Sony Planning To Make PS3, Vita Stores Nearly Unusable (kotaku.com) 67
As spotted by Kotaku, Sony has decided to discontinue credit card and PayPal payment options for both the PS3 and the PS Vita on October 27th, 2021, making it frustratingly difficult to use these stores. From the report: To actually buy video games on your video game device, you will need to go to a secondary location and purchase a physical gift card, which you can then use to purchase video games. Alternatively you can use the awkward wallet system to add funds via Sony's website, or by adding funds on your PS4 or PS5, and then spending them on the PS3 or Vita. Either way, this is extremely silly. Sony's complete lack of interest in games preservation, and for keeping games accessible to the people who bought the systems they run on, is deeply infuriating. The games industry has a short memory, made shorter by a constant focus on developing tech, and even shorter again by publishers with no interest in keeping their systems running. I've written before about the importance of libraries in game preservation, and I will take Sony's fuckery as an opportunity to get on my soapbox again. [...]
Accepting Credit cards (Score:5, Insightful)
Keeping something like that up to date isn't free and just using the capabilities you already have deployed isn't an option if they don't meet current requirements.
Re:Accepting Credit cards (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not really a walled garden problem though per-se, it's a problem with anything that takes payment.
The issue here is that guidance for payment providers is updated semi-regularly such that you can't legally take payment without meeting those requirements. That can include taking additional personal details, changing the way you process it, additional security measures and so on and so forth. This can mean not just code updates, but updates in terms of for example GDPR compliance; re-evaluating whether c
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And that's what's happening here; they can keep themselves compliant on their new consoles easy because it's new code, they can keep themselves compliant on their website, because it's regularly maintained, but supporting old systems which no one will have touched in a while?
Said devices have web browsers that seem to still support current encryption standards. Just redirecting payment requests to a web site in the built-in browser should be easy enough. Equally easy would be passing the hardware ID as a token in the URL so the funds are usable from the right device. They just picked a lazy option.
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I'm baffled at times that developers can even do this. Where do they get the autonomy, since they're not the company owners. And yet that sort of "the dev told the boss what he was going to work on and the boss capitulated" story several times. Where do bottom line grunts even get the budget to do stuff like that? Or is this a mid level manager who's still coding? A nephew of the COB?
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Long memory, not short (Score:2)
They remember that supporting obsolete game hardware and software, especially support costs, add up astronomically the older the tools involved. Investing in a money losing business is sensible, though dissatisfying to previous customers.
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Is this about supporting old games? You don't need to have "support" in order to sell them. Just sell them! I can buy 20 year old games for my PC, I can by 20 year games for a PS2, and yet on PS3 suddenly "sorry, we don't want to take your money and sell you a game without support!" I guess I don't understand the console world, it's just so weird.
Sounds more like it's about not supporting whatever sort of store/DRM/monetization package is bundled inside of the PS3 that enables purchasing/downloading/ins
Sony? (Score:2)
Much ado about nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like Sony have taken away the ability to purchase games on these platforms. You just have to add funds to your account via the website or a gift card. This is not "nearly unusable".
Now if they were taking away the PS3/Vita store entirely, like was threatened a few months back, then anger perfectly understood. This article, though, just smells of false outrage.
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I agree completely, you can still use all those payment services through the website, just not directly from the PS3 anymore. And I'll bet people with a Vita or PS3 won't buy many games through PSN anyway anymore. As long as they keep the servers online for bought content, I have no problem with them not updating the native PS3/Vita store to accept those payment services. I still have a few PSN games, which aren't available on disc, which is the reason I bought them through PSN. But I do have a custom firmw
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It's just painful, no? I don't do any console stuff, but let's say this was Steam or GOG. I'd have to put $12.95 into the account to buy a $12.95 game, which is now two separate and unrelated transactions. I suspect they want you to put in $200 because they know this will make you want to spend that money and thus buy more crap. Or you can only buy the $50 gift card and then you end up with $37.05 left over and now you feel like you need to spend it on something, even a crappy game (well, they're all cra
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And they haven't taken down any game repos so preservation isn't really a problem.
In other words PSN and Disc games are still live.
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There are still issues. Some machines brick themselves when the online service goes away.
People who have purchased games online may need to download them again, say if their console dies and cannot be repaired. Unless there is a way to download and save a backup copy then when the service is turned off they lose their purchase. So it's more like a rental than a purchase.
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But none of that is happening with Sony discontinuing credit card and PayPal payment options.
*...options through the PS3 and PlayStation Vita stores only.
I'm expecting a slippery slope argument in 3...2...1...
