If you’re rushing to grab the latest round of free games included in the October PS Plus Extra or Premium bundle, you might want to slow your horses down a bit and check that you’re not about to accidentally lose ownership of any of the games forever. Due to an ongoing bug with PlayStation’s current subscription service, if you’ve already picked up the PS Plus Essential gift from Yakuza: like a dragon in 2022, downloading it again today will clear your license to completely own it!
This problem is reported by PlayStation LifestyleZarmena Khan of , who has been trying to raise awareness about this serious issue since Sony relaunched its PS Plus service three years ago. It boils down to this: Back in the day, when you downloaded PS Plus Essential’s monthly freebies, you kept them for as long as you maintained your subscription. It was a good deal and it became essential to log in at the beginning of the month. However, in 2022 this has changed, with PS Plus adapting more to Microsoft’s Game Pass, so games are only accessible as long as they remain part of the PS Plus catalog. Once they’re gone, you can’t play them again without paying for the full version. The problem is that if you picked up a game through the Essential service and then re-downloaded it through modern PS Plus, your original license is permanently overwritten and you’ll lose access to a game you previously owned once its time on the sub is over. And it’s pretty bad!
This month makes this question particularly relevant, with Yakuza: like a dragoninitially offered as part of PS Plus Essential in August 2022, now available in the catalog. Reddit user kabirsingh84 first voiced his concern yesterday, reminding people that the PS Plus Extra version arriving today will remove your license.
So before you pick this up – as well as any other games added to the PS Plus subscription – be sure to check your library to see if you’ve picked it up at some point before 2022. It’s so easy to have picked up all three games in a given month, forget that you already did, and then all too easily lose your current right to play them.
Of course, all of this highlights the fact that we increasingly don’t own the majority of games we play, or even buy, while consumer rights are being eroded by deeply questionable digital licensing.
