Sony says you never owned your PlayStation Games anyway

Sony just told a US court, in writing, that you never owned your digital games to begin with.

The admission came in an August 21 court filing responding to a class action lawsuit accusing Sony of breaching California’s 2025 Digital Goods Law, which requires stores to clearly tell buyers they’re only getting a licence, not a purchase. As spotted by GameFile, Sony’s lawyers argued the whole idea of owning a digital game “is not plausible” in the first place, since the PlayStation Store licence agreement already says the software is licensed, not sold.

To back that up, they pointed to two of the plaintiffs themselves. Edward Heycock bought Resident Evil Requiem on the PS Store on 25 February 2026, weeks after Jason Mendoza had already bought the same game on 14 February. Sony’s argument: if digital ownership were real, Heycock couldn’t have “owned” a copy that Mendoza already owned. Slightly cheeky use of your own customers as evidence against them, but it’s hard to argue with the logic.

It fits the bigger picture too. Sony is ending physical disc production in 2028, though it says it’ll keep supporting existing physical games after that. Read between the lines and the message is clear: buy the disc if ownership actually matters to you, because the digital version was only ever a rental with extra steps.

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