Genki Life Magazine 55 - Spring 2024

PlayStation
Game Gremlins
Strike Again
“If Digital Purchases Don’t Equal Ownership,
Then Piracy Don’t Equal Theft”
When things couldn’t get any worse, the PlayStation gremlins come sticking back. During
the second week of March 2024, reports of players started a thread on Reddit that their digital
game purchases through PlayStation accounts are disappearing. It’s amusing that this news
hasn’t reached the masses. The gaming journalists seems to shy away from import piece of
news that could potentially affect thousands of PlayStation account holders.
So far, about 50 PlayStation owners have reported that their digital purchased have disappeared
from their accounts. What was causing their purchases to disappear was a bug on the
PlayStation side affecting owners of PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Consumers
complains were fell to deaf ears when they tried contacting Sony customer service. Basically
what’s going on is that the bug caused PlayStation Network account holders’ digital licenses
were cut from their account. Games cannot be re-downloaded because the customer’s
records no longer show that they made those purchases.
One customer reported over Reddit that they lost over 400 games after trying to restore
their account. Other Reddit uses advised that users should not try to restore their accounts
citing that doing this could cause the bug to take effect…wiping their accounts.
At the time of this writing, Sony hasn’t come forward about this problem publicly nor a solution
to this problem. Considering that this could happen not only to PlayStation, this could
happen to Microsoft as well as Nintendo. With stories like this are surfacing on a regular basis,
is it still a smart choice to make digital purchases? Are you willing to loose your right to
own your purchases? In the long run, digital purchases doesn’t mean you own them…you’re
only renting.
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Genki Life Magazine | Spring 2024