many companies have been doing the “you just get a license but don’t own the thing you purchased” thing for a long time. Sony is just currently the company that is getting the most attention for it.
Because Sony decided to explicitly jump the gun and declare the future of video games as “digital only”. Yeah, Nintendo, XBOX and even Steam have declared their digital games to be “licenses”, but at least with the first two, there’s still the option of physical disks/cartridges (for now. I really don’t trust Nintendo not to pull something like this due to the Game-Key Card nonsense), and with Steam, AFAIK, you can easily back up the downloaded software.
Because Sony decided to explicitly jump the gun and declare the future of video games as “digital only”. Yeah, Nintendo, XBOX and even Steam have declared their digital games to be “licenses”, but at least with the first two, there’s still the option of physical disks/cartridges (for now. I really don’t trust Nintendo not to pull something like this due to the Game-Key Card nonsense), and with Steam, AFAIK, you can easily back up the downloaded software.