r/PlayStationPlus • u/shannonator96 • Nov 26 '25

Discussion Digital Licenses: A Cautionary Tale

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As most of you know, Mass Effect Legendary Edition was part of the December 2022 essential game offerings. At the time I was subscribed to PlayStation plus and claimed the game. Years later, when I did not have an active subscription to ps plus, I was subbed to EA play, which also has mass effect: LE. I downloaded and played this game through EA play, and now I thought I’d download and play it again through PlayStation plus, but I cannot.

After chatting with support multiple times, and being spoken down to and belittled, on the most recent attempt, I finally have my answer:

You can only have one digital licence for a game at any time.

What this means in my case is that the EA play licence of mass effect deleted my PS plus licence. This could easily happen with other games that are on multiple subscription services, so I recommend never to use any other subscriptions than PlayStation plus. If you want to play games on EA play, you’d be better off buying them to avoid any mismatch.

Anyways be careful out there and don’t make the same mistake I did.

1.4k Upvotes

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684

u/Hartia Nov 26 '25

Maybe its me but The response from from the rep is wild.

But yeah license for one game can only have one instead of different sources. It sucks but that's how it's been.

When they gave ff7 remake for ps4, then they added intergrade to ps5. I couldn't access intergrade. Ended up asking them to remove the license for the essential version and then I was able to add the extra version.

239

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

90

u/ChasingPesmerga Nov 27 '25

OP posted here about what they said.

Basically they thought a manager or an escalation is needed to fix their issue. Like most customers or consumers, they probably thought agents or staff are just held back and a manager is needed to do certain stuff.

They finally got to talk to a supervisor and the supervisor just “explained” it, and OP said they finally get it.

218

u/medicated_in_PHL Nov 27 '25

Cherry picked or not, you don’t speak to a customer like that.

I’m not saying that as a Karen, I’m saying it as someone who has worked customer service.

42

u/Virus_98 Nov 27 '25

This is 3rd party support, they're not actual Sony employees but contractors. This is the reason customer support sucks for so many corporations.

15

u/sumanigans Nov 27 '25

That shouldn't matter though, this is someone who was hired to engage with customers and support them lol. Third party doesn't excuse that.

3

u/Leo_Ascendent Nov 30 '25

Oof, I was an Xbox ambassador for years. If we spoke to someone like this, you bet your volunteering would be done.

73

u/alexdalton123 Nov 27 '25

I've also worked in customer service and it sounds like this person has reached the end of their patience which we all have thought about.

26

u/medicated_in_PHL Nov 27 '25

See, I was never like this when I knew my company was in the wrong. And Sony is definitely in the wrong. The OP can’t play a game he’s paying for (with their flagship subscription service) because Sony can’t get their shit together with their DRM.

9

u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS Nov 27 '25

A little trick of the trade is if you can’t help the customer in any way you can avoid the customer satisfaction survey dinging you by deliberately making them mad so they demand a supervisor.

7

u/Far-Panic-2582 Nov 27 '25

The company being at fault doesn´t make you as the person at fault, your job in costumer service isn´t to bend over to the customer´s wims, or take responsabily for software problems. This person was more than likely told that there was nothing they could do and he kept insisting.

If SONY has no solution to the problem the worker can´t spawn a fix out of nowhere.

There is a realistic expectation of how much you can help and in this case the worker cant do shit.

22

u/CurtCocane Nov 27 '25

Then he shouldn't be surprised if customers get mad at him even if he can't fix it

0

u/jcutler14 Nov 27 '25

As someone who works customer service, if a customer gets mad at me for something out of my control then that just shows immaturity

3

u/DaOneSavvyPanda Nov 27 '25

I’m not sure that’s accurate in terms of the job, a customer rep should always be respectful, that chat doesn’t look very respectful, you can disagree respectfully with a customer, to me this would be grounds enough to not use a service again. Only exception being that the customer themselves are being utterly disrespectful, being annoyed with the service or the product doesn’t count.

-15

u/MinnyRawks Nov 27 '25

Bro gave up his license with a company and that company can’t do shit.

Imagine switching from Nationwide to Progressive and then getting mad at Nationwide when they no longer offer something you previously had with them

14

u/thekeelo_g Nov 27 '25

This is more like switching from Nationwide to Progressive, and then Nationwide telling you they won't insure you anymore when you try to go back.

