Sony went on to say that it takes a “firm stance” against such behavior, which includes examples like “persistent and repeated, or prolonged, demands, excessive or unreasonable demands for compensation or apologies, and abusive language, threats, slander, and other similar behaviors.”
Other examples included “forcing someone to prostrate themselves” and “visiting our offices or related facilities without permission.” If any such behavior is confirmed, Sony says it may “restrict or suspend customer service” to protect its employees — and, if necessary, contact “police, lawyers, etc.” to take legal action or begin criminal proceedings against them.
But that’s the neat thing, you aren’t locked into just steam as your only store. You can use other stores, I recommend GoG for downloadable, DRM free, offline installers
You’re expecting the average Sony fan to know about GOG? That’s kinda cute. Steam subscribers don’t care about GOG, if they even know about its existence.
But Valve’s hardware still have no physical media, and their digital model is still what’s inspiring Sony. How about being consistent and rewarding neither?
I think you’re conflating a locked down system with an open one with one and the things that can and can’t be done on each.
Console: locked down operating system and hardware with 1 store from the manufacturer incompatible with each other if from other companies and often not backward compatible
Computer: multiple stores with choice being given to operating system and hardware where great strides have been made to further open compatibility for software no matter what operating system and backwards compatibility that goes back nearly half a century.
Like I said though, GoG has downloadable, DRM free, offline installers. Download the installer yourself and make physical media. Mine physically exists in my NAS on the platters of my hard drives. I’ll still buy from Valve just to reward them for helping the compatibility side enabling many of us to move off closed source Windows. Each has their place and we can move on from the stupid ass tribalism a la the console wars. There’s no need to shit where we eat and buddy, eating is good on the pc gaming side on the software side minus the AI RAM winter.
Then you don’t care about the Sony dropping physical media thing, since you’re willing to give Valve a free pass despite literally paving the road Sony is going down on.
I’d expect people boycotting Sony over their decision to be better informed than that, and stay clear of Valve’s dystopia, right? Right?
EDIT: also since you said consoles are locked down to 1 store yourself, I want you to make a guess how many PlayStation users are going to figure out that they can go buy their stuff from GOG on hardware literally branded after Steam, where as I established, its subscribers don’t give a shit about other stores, much less GOG.
Dystopia? Brother, you need to understand that games were locked down to windows for the longest time. If you don’t remember the shit show that was windows 8 and Microsoft shutting down games for windows live, then you don’t understand how bleak the outlook was for PC gaming at that time. Valve has nearly single handily moved compatibility to other operating systems for nearly all games all the while keeping everyone’s library available for nearly a quarter century. When Valve does shady shit, we’ll call them out for it, but I’m not about to stop supporting them when they’re making using a real alternative for a better OS a reality.
Not to mention the sales making PC gaming much more affordable than console gaming.
I wouldn’t care if Sony dropped digital if there was another source to get games other than the official Sony PlayStation store, but since there is no alternative, it is bullshit. The loss of physical isn’t the real fight here though, it’s open competition. Why else do you think Google and Apple are fighting tooth and nail to keep other stores off their mobile phone platforms?
How will they learn about alternative stores? Like this.
It’s called a computer. C-O-M-P-U-T-E-R.
Though now it’s sort of vendor locked in to AMD and Intel (plus whatever those few Chinese clones were) and a very specific combination of software components on Linux (or just Windows), with janky emulation and translation for everything else, but that’s a separate issue.
You see, the avarage sony users won’t care, they see an idiot proof interface and just be happy