Digital Games Deserve Real Ownership

The issue is not discs. It is ownership.

The video game industry is moving steadily toward an all-digital future. Digital distribution is convenient, efficient, and often unavoidable. This proposal is not an argument against it. It is an argument that the delivery method should not determine the rights of the purchaser.

Physical media has historically allowed an owner to keep a game, lend it, give it away, sell it, donate it, or leave it to someone else. Under most current digital storefront systems, those ordinary rights disappear. A digital purchase becomes a non-transferable entitlement attached to an account and controlled by the platform holder.

The loss of physical media also threatens the secondary market. Without transferable licenses, every player who wants a particular game must buy a new license through the platform's approved store. The platform holder therefore controls distribution, availability, and price, while consumers lose the ability to recover value from games they no longer want.

A customer who purchases a game digitally should receive the same, or substantially equivalent, practical rights as a customer who purchases that game on physical media.

A Digital Consumer Bill of Rights for Games

1Permanent, non-revocable ownership

A game sold as a perpetual purchase should grant a perpetual license. Once a legitimate purchase has been completed, the publisher, copyright holder, or platform operator should not be able to revoke that license because of a later business decision, delisting, licensing dispute, or change in storefront policy.

Revocation may still be appropriate where the original transaction was invalidated by fraud, chargeback, or another lawful cause. Ending online services is also a separate matter. But when a game is capable of running locally, a purchaser should retain the right to download and play the product they bought.

2Permanent transfers and gifts

Digital licenses should be transferable. An owner should be able to give or permanently transfer a game to another user. After the transfer, the original owner would lose access and the recipient would become the sole owner.

This preserves the basic scarcity of a physical copy. The license is not duplicated; it merely changes hands.

3Digital lending

Consumers should be able to lend a digital game temporarily to a friend or family member. During the loan, the borrower would have access and the lender would not. Ownership would remain with the lender, and access would return automatically at the end of the agreed period or when the borrower returned the license.

Lending has always been part of physical ownership and an important way people discover games. A digital system can reproduce that freedom without creating an extra copy.

4A legitimate secondary market

Digital distribution should not destroy the used-game market. Owners should be able to surrender a license in exchange for a secure transfer token or another verifiable instrument that can be sold directly or traded to a retailer.

A platform-operated validation service could confirm that a token is authentic, identifies the correct title, remains unredeemed, and is eligible for transfer—without forcing the retailer to redeem it first.

5Inheritance

Digital libraries can represent thousands of dollars and decades of personal history. Consumers should be able to designate a beneficiary, or allow an executor to transfer licenses as part of an estate.

A physical collection does not vanish when its owner dies. A digital collection should not vanish merely because it is attached to an account.

6Grandfathering of licensed content

Changes in licensing agreements should govern future distribution, not rewrite past purchases.

Example: A game includes a licensed song when a customer buys it. Years later, the publisher's right to distribute that song in new copies expires. The publisher may stop selling the original edition or replace the song in future sales, but existing purchasers should retain access to the version they bought.

A physical owner does not lose music, vehicles, trademarks, or other licensed content from a disc when a contract later expires. A digital purchaser should receive equivalent treatment. Publishers should negotiate licenses that preserve perpetual playback and redownload rights for copies sold during the valid licensing period, whether through an up-front payment, continuing royalty, or another contractual arrangement.

7Clear terms at the point of sale

A storefront should state plainly whether a transaction is a perpetual purchase, a subscription benefit, a rental, or a time-limited license. Material restrictions should not be buried in legal language that bears little resemblance to the ordinary meaning of “buy.”

A digital secondary market can benefit everyone

Publishers have long objected that they receive no revenue when a physical game is resold. A digital secondary market could address that concern while preserving consumer choice.

For buyers and sellers

Buyers gain access to lower-priced older games.
Sellers recover part of the value of unused purchases.
Retailers can continue to compete with first-party storefronts.

For publishers and platforms

Each transfer can generate a reasonable royalty or transaction fee.
Older games can continue producing revenue.
Backward compatibility gains a continuing commercial value.

A used digital copy may cost a few dollars more because of that royalty and still remain a far better value than paying full launch price for a game released five or ten years earlier. This is not a demand that publishers receive nothing. It is a proposal for a fairer market in which every party receives something.

Nintendo has already demonstrated digital lending

Digital lending is not hypothetical. Nintendo's Virtual Game Card system allows eligible digital games to be lent to another member of the owner's Nintendo Account family group. Nintendo currently limits a loan to 14 days, after which the game is automatically returned.

That implementation proves that a platform can temporarily move a digital entitlement, disable the lender's access, enable the borrower's access, and return the entitlement later without creating duplicate ownership.

The limitation to members of a Nintendo Account family group is a policy choice, not an inherent technical limitation. A physical game may be lent to a friend, neighbor, coworker, classmate, or relative. Digital ownership should permit comparable freedom, subject to sensible safeguards against fraud and simultaneous use.

Convenience and ownership are not mutually exclusive

Digital technology should improve access and convenience. It should not be used to erase consumer rights that existed naturally with books, records, films, cartridges, and discs.

None of these proposals requires duplicating a license or allowing multiple people to use one purchase simultaneously. They require only that a lawful owner be allowed to keep, lend, transfer, resell, and inherit a purchased product in ways substantially equivalent to physical ownership.

If digital purchases are intended to replace physical ownership, they must provide ownership rights worthy of the name.

Sources and current examples

Sony Interactive Entertainment, “Physical disc production ending in January 2028 for new games releasing on PlayStation consoles,” PlayStation.Blog, July 1, 2026 .

Nintendo, “Virtual Game Cards” , and Nintendo Support, “Virtual Game Card Guide” .