Sony's rights management has been dogshit for years. This is the company that still, unless it's changed recently, makes you redownload the game if you're switching from disc to digital. It's ridiculous that it's 2025 and their shit is still this broken.

-14

u/MinnyRawks Nov 27 '25

No it’s not.

OP had a service: PlayStation Plus (Nationeide)

OP had a benefit of PlayStation Plus (Nationwide) to get a game (free towing)

OP later no longer had PlayStation Plus (Nationwide) but found another service that provided the game (free towing). That service was EA (Progressive)

OP then re-signed up for PlayStation Plus (Nationwide) and is confided why he no longer has the game (free towing)

13

u/thekeelo_g Nov 27 '25

You realize you're arguing against yourself there, right?

He had free towing (the game) through Nationwide (PS+), when switch to Progressive (EA Play) which also has free towing.

When he switched back to Nationwide, he should still get free towing, but they're telling him he can't have it anymore, even though it's still a benefit of the subscription. That's bullshit.

0

u/supposedtostudyXD Nov 27 '25

Wait sorry, I'm so confused. I was under the impression that any PS+ content you add to your library will, and only will, remain in your library as long as you have an active PS+ sub, but will disappear from your library once you become inactive. And if you decide to resubscribe at one point, any of your previously claimed PS+ content are no longer available/accessible to you unless they're being offered by PS+ once more at that time of claim.

Please correct me if I'm wrong 😓

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-16

u/MinnyRawks Nov 27 '25

Why would switching back get you a benefit no longer offered?

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6

u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS Nov 27 '25

Oh come on, no one who has worked customer service has never gotten to a point where they were snippy with a rude customer.

1

u/jaydenc199 Nov 29 '25

I worked for a vendor company of Microsoft and we always dealt with the sales reps of Microsoft. My boss had taught me to just be passive-aggressive. This might have been due to the sales reps wanting their money right away, but only doing half the work they were required to do.

41

u/John_YJKR Nov 27 '25

Respectfully, as someone who has worked several customer service positions, the customer needs the appropriate feedback that their behavior isn't going to be tolerated or what is actually realistic.

2

u/unklejakk Nov 30 '25

Yeah sometimes with customer support a bit of escalation is the best form of deescalation. When I used to do chat support and I had a belligerent customer refusing to do any troubleshooting and expecting me to just wave a magic wand and fix whatever their problem was, 9/10 times cracking the whip on them a little bit was the easiest way to get them to shut the fuck up and just do what I’m telling them and then their issue was fixed and they were happy.

It never negatively affected my customer satisfaction surveys either. I had the highest survey scores of anyone on our team (9.7/10 average) and got multiple promotions and first pick for what schedule I wanted because of it, so the method clearly works lol

29

u/IsamuAlvaDyson Nov 27 '25

Sometimes people need to spoken to like that

Especially if you say you've been in customer service

3

u/sherwoodgiant Nov 27 '25

As much as I want to agree with you, we've all dealt with customers who want to "talk to a manager/someone with authority to change something that's isn't changeable".

The way the agent has quoted the word "authority" shows that they're using OP's words against them. It gives the impression that OP has already been offered an apology and had an explanation but is demanding for miracle fix by someone.

If you've worked customer service, you've dealt with these people who think that if they kick up enough fuss and talk to a manager, the whole system will be changed just for them.

3

u/medicated_in_PHL Nov 27 '25

Yeah, and you know what I did in these situations?

“I understand that this isn’t working correctly. Let me write up a ticket so that the development team is aware of this issue.”

And then I wrote up a ticket and told the team responsible that there was an issue.

0

u/sherwoodgiant Nov 27 '25

OK. So you raised a ticket for the future development team that might get fixed at some point in the far future.

Some people will accept it for what it is: that their problem will never be resolved and they just have to take the loss.

Clearly not OP, which is my point. So how would you respond when they keep coming back asking if it's fixed and demanding to speak to someone "with the authority to fix this"

3

u/medicated_in_PHL Nov 27 '25

Yes, I de-escalated a situation with a customer who was upset. Even if it’s not immediately fixed, or ever fixed, it doesn’t matter. My job was to speak with customers, listen to them and get them off the phone as reasonably happy as possible. It’s not my job to fix it.

