I'm not in the EU, but had 2 accounts with Sony/Playstation (I'm pretty sure both sat unused for more than 3 years). I tried to delete one and it seemed impossible. The FAQ said to call support. I called, waiting for 45 minutes, and they said they couldn't help me and hung up before I could respond.
While I believe they would delete a user's games, I don't know if they would actually willingly give up holding on to customer data.
My guess is this is more of a CYA incase they want to clean up accounts at some point, rather than something they actively do.
And on top of that, Sony will probably get hacked again, as has already happened a couple times. That was a primary reason why I actually wanted my account gone, not just inactive.
That is not how gdpr works. If you have a legitimate reason to hold the data. You can. Ensuring people have access to purchases is a very legitimate reason.
You know, all those people making new n64, playstation, and gameboy titles might be onto something. Apart from steam, I don't think I've heard anything but bad news from modern consoles.
> Apart from steam, I don't think I've heard anything but bad news from modern consoles.
Gabe is in his mid 60s, I'm prepared that in the next decade or so there will be a change of guard at Valve and the slow train of enshittification will get moving.
P.S. There's been a lot of groupthink and bandwagoning for Valve, ignoring all the dirt under the rug. But at the end of the day, by comparison, they are the best behaving in the field.
Gabe is off forming a cult which I assume will consume his focus for the remainder of his life. I'm dead serious he is basically straight up copying Ron L Hubbards, cult on a boat playbook.
IDK what this means for the steam platform but I'm guessing it will mean change of some sort.
> hands off managing Valve for precisely this reason
Remember that this means he's not the "hands" but he's still very much the head. You'll only know what Valve really is without him when he's no longer around.
I was surprised to come back to my XBOX account after 10 years in the US and see that very old digital purchases from previous console generations were not only still available, but actually playable on the latest console through transparent emulation! They did a pretty good job with that.
Whatever you think about Microsoft, they are a good steward of their platforms and go to extremes to maintain backwards compatibility -- even if they are always moving your cheese in the UI.
But life is more than financial transactions. Those people wasted hours and hours curating their personal libraries with books they loved.
Considering how the price and availability of ebooks fluctuates, the refund value is not necessarily equal to the replacement cost, plus more hours finding replacements, if replacements are even available.
While Microsoft may not be as bad on this as Sony so far, they have certainly shown a willingness to revoke access to digital games. For example- in an effort to push users to the newer fifa titles with microtransactions, they quietly removed the ability to redownload purchased digital copies of older fifa games. For anyone who might've temporarily uninstalled the game to free up space, there was suddenly no way to get the game on your machine again.
That's almost certainly due to EA's licensing agreement with FIFA rather than Microsoft's decision. Similar to how you can no longer purchase older Forza games due to the licensing for use of the cars expiring.
But it was bought on Microsoft's Store (a walled garden) on a Microsoft platform, so the ultimate responsibility towards the customer lays on Microsoft.
And consumers will cry about it for about 5 minutes, then go back to reward the company.
When HP started making printer cartridges that expired even when they were still full, people complained—then bought more.
When Microsoft let the web stagnate with IE6, people complained, then turned around and did the same thing with Chrome.
When Apple deliberately put a bug in the iPhone that caused the Home button to fail, pushing people to buy the next model, people got upset—and then bought the next one anyway. I'm amazed nobody remembers that one; it was such a huge deal at the time. And there is not a single link back about it anymore.
When Adobe switched to mandatory Creative Cloud subscriptions, plenty of users protested, but most professionals stayed.
When Amazon remotely deleted books from people's Kindles (including 1984), it was a scandal for a month, and then... nothing.
When we found out PRISM existed, users were worried for a few months, then went right back to filling those platforms with their personal data.
When Google allowed fraudulent DMCA takedowns, shut down accounts with no appeal, and censored its search engine, there was a brief outcry, then it was back to business as usual.
When Sony put malware on its music CDs (!!!!), people grumbled for five minutes and kept giving them money.
These companies have no reason to stop. We never make them regret anything.
I should make a website to save those for posterity, so that at least we have a track record of all the things they get away with because we let them.
Switch to Brother laser jet printers - I hear about them every time HP comes up, I've had mine for years, it is a lovely solution
Tons of people switched from IE6 to Chrome; IE is a dead browser. These days I'd recommend Firefox.