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The other part is how long are they supposed to run these stores after deprecating the platforms? Certainly not forever? Eventually it IS going away. There is a discussion to be had as to if these platforms have to be so closed and exist in the walled gardens they do in the first place but owners already accepted that along time ago when the bought them. They always knew or should have know the rug pull was coming eventually.
So now that the fundamental matters is contextualized, is it a bad thing that Sony
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This.
I really hate the constant hyperbole about everything these days. Every article I read anywhere has a "sky is falling" headline.
I really miss the old days of news where they just told you what happened and kept their stupid opinions to themselves.
First world problems eh? (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone who owns a PS3 and still plays Skyrim on it occasionally I can safely say I couldn't give a toss, mainly because like most PS3 owners I've never bought an online game for it anyway - all of mine are on disc - and its a 15 year old system anyway. There are plenty of PS3 discs for sale online and in 2nd hand places. In the UK anyway.
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As someone who owns a PS3
good man.
and still plays Skyrim on it occasionally
you filthy animal.
PCI DSS (Score:4, Informative)
I guess they looked at the latest PCI DSS and decided 'fuck it, let someone else deal with it'.
It's not a trick (Score:2)
It's a Sony.
No it isn't (Score:2)
Sony's complete lack of interest in games preservation, and for keeping games accessible to the people who bought the systems they run on, is deeply infuriating.
No, it clearly is not, because they are still massively popular. To most people these are non-issues. They buy new shiny and they don't look back.
We've all known what kind of company Sony is for a long time, so if you give them money you deserve what you get, and don't deserve what you don't get.
Free PS Plus games have also stopped working (Score:2)
The payment thing doesn't bother me too much.
What is really annoying is that any free Vita games that I have claimed via PS Plus have stopped working since a few days ago (purchased titles still work fine).
When you try to run them, it throws an error saying you must re-download the game. Attempting to download the games throws up the same error code.
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all previously purchased content can still be re-downloaded indefinitely
Based on that wording, I would guess it still functions in some way and may be able to revoke?
It is almost like actually owning media is better (Score:5, Insightful)
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1. Load the GA version that's on the disc. The first time you go to play it, the version gets checked, it's determined that you are 286758 versions behind, and you can't play until 10Gb of updates are downloaded.
2. The disc only holds a stub that triggers downloading the current version from the vendor.
No sympathy. Move on. (Score:2)
Look.
The reality is the PS4 has been out since 2013. That is 8 years now. The PS3 was released 15 years ago.
It doesn't make sense to maintain and support old equipment. Microsoft doesn't support windows 7 anymore, either and it isnt even as old as the PS3.
Apple doesn't support more than a handful of generations of iPhone either, and Google Chrome OS have a time limit on support based on manufacturing dates of the device.
We can't expect Sony to maintain infrastructure for a dying system. They know better tha
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If they want to use a button labelled "buy" in their shop, then they are on the hook for supporting it as long as is necessary to keep purchased stuff working. They and all the other companies wanted to get rid of physical media and force the use of DRM-enabled downloads and there will be a point that they'll face legal challenge over whether the thing someone "bought" is even theirs or if it was under false pretenses.
This is not about getting rid of payment methods, but this is about existing purchases an
Re: No sympathy. Move on. (Score:1)
Should the accept beads and wooden nickels as well?
They do not have to accept every form of payment ya know
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You didn't read my last sentence that says this is not about payments. Nor did you see the context from the post above. The payment thing is a non-issue, but it brings up questions about which things should have ongoing support and when they should give up control of the older hardware and hand over keys to allow third party repair and data transfer and moving games from failing consoles to new. They want to lock it down, so they should be responsible any time that resolution leads to conflicts under the
Planned obsolescence or forced obsolescence? (Score:2)
Sony, as well as other dedicated platform makers, invest a great deal of time and money into new hardware. To make that investment pay off, they have to get that new equipment into users' hands. When sales of a given version of the hardware plateau, the most common business decision is to roll out a new version of that hardware, and start the cycle again (notice I said most common...not right). But if nobody is given any incentive or impetus to acquire the new hardware, the business model fails.
This, then,
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I'll have to have my moderation undone, because this just needs to be said:
What you describe is true and basic economics, really. The problem is that the extent that an investment is expected to "pay off" is subjective. Some people are greedier than others. Nowdays investors start to frown when the *growth* stops growing. We've moved away from "this company is healthy because it's growing" to "this company could soon be in trouble because it's not growing as much as it used to", downplaying the fact that th
I'm not seeing the story, here (Score:2)
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I have used books that I've bought second hand that are at least 80+ years old. What is a proper lifespan for an entertainment product? It is entirely their fault that they decided to encourage a DRM-hobbled download system rather than physical media.
