Cognition Dissemination: Here’s How Finite Digitally-Downloaded Games Are
Here’s a scenario to picture: Imagine that you want to download or redownload the original PSOne Classics version of Chrono Cross onto the PlayStation 3, PSP, or Vita (or PlayStation TV), despite The Radical Dreamers Edition remaster just releasing. It’s possible that you didn’t want to purchase the new version after feeling the old one was fine enough to replay in a timely fashion, or read reports about Square Enix doing little-to-nothing to fix the game’s performance even for the most powerful platforms. In a shock, you can’t play it after downloading it, because the game expired on the peculiar date of 12/31/1969.
This happened to Twitter user Christopher Foose, who discovered he could no longer play an older game he purchased after downloading it to an older platform. But before you think Sony and Square Enix made the dastardly move of disabling the old game before the new version released, Nintendo style, Chrono Cross wasn’t the only game affected. The Kotaku post documented evidence that this also happened with the PSOne version of Chrono Trigger, clearly not a way to prevent people from playing the worst version. It’s also reportedly happened with Rune Factory: Oceans (Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny outside Japan and Asia), and, according to a poster on the ResetEra forums, Fez. Another Reddit user claimed this happened to their entire library.
There’s already been plenty of recent evidence that ownership rights for digital games could pose a problem as it becomes the dominant way to purchase new games and repurchase older ones. Games simply expiring to the chagrin of the purchaser due to unforeseen issues is simply the newest one. Nothing platform and software owners tried to get around this, including redownloading the individual games, resubscribing to PlayStation Plus (can you imagine if this was the solution?), or factory resetting the platforms, worked to fix it on their own.
It’s good, in fairness, that Sony was reportedly prompt in fixing this. They in fact fixed this faster than the patching issues that arose for certain PS3 games last year, which happened months before their original plans to sunset the storefronts for these platforms and the PSP. (They halted this plan, though there’s no telling for how long.) The fix doesn’t stop this glitch from being a frightening one when it comes to game preservation. This shows how easy it is for Sony to change the expiration date for one title or a series of them, at their own behest or, more likely, by the request of publishers to prevent further downloads. Before anyone reads this and thinks this is a preposterous line of thought for an unlikely scenario, the same was claimed about entire game platform storefronts shutting down before hardware manufacturers went through with it.
This is the second such warning about the future of digital ownership in the last month. It was only on March 16th when Wii and DS users realized they could no longer redownload their games or assorted downloadable content. It took more than a week after it happened for Nintendo to issue a statement acknowledging the issue, itself a sign of their disinterest. The date shows how it’s been nearly one month since fans noticed the issue, yet Nintendo has not fixed the problem or given further updates on it. Nintendo has been uniquely trashy about preserving their own software, with the deletion of the Wii and DS storefronts years ago and the impending sunsetting of the 3DS and Wii U stores being the biggest signs. It will mark a new low if they don’t restore the redownloading option.
There’s a moron conspiracy theorist wearing a tinfoil hat and cape inside me who insists that the PlayStation title expiration issue was Sony testing the waters to see if this was a viable way to end downloads of titles for older platforms. Since cancelling their aforementioned plans to disappear the storefronts for older PlayStation platforms, it feels like they’ve been looking for subtler ways to kill that support, one of which included ending the option for debit card, credit card, and PayPal payments for the stores in October last year. (PlayStation Network cards can still be redeemed for use on them.) Conspiracies are often not grounded in fact, and I know this sounds preposterous. Yet despite its sheer ostensible inanity, there’s a part of me that can’t shake this. Hell, I couldn’t help but type “ostensible” in that last sentence.
Regardless of that, it’s not a conspiracy to say that these games won’t last forever. Their replacements through streaming, as seen through the Nintendo Switch Online program or the upcoming new PlayStation Plus program, will not be adequate replacements for preservation purposes either despite the latter allowing for the downloading of some games. It is, as I’ve said in previous posts, good that pirates are making sure many of these retro games are playable in pristine forms for as long as humans are around. But there remains the possible issue with future games being difficult to preserve.
About The Author
Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
