Sony tells a US court that PlayStation buyers do not own their digital games

Four California PlayStation buyers who spent hundreds of dollars on digital goods are suing Sony Interactive Entertainment, arguing that the PlayStation Store’s checkout language promised ownership while the transaction granted only a limited, revocable license.

Andrew Garcia, Edward Heycock, Jason Mendoza and John Salinas filed the class action in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on June 18, 2026, Case No. 3:26-cv-06016. Each plaintiff says he was not aware the games were licensed rather than sold, and that the belief he was buying ownership led him to pay more than he otherwise would have. Their purchases include NBA 2K26 for $65.99, Resident Evil Requiem for $69.99 and Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 for $7.99.

What the complaint says

The complaint alleges the store advertises digital games with ownership language such as “Buy Now” and “Confirm Purchase,” while the disclosure above the confirm button appears in comparatively small, unhighlighted text — short of the clear and conspicuous disclosure California law requires. The license granted by Sony’s Software Product License Agreement “expressly provides that the software is ‘licensed to you, not sold’,” the complaint notes, barring buyers from renting, sublicensing, copying, reverse engineering or transferring a game, with access tied to the platform’s continued availability. The proposed class covers California residents who bought digital games from the PlayStation Store after the state’s digital-goods transparency law took effect.

Sony: reasonable consumers would not be misled

On August 21, 2026, Sony moved to compel individual arbitration under the PlayStation Terms of Service and, in the alternative, to dismiss the complaint with prejudice. The terms place a binding arbitration agreement and a class-action waiver in Section 14, with a 30-day opt-out window that Sony says none of the plaintiffs used. Under the heading “Reasonable Consumers Would Not Be Misled,” the company argued it is not plausible that reasonable consumers believed they were obtaining ownership, noting that Heycock bought Resident Evil Requiem for $69.99 on February 25, 2026, eleven days after Mendoza had bought the same game — which could not happen if a buyer became its exclusive owner. A hearing is set for October 1, 2026 before Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco.

Sony’s own pages talk about the games you own

The wiki page that surfaced alongside the case collects Sony’s own wording: support pages explaining how to upgrade “an eligible digital PS4 game you already own,” a “Check license ownership” troubleshooting section, a Share Play page saying two players can enjoy a game “regardless of who owns it,” and listings that describe add-on content as free for “owners” of the main game — which must be owned for downloadable content to work at all. Sony’s terms, by contrast, tell users they “do not own the product” obtained from the store.

The dispute runs alongside a format shift: Sony said on July 1, 2026 that it will end physical disc production for new PlayStation games from January 2028, and KitGuru, citing Sony’s fiscal report, reported that 85% of game sales in the quarter to March 31, 2026 were digital.