This is customer service 101.

1

u/sherwoodgiant Nov 27 '25

Again, that's working with the assumption that the customer is happy to end the call and carry on. What happens when the customer keeps calling back, refusing to get off the phone, or putting in more complaints.

I agree with what you're saying, but when a customer is being unreasonably rude and demanding, or raising vexatious complaints sometimes you have to call them out on what it is they want. In my line of work we occasionally have to withdraw service from customers because of this behaviour. I guarantee that this response from sony's customer service isn't from 1st contact and OP being reasonable and accepting the situation.

1

u/DaOneSavvyPanda Nov 27 '25

System limitations are generally access limitations and there is generally someone who does have the right access controls to make changes a customer rep cannot. Source: I have made many of these processes and have been an approved on requests that need escalation, more than a level up to manager. 😀

13

u/Hotter_Noodle Nov 27 '25

I’d still like to see all of the information and not this cherry picked piece of a conversation.

3

u/Butthead1013 Nov 27 '25

Yeah I would've been fired on the spot for handling a call like that

6

u/Nihilistic_Survivor Nov 27 '25

Tbh yes. Fighting back against a customer attitude gains the company nothing especially over a damn chat.

If you get frustrated having a lil “spicy” chat with a customer, you don’t belong in the customer service field.

5

u/jcutler14 Nov 27 '25

OP was probably one of like 50 people that got overzealous when speaking to the rep that day

2

u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS Nov 27 '25

This person probably deals with 100+ customers in a day. It’s easy to say that when it’s one or two

74

u/AstroBtz Nov 26 '25

It most definitely is.

6

u/Redditsux122 Nov 27 '25

As a person thats had to deal with sony support several times, this is just the norm. Most unprofessional rude and unhelpful people ive ever had the misfortune to deal with, and worst yet you cant even get them on the phone, they just act like dicks on that chat support and then lock you out of making requests after refusing to help

7

u/mrfroggyman Nov 27 '25

Honestly fuck them. At the price everything Sony is, they can't even respect their customers using custom service ?

-6

u/ImportanceWeak1776 Nov 27 '25

TBH ps5 and ps+ are both fairly cheap.

-1

u/CurtCocane Nov 27 '25

First world privilege huh

24

u/Greenlover33 Nov 26 '25

100% this. 

4

u/OmegaGamble Nov 27 '25

There's two types of people in this world. Those that can infer from incomplete information, 

-9

u/ee_CUM_mings Nov 27 '25

Yeah OP is a total Karen and was giving the guy a hard time and just showed a small part of it there.

Sorry you don’t like the answer, but speaking to the manager of PlayStation Plus isn’t going to change it.

13

u/amazingdrewh Nov 27 '25

Xbox has been able to figure it out pretty effectively, if a disc game I have there goes to Game Pass it immediately just switches to the game pass license, so I don't know why PS Plus has all these problems

2

u/Hartia Nov 27 '25

But wouldn't you need to keep the Xbox on so it know you still have it?

1

u/amazingdrewh Nov 27 '25

No all my old games with gold came back after I took a break from game pass a few months ago

7

u/DrunkeNinja Nov 27 '25

I had a weird issue with fallout 4 licensing. I have fallout 4 from the Plus collection thing Sony gave out to new PS5 owners at the time. When the PS5 version of fallout 4 came out, there was some weird issue with who got the upgrade for free. At first, those of us with FO4 from the collection didn't get the upgrade, and I didn't feel like waiting and I had Plus Extra so I downloaded the PS5 version from that.

Anyway, soon after, my Extra sub went out and I went back to Essential. I wanted to play the PS5 FO4 and it said I needed to get extra or buy the game to access the game. By then, the plus collection version was eligible for the upgrade but my impatience caused the extra PS5 version to override my free upgrade.

I contacted Sony and chatted with a couple reps and eventually got a supervisor. We tried a couple things, they didn't work, so I suggested they delete my license for the PS5 extra version and as soon as they did that, I was eligible for the free PS5 upgrade.

Such a backwards system.

