If you’re rushing to grab the latest round of free-ish games included in October’s PS Plus Extra or Premium bundle, you might want to slow your horses slightly and double-check that you aren’t about to accidentally lose your ownership of one of the games forever. Due to an ongoing bug with the PlayStation’s current subscription service, if you previously picked up PS Plus Essential’s giveaway of Yakuza: Like a Dragon in 2022, downloading it again today will erase your license to own it completely!
This issue is pointed out by PlayStation Lifestyle‘s Zarmena Khan, who has been trying to raise awareness of this hefty problem ever since Sony relaunched its PS Plus service three years ago. It boils down like this: Back in the day, when you downloaded the monthly freebies from PS Plus Essential, they were yours to keep for so long as you maintained your subscription. It was a great deal, and made logging in at the start of a month—well—essential. However, in 2022 this changed, with PS Plus shifting to be more like Microsoft’s Game Pass, such that the games are only accessible to play so long as they remain a part of the PS Plus catalog. Once they’re gone from there, you can no longer play them without paying for the full version. The problem is, if you picked up a game via the Essential service and then re-download it via the 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 comes to an end. And that’s pretty bad!
This month makes this issue particularly relevant, with Yakuza: Like a Dragon, which was originally given away as part of PS Plus Essential in August 2022, now available in the catalog. Reddit user kabirsingh84 first raised the concern yesterday, reminding people that the PS Plus Extra version that arrives today will delete your license.
So before you grab it—and indeed any other game added to the PS Plus subscription—make sure to check your library to see if you picked it up any time before 2022. It’s so easy to have grabbed all three games in any given month, forgot you ever did, and then too easily lose your ongoing right to play it.
Of course, this all shines a bright light on the degree to which we increasingly don’t own the majority of the games we play, or even buy, as consumer rights are eroded by deeply dubious digital licenses.
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