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  • Showing only topics in ~games with the tag "sony". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. "PS5 has no games"

      This is what everyone always says. It's the big punchline of this console generation. They say it as if they meant "Sony hasn't made or published any games worth playing since November 2020."...

      This is what everyone always says. It's the big punchline of this console generation.

      They say it as if they meant "Sony hasn't made or published any games worth playing since November 2020." That's definitely not true. Sony's released several great, critically acclaimed games on PS5: Returnal, Horizon 2, God of War Ragnarok, and just recently they had Helldivers 2. They've had a PS5 game get nominated for Game of the Year every year.

      What people have really complaining about is "Sony doesn't keep their games solely on the PS5, instead they've also been bringing them to PS4 and/or PC when able." Isn't that... good?

      I remember during the PS3 and PS4 generations, it sucked that you'd have to buy a whole console for that 1 exclusive you were interested in. I had a friend who got a PS4 solely to play Bloodborne. I saw a lot of people back then interested in these exclusives coming to PC. For convenience, for better graphics and frame rates, for the novelty, for game preservation, for any number of reasons.

      Now it's finally happened, Sony's big IPs are pretty much all on PC. You can go buy God of War or Ratchet and Clank on Steam. That's awesome! 15-years-ago me would've never believed that could happen in a million years.

      And how did people react? "Why would I buy a PS5? It has no games!" It has games, they're just not keeping the games locked up there serving a life sentence, maybe getting a remaster 20 years later if they're lucky. I also find it odd how the Series X has even less exclusives, releasing games day-and-date on PC, but nobody jokes about that.

      18 votes
    2. On Bleem v. Sony and the legality of emulators

      The Bleem v. Sony case is often brought up whenever legal action against emulators happens, and I got curious, so I dug a bit deeper. It's quite hard, as most of the actual source material is not...

      The Bleem v. Sony case is often brought up whenever legal action against emulators happens, and I got curious, so I dug a bit deeper. It's quite hard, as most of the actual source material is not publicly available for free, only the appeal decision by the ninth court. But from what I've gathered from secondary sources, this is what actually happened.

      1. Sony sues Bleem on one count of unfair competition and one count of copyright violation for the use of Sony game screenshots in Bleem advertising.
      2. A judge dismisses the unfair competition claim. Sony wins the copyright violation.
      3. Bleem appeals, and the Ninth Court reverses the decision on copyright violation for advertisement material.
      4. Sony sues again, this time for unfair competition and also patent infringement for using their BIOS.
      5. Sony and Bleem settle for an undisclosed amount. Bleem declares bankruptcy.

      As far as I can tell, the only precedent was on whether or not you can use a competitor's screenshots in your advertisement, and indeed that's all I've ever seen the case referred to in future cases. The first unfair competition claim was dismissed (so cannot be a precedent) and the second case was settled. I see a lot of people say that this case set a "precedent" that "emulation is legal", but I don't see how?

      Is this just another case where through a game of telephone and rumors people just take it for assumed fact that somehow or another this case "set a precedent that emulation is legal"? For over 20 years?

      On whether or not emulation is legal, generally things are legal unless they are made to be illegal; there is certainly no specific law that says that emulation is legal. The question, then, is whether or not emulation is inadvertently made illegal by an existing law.

      In that respect, Bleem v. Sony is a useful indicator in that Sony's lawyers couldn't really find anything concrete to nail Bleem on. But not really more than that, unless you really care about whether or not an emulator can use screenshots in their advertisements.

      19 votes