Sony has announced that users who purchased shows or TV episodes from Discovery on PSN will lose access soon.

This is the nightmare of digital "ownership," which is technically licensing. That not only will things be delisted but you will lose the ability to access stuff you paid for. For the most part this has been avoided in games by the major players. They understand how much trust will be eroded if they pull content people paid for, and while there have been notable exceptions where things have been pulled for redownload (it's not JUST P.T., which was at least free) the vast majority of content is still available. Even with the Wii store and Wii U/3DS stores closed (and the 360 store to close soon) you can still redownload content, and if you have the content stored on your device you can still use it even if you can't. There are, of course, stores that have closed permanently with no redownload, and Apple and Google routinely permanently pull old stuff from their storefronts entirely, but again if you have it downloaded you can use it.

You can point to always online games like Babylon's Fall where the servers have come down so even if you have the game client it is worthless, but at least there you have an idea that will eventually happen, and most companies try to avoid doing that for a long time. Famous flop Anthem is still playable.

Here you have video content that to my knowledge you could not download (or at least most people did not) being purged, presumably because Sony's licensing agreement was terrible and didn't account for the end of licenses (lots of stuff gets pulled from storefronts but can still be downloaded by purchasers because of the way the licenses were written.) Considering Sony also sells digital games this is pretty concerning. It seems like their games division licenses are better (lots of PS3 games have been delisted but can still be downloaded) but who knows?

Regardless this is not a good look for Sony as it tries to push an all digital future with its discless PS5. Digital content has the potential to be a big win due to its lower production and environmental costs, quicker distribution and easy patching but, as usual, once large corporations get hold of something they just slowly make it worse and worse.

yeah, this is rotten- no two ways around it. it sucks but i'm not surprised.

it does seem like another 'buyer beware' teachable moment. unless there's significant legislation that enshrines a new digital ownership scheme, i don't think it's realistic to expect purchased digital content to persist in perpetuity. this is triply so with content that exists on the periphery of popularity (critical mass usually keeps things available for purchase).

i've certainly 'lost' content from Apple. but i also continue to buy movies from them because of all the platform holders, they seem the most financially secure and neutral (meaning- everyone puts there content there for the most part). maybe i'm a sucker, but honestly i just haven't been utterly burnt yet.

i feel like a real test is coming for when privately-held Steam is due for ownership change. nothing lasts forever, and i wonder what Unforeseen Consequences occur when a big shift like that happens.

I'd say the blame is more on WB and known shitstain David Zaslav than Sony on this one tbh

@kainhighwind09: yeah i was going to mention that; he's been slashing and burning content all over, hasn't he?

i don't think that exonerates Sony since they sold the content, but i wouldn't be surprised if WB/Dicovery's new approach to their catalogue is having an influence in some capacity.

@kainhighwind09: Strong disagree. Sony negotiated the deals for that content. They could have negotiated irrevocable licenses for people who purchased content.

Zaslav isn't pulling the content for tax reasons here. Sony already shut down purchases of their videos and movies on the service. What's happening here is that Sony, for some moronic reason, negotiated a license that needs to be renewed to be able to host the content, and then didn't bother to renew the license because they're not selling it anymore so it's not profitable on them. Now maybe WB asked for too much for a renewal but if the licenses had been properly negotiated in the first place the renewal would not be necessary.

That's why even though Activision lost the license to Transformers and pulled it from digital stores I can still redownload the copy of Transformers Devastation that I got from PS+. Because the licenses were negotiated so that Sony did not need to renew them in order to continue to host the game and provide it to people who already had access.

Something similar could have been done for these shows but Sony didn't do that. It's on them.

People should never loose access to content they've paid for, even if it's no longer available to purchase. At the very least people should be given a refund or store credit.

Well that’s my 4 seasons of ‘Here Comes Honey Boo Boo’ up in smoke. Thanks for nothing $ony

Oh dear, this is why I still prefer Blu-Ray and DVD more than digital copies of movies, TV shows, etc.

I never believed in buying video media outside a streaming service, because you can still get the Blu-Ray or DVD. However, with video games, it doesn't matter if you get the disc or not, you still have to download files and have an active account with, in this case Sony, to play those games. But yeah, this could be foreshadowing to something like this happening with video games in the future. Which is why you have many people trying to preserve video games as much as possible.

@av_gamer: This is mostly true, except that patches for games being taken down is extremely rare (though it will happen eventually when the servers go offline) and also if you already have the patches downloaded the game will still work in most systems (whereas most downloadable games need account verification.)

ON THE OTHER HAND Sony has designed systems that may just not work without an only handshake (especially for the drive) so this may not matter.

You'd think the companies that run multi billion dollar video game businesses would care about preservation but...no. I think Phil Spencer does personally care but Microsoft is closing the 360 store so...

To me, this sets a bad precedence for further piracy in the future. Not on a grand scale or anything, but if more and more consumers get the idea that what they purchase digitally can be permanently taken away its going to drive them elsewhere. Its not hard to find a streaming site that contains all matter of new stuff and old stuff on demand, for free. I think you're still likely safe on platforms like Apple that aren't going away anytime soon, and this whole fiasco is hopefully just a bad negotiation by Sony, however its a pretty big blunder that you would think a media company as old as Sony would easily avoid.

If more and more instances of this happen in the future, its a dark time for everyone. Physical media is slowly disappearing and digital media rights and distribution seem to be in disarray. Nobody wins, except the jolly roger's. I've noticed over the years that a lot of the free streaming options have gotten pretty darn good. They may not have all the quality but the functionality is often better. I used to have MLB TV and quite often their streams were choppy and low quality. And you'd still incur blackouts. Its not a good look when your free competitors are doing it better. The big corps have been taking baby steps for years and its really starting to show. Hell, when Google Play Movies was at its best you started seeing nice 4K Dolby Vision streams, if available. Now, under Youtube, its back to HDR10 if you're lucky. If you're trying to play stuff on your PC through Youtube its only 480p. That's utterly ridiculous in 2023.

As someone who has gone mostly digital at this point, I hope this kind of stuff gets sorted sooner than later and doesn't turn into a nasty shitshow.

I'm not really present on PlayStation at all, last game I played was Yakuza 0 in 2019. Does anyone know if this Discovery content was available in Australia? Because I really think Australian Consumer Law would come down on this shit like a ton of bricks.

@fearofthesky: Sony has done this before last year source to customers in Germany & Austria, the EU has stronger consumer laws than pretty much anywhere else. My guess would be the service is so unpopular that the number of people effected being incredibly small that no one cared enough on either side.