Is there something wrong with the iPhone as of today? It sounds like the bug got fixed in response to outcry, especially if they went and scrubbed all traces of the event - that seems like a good outcome?
Adobe stock is down almost 50% (42.24%) in the past year - I dare say a lot of people got sick of their shit. I have no clue what professionals use, but GIMP works fine for my amateur edits.
Like, c'mon, change very clearly does happen. It's just slow and uneven.
If you actually cared about change, I feel like you'd maybe list a few of the cool alternatives out there and actually help people make that transition. https://xkcd.com/1053/ - people do actually have to be taught about these things, not everyone knows what the alternatives are!
It’s not only their printers. Their computers and peripherals are also very low quality nowadays. Enterprise buys them because they’re cheap not because they’re good. The bar they have to clear is to keep working for the lease’s duration (3 years typically).
I’ve been burnt a few times now I run away when I see HP (even their “enterprise” line, which used to be good)
When Apple deliberately put a bug in the iPhone that caused the Home button to fail, pushing people to buy the next model, people got upset—and then bought the next one anyway. I'm amazed nobody remembers that one; it was such a huge deal at the time. And there is not a single link to articles about it anymore.
That one, I don't remember either. Are you sure you aren't confusing it with Batterygate?
But yes: point taken, these companies have absolutely no incentive to behave any better than they have in the past.
Oh no, I remember well. At some point, everyone at the software home button on their phone setup, because the physical button was sometimes working and sometimes not.
Apple issued a statement saying it was a hardware failure and there was nothing they could do.
A hacker later on proved they were lying by patching the software and showing the problem went away.
That's why I'm scrapbooking every article about the trump administration right now. This time period is so wild people will doubt it really existed.
I will not be gaslighted again. This world is crazy, and people have a terrible memory.
>That's why I'm scrapbooking every article about the trump administration right now. This time period is so wild people will doubt it really existed.
On one hand, I think there will be entire subgenres of literature and media dedicated to this time, the way we spend entire units in the US on WWII.
On the other hand, I also know there will be a lot of "not-MAGA" people who will say they didn't vote for Trump (they did) but defend to death how these times weren't that bad with all the same soundbites you hear today. We're way too connected (and Trump way too loud) to reasonably do Trump denialism, so the next best path will be Trump sympathizing
Here here. 100% in agreement, people seem to have forgotten that the majority hold the bargaining power. You'll always have people who cross "strike lines", but by and large if the entire user base simply said; no, and walked; the world would definitely be a better place, in so many ways.
I don't hold France as a shining example of humanity; but by-christ if they get upset they actually take those feet, one in front of the other and fight tooth and nail against `$thing`. Even if they don't "win", they /don't go quietly/.
There is a strike or demonstration of sorts every other day in France. Or so it seems living there. It’s become so frequent that it has little to no meaning anymore. The government is scared to implement any meaningful change because it’s guaranteed there’ll be a strike or demonstration of sorts. And so we continue towards the wall pedal to the metal.
A democratic government should exist only by the consent of the governed. The government should be terrified of the people. Of course you have to be able to filter out the signal from the noise and majority vs minority desires, but by and large if a change is majorly unpopular, they should be terrified of trying to push it through.
The sad thing is that for many of these examples, people got a better deal out of it.
The HP printer ink subscription makes a lot of sense if you print a certain number of pages each year. Many consumers who only print occasionally are better off with cheap subscriptions for getting their money's worth, even if from an environmental point of view the cartridge DRM is absolute bullcrap.
Adobe switching from making people pay thousands and charging them again for updates was a lot more expensive than the ridiculous yearly subscription they charge (per month, to keep the advertised price down, surprising people who thought they could cancel after a few months).
IE6 was awful at replicating what other browsers did, but it introduced a lot of features that reshaped the web. The XmlHttpRequest that moved the web from static pages to basic interactivity was a Microsoft invention.
Many if these cases didn't work out of course, but for many business decisions that cause outrage on the internet, it's worth reconsidering the options on offer after the outrage has died down. Unpopular decisions aren't often the unbridled conspiratory evil that the internet would like you to believe.
I've avoided buying any Lenovo product ever since their SuperFish fiasco.
At the beggining it surprised me that people still seriously recommended Lenovo products (even hackers). Now, my brain automatically "adblocks" the entire brand out when I'm looking to buy a new laptop or monitor, as it knows I can't buy it.
