By
Lee D'Amato
Published 21 minutes ago
Lee D’Amato is a writer born, raised, and based in Queens, New York. With collective thousands of hours in games like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Elden Ring, and The Legend of Zelda, he's now writes game features, guides, and reviews for Screen Rant, but has covered a wide range of topics, including ancient history, affordable travel, and overall health.
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One PlayStation Plus subscriber has shared a cautionary tale about the complications of digital rights management that affects players everywhere. A Reddit post by user shannonator96 describes a particularly thorny DRM situation that caused them to lose access to their copy of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition.
In short, since you're only allowed to own one digital license to a game on the PlayStation platform at a time, having access to the game through more than one means might cause one of your licenses to be deleted.
A PlayStation Plus Gamer Shares A "Cautionary Tale"
How To Lose Your License
A distraught Shepard in Mass Effect.
Shannonator96 originally obtained a digital copy of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, a bundle containing remasters of the original Mass Effect trilogy with all DLC, as a free monthly download from PS Plus. This was a part of December 2022's Essential-tier releases, available to all subscribers to download and keep as long as they remain subscribed to the service.
Ordinarily, these games would have remained in their library even if they had paused or canceled their subscription, which shannonator96 did at a later date. PS Plus still allows players to keep any games they've claimed as part of the Essential tier while their subscription is inactive, even though they'd need an active subscription to play them.
Some time later, shannonator96 subscribed to EA Play, a similar service that provides players access to a variety of different EA-published games. Mass Effect: Legendary Edition was also available on EA Play, so they were later able to redownload the bundle and play the game.
However, when they later resubscribed to PS Plus, shannonator96 found that Mass Effect had disappeared from their library. They contacted PlayStation support, by whom they claim to have been "spoken down to and belittled," only to receive a disappointing answer: "You can only have one digital licence for a game at any time."
In other words, gaining access to Mass Effect: LE through EA Play deleted their license to access the bundle through PS Plus. If they wanted to play the game again today, they'd either have to resubscribe to EA Play, or purchase it outright through the PlayStation Store.
EA Play includes tons of games by one of the biggest publishers in the space, including most annual sports franchises, the Battlefield series, Star Wars Jedi and Battlefront, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and The Sims. If you already own any of these games via PS Plus, shannonator96 recommends, be careful before subscribing to EA Play.
Digital Ownership Is A Tricky Situation
Game Ownership Is Surprisingly Complicated
There was a time when you could purchase a video game at a brick-and-mortar store, take it home, and own it forever. No internet was required to download the game; it was entirely contained on the disc or cartridge you bought. You could play it, sell it, or give it away at will.
In today's age of digital-only releases and consoles without disc drives, though, the concept of game ownership has become surprisingly complex. Many games are released exclusively as digital downloads, and sometimes, even physical copies just contain digital licenses.
Subscription services like EA Play and Game Pass have become popular ways to distribute everything from old classics to day-one releases. They're incredibly convenient and offer diverse libraries of games, but one easy mistake could cause players everywhere to lose access to huge chunks of their PlayStation Plus libraries.
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Sony
Original Release Date
June 29, 2010
Original MSRP (USD)
$59.99 (Essential), $99.99 (Extra), $119.99 (Premium) - Per Year
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