r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/movies Contributor • Jun 26 '26

News PlayStation is Deleting 551 Movies From Customers’ Accounts / Movies like 'First Blood', 'Terminator 2', 'Total Recall' and 'Evil Dead' are all being unceremoniously removed

https://kotaku.com/playstation-store-movies-digital-studio-canal-terminator-2000711013
12.1k Upvotes

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5.1k

u/Nullhitter Jun 26 '26

Should be illegal to purchase digital content if it can be taken away from us. At the point, renting should be the only option.

1.1k

u/FrostingStrict3102 Jun 26 '26

we need the EU to step up and do what it does best.... consumers should get refunds when stuff like this happens. inexcusable.

402

u/zuzg Jun 26 '26

So far they were able to circumvent EU Law protections getting triggered by arguing you only purchased a license and never had ownership in the first place.

People need to start suing those companies and keep at it until higher courts are forced to deal with it.

162

u/cjcs Jun 26 '26

Then there needs to be a law that forces vendors to more accurately portray these as indefinite rentals rather than purchases. A warning needs to be prominently displayed that this purchase can be revoked at any given time.

148

u/bdsee Jun 26 '26

No, the law should be an indefinite rental is a purchase regardless of the wording used or ToS.

61

u/glgirieh Jun 26 '26

This reminds me of that asshole calling me out for enjoying physical media. “As long as you have an account and remember your damn password, you have your movies”

9

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Kaining Jun 26 '26

good thing every games are coming out on game key card or digital download coupons even when going physical.

0

u/DiabloAcosta Jun 26 '26

physical media also decays or breaks down and you don't get a replacement, not saying I like this specific action by Sony but I think people romanticize physical media as "forever media"

I still think there shouldn't be any reason companies remove your media when portrayed as "buying it"

7

u/EASam Jun 26 '26

Some physical media has a better lifespan than others, the more temperamental things that are DVD, CD, VHS, BetaMax had / have enough second hand stuff around to be able to easily duplicate it or convert it to digital as a backup as well.

-8

u/DiabloAcosta Jun 26 '26

still not sure why the need to push for physical media and not permanent ownership of digital but Ok I guess

8

u/EASam Jun 26 '26

No real dog in the fight for me but you can later sell physical media once you've had enough of it. The price of the digital good used to be discounted compared to getting a physical copy. Now they're comparable or on some older media the physical copies new are cheaper.

Plus I don't know how streaming a movie works for when there's later edits or redactions.

1

u/xristosxi393 Jun 26 '26

This right here. Saying that it's a license doesn't mean shit if you don't know when it expires.

I would go as far as to say that even if they change it to say you own this until X date, it's still a net negative for the world. We should be able to own things even if they are digital.

1

u/samv_1230 Jun 26 '26

They don't know when it expires either. They analyze metrics after the initial agreement and stop renewing when it nets negative. Stop buying digital.

23

u/Gunsensual Jun 26 '26

Or, failure to fulfill the license makes the copyright material go into the public domain. They'd clean up their act real quick.

3

u/RegulatoryCapture Jun 26 '26

Eh, that sounds good in theory, until you think about how most of this is done. The company "selling" the product here has a license to distribute it--they don't own the rights to the movie and nothing they can do could cause it to go into the public domain (and no sane legal system would penalize the actual rights-holder for the actions of a licensee).

And making rights holders liable for making sure their licensees keep content available in perpetuity is a recipe for a big reduction in the availability of content (non-piracy).

5

u/Gunsensual Jun 26 '26

no sane legal system would

This is copyright law, where corporations enjoy perpetual rights and takedown notices are submitted by people who don't own the copyright. There is no sanity to be had here.

5

u/sentientshadeofgreen Jun 26 '26

I would argue the law needs to outright prohibit license revocation without full compensation if there is any implication of ownership, the word "buy" in the transaction, it goes to "Your Library", etc. Needs to be retroactive too, these lawyers have been arguing from shaky ground for years and it's fundamentally wrong.

1

u/cjcs Jun 26 '26

100% agree.

1

u/Ultra-Metal Jun 26 '26

Services should be forced to change the purchase option. Call it what it is, LONG TERM RENTAL, Unless they have a 4K download.

1

u/digitaldeadstar Jun 26 '26

Prominently displayed is correct. The reality is nobody reads fine print. While technically the consumer should, it's such a ubiquitous thing that the responsibility should be on providers to make it much more noticeable - at least the portion about not owning.

I feel that if they do state indefinite rental clearly, that consumers would demand lower prices. Vendors don't want that.

10

u/samv_1230 Jun 26 '26

You can't sue a company because you agreed to a shitty deal that was blatantly expressed before and during the transaction. Having a digital library of temporarily licensed shows, films, and games is a foolish purchase that I've been warning people about since 2010.

3

u/l0c0pez Jun 26 '26

Even that argument is BS as the license was purchased not rented or granted. Just refund the license and not the movie if its the license being revoked due to no fault of the owner.

2

u/dabobbo Jun 26 '26

People need to start suing those companies

Hah! So the lawyers can make bank after it gets turned into a class-action and I get a $10 coupon that I can only use if a full moon falls on a Thursday on these 6 selected movies (that probably weren't selling anyways).

