Last month, Sony argued that “reasonable consumers” already know they don’t really own the digital goods they paid for. The Consumer Rights wiki has now made a list collecting more than 30 examples where Sony told customers they do, in fact, own the digital games they paid for.
A class action lawsuit recently filed against Sony alleged the PlayStation Store isn’t clear enough about the fact that digital purchases don’t equal digital ownership. Once a player makes a purchase on the PlayStation Store, they’re paying for a digital license that’s revocable at any point in time – the purchase doesn’t guarantee you’ll have access to a particular game or DLC or cosmetic pack forever.
Sony’s legal team fired back, arguing that it’s not breaking any laws around digital ownership because “reasonable consumers would not be misled” by the storefront’s small print disclosures. (You know, the links to the company’s Terms of Service and Software Product Licensing Agreement that show up just before you pay for something on the PlayStation Store.)
Seemingly in response to those arguments, the Consumer Rights wiki has now created a “non-exhaustive table of references on Sony’s site to ‘owning’ digital games.” The list includes more than 30 occasions in which Sony’s site has said something along the lines of, “View a broadcast for a game you own through the game’s hub,” or, “If you ownthe PS4 and PS5 versions of the same game, here’s how to switch between them…”
One of the more recent examples can be found in Marvel’s Wolverine’s FAQ section: “Standard Edition owners can also upgrade to the Digital Deluxe Edition content.”
The lawsuit claimants said Sony was in breach of a California Law that made it “unlawful for a seller of a digital good to advertise or offer for sale a digital good to a purchaser with the terms ‘buy,’ ‘purchase,’ or any other term which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good.” (Reasonability doesn’t seem like something you could measure in court, but I digress.) A digital vendor can get around the law by giving customers clear information about the licenses they’re paying for. We’ll see how the suit plays out over the coming weeks and months.
