• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Sony has reportedly blocked PlayStation Plus and PS Now subscription stacking (Update: stacking will resume when service launches, codes still valid)

The move to the west was one of the things that saved PlayStation for the PS4 era but okay.

Anyway...the irony is that if Sony wasn't doing this, not nearly as many people would be talking about this, lmao. Now this will probably grow into a much bigger thing than it should and they will probably backtrack anyway.

They can't possibly spend 2 months without accepting cards...i mean...right?
The move to the West did undeniably help Sony in several ways, but it seemed to also change them as well, especially in the PS5 era. Some good changes and some bad.

Heh, hopefully they will get this card issue rectified in a timely manner. What I wonder about is, first the classic PSOne games have random expiration dates on them as soon as the new subscription service surfaces and now this. Weird.
 
Last edited:

Punished Miku

Gold Member
Can’t fault them for this, people who like to exploit will complain but those are the same people that would throw a tantrum if they were the ones being exploited.
So now if you get Gamepass for the price of Gold you're a "person who likes to exploit." Does that also apply to people who buy games on sale? I'm genuinely in awe of your spin here lol.
 
Last edited:

MonarchJT

Banned
Netflix isn't doing well at all:

meanwhile Netflix has come to a halt (like all companies including the whole of Sony or any other) for this past year overall Netflix is still a total global hit so big that everyone are changing their business models to replicate their success in some way ... from Microsoft with office365 to Disney+ from Xbox with gamepass to Amazon prime ... etc etc
trying to draw a paint where netflix is somehow a "failure experiment" it means not having real contact with today's market. Whether some of you like it or not, subscription services are the future at least until the next revolution.
 
Last edited:

Punished Miku

Gold Member
Where in his post he mentioned gamepass?
Maybe I read his post wrong, since the one below it was talking about VRR. Who knows? Maybe he just meant PS gamers that buy cards are people who like to exploit. That would make sense too I guess. I still just think it's a genius way to frame it in terms of spin lol. Made me laugh.
 

onesvenus

Member
I’m pretty sure it was said a while ago. That’s why people were stacking years of PSNow last month. The door was closed on PSNow subs for a while now.
Come on, can you read what I'm saying? Ok Tuesday they clarified that if you have both subscriptions active, you'd get premium for as long as the longest subscription you had. Instead of stacking years of PSNow, people bought three months of PSNow and then stacked PS+, which is much cheaper than Now.
The same day they started to block redeeming ps+ cards. The clarification that that's not possible came 2 days later. That's the problem.

This is the PlayStation website on Monday via the way back machine.


You'll see that they changed the faq, adding the snippet that says that it'll use the longest of the two service when you are signed up for both.
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
So now if you get Gamepass for the price of Gold you're a "person who likes to exploit." Does that also apply to people who buy games on sale? I'm genuinely in awe of your spin here lol.

MS actively encourages the process, so there’s no real exploit there. Games on sale comparison is so wild I don’t know where you’re going with it, absolute nonsense.
 

FrankWza

Member
Come on, can you read what I'm saying? Ok Tuesday they clarified that if you have both subscriptions active, you'd get premium for as long as the longest subscription you had. Instead of stacking years of PSNow, people bought three months of PSNow and then stacked PS+, which is much cheaper than Now.
The same day they started to block redeeming ps+ cards. The clarification that that's not possible came 2 days later. That's the problem.

This is the PlayStation website on Monday via the way back machine.


You'll see that they changed the faq, adding the snippet that says that it'll use the longest of the two service when you are signed up for both.
They were never going to convert the “cheaper” plus to a premium tier. It was always going to be the lowest tier when it was converted. They announced last month that PSNow would be converted to the higher tier. If you had both you were going to have the higher tier as well. Based on that, the PSNow sub would always be the one converted for the longer time. Them keeping people from stacking psplus right now does nothing to keep anyone from using a loophole of any kind.
 
Last edited:

ManaByte

Gold Member
They were never going to convert the “cheaper” plus to a premium tier. It was always going to be the lowest tier when it was converted. They announced last month that PSNow would be converted to the higher tier. If you had both you were going to have the higher tier as well. Based on that, the PSNow sub would always be the one converted for the longer time. Them keeping people from stacking psplus right now does nothing to keep anyone from using a loophole of any kind.

No they did say that if you had PS Now AND PS+ your PS Premium sub would end at the end of the longest of the two. So all you really needed to do was buy 1 year of PS Now and then stack PS+ until the next decade and you would have PS Premium until the 2030s. Them blocking PS+ stacking closes that loophole.

FRXK1gqUYAIffQN
 

Punished Miku

Gold Member
MS actively encourages the process, so there’s no real exploit there. Games on sale comparison is so wild I don’t know where you’re going with it, absolute nonsense.
That's fair. I guess I just was amused by the word "exploit," since there was no real exploit. Either Sony encourages it or they don't. And now we know they don't. Sorry for starting shit. I think I misread your post a bit.
 

Godot25

Banned
Sony: "Let's just allow them to have highest tier of subscription when they have both PS Plus and PS Now. What could go wrong?"
Players: *starts stacking years and years of PS Plus*
Sony: "Well...shit"

I really don't understand what Sony thought will happen. Did they serious not considered this at all?
Congratz to all who have their PS Plus premium until 2031 for 300 bucks. That's price that this service is worth it.
 
