PSN: A rant (a.k.a. those quantic digital games that are yours, yet not yours)

I've just made the most unpleasant discovery regarding games downloaded through the Playstation Store, a discovery that made me hiss and spit like an angry cat. Having to fork out a ludicrous amount of money to obtain proprietary Vita memory cards was not enough, oh no; dear ol' Sony had to design extra limitations to prevent us from using the content that we legally bought.

Here's the situation: I am a collector of both games and gaming systems. As a result, I currently own five Vitas in various colours, with the plan of using some of them as backups when my oldest Vitas start dying on me. I always assumed that all the games I downloaded from the Playstation Store could be played at will on any of my precious Vitas; but lately, as I learnt that only two Vitas could be registered on the PSN, a sliver of doubt regarding that assumption wormed its way into my mind. Before I knew it, said sliver of doubt had expanded to massive proportions, to the point where I felt obliged to run a test in order to dispel or confirm my suspicions. I took one of my brand-new Vitas out of its box, stuck a memory card loaded with games into it and booted the system. A couple of minutes later, my horrendous suspicions were confirmed: I cannot access the content of the memory card at all unless the hosting Vita is registered in the PSN.

I'm absolutely livid, and royally pissed off. This basically means that I cannot play the games I bought on the systems I bought on my own terms and have instead to endure Sony's arbirtrary limitations. Sure, I can register and unregister Vitas at will on the PSN, but why do I have to do that at all? Why can't I register as many Vita as I want on the PSN? And most importantly, why do the memory cards need to be used with a system tied to a PSN account in the first place? I bought these games, damnit, and I should be allowed to play them on any system I want once they are safely tucked away on a memory card.

This point matters to me as a collector, because one of the main reasons why I collect is perennity. I collect games and systems so that I can replay them to my heart's content as time goes on, and these hidden PSN rules put this plan in jeopardy. It's pretty safe to assume that the PSN won't be around forever, and I'm asking: what will happen to my downloaded games when the PSN is taken down? Will they become totally unplayable? Maybe Sony will come with a fix to allow PSN users to keep on playing the games they bought, but maybe they won't. This means that I paid for products that may one day become unusable, and this is NOT what I signed for. Nintendo got a lot of criticism for their unpractical policy of forcing Nintendo Eshop users to have their account tied to a single system, but these policies of Sony are just as bad. They are actually even worse, because Sony doesn't deliver clear information on the matter and let people make assumptions that are ultimately untrue—such as the perfectly reasonable assumption that purchased digital games are yours to use as you want on any system you want, now and forever.

I was already not in favour of digital games, and this discovery makes me dislike them even more. From that point on, I will:
a) Ponder very carefully every digital purchase and proceed only if the concerned game is not available physically at all and if there is a discount on it.
b) Get my act together and step up my game by diving back full force into my long-forsaken Japanese studies. This endeavour is long overdue, and now I have more incentive than ever to undertake it. Once I know enough Japanese, I can purchase the Japanese physical editions of all these games that are released only digitally in the West and stop worrying about the perennity of my games.

Although I'm furious about this whole mess, I'm also glad that I made this discovery. Being aware of these hidden limitations regarding digital games will spare me some uninformed purchases and help me save some money in the long run, and hopefully it will help other gamers do the same. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!