Same for me on Lenovo. And likewise, once upon a time ago I told myself I was never going to use another Microsoft product ever again, and I've also mostly stuck to that and even changed jobs over it. Unfortunately, I can't escape github for now but I'm Microsoft free everywhere else at home and at work.
We need more people willing to vote with their wallet over stuff like this.
Microsoft dragged their heels hard when Firefox 3 came to the scene. IE6 was the browser at the time. Chrome was a concept and Opera at least pushed to keep up but surrendered and went to Chrome.
Closing inactive accounts in the EU is due to (interpretation of) certain provisions set in the GDPR (e.g. article 5 - https://gdpr-info.eu/art-5-gdpr/) and Sony is not alone, many services in the EU automatically close and delete orphaned accounts after a given amount of time, and if they are international ones even when they don't outside of the EU.
If implemented correctly the affected person is also warned/notified several times by email before this is going to happen, so you have enough time to log in at least once and prevent it (and also extend the time frame again).
Those articles don't require deletion in this case, in my non-lawyer opinion. There is still a purpose to keeping the user's personal information here. Sony needs that information to be able to grant the user access to the content they bought.
There's a difference here between an account that hasn't been used and doesn't hold anything of value and an account like this that holds items that were bought.
The problem with email is that it's an email address from 3+ years ago, which means there's a much higher chance of it being out of date - are you still using XxCoolDude67xX from high school?
Consoles area also marketed heavily towards older teenagers and younger adults, who are exactly the ones unlikely to maintain a consistent email address.
And of course if your email provided decides to cut you off, or goes out of business, or you used a university email...
The solution to that is to allow people to set an additional email address for the account and then maybe allow them to disable the original after a period of time.
Good, customer data should be a liability and they should be incentivized to delete it as early as feasible, or not store it at all when possible. It's your data, not theirs.
I am not sure, but I feel that many of these "Sony bad" type of conversations appear close to something unfavorable being discussed about Xbox. Am I imagining it? The Playstation issue discussed here is certainly not new, but the timing is interesting.
>many of these "Sony bad" type of conversations appear close to something unfavorable being discussed about Xbox.
Both console makers released some devastating news this week. Perhaps by design (But probably not. It's a new financial quarter, the usual time for big news anouncements, good and bad). And this is coming all the backs of rising memory prices driving speculations of 4 figure next gen consoles, GTA 6 costing $80 for part of the game for a case which does not contain a disc, and alleged reports of digital dynamic pricing.
It hasn't been a good few months for anyone in the games industry. Even Nintendo is begrudgingly increasing prices by end of summer.
This isn't surprising given how different businesses may value a payment against an ongoing obligation to customers. @patio11 had a good podcast about this "Cash received is not revenue earned" last April.
What the GoDaddy CEO said in many interviews and investor presentations is:
"Look, since we're not going out of business, and since the cost of serving
domain names is essentially the same whether we're serving a million of them
versus a hundred million of them, you should really treat this as a
cash-and-carry business. So all of the money that comes in this year is our
revenue, regardless of this massive balance sheet item that says deferred
revenue." What sophisticated investors looking at GoDaddy said was, "Well,
no. You do have to still keep running the business. And so from my
perspective, it looks like GoDaddy is incredibly levered. You've got so much
debt on the books. The debt isn't to a bank or to a private credit fund–it's
just to your customers. But oh goodness, is there a lot of debt. And since
that debt must get satisfied before US equity holders get the residual value
of the company, we are not willing to extend equity investment at the
valuation you think you're worth."
what debt does the comapny owe, given his observation that the marginal cost of serving another customer is zero? sure, if they stopped serving them, theyd have a problem, I agree there. But when you try to value the liability here, its surely not very big? Thats what he's saying.
Same here with these games. All sony has to do is not delete your games. They still keep your account, and your payment info and a hundred other things. but the cost of keeping a binary "owns/doesnt own" on their database is suddenly too much?
Maintenance isn't cost-free. As an example, the operating system and other software dependencies of the game depends will eventually be depreciated and not supported.
If a security vulnerability is discovered in software still available from company servers but the teams that built it have moved on, what is the company's liability for recomposing teams in order to make a fix that does not negatively affect other aspects of the software?
right, but if a game no longer works and you don't assign resources to fix it, thats way more understandable than removing access to a game that others can play perfectly fine because your account is old or some other reason
I hope they send warning letters to log in. Mine been idle for over a year and I don't have it right now.. but I paid for those games so it would be scammy to remove without warning.
