Sony is reportedly banning PS4 users who pay money to access PlayStation 5’s PS Plus Collection via a loophole.
The PlayStation Plus Collection is a library of 20 PS4 games (including ten first-party games and ten third-party titles) given exclusively to PlayStation 5 owners who are also members of the paid subscription service.
However, some PS5 owners have begun exploiting a loophole with the Collection, which sees them log in to the user accounts of PS4 owners on their next-gen console, which causes the Collection games to then automatically unlock on the users’ last-gen console.
According to Sony’s marketing, the PlayStation Plus Collection is intended to be a perk for owners of PlayStation 5 consoles only.
Unsurprisingly, auction sites including eBay already have multiple listings for people offering to unlock the PS Plus Collection for PS4 in exchange for money.
At the time of publishing, one user had made £100+ charging over 20 users £5 each to unlock the PS Plus Collection on their PS4 consoles.
According to many users on a popular Chinese forum, Sony has issued multiple bans in the region for both PS5 owners selling access to the PS Plus Collection, and those PS4 owners who have purchased access to it.
According to the users, their bans will last for two months, while any PS5 consoles involved in the scheme have been permanently blocked from network services.
It’s believed PlayStation automatically bans a console when it logs into a high number of users accounts in a single day, in order to protect from fraud, so it’s not clear if Sony is banning the users simply for sharing their Collection games.
VGC has requested comment from Sony Interactive Entertainment.
PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan recently claimed SIE hasn’t decided if the PlayStation Plus Collection will be expanded beyond its initial launch line-up.
“Well, we’re going to wait and see how the world receives the Plus Collection,” he told GQ. “You know, which games are played how much they’re played before we make any decisions about that.
“We think it’s potentially going to be a great user acquisition tool. Arguably if you never had a PS4 and you choose to buy a PS5 you basically get a PS4, right?”
Ryan has previously said that a subscription model like Xbox Game Pass “doesn’t make any sense” for Sony‘s first-party operation, considering its focus on big-budget games.
However, more recently he suggested Sony may have an ace up its sleeve in terms of replying to Xbox Game Pass.
“There is actually news to come, but just not today,” Ryan told Russian news agency TASS, when asked how PlayStation will respond to Microsoft’s subscription service.
“We have PlayStation Now which is our subscription service, and that is available in a number of markets,” he continued.
PlayStation Now had over 2.2 million subscribers as of April 2020, according to Sony – up from one million in October 2019.
