Sony has told a California court that PlayStation players never truly owned the digital games they paid for, a defense landing at an uncomfortable moment for a company preparing to abandon physical discs altogether.
The case traces back to June, when four customers filed a class action accusing Sony of failing to disclose that digital purchases are licenses rather than sales, as required under California’s 2025 Digital Goods Law. The plaintiffs argue that buttons reading “Buy Now” and “Confirm Purchase,” paired with fine print most people skip past, create a false impression of ownership.
Sony’s response was that no reasonable consumer could believe they were getting true ownership, since the same title can be sold to countless buyers from the same store shelf. Sony cited its Software Product License Agreement, stating plainly its software is licensed, not sold, using Resident Evil Requiem as an example of different customers buying the same digital copy on different dates.
This comes after Sony confirmed in July that it will stop producing physical discs for new PlayStation games from January 2028, ending resale, lending, and trading as gamers have known it. That announcement has already triggered backlash, and now Sony has informed the judge that ownership was never part of the agreement, even in digital form.
None of this licensing argument is unique to Sony. Steam, GOG, and most digital storefronts run on the same model, buried in terms of service that nobody reads.
READ: The End of Physical Discs Could Mean Losing Games Forever
This isn’t Sony’s only legal headache over the Store, either. A separate, older case, Caccuri v. Sony Interactive Entertainment, is heading toward its payout. Filed in 2021, it accused Sony of cutting retailers like Amazon, GameStop, and Walmart out of selling PlayStation vouchers, forcing digital purchases through Sony’s own store and inflating prices without competition.
This isn’t Sony’s only legal headache over the Store, either. A separate, older case, Caccuri v. Sony Interactive Entertainment, is heading toward its payout. Filed in 2021, it accused Sony of cutting retailers like Amazon, GameStop, and Walmart out of selling PlayStation vouchers, forcing digital purchases through Sony’s own store and inflating prices without competition.
That 2021 antitrust claim finally moved toward resolution when Sony agreed to pay $7.85 million, only for a judge to reject the deal in 2025 over unclear terms. A revised version won approval in April 2026, with a final hearing set for October 15. Sony still denies wrongdoing, and payouts, credited to PSN wallets rather than cash, will be modest after legal fees, but the case adds to a pattern alongside a separate £2 billion UK claim over alleged excessive Store pricing.
What changes the optics is the disc decision. A company can rely on licensing language while physical media still exists as a fallback for people who want something they can hold or resell. Take that fallback away, and the license-not-sale argument stops sounding like a technicality and starts sounding like the whole deal.
Whether Sony wins in court is separate from whether it wins with players. Gamers have endured the distinction between “buy” and “own” for years, as physical alternatives mitigated the impact. With that safety net gone, and a pricing settlement and UK monopoly case still hanging over the store, Sony risks confirming exactly what critics have accused it of: treating customers as subscribers to a library it still fully controls.
