Those who were lucky enough to get PlayStation 5 and have a PS Plus Subscription get immediate access to 20 excellent PlayStation 4 titles dubbed the PS Plus Collection. Unfortunately, this is only for new owners of the PlayStation 5, and not available to PlayStation 4 users despite being the very same system that these titles launched on. However, people figured out a loophole to this lockout by signing their credentials into a PSN account on a PlayStation 5, claim the free games, and then download them onto their PlayStation 4’s. According to Video Game Chronicles, some users are taking advantage of this by selling the unlock on auction sites, which has led to Sony banning both PlayStation 4 and 5 users.
According to the report, the bans seem to be taking place mostly in Hong Kong at the moment, but it’s definitely possible that the company has banned other users in different countries. In addition, the report states that those who used the service to unlock the games for their PlayStation 4 will be banned for two months, while the PlayStation 5 users who did the unlocking are reportedly being banned from the PSN permanently. Video Games Chronicles mentions that these bans might be the result of a system that monitors how many different logins one console has in a day in order to prevent fraudulent activities, although this has not been made clear by Sony.
Considering the draw power that the PS Plus Collection has, it’s easy to see how tempted users are to try and use this loophole to their advantage. However, if the system, and by extension Sony themselves, are banning users for exploiting this, the question of risk and reward comes into play. For those that were banned for two months, this means that they cannot gain access to their gaming library for the entirety of the holiday season. This situation is made even worse for the users on PlayStation 5 bans, as their brand new system, the one that just launched weeks ago, is now severely limited to only a handful of functions.