In advance of online support shutting down for Gran Turismo 5 at the end of May, Sony is removing all DLC for the game from the PlayStation Store on April 30. Some, but not all, DLC will be re-downloadable through PSN after then if you already own it.
Briefly: Sony Is Dropping Gran Turismo 5 DLC From The PlayStation Store
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21 responses to “Briefly: Sony Is Dropping Gran Turismo 5 DLC From The PlayStation Store”
But not all dlc will be redownloadable. Tell me again why digital mediums for games are so good?
Chances are the DLCs that aren’t able to be downloaded again were limited licence stuff that is about to expire. For example if they had the licence for a particular model of car they might have only been granted the rights to use it for 3 years rather than for the lifetime of the game and once the 3 years are up, keeping the DLC available would be in breach of their contract.
Crappy thing to not mention to people especially if it’s DLC you pay for but it’s that kind of thing that’s easy to imagine being the cause.
Licences will have to change if the market ends up fully moving to all digital platforms, as even now digitally released games are getting pulled from stores because of licensing issues while the physical copies continue to be sold at retail.
I’m just thankful Valve doesn’t remove pulled games from your library, even though I’m sure they legally could under their ToS.
Yeah licencing is one of the many things that are stuck back in the 70s when there was basically no such thing as broadcast AND sale, it needs a total teardown an rebuild with a degree of logic recognition of the ubiquity of music in modern life. There’s episodes of Dr Who that feature 30s of real songs in the background of a scene that have had to be edited or can’t be released because the licencing fees are stupidly high.
I get that the point of it is to stop people profiting from artists works without recompense and that’s fair enough but the application of it is so insanely draconian that it defies logic. One of the Dr Who stories that have had that treatment was Revelation Of The Daleks, the story features a DJ playing music for people who are basically dead and stored in suspended animation, one of the songs that you can hear in the background while the characters are talking over it and explosions are going on is Jimi Hendrix’s Fire and that had to be digitally edited out in favour of a generic track because of the exorbitant licencing fee required to keep it. That implies that someone somewhere genuinely thinks that a Jimi Hendrix fan would be so insane as to buy a Dr Who DVD to get 20 seconds of heavily noise polluted music that he’d obviously already have on CD anyway (it wasn’t unique in any way) so the publishers of the DVD should pay the music rights holders a slice of the profits for something that’s clearly adding sooooo much value to their product which is not only bonkers but wildly unrealistic.
Same with content claims on youtube. By all means stop people uploading entire albums by a band but is anyone REALLY going to claim that my GTA video featuring 28 seconds of a 30 year old song on very low volume heavily polluted by player chatter and helicopter rotor noise all of which is seen by an average of 4 people is really depriving Steve Winwood of income?
One of worst thing imo is the artist life + 60 years or whatever crazy number it is now before it enters public domain.
By all means have the ORIGINAL ARTIST continue to earn royalties for the rest of their life but lets be honest, who is really claiming those 60 extra years of royalties? It sure as hell ain’t a dead person and the money given to those who survived him (as it usually goes I think) would be minuscule compared to those collected by the publisher/label/scum.
Yeah that’s pretty shitty, 60 years from creation might be too much but it’d be an acceptable compromise to me. After all the original point of copyright was to let the artist live off the royalties so they could create more work rather than just create the one thing and sit on it forever.
But if Valve were to pull a game from the store and then also from your library, surely they would be required to refund whatever you paid for the game right? If not, that sounds super-dodgy to me…
Nope, since you only purchased a licence from them, which is more closer to renting the game than outright owning it.
It’s the same reason why if Valve were to shut Steam down they wouldn’t have to refund everyone who can’t access their games anymore.
That isn’t really true. A license is permission to do something you wouldn’t otherwise have the right to do.
A license can be like a rental (e.g. a film streaming service that lets you watch a film once), but they can also be perpetual (e.g. the license you give Facebook to use all the photos you’ve uploaded to their site).
The Steam subscriber agreement (http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/) doesn’t have a fixed termination date, and lists when it can be terminated by either you or Valve. It does say that they won’t refund you if you are terminated for breach of services, but doesn’t say anything about the case where you are not at fault. It is possible you’d be able to use the Australian Consumer Law against them if they refused to refund you in that case.
Yeah I was largely generalising and more than likely mixing up terms and such, but it more or less remains true.
Does Australian Consumer Law cover digital purchases (or any purchase for that matter) that are made outside of Australia? Steam purchases would technically be like an import after all wouldn’t they?
The ACL covers services, and if Steam purchases aren’t goods, then it is definitely a service.
As far as jurisdiction goes, Valve has said they plan to let you pay in Australian currency, they also sell prepaid cards to top up your wallet, so there is a good argument that they’re doing business here.
Paint pack and Racing gear pack can’t be downloaded after it is d=taken offline. And not worth it anyway.
the only thing you cant re-download are the “Paint Pack” and “Racing Gear Pack” & this only happens if you’ve deleted your save data, which no ‘serious’ GT5 player would do, and they’re the only ones who would buy paint or gear packs….
OMFG SONY ARE DOOOOOMED!!!
*rolls eyes*
Doomed or fuckheads? Article implies fuckheads to me.
@SemiConcious in what way does this not show they are massive douches? It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in digital ownership does it?
@dknigs your post implies you didn’t bother to read the article… that’s a paddlin’ 😉
and that lead you to understand that something you purchased will no longer be available to download, but it’s just paint and racing outfits that will not be avaliable, the digital version of the game, track and car packs will still be downloadable…
this is not the first game to ever have it’s online support ended, will not be the last.
remember when Halo (or was it halo2, was it even halo?) had it’s online support ended but they couldn’t shut it down because one dude just kept on playing. that was funny.
anyhoo, out of interest, do you even own a PS3/gt5 or was this some misguided crusade brought on by a slightly misleading (clickbait) kotaku headline and your allegiance to M$ and the Xbone? also what are your views on asylum seekers?
that’ll be a paddlin’
downvotes incoming/ comment moderation FTW!!!!!
upvoted your comment, i hate comment moderation, it’s fucked.
I bought a PS3 because of my blind allegiance to Sony actually, then eventually regretted it, feeling jaded with all the crappy ports, slow progress, and stillborn accessories (PlayTV), bought a 360 slim and sold my G25 (for more than I bought it for four-five years earlier on sale haha). So while I do have it, I haven’t really played it in a while. The thing is though that this isn’t just happening to random EA games or such where you expect them to be super tight arse and screw you over, this is a major first party game, a console seller. If Sony aren’t even going to keep this stuff online themselves, why would any third party publisher ever feel the need to honor their sales to customers?
Eh.
Haven’t touched GT5 in about 18 months, so no big loss for me.
They’re more than likely focusing on GT6’s DLC/.
Yeah that’s really flawed logic… Not everyone owns Gt6 yet, it’s ridiculous considering Microsoft still has all it’s DLC for Forza3 and that game is almost ancient now… credit where credits due
licensing is seriously getting out of hand.
Look at the dvd releases of tour of duty, all of the music that made that series have had their licenses expire and they cant renew the licenses, so its all been removed too.
Same with Daytona USA arcade machine re-release a couple of years back at the arcades. ‘Sega Racing Classic’, and the music in game with ‘Daytonaaaaaaa’ removed.