You Don’t Own Your Digital Games. Sony’s Lawyers Just Proved It.

You remember the first time you dropped $70 on a digital game. You scrolled through the PlayStation Store, hit ‘Buy,’ and watched the download bar fill. A notification popped up: ‘Purchase Complete.’ You felt secure. You felt like an owner.

That feeling is a carefully engineered lie.

Sony is currently facing a lawsuit over exactly this. Two plaintiffs, Edward Heycock and Jason Mendoza, are arguing that Sony’s marketing explicitly tells players they are ‘buying’ and ‘owning’ digital games, only for the platform to revoke access or restrict usage at will. The details are incredibly specific: the lawsuit points out that Mendoza bought Resident Evil Requiem for $69.99, but Sony’s terms of service dictate he doesn’t actually own it.

Sony’s legal defense isn’t just arguing that their terms of service protect them. They are arguing that nobody with a functioning brain actually believes they own the things they buy digitally. In their own words: ‘In the digital age, it is not plausible to allege that reasonable consumers believed they were obtaining ownership of a digital game.’

At checkout, you’re a valued customer; in court, you’re a sucker for believing them.

Think about the absurdity of this position. Sony’s entire digital storefront is built on the word ‘Buy.’ Their marketing materials, their UI, their purchase confirmations—all of it implies ownership. They use the language of property because that’s what gets us to hand over our credit card numbers. But the moment that illusion is challenged in a court of law, the mask drops. They don’t just say you don’t own the game; they say you’re unreasonable for thinking you ever did.

This isn’t just a weird legal hill for Sony to die on. This is the foundational hypocrisy of the entire digital economy. Apple does it with movies. Amazon does it with books. Steam does it with PC games. They sell you the experience of ownership while legally maintaining a perpetual rental agreement.

If Sony wins this argument, the precedent will be devastating. It will legally legitimize the idea that digital storefronts are nothing more than infinite, revocable rental hubs. Platforms will have the legal backing to treat your digital library exactly the way they want to: as a privilege they grant you, not a right you possess.

A library you don’t own isn’t a library. It’s a hostage situation.

The real tragedy here isn’t just that Sony’s lawyers picked a strange and cynical defense. It’s that even if the plaintiffs win this specific case, the structural problem remains. The courts might force Sony to tweak their marketing language or pay out a settlement, but the underlying copyright architecture will still favor the platform over the person.

We don’t just need a judge to slap Sony on the wrist. We need massive copyright reform. We need a legal framework that mandates true transferable digital ownership. We need systems where digital assets are held in escrow, where if a publisher pulls a game from a store or shuts down a server, the buyer retains access to the files they paid for. If a physical store goes out of business, the board game I bought last week is still sitting on my shelf. If the PlayStation Store shuts down tomorrow, my $70 Resident Evil purchase vanishes into the ether.

The platforms want us to live in a world where we pay full price for the illusion of property. They want us to smile for the checkout screen and stay quiet when the servers go dark.

They are betting that we care more about the convenience of buying than the reality of losing.

The next time you click ‘Buy’ on a digital storefront, remember Sony’s defense. Remember that they think you’re unreasonable for expecting to keep what you paid for. And ask yourself how long you’re willing to rent an illusion.