As PlayStation gamers prepare for an all-digital future after January 2028, Sony makes no apologies to anyone who doesn’t know what that means for game ownership (or lack thereof). In fact, the company told a California court that no “reasonable” consumer would be stupid enough to think that buying a game digitally means it actually belongs to you.
When you buy a game from the PlayStation Store or any other digital storefront, even though you often have to click buttons with words like “buy” and “purchase” written on them, you’re really just getting an ultimately revocable license to play it. That’s the sad reality, but a class-action lawsuit filed in June alleged that Sony didn’t make the nature of these transactions clear enough.
In addition to the aforementioned language implicating ownership, the lawsuit also claims that PlayStation “fails to clearly and conspicuously disclose to consumers at the point of sale that these transactions do not confer ownership of digital games.” The plaintiffs argue that Sony instead chooses to “relegate” this information to separate disclaimers or agreements that consumers are not required to acknowledge before completing a purchase.
The lawsuit, which was filed June 18, claims Sony is violating California law by not making its current disclosures sufficiently clear, a charge Sony disputed in its Aug. 21 response. The game filepart of Sony’s argument apparently is that digital purchases are inherently different from physical ownership, because many people can purchase a digital copy of the same game from a digital storefront. This prevents them from owning that game and is different from purchasing a disc.
“As plaintiffs admit, Section 1 of the SPLA also explains that ‘the software is licensed, not sold, to you,'” Sony said in its filing. “This makes sense. In the digital age, it is implausible to assert that reasonable consumers believed they were obtaining “ownership” of a digital game… If that were the case, plaintiff Edward Heycock would not have been able to obtain the game Resident Evil Requiem on February 25, 2026 for $69.99 from the PlayStation Store after plaintiff Jason Mendoza obtained Resident Evil Requiem on February 14, 2026, because Mr. Mendoza, not Sony, would have owned it at that time.”
It remains to be seen which side the court will side with, but Sony took the time to email all of its reasonable (or not) customers last week to remind them that digital games are licensed rather than sold. The company also recently reiterated its commitment to ending physical game production in 2028 despite widespread backlash.
