You Bought a PlayStation Game. You Don't Actually Own It.

By 2026, roughly 85 percent of PlayStation game sales are digital licences tied to a single PlayStation Network account, not discs you truly own. This episode breaks down how that shift from physical copies to licences lets Sony treat your library as revocable permission rather than property, from store shutdown scares to the 551 movies it deleted from paid customers in Germany and Austria. We look at how the PlayStation Store's 30 percent cut (now the subject of a UK lawsuit worth over $6 billion), account bans, and PlayStation Plus subscriptions turn your console into a low-margin box feeding a high-margin, tightly controlled ecosystem. This is The Markup. 0:00 Your Library On Thin Ice 3:56 Why Lock-In Pays 5:35 When Accounts Go Dark 7:16 The Second Lock ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The Markup | @TheMarkupChannel The story underneath the story. #themarkup #businessmodel #howmoneyworks