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Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

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Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You are both rigth and wrong. First, the EU parliament isn't a "fake" parliament. You just claimed this, without any reasoning, so I'm free to just claim the opposite. The members of this parliament are freely elected and they can decide out on their own whim, without consulting the executive. So really they are one of the 3 legs, the legislative. However, the "EU is a fake democracy" is maybe correct. The thing is t…

Thank you for that.

It often feels like many people (including here on HN) don't understand what the EU is.

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#282
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the kind of people that get voted into Parliament, I consider that a very good thing. I only consider true democracies those countries where citizens can force new legislation by national referendum, bypassing parliament. There are very very few countries that allow it, and even fewer where the requirements are low enough to actually allow it to happen. Anyway, back to the subject. If Stop Killing Games w…

I think we know from using Athens of Ancient Greece as an example that true democracies of this kind are not a good idea at scale. Enough of the general public can be so easily swayed on a clearly catastrophic idea.

This is wrong. A "true democracy" is the system where you need to "sway" the most people on the catastrophic idea. The worst scenario is a totalitarian system where exactly one person can take the catastrophic decision on their own. Everything else is in-between.

It does NOT mean that democracies cannot go wrong. Just that a functioning democracy represents the majority of the people, and we don't have a single system that can steadily represent more people than a democracy (by definition).

It also does NOT mean that democracies are not frustrating: when you are in the minority, obviously it is frustrating. And of course you will be in the minority from time to time.

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#283
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the kind of people that get voted into Parliament, I consider that a very good thing. I only consider true democracies those countries where citizens can force new legislation by national referendum, bypassing parliament. There are very very few countries that allow it, and even fewer where the requirements are low enough to actually allow it to happen. Anyway, back to the subject. If Stop Killing Games w…

The replaceable batteries is only a mandate that it retain 80% capacity after n charge cycles, which phones already meet. Toothless and useless regulation, the EU strikes again.

> which phones already meet

All phones, really? Or just the one you care about? Even if it's all phones, it sets a bar, and it doesn't hurt.

> Toothless and useless regulation, the EU strikes again.

This is unfair. The EU brings many regulations. Ever heard of the Digital Markets Act? USB-C? EU does a lot for the ecology/climate (more than the individual countries, actually). There are many examples. Probably you don't like all of them, which may be frustrating. Doesn't mean the EU is completely useless.

I find that people love to hate the EU based on some regulations that they hate, and more often than not based on discussions about potential regulations that they would hate (like ChatControl). I hate ChatControl, but the truth is that it hasn't been accepted at this point.

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m wondering what happens when Gabe dies?

It's been discussed a long time. Nobody knows, but apparently he had been preparing his son for it. Don't quote me on that, it's what I heard

That's still a terribly small bus factor.

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You paid for it, but you never bought it. So you would still not have a clean conscience.

If you paid for it, then not a single person in the world can ever accuse you of "stealing" from creators, or of failing to support them. They named the price, and the price was paid. The licensing and rent seeking shenanigans of corporations and their lawyers are utterly irrelevant.

Practically infinite number of persons in law enforcement and blackmail businesses absolutely would accuse you.

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#286
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been discussed a long time. Nobody knows, but apparently he had been preparing his son for it. Don't quote me on that, it's what I heard

That's still a terribly small bus factor.

Indeed the danger is there, but their hardware is open, so there is always the option to switch.

Also piracy will go rampant if Steam stops being a good actor.

That being said, what alternatives you have? GOG lacks support for Linux, Sony cares doesn't care for you, Nintendo likes to s** all over you and their most passionate fans, Microsoft killed itself.

There is just no other option

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#287

We’re all familiar with all the ways this sucks, of course, so I’ll discuss something else: The fact that someone like Sony can’t negotiate a contract that provides perpetual re-download rights to customers is embarrassing. I doubt that would have cost any money. No movie studio would have objected to the idea that the original buyer gets to keep the non-transferable media forever. I guess they just didn’t think of i…

Of course they could have negotiated that. They didn’t just forget. They choose to not pay whatever additional cost Studio Canal would have wanted for a perpetual license. Knowing that, they turned around and deceived people into buying something by false representation. Sony are crooks and have been crooks for a long time.

I agree with you, but my main speculation is that a perpetual license would not have actually cost extra. It is at least possible that this happened via incompetence rather than malice, especially at a big corporation like Sony.

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#288
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve is in a funny position now. They lived long enough to see every one of Sony and XBOX's moats dry up by being pro-consumer where possible, but with Steam as the leader of a fungible game distribution market it may no longer make good business sense to continue to act so benevolently. We've reached a sort of gaming singularity where nearly every video game can be run on any hardware you choose or be streamed over…

One point in Steam's favor (not to suggest that Valve is above reproach) is that it doesn't impose any DRM. If games have DRM, that's the publisher's decision.

Valve does make its own DRM, and they could certainly find reason to improve its efficacy and roll back their current policy without upsetting the applecart

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You paid for it, but you never bought it. So you would still not have a clean conscience.

If you paid for it, then not a single person in the world can ever accuse you of "stealing" from creators, or of failing to support them. They named the price, and the price was paid. The licensing and rent seeking shenanigans of corporations and their lawyers are utterly irrelevant.

Having a clean conscience depends on one's internal moral values, not from what the rest of the world accuses of. If one's moral compass would feel the need to having paid for it to feel satisfied, it would also need to having bought it.

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve is in a funny position now. They lived long enough to see every one of Sony and XBOX's moats dry up by being pro-consumer where possible, but with Steam as the leader of a fungible game distribution market it may no longer make good business sense to continue to act so benevolently. We've reached a sort of gaming singularity where nearly every video game can be run on any hardware you choose or be streamed over…

> DirectX is losing ground too thanks to Proton and Vulkan [citation needed] My understanding is that Proton is effectively a distribution of WINE + DXVK, which does for DirectX what WINE does for Win32. Valve is even on record saying "make one good copy of your game and trust our compatibility tools to port to other platforms" which is effectively saying "use DirectX if you want - Proton will run it just as well."

I think I could have bolstered this point by claiming "Windows and DirectX are losing ground", but I stand by my argument that Microsoft's gatekeeper status is eroding thanks to the growth [1] of Proton and Vulkan. Now native Vulkan implementations are not growing the way Proton is, but one could argue that Valve has done more to grow Vulkan support than Google's Stadia team ever did by removing the onus to write for it from game developers. Either way you slice it, Microsoft is now competing with Valve for OS installs. _____________

[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Survey-May-2026]

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