THE EVIDENCE

You do not own your games

45 CLAUSES QUOTED AND ARCHIVED · LAST VERIFIED

Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and Valve all put a button on your screen that says Buy. All four have written down, in terms they published themselves, that no sale takes place. Even GOG and itch.io, the stores that sell themselves on ownership, grant licences in their own terms; their pages here document what they do differently, and how far that goes.

How we compiled this

This is not a theory, and it does not need one. Every platform holder has already conceded the point in writing. They just did it in a document nobody reads, in language chosen so the storefront could keep saying "buy" without anybody having to explain what it means.

So we read the documents. All of them: the terms of service, the software licences, the console agreements, the refund policies, and, in Sony's case, seventeen previous versions of its own terms going back to 2007. Then we quoted the clauses exactly, photographed them on the companies' own pages, and froze a copy of every source so that these citations still work after the next revision. There is always a next revision.

What follows is their words, not ours. Where we are inferring rather than quoting, we say so on the page, in the same size type.

Sony PlayStation

9 EXHIBITS · 6 DECISIVE

Sony is the only one that tells you the word Buy is meaningless. It is in the Terms of Service, under a heading with the word purchase in it.

“you buy a personal license to use that product ... but do not own the product”

PlayStation Terms of Service, 8.4

READ THE EVIDENCE

Nintendo Switch

8 EXHIBITS · 5 DECISIVE

Nintendo says it at every layer: the store, the account and the console. Since May 2025 it is also the bluntest about the hardware: break the licence rules and the console itself can be rendered permanently unusable.

“Some Products, such as software and digital content, are licensed, not sold, to you”

Purchase and Subscription Terms, 4

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Microsoft Xbox

6 EXHIBITS · 5 DECISIVE

Microsoft reaches the same result as Sony without ever telling you. It admits licensed, not sold only in the fine print, then says purchase everywhere a shopper looks and lets you draw your own conclusion.

“The software is licensed, not sold, and Microsoft reserves all rights to the software not expressly granted”

Microsoft Services Agreement, 8.b

READ THE EVIDENCE

Valve Steam

5 EXHIBITS · 3 DECISIVE

Valve is the only one that puts a real sale and a fake one in the same contract. A Steam Deck is sold to you. A game is not. The difference is not the money.

“The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services.”

Steam Subscriber Agreement, 2.A

READ THE EVIDENCE

GOG GOG

9 EXHIBITS · 4 DECISIVE

A storefront we genuinely like, and its terms still are not ownership: the same personal licence as everywhere else, no resale, no inheritance. What GOG does differently is let the downloaded files outlive the deal.

“Your GOG account and GOG content are personal to you and cannot be shared with, sold, gifted or transferred to anyone else.”

GOG User Agreement, 3.3

READ THE EVIDENCE

itch.io itch.io

8 EXHIBITS · 4 DECISIVE

The docs call you an owner and the terms never do: itch.io grants the most generous licence in this report, then routes it through an account, a page and a file it never promises to keep. Even its founder's advice is to download and back up.

“Download and backup your games and don’t let any corporation dictate what you can own.”

Update on NSFW content, July 2025

READ THE EVIDENCE
QUICK ANSWERS

The short version, with the receipts

Every answer here is about the stores you buy from today, Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Valve, GOG and itch.io, not about Gamakura, except the last, which says why a store would publish this at all. Short answers in their own words, with a link under every claim to the clause that carries it.

Do you own the games you buy on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, or Switch?
No. Every storefront on this site writes it down. Sony's terms say "licensed to you, not sold", Microsoft's say "All Digital Goods are licensed, not sold", Valve's say "The Content and Services are licensed, not sold", Nintendo's say "licensed, not sold, to you", and even GOG, the store that markets ownership, names your purchase a licence. itch.io's help pages call you an owner; its terms grant a licence too. The button says buy. The document behind it says licence.

What does "licensed, not sold" actually mean?
That your money bought permission, not property. A thing you own is yours to keep, to sell, and to pass on; a licence is permission to use the game on conditions the store wrote, ending when its terms say it ends. The stores spell out the difference themselves: Valve's agreement says your licence confers "no title or ownership", and that every copy of the game, including the one on your own drive, is "owned by Valve". What you hold is not the game. It is a permission slip the other side drafted.