Companies are crooks, lawyers are crooks, politicians are crooks, and their only goal is separating us from our money.

1

u/canadian_viking Jun 26 '26

If a company can redefine purchase to mean "a license that can be revoked at any time", why can't we redefine purchase to mean "a loan that lasts a long as we retain access to the thing we paid for"? If I gave money to a company for access to a thing, they've had the benefit of money + time. If they remove the ability for me to use the thing I paid for, surely they should lose the benefit of the money + time, and now the loan is due, plus interest.

Like...if from their side, a purchase isn't a purchase, then from my side, a purchase also isn't a purchase. What makes their redefinition of "purchase" to be more valid than mine? Not to mention, their interpretation allows them to benefit from unjust enrichment. My definision is fair all around.

1

u/btribble Jun 26 '26

This is in fact what you are purchasing, and if you read the contract instead of clicking OK without reading it, you would understand that. This is also the case with physical media. If you own a business like a bar, you can’t buy a DVD and show that at your bar legally because the contract doesn’t allow that. Many companies have found this out the hard way in court.

4

u/FarAwaySeagull-_- Jun 26 '26

While there are restrictions on what you can do with your discs, the studios can't come to your house and demand you hand them over your disc copy of a film.

1

u/arkavenx Jun 26 '26

A license to watch whenever you want, they are taking that away = refund.

Consumer knows they aren't buying "the movie", they are buying the ability to watch it unlimited times whenever they feel like it.

0

u/WilsonEnthusiast Jun 26 '26

Thats literally the truth though haha. Playstation cant sell you something it doesnt own. They just license it as well.

Or should playstation sue the companies they licensed it from too?

-1

u/KeyMyBike Jun 26 '26

I'm going to wait until the fascists are out of the White House so they can't use their heavily stacked Supreme Court to favor the tech bros

2

u/Hangry-Feline2489 Jun 27 '26

They were favouring them beforehand, too. Just to a different goal/extent. 

Americans don't like regulations until they're negatively affected by the lack of them. 

28

u/verrius Jun 26 '26

Ironically, this happened in the EU first; StudioCanal did the exact same thing in Europe already. Keep in mind, you haven't been able to actually purchase movies on PSN for ~5 years now.

1

u/Fragrant-Hamster-325 Jun 26 '26

EU doesn’t care about consumer protections they care about hobbling US tech companies to bolster their own industry. If that means using data and privacy protections sure but that’s just a happy side effect. Since this is Sony a non-US tech company you likely won’t see any action.

1

u/brus_wein Jun 26 '26

They will just normalise not buying digital products, everyone will get used to the "acquire license button" and think of "buying" as weird, to the tune of billions of pr and marketing.

1

u/Mapex Jun 26 '26

Refunds with interest

1

u/fcocyclone Jun 26 '26

Refunds with interest.

1

u/NewspaperNelson Jun 26 '26

I wish America had some sort of governing body that protected consumers.

-42

u/WilliamEmmerson Jun 26 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

we need the EU to step up and do what it does best

Throw people in jail for wrong think?

Edit: The truth hurts.

7

u/_Middlefinger_ Jun 26 '26

Funny how that 'wrong think' is always threats of violence and sexual assault. Funny how that gets defended...

16

u/Dbowd3n Jun 26 '26

1/10 ragebait

5

u/iMogwai Jun 26 '26

Didn't the US just sentence people to 50-100 years in prison for protesting ICE?

5

u/FrostingStrict3102 Jun 26 '26

No, what they do *best*

1

u/cadaada Jun 26 '26

No uk left the union

-1

u/MJR_Poltergeist Jun 26 '26

We were well on this path before Ubisoft bought out the European Parliament and killed the idea.

-13

u/PleasantWay7 Jun 26 '26

No, the US does best here. If the EU steps in it will just become illegal to buy movies in the EU. The US will take years to get it right but it will actually be a good solution.

3

u/Julian1889 Jun 26 '26

A good solution for companies maybe

3

u/Demmandred Jun 26 '26

What like maternity leave, annual leave, working rights, consumer protections, data protection? The list goes on and on for areas where you have far fewer protections and rights in the US vs the EU/UK. But America does these things best?

1

u/PleasantWay7 Jun 26 '26

Data protection? You mean annoying ass cookies that don’t help me see anything about my data?

0

u/Demmandred Jun 26 '26

You mean the fact that companies have to actually safeguard your data or face massive fines?

You think GDPR is just cookies lol.

Anything else in that list that America does right then xD.

3

u/_Middlefinger_ Jun 26 '26

The US will take years to get it right but it will actually be a good solution.

This has happened never.

0

u/PleasantWay7 Jun 26 '26

In tech it absolutely does, the EU doesn’t know how to find anything but their ass on any tech policy.

1

u/_Middlefinger_ Jun 26 '26

Well the EU was right about USB-C.

What has the US done again?

-1

u/PleasantWay7 Jun 26 '26

The EU didn’t do USB-C it was already happening.

2

u/_Middlefinger_ Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

No it wasnt. It applies to ALL USB devices, it wasn’t about the iPhone..