Owners of Sony's securities have certainly had several restless and sleepless nights or have already liquidated their assets.
Digital panic and market drops. Sony rattled the gaming community
At least that is what the stock price of the Japanese giant indicates, showing a clear dip, losing billions of USD in market capitalization at its peak.
The cause of this situation is a speculation avalanche concerning radical changes in digital rights management (DRM) policy for PS4 and PS5 consoles.
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Social media began to show posts claiming the company intended to introduce mandatory online license verification every 30 days for all games purchased in the PlayStation Store.
This would mean that a digitally purchased game must be verified at least once a month to play it and not be blocked. For gamers and investors, such rumors signal an alarm. The gaming industry is now not just about hardware sales, but primarily about a services ecosystem.
Every move that gamers perceive as anti-consumer directly hits the company's valuation. The market reacted almost allergic to the vision where the consumer essentially “rents” a game instead of owning it.
However, it is worth noting that today in digital stores gamers actually buy a license to use the software.
It is hard to be surprised by such a panicked reaction if we look at the situation with Ubisoft’s The Crew, which was suddenly discontinued, despite a large number of still playing users.
Although Ubisoft explained its decision as cost optimization, players were outraged by the fact that owning the game meant they could not play it after official servers shut down. This also sparked the consumer action Stop Killing Games.
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Sony breaks silence - official stance on DRM
After a festival of speculation and rumors, Sony finally decided to cut the speculation that was increasingly threatening the giant’s shares.
The company issued an official statement intended to calm both the outraged fan crowd and nervous brokers. In a brief but substantive communication sent to Gamespot, Sony explained the mechanism of its security:
Players can still use purchased games and play them as before. Only a one-time online verification is required to confirm the game license; after that, no further verifications are needed.
Although this statement is a great relief for both shareholders and PlayStation console owners, the gaming giant’s shares still fall. Sony confirmed that there was no talk of cyclically checking digital libraries of titles before the company’s servers.
Importantly, insiders who highlighted the problem did not misunderstand the existence of a verification mechanism, but significantly overestimated its inconvenience.
Now the market’s attention shifts to how Sony intends to rebuild the damaged trust. We can expect new marketing campaigns emphasizing the benefits of being part of the PlayStation family. In the background, competition from Microsoft and Steam, which also plans to release its console named Steam Machine, looms.
In a crisis in the component market, the game of players and their loyalty is starting to take shape like two decades ago, when console wars were completely normal for the market.
The current price of Sony shares on April 30 is 19,78 USD.
Chart. Sony share price
Source: TradingView.
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Source: GameSpot.
