Give Gamers True Digital Ownership – If We Pay Full Price, We Should Own Our Games
The Issue
Give Gamers True Digital Ownership
- If We Pay Full Price, We Should Own Our Games
For generations, ownership was simple.
When you buy a book, you own it.
When you buy a television, you own it.
When you buy a car, you own it.
When players bought physical video games, they owned a tangible copy they could keep, collect, lend, trade, resell where permitted by law, and preserve for future generations.
Digital technology has transformed how games are delivered. It has brought convenience, instant downloads, automatic updates, cloud saves, and easier access for millions of players.
However, it has also changed the relationship between consumers and the products they purchase.
Today, millions of gamers spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars building digital game libraries. Yet under the licensing model used throughout much of the gaming industry, consumers often receive only a revocable license to access a game—not meaningful ownership of the copy they paid for.
We believe this must change.
When consumers pay full retail price for a digital game, they should receive strong, permanent, and clearly defined rights over that purchase.
Convenience should not require customers to surrender reasonable expectations of ownership, preservation, account recovery, and long-term access.
- The Future of Gaming Is Becoming Digital
The gaming industry is moving rapidly away from physical media.
Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced that physical disc production for all new games released on PlayStation consoles will end beginning in January 2028. After that date, newly released PlayStation games will be sold digitally through the PlayStation Store and through retailers offering digital formats.
This means the debate is no longer only about saving physical discs.
It is about the future of ownership itself.
When physical copies disappear, consumers may lose the last practical alternative to digital licensing systems controlled entirely by platform holders and publishers.
A physical game does not require the owner to remain active on an account.
A physical game does not disappear because an online storefront closes.
A physical game can often be preserved, displayed, lent, traded, or resold.
A physical game can remain on a shelf for decades.
Digital games should provide reasonable protections that reflect those same expectations of lasting ownership.
Our Request
We call on Sony Interactive Entertainment, Microsoft Gaming, Nintendo, Valve, Epic Games, and all major game publishers and digital storefront operators to modernize digital ownership and provide consumers with stronger, permanent rights over the games they legally purchase.
Specifically, we ask these companies to:
1. Provide Meaningful Digital Ownership
Consumers should be offered true digital ownership or, at minimum, a permanent and non-revocable personal licence for every legitimately purchased game.
A company should not be able to remove access to a legally purchased game without a serious, clearly explained, and legally justified reason.
2. Guarantee Long-Term Access
Purchased games should remain available even when an account has been inactive for an extended period, subject to reasonable security and identity-verification measures.
Account inactivity alone should never erase years of legitimate purchases.
3. Protect Digital Libraries
Companies should create fair, transparent, and reliable recovery procedures for accounts that are compromised, mistakenly closed, suspended, or made inaccessible.
Customers should have a meaningful appeal process before permanently losing access to their digital libraries.
4. Allow Personal Backups
Consumers should be allowed to create secure personal backup copies of legally purchased games on approved storage devices, including external hard drives.
These backups should be protected against piracy and unauthorized distribution while still allowing customers to restore their games if a console fails, an internal drive becomes damaged, or an online service is discontinued.
Players should not be forced to depend forever on a company’s servers to access a product they already paid for.
5. Preserve Offline Single-Player Games
Legitimately purchased single-player games should remain playable without permanent online authentication whenever technically possible.
If a storefront, authentication server, or platform service is retired, companies should provide a final update, offline mode, or another reasonable method that allows customers to continue using their purchases.
6. Clearly Explain What Is Being Sold
Before checkout, companies should clearly state whether the customer is purchasing:
Ownership of a digital copy;
A permanent licence;
A subscription-based entitlement; or
A temporary or revocable licence.
Words such as “buy,” “purchase,” and “own” should not be used in a misleading way when no ownership rights are being transferred.
7. Support Library Transfers and Inheritance
Consumers should have a secure process to transfer eligible digital purchases to another approved account or leave their digital game libraries to family members after death.
A digital collection built over decades should not automatically disappear when its original account holder dies.
8. Protect Game Preservation
Publishers and platform holders should develop clear preservation plans for games when storefronts, servers, launchers, or authentication systems are retired.
Museums, historians, archivists, collectors, and future generations should not lose access to gaming history because a company no longer wishes to support a particular service.
9. Continue Physical Editions Wherever Practical
Digital gaming should not automatically eliminate physical consumer choice.
