They also changed the way DRM works for digital games purchased after March 2026. It used to be a permanent license at purchase time and is now a temporary license that requires online check for the duration of the refund period with the claimed reason of combating “refund fraud”.

It's pretty hard for me to believe that going through the trouble to set up an entirely new Playstation account, buy a game, refund it, and have the dedication to stay offline forever to keep the game could possibly have been a widespread behavior. It will obviously be easy for them to ratchet that into online check required every 30 days once the current thing is out of the news cycle: https://kotaku.com/playstation-drm-ps4-ps5-support-30-days-o...