In a court filing on Aug. 21, Sony pushed back against a class action over PlayStation Store disclosures, saying digital game purchases are licenses, not products people own. The company made that case in response to a lawsuit accusing the storefront of failing to properly disclose the terms of digital goods under California’s 2025 digital goods law.
Sony’s lawyers said it is not plausible to claim that reasonable consumers believed they were obtaining ownership of a digital game. Their argument is simple: the same title can be bought by multiple customers from the same online store, so a digital copy cannot be owned in the ordinary sense. The company also pointed to its PlayStation software license agreement, which says the software is licensed, not sold. One of Sony’s lawyers put it bluntly:
The Software is licensed to you, not sold.
The plaintiffs say PlayStation Store wording such as “Buy Now” and “Confirm Purchase” can mislead customers into thinking they are making a full purchase rather than accepting a limited license. They also argue that the licensing disclosure is too small and easy to miss during checkout. In Sony’s filing, Resident Evil Requiem was used as an example of how the same digital game can be bought on different dates by different customers.
Earlier, Stop Killing Games joined the antitrust lawsuit challenging Sony’s digital storefront, PlayStation’s Digital Monopoly.
The lawsuit is seeking compensation and a court order requiring Sony to fix the alleged disclosure problem in the PlayStation Store. At the center of the case is a bigger question: how clearly should digital storefronts explain what buyers are actually getting?
