PlayStation Deleting 500 Movies Is A Wake-Up Call For Digital Ownership

PlayStation used to run a video delivery service that allowed you to buy and rent movies, but it was officially discontinued in 2021 due to a "shift in customer behavior." In so many words: digital sales sharply declined as streaming took over, so there was little money left in the business. Sony promised customers they could still access their existing purchases, but you were never sold a movie, you were sold a license.

Today, the reality of that fine print is finally sinking in. PlayStation has announced it will be permanently deleting 551 movies from user accounts on September 1 due to expiring distribution deals. "You will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased StudioCanal content and the content will be removed from your video library," Sony explained.

You can read the full list of movies here.

No refunds—just over 500 films ripped from consumer libraries. Among the casualties are horror classics like Evil Dead, iconic sci-fi staples like Terminator, and timeless comedies like Hot Fuzz, which will no longer be watchable if you bought them through PlayStation.

Why You Should Care

It's a damning indictment of digital media, and should be ringing alarm bells as companies like Sony push for digital-exclusive consoles with disc drives sold separately, while industry titans like Rockstar and Take-Two Interactive move away from physical discs entirely to instead sell a code-in-a-box, as we're seeing with GTA 6.

You don't truly own a digital copy. As laid out in the Steam Subscriber Agreement—which is boilerplate for most digital storefronts—all purchases are in fact a "non-exclusive license" that can be revoked at any moment without compensation, as we're seeing now with PlayStation's defunct video delivery service. This is exactly why physical media is so important, both for ownership and preservation.

Sony isn't going to send a representative to your house with a baseball bat to smash up your Blu-rays, after all. Though plenty of publishers, like Ubisoft, insist that you "uninstall the product and destroy all copies" if a game is taken offline. Luckily, with physical media, you can simply ignore the demands: nobody is going to check if you stomped all over your copy of The Crew.

Consumer-led campaigns like Stop Killing Games are seeking to address these issues of ownership in a growingly digital landscape, especially as DRM becomes more and more pervasive, ensuring that even single-player titles demand an internet connection to be playable. Gone are the days of inserting a cartridge and booting up the game, knowing that you could insert that same cartridge into a console 30 years later without hassle.

However, while SKG might have garnered over one million verified petitions from backers, it hasn't had much luck in the EU, where it was determined that The Commission "cannot propose a legal obligation to keep video games playable after they stop being provided commercially."

It's clear that digital is the future of gaming, following in the footsteps of music, but legislation has yet to catch up. As it stands, abandoning physical media means embracing wholly anti-consumer practices, while also ensuring that chunks of the industry's history will be erased—whether that's through delisting titles with expired licenses, closing storefronts (rendering digital exclusives inaccessible), or shutting down servers. Today's news, that over 500 movies are being deleted from libraries, should be a wake-up call to the future of digital ownership, or lack thereof.

Only 15 Percent Of PlayStation's Game Sales Are Still Physical

Physical gaming is becoming something of a niche, to say the least.