PlayStation's Summer Sale list includes many licenses they can take away at anytime

The annual PlayStation Store Summer Sale begins on July 15, promising discounts of up to 75 percent across hundreds of PS4, PS5, and PS VR2 titles. The preview published by PlayStation Blog includes the usual heavy hitters.

If there are some 2024 era or earlier games you were holding out on, now is the time to purchase a version that you don't actually own. Can you tell I'm still bitter about Sony killing physical? Well keep reading, I get more into it at the bottom.

Armored Core and Cyberpunk

The list is packed with established games. Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is getting a price cut. This is a great excuse to play FromSoftware's excellent mech revival if you skipped it since its release in August 2023. The Batman: Arkham Collection and Control: Ultimate Edition are also on the board. Both offer massive single-player campaigns for what will likely be a few dollars.

If you want something lighter, the Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time and Crashiversary Bundle packages are listed. Strategy fans can look out for Crusader Kings III: Royal Edition and Cities: Skylines - Remastered.

Sales like these are exactly what turn me into a digital hoarder. It is incredibly easy to buy up 100-hour RPGs like Cyberpunk 2077 just because the price dropped, telling yourself you will eventually find the time to play them.

I might be done with Sony

Despite the tempting list, I have a pretty bad taste in my mouth about Sony lately. I will probably not be spending any money with them during this sale, or anytime soon. Between the ongoing death of physical releases and the absolute hoops they make you jump through when you move to a new country and need your account updated, the ecosystem feels increasingly hostile.

Sony still ties PlayStation Network accounts to the region where they were created. This policy dates all the way back to the launch of the PlayStation 3 in 2006. If you relocate internationally, you cannot simply update your country in the settings. You have to create an entirely new account, split your library, and manage multiple logins just to buy new games with a local payment method. It gets even more complicated with family management.

When physical games were the norm, this was a minor annoyance. You could just walk into a store and buy a disc. Now that the industry is aggressively pushing digital-only consoles and physical media is disappearing from retail shelves, being locked out of your own purchase history over a change of address is unacceptable. The convenience of a digital sale evaporates the moment you realize you do not actually own any of these files, and the platform holder can make accessing them a bureaucratic nightmare.