Does it cost them money to keep my purchases logged? I don't think so.
It’s as if they were working super hard to obliterate their domination of the consoles market.
Xbox is in shambles but if Sony keeps pulling these braindead moves and annihilating any goodwill they have, Xbox might come out on top despite their best efforts.
I bought the Orange Box years and years ago and to install this Steam launcher to play Counter-Strike, what a pain in the a$$. Stop playing, promptly forgot about it.
Years passed, and wanted to play something else that was on sale on this Steam thing that seemed familiar so reinstalled it. To my surprise, my old Orange Box games were still there.
That has led to an unhealthy 20 years of hoarding on-sale games like Smaug.
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 65.7 ms ] threadWhile I believe they would delete a user's games, I don't know if they would actually willingly give up holding on to customer data.
My guess is this is more of a CYA incase they want to clean up accounts at some point, rather than something they actively do.
So basically you get worst of both worlds, great.
Gabe is in his mid 60s, I'm prepared that in the next decade or so there will be a change of guard at Valve and the slow train of enshittification will get moving.
P.S. There's been a lot of groupthink and bandwagoning for Valve, ignoring all the dirt under the rug. But at the end of the day, by comparison, they are the best behaving in the field.
IDK what this means for the steam platform but I'm guessing it will mean change of some sort.
He's been scuba diving and IIRC even discovered new species and doing marine biology. Very impressive as far as CEOs/presidents go.
Remember that this means he's not the "hands" but he's still very much the head. You'll only know what Valve really is without him when he's no longer around.
This is the same company that closed its e-book store, and everyone lost the libraries they'd worked so hard to curate.
But life is more than financial transactions. Those people wasted hours and hours curating their personal libraries with books they loved.
Considering how the price and availability of ebooks fluctuates, the refund value is not necessarily equal to the replacement cost, plus more hours finding replacements, if replacements are even available.
https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/xbox/xboxs-backwards-c...
Not that this person couldn't have retired years, if not decades ago on his stocks from 1989. But a real shame nonetheless.
Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48745456
When HP started making printer cartridges that expired even when they were still full, people complained—then bought more.
When Microsoft let the web stagnate with IE6, people complained, then turned around and did the same thing with Chrome.
When Apple deliberately put a bug in the iPhone that caused the Home button to fail, pushing people to buy the next model, people got upset—and then bought the next one anyway. I'm amazed nobody remembers that one; it was such a huge deal at the time. And there is not a single link back about it anymore.
When Adobe switched to mandatory Creative Cloud subscriptions, plenty of users protested, but most professionals stayed.
When Amazon remotely deleted books from people's Kindles (including 1984), it was a scandal for a month, and then... nothing.
When we found out PRISM existed, users were worried for a few months, then went right back to filling those platforms with their personal data.
When Google allowed fraudulent DMCA takedowns, shut down accounts with no appeal, and censored its search engine, there was a brief outcry, then it was back to business as usual.
When Sony put malware on its music CDs (!!!!), people grumbled for five minutes and kept giving them money.
These companies have no reason to stop. We never make them regret anything.
I should make a website to save those for posterity, so that at least we have a track record of all the things they get away with because we let them.
We're screwed—and we deserve it.
Tons of people switched from IE6 to Chrome; IE is a dead browser. These days I'd recommend Firefox.
Is there something wrong with the iPhone as of today? It sounds like the bug got fixed in response to outcry, especially if they went and scrubbed all traces of the event - that seems like a good outcome?
Adobe stock is down almost 50% (42.24%) in the past year - I dare say a lot of people got sick of their shit. I have no clue what professionals use, but GIMP works fine for my amateur edits.
Like, c'mon, change very clearly does happen. It's just slow and uneven.
If you actually cared about change, I feel like you'd maybe list a few of the cool alternatives out there and actually help people make that transition. https://xkcd.com/1053/ - people do actually have to be taught about these things, not everyone knows what the alternatives are!
People still buy HP printers.
It's still a popular brand.
I’ve been burnt a few times now I run away when I see HP (even their “enterprise” line, which used to be good)
That one, I don't remember either. Are you sure you aren't confusing it with Batterygate?
But yes: point taken, these companies have absolutely no incentive to behave any better than they have in the past.
Apple issued a statement saying it was a hardware failure and there was nothing they could do.