Companies should continue producing physical editions, collector’s editions, cartridges, discs, or archival versions wherever practical and commercially reasonable.
Consumers should be free to choose the ownership model that best meets their needs.
10. Establish Fair Digital Pricing
Digital games remove many costs connected to physical manufacturing, packaging, transportation, storage, and retail distribution.
Digital pricing should be fair, transparent, and should not be used to charge customers more while offering them fewer ownership rights.
Why This Matters
For many players, a gaming library represents years of work, saving, sacrifice, memories, and financial investment.
These libraries may include hundreds of games, downloadable expansions, additional content, season passes, soundtracks, and other purchases.
Losing access to such a collection is not a minor inconvenience.
It can mean losing thousands of dollars in legitimately purchased content.
Around the world, lawmakers, consumer advocates, and courts are increasingly examining whether existing digital licensing systems offer adequate protection to customers.
The question is becoming more urgent as entertainment companies move away from physical products and place greater control in the hands of digital platforms.
Technology has changed.
Consumer protections must evolve alongside it.
This Is Not an Attack on Digital Gaming
This petition is not against digital distribution.
Digital games offer convenience and accessibility, and many customers prefer them.
This is also not an attempt to weaken copyright protections, encourage piracy, or deny creators fair compensation.
Game developers, artists, writers, musicians, publishers, and other creators deserve to be paid and protected.
However, protecting creators and respecting consumers are not opposing goals.
A fair digital marketplace can protect intellectual property while also giving paying customers durable, transparent, and meaningful rights.
The future of gaming should protect both the people who create games and the players who invest in them.
Our Message to the Gaming Industry
We do not want temporary access disguised as ownership.
We do not want years of purchases dependent on one account, one server, one email address, or one company’s changing policies.
We do not want digital games taken away without fair notice, due process, recovery options, or compensation.
We want transparency.
We want preservation.
We want consumer choice.
We want lasting access to the products we legally purchase.
We do not just want permission to play.
We want meaningful ownership.
Please sign and share this petition to support stronger digital ownership rights, continued access to legally purchased games, personal backup options, game preservation, fair pricing, and consumer choice.
If We Buy It, We Should Own It.
We Don’t Rent Our Games. We Buy Them.
Your Shelf Doesn’t Have a Terms of Service.
1
The Issue
Give Gamers True Digital Ownership
- If We Pay Full Price, We Should Own Our Games
For generations, ownership was simple.
When you buy a book, you own it.
When you buy a television, you own it.
When you buy a car, you own it.
When players bought physical video games, they owned a tangible copy they could keep, collect, lend, trade, resell where permitted by law, and preserve for future generations.
Digital technology has transformed how games are delivered. It has brought convenience, instant downloads, automatic updates, cloud saves, and easier access for millions of players.
However, it has also changed the relationship between consumers and the products they purchase.
Today, millions of gamers spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars building digital game libraries. Yet under the licensing model used throughout much of the gaming industry, consumers often receive only a revocable license to access a game—not meaningful ownership of the copy they paid for.
We believe this must change.
When consumers pay full retail price for a digital game, they should receive strong, permanent, and clearly defined rights over that purchase.
Convenience should not require customers to surrender reasonable expectations of ownership, preservation, account recovery, and long-term access.
- The Future of Gaming Is Becoming Digital
The gaming industry is moving rapidly away from physical media.
Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced that physical disc production for all new games released on PlayStation consoles will end beginning in January 2028. After that date, newly released PlayStation games will be sold digitally through the PlayStation Store and through retailers offering digital formats.
This means the debate is no longer only about saving physical discs.
It is about the future of ownership itself.
When physical copies disappear, consumers may lose the last practical alternative to digital licensing systems controlled entirely by platform holders and publishers.
A physical game does not require the owner to remain active on an account.
A physical game does not disappear because an online storefront closes.
A physical game can often be preserved, displayed, lent, traded, or resold.
A physical game can remain on a shelf for decades.
Digital games should provide reasonable protections that reflect those same expectations of lasting ownership.
Our Request
We call on Sony Interactive Entertainment, Microsoft Gaming, Nintendo, Valve, Epic Games, and all major game publishers and digital storefront operators to modernize digital ownership and provide consumers with stronger, permanent rights over the games they legally purchase.
Specifically, we ask these companies to:
1. Provide Meaningful Digital Ownership
Consumers should be offered true digital ownership or, at minimum, a permanent and non-revocable personal licence for every legitimately purchased game.
