Hey there

I'm thinking going digital with my PS4, but I've heard people say PS4 digital licensing is a bit of a fuck up

Meaning, some people got randomly cut out of their games, random license errors, bans, changing console would lock you out o your games.. etc, is it really that bad ?

How's been your experience, and would you recommend it?

from my experience i have never had a problem with any of the things you mention.
i have never been randomly cut out of my game unless it was an error of some kind. and that also happens on disc versions. never had a random license error, never heard of being banned because you had a digital version and changing console would also not be a problem unless you did not login with your profile. basically i personally have not encountered something that was specifically due to owning a digital version of a game.
so i dont see a problem with going digital but i also dont have an issue with staying disc based. its all about space on your shelfs or where you have your disc based games. and how easy/lazy you are.
i mostly buy digital because then i dont have to drive 10km to a store in its opening hours and buy it to drive all the way back. its just easier doing it from your couch. either way is fine.

I went fully digital this generation and have zero complaints. I recently upgraded my PS4 HDD from 2TB to 4TB.

I do miss having the games sitting in my shelf but having instant access to my game collection is fantastic.

Most of my games are digital this gen and I've had no issues.

I am almost 100% digital (and when I buy a physical copy I usually "upgrade" later when the game goes on sale for under $10.)

Here are the problems I have experienced/foresee:

1) Sony has really bad customer service and policies, especially if your account gets hijacked. I actually got banned from my PSN account (which I believe means locked out of digital purchases you have not yet downloaded) for a week a couple years ago because the following happened: 1) Sony double charged me for a game. 2) I called Sony customer support and they told me to dispute one of the charges with my credit card. 3) I did so, and Sony banned me from PSN. 4) I called Sony again and they said they would unban me if I bought a points card and paid the charge I disputed. I pointed out this had been a double charge from their system and they said it didn't matter, I still had to pay it if I wanted to be unbanned. So I caved and did what they asked (no point in losing hundreds in digital games over a $12 overcharge.) Now they did unban me, and they did actually eventually refund the double charge to my credit card, but the whole experience was pretty unnerving. I have also heard of cases where someone has hijacked an account and either run up a bunch of purchases or changed the "primary console" on the account to a different one, and Sony is bad about dealing with these, often making people eat hundreds in charges they clearly didn't make.

If you are going to go all digital you might not want to leave a credit card associated with your Sony account and you should have a secure, unique, password on your PSN account.

2) You don't know if the games will be forwards compatible or if the servers will stay up. Microsoft seems to have made a commitment to forwards compatibility with its digital games, but Sony hasn't even tried to bring PS3 digital games forward to the PS4, and they haven't said anything about PS4 games on the PS5. All that is fine if the PS4 servers stay up and you can re-download stuff as long as you have a PS4, but it may cause problems in the future if they decide to abandon the PS4 ecosystem when the PS5 comes out. The PS4 does not support external hard drives so if you have a large collection you won't be able to download the whole thing. It's an issue I'm currently foreseeing with my PS3 where I have a ton of games but can't get over a 1.5 gig hard drive in my PS3 (and PS3 games are blu-ray sized so 40-50 games could take up that much space, which is not that many when you consider all the PS+ stuff) so I'm not sure what I would do if Sony announced that the PSN servers for PS3 were going down. To their credit the PSP servers are still up (you can't access them from the PSP itself but you can use other devices to download them and transfer to PSP) but that doesn't mean that will be consistent. This is not a problem with Microsoft because it permits externals, and 360 games are much smaller anyway.

Those issues haven't kept me from going digital on PS4 (mostly because I don't have space for shelves of games, and there are a ton of great PS4 games that are digital only) but they are things to be aware of when making the decision.

I've also not had a single issue with any of my digital games; but I still buy a number of games on disc.
Basically the process goes as follows:

1) Is this a game I will be playing online mostly (or is only online)? Buy digital so I can get 2 copies of it (your "Master" PS4 can have it be played on a friends PSN account while you log into another PS4 with the account you bought it on to play it).

2) If it has a coop mode that isn't local also buy it digital for the above reason.

3) Otherwise buy a disc because I still do like physical media and my internet still isn't great living in the US of ISP. But disc media this generation still doesn't save you any HD space as all games (that I know of) install the game to your HD and don't run off the disc.

4) A 4th thing you keep in mind is if you use the remote play feature much buying something on disc only lets you play it if you have it in the ps4 when you remote in. All your digital games will be accessible through remote play.

Another factor here is that a lot of games this gen A) are always online, often unnecessarily so (The Division, I am GLARING at you. NBA 2K14 also did this in a BS way and turned off the servers super early before fan backlash made them turn them back on) or ship in terrible shape on the disc and require a day one patch to be decent (No Man's Sky was notorious for this, being very crash prone in its disc state, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 shipped with only a small portion of the game actually on the disc.)

That means while you can still sell your games or lend them if they're physical, they don't really act as a "permanent" collection the way they did in past generations, and they often can't just be popped into a system with no Internet connection and played without issue. In a lot of ways all games are download only this generation, at least if you want them to be in a playable state with proper patches and all that jazz.

95% of my games are digital and ive never had a problem, even upgraded to a 1tb drive. Only games locked out are "free" plus games after i dropped the service.