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If your books were printed on cheap newsprint, with terrible inks, and bound with thermal glue, they might not last 80+ years, or be readable by then.
It's the technology, you know. Well bound books hold up great, but the cheaper trades or, sadly, cheapest paperbacks, those do not last, and were not expected to. You bought well. Very little digital technology will be usable for 40 years without being, in essence, re-bound.
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And if Sony is holding the keys, they are the locksmith. If they don't want to support it anymore, they should hand over the keys.
Re: I'm not seeing the story, here (Score:2)
I see. So it's not theirs anymore if they choose to not sell it, don't let you expand your use.
I do understand, really, it's an old complaint. It's still not valid, of for no other reason than often there's more than just a small matter of money. Like real payment fraud liability. Or minimum costs beyond profitability. Or, sometimes, changing markets. Hey, the PS3 is only 15 years old, the Vita only on market for 10 years... Not many consumer computing devices last that long with support, my original Androi
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Not many consumer computing devices last that long with support
And yet there are plenty of functioning Atari or Nintendo systems going back many decades. Just bad build quality and planned obsolescence making the difference here. Both on Sony's shoulders.
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Who's fixing YOUR 2600? Hey, who's fixing YOUR Amiga? That last, the Amiga, that's getting some love from the community, but Atari isn't helping, and hasn't for a while. And the DRM in your PS3 will, indeed, defeat you.
But I'm a bit of a Luddite, playing an online DnD game since 1983, and it's on its third platform iteration. I pray they don't pull the plug, it will be gone. I've gotten 19 years into this particular set of chars, it would be sad.
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The answer to the first two questions - ANYONE. That's how it should be and that's the problem here
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Re: I'm not seeing the story, here (Score:4, Informative)
So it's not theirs anymore if they choose to not sell it
That's actually kinda how copyright is supposed to work. The creator gets an exclusive opportunity to realize a return on their creation, then it's supposed to belong to society after that. They're not supposed to have that exclusive opportunity for profit forever, because the objective is to encourage further work from that creator instead of letting him rest on his laurels. You wouldn't know it from the way copyright law is today, but that was the original intent.
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They're not supposed to have that exclusive opportunity for profit forever
The current situation is worse than that. Copyright of a piece of work can be bought up and brought to grave. Then original author and fans of the work lose forever legal means to enjoy the work. So yes, if we can achieve a true democracy and overwrite the laws, there should be a line like this:
For any copyrighted work, if it lost legal means to be bought or rented or "licensed" by general public, after a short period of time, any new copyright infringement claim on such work shall be automatically voide
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>Why should a company have to sell support for a discontinued entertainment product?
To engender nostalgia and appreciation for the past products and so also for the company such that people keep buying the new products. It's called marketing.
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It's my understanding that what they are stopping is the store... that people can't continue to pay for stuff on that store anymore.
Which has nothing to do with past products that have aready been paid for in full.
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If you need to re-download corrupted applications (I have two on my Vita) and the store doesn't work, you're stuffed.
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I have a 132 year old sewing machine that works great. How old does my vita need to be to be outdated?
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When you are depending on the company to provide ongoing support for it even after they provided a newer alternative.
If a company chooses to provide ongoing support for a legacy product, it's convenient, but it's far from an obligation.
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When you are depending on the company to provide ongoing support for it even after they provided a newer alternative.
If a company chooses to provide ongoing support for a legacy product, it's convenient, but it's far from an obligation.
But if the company locks down the product so it cannot be repaired, the obligation is on them to open it up,
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Again. that's a risk that you implicitly assume by continuing to willingly use a legacy product.
No, the company does not have any such obligation.
YSOD (Score:1)
Now I understand (Score:2)
"you can still use all those payment services through the website, just not directly from the PS3 anymore."
Yup. Obsolete, and either not worth the effort or, equally likely, technically impractical. As in having to re-write the clients on the hardware.
Gift cards loophole (Score:2)
They never allowed me to use real payment options because I live in one country and buy games from others, even though the EU should be a single market. I have no fricking idea how they got away with this for so many years.
Retro gaming/computing (Score:2)
And then... why people pirate games? (Score:3)
If you make it difficult to do things lawfully, people will of course be tempted to go around.
It is already easy to install CFW on Vita, and by removing one of the last advantages of having an official firmware (PlayStation store), isn't Sony pushing people in that direction?
Bullshit (Score:2)
If by 'nearly unusuable' you mean:
a) go to store.playstation.com
b) click on your profile icon, then 'payment management'
c) click 'add funds'
d) Select the card you presumably already have on file
e) select an amount and click 'add funds.'
That's it. That, apparently, is 'nearly unusable.' I figured that out in about five seconds, having never tried to do it manually before.