The Buy Button Doesn't Mean What You Think
On March 31, 2024, Ubisoft shut down the servers for The Crew, a racing game that had been on shelves for ten years. A few weeks later, the company went further: they revoked the licenses entirely, removing the game from players' libraries. The message they received was blunt: "You no longer have access to this game. Why not check the Store to pursue your adventures?"
Players who paid $60 for the game in 2014 now own precisely nothing.
This wasn't a bug. Ubisoft's legal response to the ensuing lawsuit was clearer than their marketing ever was: players had purchased a "limited license," not ownership. The packaging had said so, in capital letters, in fine print, somewhere below the $59.99 price tag.
Three months earlier, Sony had attempted something similar. In December 2023, PlayStation announced it would delete over 1,300 seasons of Discovery content—MythBusters, Deadliest Catch, How It's Made—from user libraries. Shows that users had paid for, individually, using a button that said "Buy."
The backlash was immediate. Sony reversed course, negotiating a 30-month extension with Warner Bros. Discovery. The terms of service stayed the same: all content is licensed on a "non-exclusive and revocable basis." They backed off, but they didn't back down.
Warner Bros. Discovery, meanwhile, has been methodically erasing its own streaming history. Westworld, four seasons and a devoted fanbase, was canceled and then pulled from Max entirely. Same for Love Life, HBO Max's first scripted original. Same for Minx, which had already been renewed for a second season when the axe fell.
There are no physical copies. When a streaming original disappears, it disappears completely. The creators who spent years making it, the viewers who wanted to revisit it—none of that factors into the quarterly earnings math that makes delisting content "save north of $100 million annually."
California noticed.
AB 2426, signed in September 2024 and effective January 1, 2025, makes California the first state to call this what it is: false advertising. Digital storefronts can still sell you a license that can be revoked at any time. But they can no longer pretend that's the same as selling you the thing.
The law requires explicit disclosure: if you're buying a license, not ownership, the seller must say so. Clearly. Separately from the other terms and conditions. Before you click the button that still says "Buy."
It's a disclosure law, not a fix. You still don't own anything.
The industry calls this "digital content management." A more honest term: the slow renegotiation of what purchasing means.
You buy a book, you own it. You buy an album, you can play it forever. You buy a movie, it sits on your shelf until you throw it away. Digital goods looked like the same transaction—same button, same price, same receipt. The only difference was the clause on page 47 of terms nobody reads: we can take this back whenever we want.
The courts are catching up. Ubisoft is being sued. California is demanding honesty. The Stop Killing Games movement is pushing for legislation across Europe. But every digital storefront on earth is still built on the same assumption: your library exists at their pleasure.
The question isn't whether this is legal. It clearly is.
The question is how long we'll keep pretending that "Buy" means buy.