A company should not be able to remove access to a legally purchased game without a serious, clearly explained, and legally justified reason.
2. Guarantee Long-Term Access
Purchased games should remain available even when an account has been inactive for an extended period, subject to reasonable security and identity-verification measures.
Account inactivity alone should never erase years of legitimate purchases.
3. Protect Digital Libraries
Companies should create fair, transparent, and reliable recovery procedures for accounts that are compromised, mistakenly closed, suspended, or made inaccessible.
Customers should have a meaningful appeal process before permanently losing access to their digital libraries.
4. Allow Personal Backups
Consumers should be allowed to create secure personal backup copies of legally purchased games on approved storage devices, including external hard drives.
These backups should be protected against piracy and unauthorized distribution while still allowing customers to restore their games if a console fails, an internal drive becomes damaged, or an online service is discontinued.
Players should not be forced to depend forever on a company’s servers to access a product they already paid for.
5. Preserve Offline Single-Player Games
Legitimately purchased single-player games should remain playable without permanent online authentication whenever technically possible.
If a storefront, authentication server, or platform service is retired, companies should provide a final update, offline mode, or another reasonable method that allows customers to continue using their purchases.
6. Clearly Explain What Is Being Sold
Before checkout, companies should clearly state whether the customer is purchasing:
Ownership of a digital copy;
A permanent licence;
A subscription-based entitlement; or
A temporary or revocable licence.
Words such as “buy,” “purchase,” and “own” should not be used in a misleading way when no ownership rights are being transferred.
7. Support Library Transfers and Inheritance
Consumers should have a secure process to transfer eligible digital purchases to another approved account or leave their digital game libraries to family members after death.
A digital collection built over decades should not automatically disappear when its original account holder dies.
8. Protect Game Preservation
Publishers and platform holders should develop clear preservation plans for games when storefronts, servers, launchers, or authentication systems are retired.
Museums, historians, archivists, collectors, and future generations should not lose access to gaming history because a company no longer wishes to support a particular service.
9. Continue Physical Editions Wherever Practical
Digital gaming should not automatically eliminate physical consumer choice.
Companies should continue producing physical editions, collector’s editions, cartridges, discs, or archival versions wherever practical and commercially reasonable.
Consumers should be free to choose the ownership model that best meets their needs.
10. Establish Fair Digital Pricing
Digital games remove many costs connected to physical manufacturing, packaging, transportation, storage, and retail distribution.
Digital pricing should be fair, transparent, and should not be used to charge customers more while offering them fewer ownership rights.
Why This Matters
For many players, a gaming library represents years of work, saving, sacrifice, memories, and financial investment.
These libraries may include hundreds of games, downloadable expansions, additional content, season passes, soundtracks, and other purchases.
Losing access to such a collection is not a minor inconvenience.
It can mean losing thousands of dollars in legitimately purchased content.
Around the world, lawmakers, consumer advocates, and courts are increasingly examining whether existing digital licensing systems offer adequate protection to customers.
The question is becoming more urgent as entertainment companies move away from physical products and place greater control in the hands of digital platforms.
Technology has changed.
Consumer protections must evolve alongside it.
This Is Not an Attack on Digital Gaming
This petition is not against digital distribution.
Digital games offer convenience and accessibility, and many customers prefer them.
This is also not an attempt to weaken copyright protections, encourage piracy, or deny creators fair compensation.
Game developers, artists, writers, musicians, publishers, and other creators deserve to be paid and protected.
However, protecting creators and respecting consumers are not opposing goals.
A fair digital marketplace can protect intellectual property while also giving paying customers durable, transparent, and meaningful rights.
The future of gaming should protect both the people who create games and the players who invest in them.
Our Message to the Gaming Industry
We do not want temporary access disguised as ownership.
We do not want years of purchases dependent on one account, one server, one email address, or one company’s changing policies.
We do not want digital games taken away without fair notice, due process, recovery options, or compensation.
We want transparency.
We want preservation.
We want consumer choice.
We want lasting access to the products we legally purchase.
We do not just want permission to play.
We want meaningful ownership.
Please sign and share this petition to support stronger digital ownership rights, continued access to legally purchased games, personal backup options, game preservation, fair pricing, and consumer choice.
If We Buy It, We Should Own It.
We Don’t Rent Our Games. We Buy Them.
Your Shelf Doesn’t Have a Terms of Service.
Petition Updates
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Petition created on 6 July 2026