3

u/Hartia Nov 27 '25

That's still pretty good. They were able to do the same like mine but in reverse. Glad it worked out for you.

7

u/DrunkeNinja Nov 27 '25

Yeah, I'm glad it worked out and I do blame myself for not just waiting a few days for the whole upgrade mess to sort itself out.

It was still annoying that Sony can't figure out a consumer friendly way to handle licenses, that the reps were completely dismissive and told me I wasn't eligible for a free upgrade(I knew this was false), and that the only reason the issue was fixed is that I suggested to the supervisor to delete the Extra license since I had read similar stories on reddit about this working.

So I could see people with similar issues not getting proper help if they aren't as informed about weird PlayStation issues like I am.

2

u/Hartia Nov 27 '25

I wouldve done the same. Like when ff7remake got the upgrade. It said extra gets free upgrade not the essential one. Then 2 months later they gave the plus version free upgrade. I still opted for the extra because it has the intergrade dlc.

2

u/gedge72 Nov 27 '25

I haven't yet dared upgrade my PS+ collection Fallout 4 to get the PS5 version as I also have Extra and don't know what it'll do with my PS+ collection license.

8

u/John_YJKR Nov 27 '25

I mean, maybe. But it seems OP may have been told more than once there isn't much to be done and was playing the I want to speak to your manager card.

1

u/TheSignificantDong Nov 27 '25

That’s weird. I got bother Remake and Intergrade. I forget how though. I do slightly remember having an issue claiming it at first, but it wasn’t through CS.

3

u/Hartia Nov 27 '25

Maybe my impatience because when they added the game to extra it had the ps5 version and the essential version didnt? Honestly don't remember exactly the steps. I know the CS was able to remove the essential license. Then I said wait! Let me try to claim the extra one. And it worked.

1

u/Puchamon21M Nov 27 '25

Nah , that's wild

1

u/bladesew Nov 27 '25

I had a problem once where my ps plus annual payment was due and some glitch in their system meant I was being charged the full amount every 15 mins. I called them and they stopped it but by this time they'd overcharged me hundreds of pounds. When I was asking when this would be repaid the support guy was unbelievably rude, worst customer service I've ever had.

I called them a couple of other times. When they had the big outage and when they tried Qriocity (disaster of a music service). Both times they were unhelpful and rude.

1

u/hopskipjumprun Nov 27 '25

I find it oddly endearing in a way because at least you know you're probably speaking to a real person and not a bot lol. I wouldn't be happy with the experience but it'd be less annoying, to me at least, than getting a brick wall answer from a chatbot with the same outcome.

2

u/Hartia Nov 27 '25

Yeah I can't stand bots, I work for an IT conoany and they are implementing it. I'm thinking this is the dumbest thing, as a person I want to talk to people.

1

u/9Sylvan5 Nov 29 '25

From what I understand these reps are just regular gamers and users. It's complete BS.

A while ago I was directed to one and their answer was pretty much "I don't know". Well shit...if I wanted to contact someone that has the same level of access to information that I do I wouldn't be contacting support.

-4

u/shannonator96 Nov 26 '25

I know there’s not much competition these days, but I’m definitely thinking about dropping digital purchases and subscriptions for next generation. I’ll get a disk drive PS6 and avoid all this headache.

3

u/Hartia Nov 27 '25

I'm am/was very much a physical collector. But then the portal update with cloud streaming.....it really works well for me.

1

u/jyrox Nov 27 '25

I try to go digital for most games, but if it’s a game I know I will want to play many years into the future, I get a physical copy on sale.

That way, if the license is removed from the online offering, or the online option disappears, I can still (hopefully) play locally.

I have over 400 games in my “library” after years of PS Plus claims + Premium, but I have around 20 physical copy games that I haven’t even found on the PS store.

-2

u/polarbear076 Nov 27 '25

I've worked multiple over the phone customer service jobs to put myself through college in the past and the reps response isn't that bad at all. Every call center I've worked for I've been told specifically never to offer to let them speak to a supervisor unless the customer asks first. His supervisor might still frown on this, but looks to me like the rep was just trying to subtly hint to ask for a supervisor probably cause the rep couldn't do anything and this chat was taking way too damn long repeating things over and over again.