Gatchamic

🚨 SONY'S TERMS OF SERVICE: PROTECTING THEIR ASSES AND SCREWING THE GAMER! @PlayStation @Sony I've been looking at Sony's TOS, and something becomes painfully obvious. This agreement does a hell of a job protecting Sony. The gamer? Not so much. So who actually benefits from the contract we're all expected to accept? Sony sells you a digital game, collects your money, and grants you a limited license, not ownership. You generally can't resell it, transfer it, or recover its value when you're finished playing. Sony gets the sale, keeps control of the license, and eliminates competition from secondhand digital sales. Sweet arrangement, isn't it? Now, account termination. Sony has the right to suspend or terminate accounts for violations of its terms. Depending on the circumstances, it can mean losing access to years of digital purchases. Sony protects its ass as the gamer carries the financial risk. How much money have you invested in your library? Then the refund policy. Once you've started downloading a game, your refund options are extremely limited unless an exception applies. Sony gets paid before you can properly evaluate the product. You discover the game is trash? Good luck getting your money back. How is this fair to gamers? PS Plus is another beautiful arrangement for Sony. Auto-renewals keep the money coming until you cancel. Higher tiers generate additional revenue, and Sony's financial disclosures celebrate record subscription profits.🎯 Congrats, gamers. You've become a recurring payment. Sony reserves broad rights concerning virtual items, including modifying or removing them. You spend money, but your control over what you purchased is limited. Sony protects Sony while you're left accepting the consequences. Now, arbitration. Sony's US agreement includes provisions directing many disputes into arbitration and restricting class actions, with exceptions and an opt-out procedure. That may limit gamers' ability to join forces against the company. Interesting how Sony's lawyers protect the company while leaving gamers with so little bargaining power. Let's not forget the limitations of liability. Sony tries to restrict what it can be held responsible for when things go wrong. Those provisions aren't necessarily enforceable in every circumstance, but the intention to limit corporate exposure is obvious. Imagine an entirely digital PlayStation ecosystem with physical media removed. No competing physical retailers. No used-game market. No lending discs or selling games. Your purchases, licenses, subscriptions, and access become increasingly dependent on Sony's ecosystem. Sony gets the control. Gamers get shafted. No dinner first! Yup, I'm critical of Sony's monetization strategy. Its financial disclosures emphasize revenue per user, subscription profitability, and monetization. Its Terms of Service cement contractual protections that benefit the business. Sony's shareholders benefit from predictable revenue. Sony benefits from reduced financial exposure and greater control over its storefront. Gamers accept restrictions they had no opportunity to negotiate. If you want access to PlayStation's digital ecosystem? You'll Click Accept. Don't like the terms? The only choice is to walk away. That's not much of a negotiation, is it? To Sony's board of directors, including Wendy Becker and Hiroki Totoki: We aren't just numbers on a financial statement. We're the people who built your success. Keep celebrating record profits.Our loyalty isn't guaranteed, and neither are those profits. The more control Sony takes, the less freedom gamers have. We're the ones paying for that greed! Read the agreement, gamers. Then ask yourselves whose interests it was written to protect. Make Sony listen! Sony's US Terms of Service: playstation.com/en-us/legal/… Sony Investor Relations: sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/ #PlayStation #Sony #PSPlus #PlayStationStore #DigitalOwnership #ConsumerRights #GamePreservation #EthicaGaming

🚨 ATTN: SONY BOARD CHAIR WENDY BECKER-WE NEED TO TALK. "If I could find an X account, she'd be tagged." Ms. Becker, on November 5, Sony reports its Q2 earnings. Before those numbers take center stage, there's another matter to discuss. The gamers who built PlayStation into what it is today. We've spent years watching Sony make decisions that leave portions of its consumer base questioning where this company is headed. Rising costs, restrictive policies, game preservation, and a growing disconnect between management and its customers. You chair Sony's Board of Directors. We're asking you personally to open a dialogue with the PlayStation community. Not another dull corporate statement. An actual conversation. Sony talks about shareholder value. Fair enough. What about the customers responsible for creating that value? You know, the gamers! Ms. Becker, will you talk with us? We're also calling on Sony's other directors to hear this message: Hiroki Totoki, Lin Tao, Joseph A. Kraft Jr., Neil Hunt, William Morrow, Shingo Konomoto, Yoriko Goto, Nora Denzel, and Masayuki Hyodo. The PlayStation community deserves a seat at the table. You owe us that much! @Sony @PlayStation #Sony #PlayStation #PS5 #PlayStation5 #SonyGroup #SonyInvestors #SonyShareholders #SonyEarnings #SonyBoardOfDirectors #WendyBecker #GamingCommunity #Gamers #ConsumerRights #GamePreservation #BackwardCompatibility #GamingIndustry Source: sony.com/en/SonyInfo/csr_rep…

SONY, I THINK YOUR OWN ARGUMENT JUST COLLAPSED. Nobody is claiming that buying a copy of a game means I own the copyright to the game. "That has never been the argument." If I buy a movie on Blu-ray, I don't own the movie studio's intellectual property. "I own MY COPY." If I buy an album on CD, I don't own the artist's music or the record label's copyright. "I own MY COPY." Millions of people can own separate copies of the exact same movie, album, book or game at the same time. We have understood this for generations. Apparently everyone but you! And when I own that physical copy, I can put it into compatible hardware and use it. The studio doesn't suddenly get to argue that ownership is impossible because somebody else bought the same movie too. So why should a video game suddenly be different just because the delivery mechanism changed from a plastic disc to digital data? That is where Sony's reported legal argument loses me. I'm not claiming I own Resident Evil. I'm claiming I paid for MY COPY of Resident Evil. Those are two completely different things. And Xbox just made this argument even harder for @Sony to defend. Microsoft has demonstrated that a physical game can be tied to an individualized digital entitlement. They don't have to hand the customer the copyright. They don't have to give one person exclusive ownership of the game. They simply have to recognize that THIS consumer paid for THIS entitlement to access THIS game. Millions of people can each possess their own entitlement to the same copyrighted work. "Of course they can." Sony already assigns digital licenses to millions of PlayStation accounts every day. So the question was never whether the technology exists. The question is what rights the consumer receives after Sony puts the word BUY on the screen and takes their money. Here is the distinction that matters: I OWN MY COPY. I DO NOT OWN THE COPYRIGHT. Movie studios understand that. Record labels understand that. Book publishers understand that. Physical video games have worked that way for decades. What makes you any different, @Sony? Digital distribution should not magically erase that concept simply because the corporation has more technical control over the transaction. And if the customer pays full price while receiving fewer rights and less control, I think consumers have every right to ask who actually benefits from that arrangement. Sony doesn't need to give me ownership of its intellectual property. Sony needs to explain why paying full price for my copy should give Sony more control over what I purchased simply because that copy arrived as bits instead of on a disc. And Xbox has now demonstrated that individualized digital entitlements are absolutely possible. The movie and music industries have demonstrated the underlying principle for generations. Sony companies themselves sell movies and music on physical media that consumers can buy, take home and play whenever they want on compatible equipment. So please explain why video games should suddenly be treated differently. That makes the legal argument much more difficult to defend. That's the conversation I think Sony needs to answer. @PlayStation @Sony @Xbox @Microsoft @Blaze2KX @Aztecross #PlayStation #Sony #Xbox #DigitalOwnership #ConsumerRights #GamePreservation #PhysicalMedia #DigitalGames #NoDiscNoBuy 🎯If you like this content, follow. I stay on top of the latest gaming & tech information. Game On!