I only own digital games, and have been buying them since the PS4 launch. I've never been locked out of a single-player game.

I fully intended to go all digital when I got my PS4... and then I experienced PSN's piss poor download rates. A 30GB game that would take about half an hour on Steam would take the better part of a day on PS4. Then consider the size of a lot of triple A games... yeah, I dropped that idea pretty quickly.

A year of dicking around with console and network settings and I've never been able to work out a fix.

Thanks all for your input, digital it is then

If you don't have any bandwidth cap with your ISP, don't mind no being able to sell your games back and aren't into having a physical collection (which is my reason for not going fully digital), then I don't see any reason not to go for it.

You get the convenience of not having to switch discs, especially if you play a few different games at the same time and you don't have to worry about shelf space.

I think the service for digital purchasing and ownership is great. I just buy my main games on disk so I don't have to worry about hard drive space.

It's the difference between cost savings and time savings. It will be far cheaper to buy games through Amazon; also you have the option to re-sell them.

I've never had any problems with anything I bought on the service. These days, it's 50/50 whether I buy a real or digital copy of a thing

I still like physical, because A) It's always cheaper, especially at launch, but also in sales and such afterward ($45 at Best Buy is the most I pay for a new, boxed game for any console, and it's also 26% off older stuff as well. B) It has real value (can be resold, lent, borrowed, etc), which the digital versions do not... unless you sell your whole account to someone else, which is against the terms and could get the account shut down if found out. And, C) it saves a bit of bandwidth, which I currently don't care about, but I probably will soon when Comcast finally rolls out the data caps nationwide.

Digital is CERTAINLY more convenient. Valve does digital REALLY WELL, because they have a great setup and GREAT sales. Digital games/movies from Sony or MS are really just a rip off - it costs MORE in every case I've ever seen (usually significantly so), and you get less (really, you get nothing but a semi-permanent rental which is "due back" whenever they decide to pull server support). Since they make about 2x-3x as much profit per digital sale (due to lack of middleman, distribution, and manufacturing costs), it seems insane to me that they think it's worth MORE than physical copies.

I can see why the GB crew are fans of all digital given their penchant for playing games on multiple consoles, and switching between them multiple times a day (at work and home, etc) and also because they get them for free - they even don't seem to be aware that for the rest of us, the digital versions actually cost a lot more in many cases. I'd like to hear from fans of an all digital library about the above. Do you not care about the cost, or is the convenience of not having to insert a disc really worth that much to you? Genuinely curious!

@zombievac: I mean pretty much agree with everything you say, there is a convenience vs the real value of actually owning a game

For me is just that at this point I have a 8hrs a day job, I don't buy nor play that many game these days

I pretty much know what I want to play, it used to be that if I was unsure of a game I bought it on a disc, now I just don't buy it

That thing people say when you have money you don't have time and vice versa... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

True. I have plenty of disposable income, which I would spend on digital instead of boxed if there was a good reason to. I find that many of my favorite games would be worth $120 at launch to me, when comparing entertainment time vs. what my time is worth per hour (Witcher 3 is a great example, or GTA 5). But in the end, I prefer to spend that income on having a great gaming PC and both Sony and MS consoles for their exclusives (though it looks like I might not ever need an xbox again if MS continues with their great share play program on both XBOX and PC).

Also, for me, I just don't switch out games that often. I have a PC and generally play there, so it's mostly exclusives or back compatible games that I play on my consoles and that involve a disc switch (no more discs ever needed on PC thankfully). So, it's generally one disc at a time until I finish that game. Even if I had to switch them, I find the 26%-75% discount too enticing to make a few second disc switch here and there even matter to me.

I also find that buying any collector's edition (physical) that I know will likely be popular with the 26% discount pretty awesome, since I can always (so far) go and resell them on eBay right away for double what I paid, netting me an easy $100 bucks for basically mailing something.

I think the issue is that sonys customer service is really bad, so if something does go wrong it can be a major pita to sort out. They have some crappy policies in the US, like not allowing you to cancel preorders and I've read on neogaf that people are being blocked from support chat if they've complained/got a refund before (could just be a glitch though)

A lot of people don't have issues though so it's up to you, personally I favor physical but if I were to go all digital I don't think the PS4 would remain my main console - Microsoft seems to have wayyy better policies&customer service and for PC Steam and Origin are good too.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but all games need to be fully installed on your hard drive to play. The disc just saves the download.

I am slowly finding that I might be going digital even though I have generally been a pretty vocally in the physical camp. I think, as hilarious or sad as it may sound, either lazynesss or old age is getting to me and I actually dislike the act of switching discs. I also think it has something to do with all my other media is streamed so I don't do a lot of disc switching anywhere. I feel like my biggest issue with the whole thing is the same as with photographs. I have a bunch of printed photos from when I used film and they are fun to pick up and look at and do a trip down memory lane but even though I have years of photos on my computer I rarely look at them because they are stored away and yet easily accessed. In some way they're invisible. And something about physical media has the same nostalgic value. My Mass Effect collector's edition boxes and so on. But maybe I should reconsider and go mostly digital and maybe just buy a few 'favorites' on physical discs when they get cheaper just to keep a collection of the games that really matter.

Granted, having a surprise visit from my brother and pick a game to play is easier with physical since there's no download wait if I don't have it already installed, I suppose.