buying from its digital store either in the past, present, or future.
For those out of the loop a bit, this recent comment is in response to a lawsuit filed by four gamers in California back in June. Their primary grievance was that Sony might be violating a California law that requires digital storefronts make it 100% clear buyers are acquiring licenses instead of full ownership of digital games. Their main complaint was that the store uses language such as “Buy Now” and “Confirm Purchase,” which would indicate that buyers are, indeed, acquiring ownership rather than renting or licensing a game.
What will likely sink this argument is that the PlayStation store does provide a disclosure to shoppers. For years now, fine print stating “You further acknowledge that your purchase of this digital product amounts to a license subject to the Software Product License Agreement” has been attached to all purchases on the store. The gamers stressed that “a reasonable customer completing a purchase would not necessarily notice this disclosure,” which then prompted Sony’s response above.
Going further, Sony’s lawyers are arguing that because digital games are not a finite resource and can be acquired by multiple people at once, that somehow indicates that no one “owns” the game outright. Using a physical game as an example, they state that only one person can own a particular physical copy at a time, which isn’t true with digital games. “In the digital age, it is not plausible to allege that reasonable consumers believed they were obtaining ‘ownership’ of a digital game,” the filing reads.
The absurdity of this all mostly comes down to Sony attempting to snuff out physical media all together. While digital ownership rights are woefully behind the curve in a legal sense, consoles have provided a physical option since their creation. If you weren’t comfortable with “licensing” a game, at least you had an option to actually own it. Sony has already signaled it will be exiting the physical race, and Microsoft seems ready to follow course. If that happens, it will be only Nintendo which allows any true ownership of games, at least as far as lawyers are concerned.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
