New reports from countries where the PS Plus revamp is already live reveal that discount stacking may not be the saving it first seemed.
The three-tier revamp of PS Plus has been live since Monday in certain Asian countries and so far the feedback has been mostly negative, with only a limited number of games and reports of crashing and poor emulation.
Additional details are coming to light all the time, with a number of users complaining that after buying and ‘stacking’ multiple PS Plus accounts, so that they can be upgraded for free once the new services begin, they’ve been penalised by Sony.
They claim that they are being charged an extra feel to upgrade to different tiers of the new service, removing the promised discount. Not only that but they’re forced to pay for the upgrade for as long as the stacked accounts last, which in some cases can be several years.
Once Sony realised that the stacking loophole existed, they put a stop to it worldwide and although there were some complaints it did seem a reasonable move considering people could get away with a major discount that lasted several years.
These new measures go much further though and while it’s not yet clear if Sony intended for them to punish people who had used the loophole even the official UK website makes the policy fairly clear:
‘When you upgrade you will be charged a pro-rated fee to level up the remaining time on your existing membership to the desired level.’
‘For example, if you purchased a 12-month membership five months ago and have seven months left, you will need to pay a pro-rated upgrade fee to upgrade your remaining seven months to the desired plan level.’
‘Then on your next payment date, you will be charged for the standard price of the membership plan level that you upgraded to at your current payment frequency.’
It’s currently unknown exactly how this fee is determined, with users on Reddit refuting initial assumptions that it is calculated on a monthly basis.
Since the number of people that will have been able to take advantage of the stacked discounts is relatively small this is unlikely to become an issue for most PlayStation owners, although it does affect early adopters more than others – which is only going to add to the early, negative buzz.
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