Can someone explain to my why whenever there is a thread like this there are certain people who are practically tripping over themselves in their hurry to defend corporate bullshit? What drives a person to do that?
In threads like these, reading comprehension seems to take back seat to unbridled rage. Plenty of people in "these threads" tend to take a dispassionate look and explain how this stuff works. Then they get accused of being "corporate apologists" or what have you. Some even say "and btw, my opinion is I don't like it" - and STILL get called corporate apologists.
In this particular case, it's quite true that software is licensed, whether physical or digital. The emotional connection people have to the idea of ownership notwithstanding and the rationalizations that connection inspires them to make.
Having said that, what Sony MAY be embarking on here (if they do not take further steps to address this issue) is bad news, for their reputation especially.
In the interests of not being categorized as an "apologist", I shall now say a corporation does bad things. *clears throat*
Sony really gives the aura that end user and customer concerns are essentially at the absolute bottom of their priority list. Worse than most, even worse than Microsoft in a lot of ways. In this case, what appears to have happened is that it isn't that Sony's DD system broke; they do have basic provisions for preserving the customer's right to a purchased PSN title in perpetuity. But when extraordinary circumstances hit Sony, they freak out and make rash, shoot-from-the-hip responses.
In this case, their response to the mere possibility of a full Vita hack was to not just bar future sales of the affected PSP games, but effectively destroy those games, wiping them from existence. With apparently no plan on what to do next to resolve the situation. (Until we hear otherwise.)
... and that does set a bad and scary precedent. It means that at the slightest hint of inconvenience for Sony, they will rip anything off PSN with very likely no provisions, forethought, or after-the-fact plan for fixing it. This is sobering and may be one of the first real significant fuckups that the major platform holders have made with DD. The fact that it involves a pair of "mere" PSP games is just the canary in the mineshaft.
For example, Zipper is apparently going out of business. Unit 13, the recently released title for Vita, is buggy and desperately needs support. What if a Vita exploit is discovered tomorrow due to how buggy the game is, and with no staff left to do real work on it, Sony just cancels the game's existence and rips it down?
What if a year from now some other significant game has a bug or issue uncovered that sets off Sony's berserker response to Playstation firmware hacks? If this new behavior is a sign of things to come, their response would be to crush the threat as clumsily as possible with no thought to the situation of their paying customers.
dang it I wanted to buy that game but kept waiting for the 2-pack to go up on PSN