CHOICE names Sony in its 2026 Shonky Awards over digital ownership

Hero image: JDC808 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

CHOICE, Australia's leading consumer advocacy group, published its 21st annual Shonky Awards on 4 November. Sony Interactive Entertainment is one of six recipients, listed "for asking us to pay to play, but not own". Ticketek and Ticketmaster, Virgin Australia, Hisense, Quest Protein Chips and Petcover took the other five spots.

Sony was not cited for a defective console or a failed repair programme. The complaint is about the terms attached to every digital purchase on PlayStation, and about a decision Sony made in July that removes the alternative.

What Sony actually announced

The January 2028 date is not CHOICE's inference. SIE communications director Sid Shuman wrote on the PlayStation Blog on 1 July 2026 that "physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028". Titles released before that date keep their discs. Sony framed the change as a response to consumer preference.

The same day, Sony confirmed that the PS3 and PS Vita stores close in most markets by July 2027, with previously purchased content downloadable "for the foreseeable future". That phrase is Sony's.

What is documented, what is argued

The licence question is settled by Sony's own terms: "The Software is licensed to you, not sold."

The dispute is about the shop. CHOICE argues the storefront never surfaces that sentence. Its games expert Peter Zaluzny describes the final step as "Order & Pay", and the group writes that "the checkout process so frequently and consistently uses the term 'purchase' that customers could reasonably interpret it as ownership, rather than licensing". That is CHOICE's characterisation of a flow we could only partly check: a live PlayStation Store product page shows a price and an "Add to Cart" button, with no ownership language in that block.

The film removals are on the record. The notice Sony sent users, quoted by outlets in June, read: "From September 1, 2026, due to our content licensing agreements, you will no longer be able to access your previously purchased content from Studio Canal, and it will be removed from your video library." CHOICE puts the figure at 500 films; other reports say 551. No refund route was announced, and storefront refunds are already narrower than buyers expect (refund window data).

The compound effect is CHOICE's argument, not its finding. It rests on a property a disc has and a licence does not: it keeps working after a store delists a title, and after an account gets banned. From 2028, new games will not have that option.

What the award is, and what it is not

CHOICE is a consumer group, not a court or a regulator. The Shonkys carry no penalty and force no change. The finding is a public one, and it can be disputed.

Sony has not issued a public response to the award. Its July blog posts remain the company's position, and they address the format change rather than the licensing question CHOICE raised.

Why the timing matters

Pressure has moved Sony before. In April 2021, about a week after announcing that the PS3 and Vita stores would close, SIE's then president and CEO Jim Ryan wrote that "it's clear that we made the wrong decision here" and kept both open. The PSP store still shut.

Players are making the same noise now. On 6 November, PlayStation promoted new PS Plus perks, including a three-month YouTube Premium trial, a Calm trial and Audible discounts. GamesRadar recorded the replies: "The only perk I want is discs." "Do the trials come on disc?"

Sony is selling subscriptions and licences with language built for a shelf of boxes it has decided to stop making. The gap between a storefront's label and what buyers get for their money is not new. The difference here is what disappears when the label is wrong.

The Shonky has no legal weight. It does put a name and a date on a question Sony has otherwise answered only in its terms of service.