If by this point in your life you haven’t actually understood that the shift towards digital media, DRM storefronts, live services and always online requirements have utterly destroyed the industry you hold dear you’re a lost cause.
Time and time again games and other various forms of media entertainment have been purged from sale on digital storefronts, mostly due to licensing issues or because their online services have been shut down leading to the removal of store listings meaning you can no longer purchase said content.
Various games have been lost over the years, such as Deadpool, Blur, Titanfall and several Forza Motorsport / Horizon titles on digital storefronts, however the common theme across these games and their subsequent restriction from sale is that those who already “own” the game can continue playing them at their own leisure.
Sony are reinventing digital media by outright taking paid content away from PlayStation users whether they like it or not, similarly to how Ubisoft essentially steals back purchased DLC content for its games by restricting your access to them because they’ve shut down crucial online authentication.
Because the reality of digital media is rather simple, whether you buy anything via the Nintendo eShop, PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, Valve’s Steam Store, you own absolutely none of it. You are effectively buying a digital license to contain the content on your account, at any point in time your access to these games can simply be revoked at the drop of a hat.
Sony are now on the verge of removing various TV shows such as Mythbusters, Naked and Afraid, and numerous other Discovery shows from the libraries of PlayStation users, even if they had previously “purchased” these shows for personal consumption on their PlayStation console.
An official page on the PlayStation website elaborates to greater extent the amount of content that will be removed from not just digital purchase on the PlayStation Store but outright those who “own” said TV shows will no longer be able to WATCH previously purchase Discovery TV content, it will be removed from your PlayStation account entirely.
While majority of Discovery’s content is personally garbage, as they prioritize low budget reality TV garbage, there’s a shit load of them being removed come the new year, with the larger more prominent shows such as:
Deadliest Catch, Fast N’ Loud, Gold Rush, How It’s Made, Man vs Wild, Naked and Afraid, Mythbusters, Tanked, Street Outlaws and Wheeler Dealers all being removed.
Naturally, middle aged men aren’t happy that their beloved reality shows are being purged, seeing as how they’ve paid to essentially own a license to stream such media content and nothing more.
Movies and TV shows initially became available on the PlayStation Network in 2008 with the introduction of the PS3. During that period, users could transfer purchased content between devices, such as the PlayStation Portable for viewing.
However, Sony discontinued this option with the PS4 console, and nobody really seemed to care. Because anything you buy on the PlayStation Network, much like any other DRM ladled digital storefront can be summarized as an indefinite loan of any such product.
This license agreement will essentially last as long as either the PlayStation servers themselves or if the original copyright holder decides to pull its content from services such as Sony PlayStation for whatever reason.
This isn’t even the first time that Sony have outright barred users from their paid media content, and the way I see things, this is an eye opener to all of those middled aged boomers who believe it’s morally righteous to simply pay for such digital media.
Sure, you can opt on buying your shows and movies on DVD and or Blu-Ray, but what are you actually achieving by doing so? If Sony themselves are more than happy to simply restrict content that you’ve outright paid to “own”, not even refunding you in the process I say this is a free pass to pirating anything and everything produced by Sony Pictures Entertainment or anything else for that matter.
Consumers are treated as nothing more than sheep with disposable income to these scummy mega corporations, who are quite literally stealing your money and content, it’s morally justified at this point to download such media for free.
You can host your own private media server via solutions such as Plex, allowing you to easily browse and watch various forms of media from movies to TV shows all in a very simplistic and easy to navigate menu system, all you need to do is organize and arrange any such content on your PC with named folders and to simply tell Plex where to navigate.
Plex is possibly one of the most prominent such media server programs given how it works seamlessly on home consoles such as Microsoft’s XBOX and Sony PlayStation, though for optimal viewing pleasure you may want to invest in a NVIDIA Shield TV PRO for real time 4K upscaling.
How you download and acquire your shows and media is entirely up to you, for those obscure reality TV shows that are being removed by Sony your best bet is probably to purchase DVD collections and to rip the contents onto your PC, storing them in organized fashion.
For more common forms of media there’s a multitude of different websites available to download entire TV shows and movies in varying resolution qualities, sites such as 1337X, RARBG, YTS and EZTV are some good choices. For Japanese media such as anime the only website you aught to consider is Nyaa.
These mega corporations are desperate to push the motive that the future is entirely digital, that digital media is the future and they’d be right about that only in the instance that pirated content is forever yours to enjoy, yours to own, yours to modify.
Piracy is the all digital format that we so desperately crave and desire, and it’s the actions by the likes of progressive pushers such as Sony that simply sway more and more individuals to go back to the common standard that we quite literally should have never left.
The hell are you waiting for exactly? Start up your own Plex sever, go out there and rip / clone your existing physical media or start downloading your own personal collection today.
