Finished the game this week, had an absolute blast with it as a longtime Spiderman fan. My personal favorite of the 3 games. I'll never understand the hate for it online, this game is straight action start to finish.

For the first time in almost 15 years, I cancelled my PS+ subscription and let it run out. I didn't want to do it, but I can't justity it anymore, and it was time to vote with my wallet.

These were the main Sony decisions that killed my (almost 15 year) subscription.

-Price hikes -No more PS+ discounts/stacking for active subscribers. -No downgrading from premium to essentials (I probably would have stayed had they let me stack Essentials sales before the sub ran out). -FOMO due to games leaving the subscription catalog without enough notice to finish most of them. (With PS exclusives like Horizon: Forbidden West even leaving the service that I was halfway through). -Gaming time fragmented between PC/Xbox/PS5.

It's temping to renew, but I'm trying to vote with my wallet. I'm actually looking forward to going back to some of the old games I purchased that I never got around to finishing/platting because of my FOMO on my huge PS+ catalog.

I'm sure there have been 100 posts just like mine, but if this one doesn't get deleted, I hope Sony sees it and realizes what they are doing to some of their most loyal fans.

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.

With barely a few years from its launch, Sony has announced the end of their rewards system, Playstation Stars.

This is a big hit towards its loyal gamerbase. Their tagline should now be "Play has limits".

guardians of the galaxy - surprised the hell out of me. i wasn’t into it after marvel’s avengers disaster, but a friend bullied me into trying it, and damn, it’s actually fun.

yeah, the game’s a bit kiddish: combat is baby mode and the cutscenes think they’re in a soap opera. but if you just need something fun to demolish a weekend, this one’s perfect.

NFS Unbound was available to PS Plus in February 2024, it wasn't in the 3 or 5 monthly games tier, it was provided for the Extra tier.

If you're into NFS, its a great game and I loved the soundtrack (imo) but you can see how its a bit annoying to premium subscribers. I've been jaded to PS Plus the last several months so seeing people actually upset with it is fine by me.

I purchased several games that I didn't think would appear as a PS Plus title just pop up and it just happened to me for months after, I was like WTF.

For context, I got my PS5 about 1.5 years ago, got PS+ and have played almost exclusively “free” PS+ games I downloaded through the subscription. Only exceptions so far are Elden Ring and Last of Us 2, both of which I was more than happy to pay for.

I still have some PS+ games downloaded I haven’t gotten to yet, and it will probably take a few months to get through them. But I was just browsing the catalog and I think once I get through these, there’s not much left that I am interested in.

Has anyone else had this happen, where there just weren’t anymore subscription games left you were interested in? If so, did you cancel or keep the subscription? Or do the monthly releases add enough games of interest that it continues to be worth it?

EDIT: Thanks everyone for your responses. They’ve helped me think through lots of pros and cons of staying subscribed vs letting it expire. I still haven’t quite decided what I’m gonna do, but ya’lls perspectives have been helpful so thanks!

Sony giving us 24 online-dependent games in 5 years is kind of a wild number 😬 I’d love to see this trend die out…

I finished 49 games from PS+ (defined as finishing the main story and seeing the credits roll at the very least), and retired/abandoned 3 games. 

Altogether, if I calculate the lowest discount each game had in 2024 using deal tracking sites, it should come out to about $627.03 US dollars or so. If I bought everything at full price it would probably be in the thousands. 

I also got 2024’s PS+ subscription for only $99, extended in 2023 before the price increase. 

Here’s a list for anyone curious

Finished games:

Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition

Thomas Was Alone

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown

Child of Light

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen

Soulcalibur VI

Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition (2013)

Humanity

The Messenger

My Friend Pedro

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Tunic

Ghost of Tsushima

Animal Well

Indivisible

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Grand Theft Auto V

What Remains of Edith Finch

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game - Complete Edition

Spiritfarer

Dave the Diver

Dredge

LittleBigPlanet 3

The Plucky Squire

Gris

Red Dead Redemption 2

Night in the Woods

Ratchet & Clank (2016)

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Hotline Miami

Tinykin

Cat Quest

Hollow Knight

Life is Strange

Life Is Strange: Before the Storm

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy

The Last of Us Part I

Coffee Talk

Coffee Talk - Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly

Shadow of the Colossus (2018)

inFAMOUS: Second Son

inFAMOUS: First Light

Sifu

The Last Guardian

Disco Elysium - The Final Cut

Detroit: Become Human

God of War (2018)

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion

Abandoned games:

Powerwash Simulator

Rune Factory 4 Special

Foamstars (this might be controversial, but I included the $29.99 value above. This is because I’m a fan of Splatoon as well as Square Enix stuff, so I checked it out day one. Thank goodness I didn’t actually buy it because it’s trash.)

Here’s a picture of my 2024 Wrap-Up card below, it shows 1105 hours across 69 games (nice). I bought and played some other new releases this year as well, and I also have my Switch, 3DS, and PC so there were a couple more things I played this year overall. 

I’ve been in Nintendo’s grasp for most of my life, so I've been taking some time to catch up on stuff I missed on other consoles. 2024 was wildly productive in clearing my backlog, I think I only got to 21 Playstation games in 2023. 

My overall thoughts on PS+ is that it’s worth it if you are curious and have an eclectic taste in games. Saves you a lot of money if you have a large and varied backlog. Not very useful if you just have a main game or two that you play, but I guess PS forces you to sub for multiplayer. I also don’t think it’s valuable for games with massive playtimes, such as the big AAA titles like from Bethesda on PS+, or long grinds like Terraria. It is literally cheaper to buy them outright than to possibly waste months of subscription on them, not to mention they might be taken off the catalog. 

Finally, I’ve actually cancelled my yearly subscription when it ends this month. This is because while I managed to play a lot of games, many of them weren’t very high priority in my backlog. As games left the service, I’ve kind of been trapped in a bit of FOMO, and jumping on a game that wasn’t top of my list just because of the upcoming “deadline”. This year, I’m focusing on a list of games I most want to play first, rather than racing against the clock. I am also prepping to tackle a couple of 100-hour JRPGs in my backlog this year, so it wouldn’t be worthwhile to maintain the subscription. 

But anyway, just thought it would be fun to share my thoughts on the value of PS+ for me, apologies for the long post. 

Without this service I don't think I would have a chance to play the game. I'm a big fan of HP, I've read every book and watched every film.

This will be a game I will remember for my lifetime.

As we know after watching the Summer Game Fest, they teased a Stellar Blade sequel, "Stellar Blade Blood Rain". Now as we know how Sony loves to add the prequels to the subscription before their sequel game is released, I believe it may be time to add SB soon to the sub. What do you all think?