Switching PlayStation Plus subscription plans can have unexpected effects on your game library. For good reason, some titles can disappear without warning! We will explain everything to you.
Since June 2022, the PlayStation Plus has had a facelift. From now on, Sony’s subscription is divided into three distinct formulas. The Essential offer takes up most of the features offered by the old version of PS Plus (access to online multiplayer, three games offered per month, cloud backups, etc.).
On their side, the Extra and Premium formulas notably provide access to a vast catalog of PS4 and PS5 games, as well as retro titles from the PS3, PSP, PS1 and PS2 toy library.
And precisely, Sony has just unveiled the list of games offered with the PS Plus Extra / Premium of May 2023. There are big titles, such as Rachet & Clank: Rift Apart or Watch Dogs: Legion. What therefore motivate some to abandon the Essential offer for the superior formulas.
Switching PS Plus offers can cause you to lose games
But be careful though, switching from one offer to another can cause some problems. As user Danikruces explains on Reddit, he claims to have lost access to the game Mafia 3 after changing the formula precisely. And in his eyes, there is only one possible explanation:
“I picked up Mafia 3 through Free PS Plus Games August 2018 and totally lost access to the game. I guess it’s because I downloaded Mafia Trilogy with the PS Plus Premium, and that the trilogy disappeared from the offer about 2 months ago. A friend checked on his end and he can’t access it either”, he details.
And as our colleagues on the site suggest PlayStation Lifestyleit would actually be a license problem. Simply put, Essential subscribers who picked up Mafia 3 in 2018 had a license related specifically to their offer.
A recurring concern in license management
By upgrading to Premium, players were able to request Mafia Trilogy, which was temporarily available in the catalog. By extension, users now have access to the game via this other license linked to their formula. Except that by the way, the previous license was revoked.
But where the rub is that Mafia Trilogy was removed from the PS Plus Premium catalog some time ago. Result, subscribers can no longer launch Mafia 3for want of having a valid business license. “When Mafia Trilogy was made available on PS Plus Premium, players picked up a bundle with all three games. This license for the three games overwritten the previous one. The one I had by downloading only Mafia 3 with the basic PS+. As a result, it’s as if I never had the game”, concluded Danikruces. Note that a similar problem has already occurred with the French RPG Greedfallwith license canceled by upgrading from PS Plus Essential to Extra.
