The Sony Playstation ranks in the top tier of gaming consoles, with 4000+ games and an immersive gaming experience. Since its creation back in 1994 with PS1, now we are at PS5, and Sony isn’t stopping anytime soon. And we have also come a long way from playing games with CDs to online accounts and cloud services. Just thinking about it all feels nostalgic.
Now Playstation works on a subscription basis, which was previously known as Playstation Plus subscription. The Playstation Plus subscription is still there but divided into tiers – Essential, Extra, Premium, and Deluxe. The benefits that you receive depend on the tier-based subscription you have. In addition, you can also purchase lifetime game licenses if you don’t want a subscription-based service.
But while you are in full swing on your PS5, have you ever thought if you could lose that game in a moment? A Reddit thread revealed that you could lose access to your games under certain conditions. Let’s see what the thread is, what peculiar details it reveals, and why it is essential to thoroughly read the Terms and Conditions of Service before using it.
What Exactly Happened and Why?
The chat depicts a fellow gamer talking with Playstation Support about a game he can’t access anymore. Though he has a valid subscription, it turns out that it can happen. According to the support executive’s replies, the developer had removed the license for this game for both PS4 and PS5, hence the locked status.
This part is quite unclear, and it seems that the support executive couldn’t understand what exactly happened and failed to provide a real solution. The terms that he shared don’t clear the situation. The only important point of relevance it shows is that Playstation keeps editing subscription tiers for better variety.
A better explanation depicts that it is a result of the tier system upgrade. Playstation works on providing the best experience, and the better the tier, the more in-game features and benefits your get. So if you have a game under the Essential deck but add it again using other upgraded tiers, the Essential one gets outplayed, and now you are running it on the upgraded one.
The problem with upgraded tiers is that games are usually changed – added, and removed. So now, if the game is released from the upgraded tier, you will lose it, and since the previous Essential tier license was overwritten, you can’t access it through that anymore.
What do the Terms & Conditions say?
If we consider the Terms of Use, Sony can do it. The PS Plus Usage terms clearly say that the Games included in the subscription are subject to change; not only that but the other features and benefits of Playstation Plus are also subject to change. Well, it’s the first point that matters the most here, and the fact makes the explanation even more solid.
The terms don’t mention a notice before such an event, so it isn’t sure if they are liable for that. But they should provide a note of the action as it would clear the air. Still didn’t get the “reasonable notice” part from the second image, notice to the user, or from the developer, but it doesn’t matter much now.
What to do in such a case?
I haven’t seen such a case before, so I might not know if you can claim it back or if Sony has a term for such a condition, but I feel they don’t. This means you can’t legally claim your game back, as I know. However, you can only talk to the support and see if they get you the game from another tier.
Nobody could have predicted this unless they went through it, so it’s always better to read the Terms of Use and understand it correctly. The better way is to stay in the Essential tier if you want to keep the game. The odds say that the game will likely be removed from the upper tiers first than the lower ones.
Also, this does not apply to purchased games since they are not a part of the subscriptions and are handled differently. Playstation should look over this and provide a real solution because it’s just plain lousy management and disgraces the “good experience.”