A hacker later on proved they were lying by patching the software and showing the problem went away.
That's why I'm scrapbooking every article about the trump administration right now. This time period is so wild people will doubt it really existed.
I will not be gaslighted again. This world is crazy, and people have a terrible memory.
* Error 53: Exposing An Apple Scandal -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWE4mwhjNY4
* ‘Error 53’ fury mounts as Apple software update threatens to kill your iPhone 6 -- https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/feb/05/error-53-apple...
* Apple apologises for iPhone 'error 53' and issues fix -- https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35611756
On one hand, I think there will be entire subgenres of literature and media dedicated to this time, the way we spend entire units in the US on WWII.
On the other hand, I also know there will be a lot of "not-MAGA" people who will say they didn't vote for Trump (they did) but defend to death how these times weren't that bad with all the same soundbites you hear today. We're way too connected (and Trump way too loud) to reasonably do Trump denialism, so the next best path will be Trump sympathizing
I don't hold France as a shining example of humanity; but by-christ if they get upset they actually take those feet, one in front of the other and fight tooth and nail against `$thing`. Even if they don't "win", they /don't go quietly/.
The HP printer ink subscription makes a lot of sense if you print a certain number of pages each year. Many consumers who only print occasionally are better off with cheap subscriptions for getting their money's worth, even if from an environmental point of view the cartridge DRM is absolute bullcrap.
Adobe switching from making people pay thousands and charging them again for updates was a lot more expensive than the ridiculous yearly subscription they charge (per month, to keep the advertised price down, surprising people who thought they could cancel after a few months).
IE6 was awful at replicating what other browsers did, but it introduced a lot of features that reshaped the web. The XmlHttpRequest that moved the web from static pages to basic interactivity was a Microsoft invention.
Many if these cases didn't work out of course, but for many business decisions that cause outrage on the internet, it's worth reconsidering the options on offer after the outrage has died down. Unpopular decisions aren't often the unbridled conspiratory evil that the internet would like you to believe.
At the beggining it surprised me that people still seriously recommended Lenovo products (even hackers). Now, my brain automatically "adblocks" the entire brand out when I'm looking to buy a new laptop or monitor, as it knows I can't buy it.
We need more people willing to vote with their wallet over stuff like this.
How so? I see more complaints about Chrome implementing things that Firefox and/or Safari do not than complaints the other way around.
I'm tired boss.
If implemented correctly the affected person is also warned/notified several times by email before this is going to happen, so you have enough time to log in at least once and prevent it (and also extend the time frame again).
There's a difference here between an account that hasn't been used and doesn't hold anything of value and an account like this that holds items that were bought.
Consoles area also marketed heavily towards older teenagers and younger adults, who are exactly the ones unlikely to maintain a consistent email address.
And of course if your email provided decides to cut you off, or goes out of business, or you used a university email...
> Your browser is not Javascript enable or you have turn it off. We recommend you to activate for better security reason
It's reassuring to know that their copy is not AI-generated.
Both console makers released some devastating news this week. Perhaps by design (But probably not. It's a new financial quarter, the usual time for big news anouncements, good and bad). And this is coming all the backs of rising memory prices driving speculations of 4 figure next gen consoles, GTA 6 costing $80 for part of the game for a case which does not contain a disc, and alleged reports of digital dynamic pricing.
It hasn't been a good few months for anyone in the games industry. Even Nintendo is begrudgingly increasing prices by end of summer.
Same here with these games. All sony has to do is not delete your games. They still keep your account, and your payment info and a hundred other things. but the cost of keeping a binary "owns/doesnt own" on their database is suddenly too much?
If a security vulnerability is discovered in software still available from company servers but the teams that built it have moved on, what is the company's liability for recomposing teams in order to make a fix that does not negatively affect other aspects of the software?
Does it cost them money to keep my purchases logged? I don't think so.
Maybe.
Don't think these ToS are just theoretical.
Xbox is in shambles but if Sony keeps pulling these braindead moves and annihilating any goodwill they have, Xbox might come out on top despite their best efforts.
Years passed, and wanted to play something else that was on sale on this Steam thing that seemed familiar so reinstalled it. To my surprise, my old Orange Box games were still there.
That has led to an unhealthy 20 years of hoarding on-sale games like Smaug.
Thanks, gaben!
P.S. Sony is screwing their fans.