Can these stores take back a game you paid for?
Their terms say yes, each in its own way. Valve can cancel with no fault on your part at all, Nintendo reserves the right to make purchases "permanently unusable in whole or in part", Microsoft lists "forfeiture of content licenses" among its enforcement options, and even GOG's rules let a banned account lose "all rights to games you have in your library". Whether a company would is a different question from what you agreed it may.

Can the terms change after you buy?
Yes, quietly, and two of these pages catch it happening. Between October 2022 and March 2025, the trigger in Sony's termination clause moved from a violation you committed to Sony holding a "reasonable belief" that one will occur. Nintendo's May 2025 rewrite added the words "licensed, not sold, to you" to an agreement that had never used them. Both changes are shown before and after in the companies' own published text, with an archived copy of each version.

What happens to your games if Steam or another store shuts down?
The contracts are almost silent, Steam's included: the closest Valve's agreement comes is a clause letting it cancel subscriptions it "ceases providing", which says nothing about the store itself closing. Sony makes "no commitment to continue to make those servers available". Only GOG addresses its own shutdown: a best-efforts promise of sixty days of notice to download everything you bought before the lights go out.

Can you resell, gift, or hand down a game you bought from these stores?
No store here allows any of the three. Valve says a boxed retail key can never move to another account, Microsoft rules out transfer and resale of digital goods, Sony heads an entire section "No Resale or Commercial Use", and GOG's terms bar your games from being "shared with, sold, gifted or transferred to anyone else". Where a will would ask the question, the no-transfer clauses have already answered it.

Are GOG and itch.io different, since they are DRM-free?
In practice, honestly, yes. We like both stores and believe they are good actors: on GOG, delisted games stay in your library and the installers you download outlive the store; on itch.io, the licence is perpetual and written to survive delisting. In law, no: GOG's agreement still grants a licence and bars resale and transfer; when GOG explained what it meant by letting you own your games, its answer was the files, not the title, and itch.io's founder gives the same answer as advice: download and back up. The full pictures, credit and limits both, are on the GOG page and the itch.io page.

Do these companies know how to write a real sale?
Yes, and it is the most telling exhibit on the site. Valve's agreement writes a real "contract of sale" for a Steam Deck, in those words, in the same document that says games are "licensed, not sold". When these companies mean a sale, they write one. For a game, none of them ever has.

Has anyone actually lost games they bought from these stores?
That question is exactly why every page here has a "what we are not claiming" section. These pages argue from what the contracts say, not from a tally of incidents, and they decline the popular stories the documents do not support: see Valve's or Sony's. Where a company's own posts document practice, we quote them: GOG's delisting announcement is the clearest example.

Why is a game store publishing this?
Because we are building the alternative, and you should weigh that while you read. Gamakura is a store being built so that buying a game means owning it, which gives us an interest in this argument landing. That is exactly why the method assumes no trust: every claim is a verbatim quote with a screenshot, a live link and an archived copy beside it, so you can check the documents yourself rather than take our word for what they say.

WHO WROTE THIS, AND HOW FAR TO TRUST IT

Researched and published by Gamakura. Document analysis assisted by AI; every quote is verbatim and checkable against the source and archived snapshot linked beside it. Last verified 17 July 2026.

This is a best effort reading of public documents by people who are not lawyers, and it is not legal advice. We quote exactly and we link every source, and we can still be wrong about what a clause means: a contract term can carry case law, definitions and context that change its effect.

So do not take our word for it. Read the documents yourself using the links on every exhibit, and if a conclusion here matters to a decision you are making, get the advice of an attorney before you rely on it.

Compiled 16 July to 17 July 2026; each page carries its own date. Every quote was read from the live document on its page's date and checked against the dated Wayback snapshot cited beside it.

THE POINT OF ALL THIS

We are building the one where you own it

Gamakura is a store where buying a game means owning it: yours to keep, to resell, and to still have when the servers go dark. It is not built yet. Raise your hand and help decide how it gets made.

Quick questions. This is the data that gets this moving.
IF WE CROWDFUNDED IT, WOULD YOU TAKE PART?
WHO WOULD YOU TRUST TO FUND THIS? (PICK ANY)
HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT TO HEAR FROM US?

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