Stacking will be available when it's the new pricing tiers in June. Sucks for people that didn't jump on it when you could get it cheaper though.
 
MS actively encourages the process, so there’s no real exploit there. Games on sale comparison is so wild I don’t know where you’re going with it, absolute nonsense.
Is getting a new 1$ trial every month by providing the exact same (correct) info and just using a new email an exploit? It just seems like how MS intends the system to work given that they don't check anything, you can use the same credit card, same name, same phone number, etc.

It would require minimum effort to stop this but it has worked for 5 years now, just seems like them trying to inflate numbers so they get their bonuses. MS is the one doing the exploit in my opinion.
 
Last edited:

Punished Miku

Gold Member
Sony: "Let's just allow them to have highest tier of subscription when they have both PS Plus and PS Now. What could go wrong?"
Players: *starts stacking years and years of PS Plus*
Sony: "Well...shit"

I really don't understand what Sony thought will happen. Did they serious not considered this at all?
Congratz to all who have their PS Plus premium until 2031 for 300 bucks. That's price that this service is worth it.
Seriously. It's literally the end result of that policy they put out. That's exactly what the policy states. Surprised they didn't realize what they were saying apparently.
 

Godot25

Banned
Is getting a new 1$ trial every month by providing the exact same (correct) info and just using a new email an exploit? It just seems like how MS intends the system to work given that they don't check anything, you can use the same credit card, same name, same phone number, etc.
Yeah. I'm sure everybody is willing to loose all their saves, progress in games and other stuff so they can have Game Pass for 1$ :messenger_tears_of_joy::messenger_tears_of_joy::messenger_tears_of_joy:
I mean. I would not be surprised if there is that kind of people. But I doubt there are many of them.
 

Thirty7ven

Banned
Is getting a new 1$ trial every month by providing the exact same (correct) info and just using a new email an exploit? It just seems like how MS intends the system to work given that they don't check anything, you can use the same credit card, same name, same phone number, etc.

I think it’s an exploit, but MS doesn’t care. I used that exploit on Netflix until they started blocking me, and I wasn’t mad about it because I knew I was exploiting the system.

The thing with exploits is that they work until they don’t, there’s no point in being mad about it. Just like in games.
 
Last edited:

FrankWza

Member
No they did say that if you had PS Now AND PS+ your PS Premium sub would end at the end of the longest of the two. So all you really needed to do was buy 1 year of PS Now and then stack PS+ until the next decade and you would have PS Premium until the 2030s. Them blocking PS+ stacking closes that loophole.

FRXK1gqUYAIffQN
Ok I get it. So that was changed now and the stacking stopped simultaneously. I thought the deals were closed out when the PSNow stacking was closed a few weeks back. The move to make was the PSNow move because we knew that would be converted regardless. Stacking years of the plus with a 3 month now card was never supposed to happen. I thought that was why everyone in the thread last month went with the PSNow sub vs trying this method?
 
Yeah. I'm sure everybody is willing to loose all their saves, progress in games and other stuff so they can have Game Pass for 1$ :messenger_tears_of_joy::messenger_tears_of_joy::messenger_tears_of_joy:
I mean. I would not be surprised if there is that kind of people. But I doubt there are many of them.
You lose nothing on PC, just store your save if you are in the midle of a game. I don't know how storing your saves works on Xbox.

To leave such easy exploit open for so long just means it's done intentionally to inflate numbers.

I think it’s an exploit, but MS doesn’t care. I used that exploit on Netflix until they started blocking me, and I wasn’t mad about it because I knew I was exploiting the system.

The thing with exploits is that they work until they don’t, there’s no point in being mad about it. Just like in games.
This one has worked for about 5 years now. With very little downside since if you had paid for 5 years you would still own nothing anyway.

A person that did this would've paid $60 in that period instead of $900 or something for regular game pass.
 
Last edited:

Godot25

Banned
You lose nothing on PC, just store you save if you are in the midle of a game. I don't know how it works on Xbox.

To leave such easy exploit open for so long just means it's done intentionally to inflate numbers.
Yeah. On consoles it does not work like that. And of course it also don't work on PC in certain games where are your save files stored online (like Destiny 2 for example).

So it is only for cheap morons who will find any way to go around every measure just to not pay anything. And I seriously doubt many people are doing it. I'm sure that if 10 million GP subscribers would do that, Microsoft would not allow it :messenger_grinning_sweat:

Same for that Gold to GPU conversion method that GAF claims "almost everyone uses"
 
Last edited:
Yeah. On consoles it does not work like that. And of course it also don't work on PC in certain games where are your save files stored online (like Destiny 2 for example).

So it is only for cheap morons who will find any way to go around every measure just to not pay anything. And I seriously doubt many people are doing it. I'm sure that if 10 million GP subscribers would do that, Microsoft would not allow it :messenger_grinning_sweat:

Same for that Gold to GPU conversion method that GAF claims "almost everyone uses"
Is the person paying $1 instead of $15 by doing something that takes 1 min (creating a free email) while providing no false info the real moron?

I already have like 5 emails that I use to keep things separated, so that pretty much already gets me 5 months of Gamespass each years for $5 with zero effort, I'm very unlikely to use all 5 given the rate that games I want to play are included there and 1 months is more than enough to play most games.

I know that many people do it, because I've seen people selling these 30 days accounts online, just check ebay and that's just for the people who can't figure out on their own something that isn't a secret in any way.

When Square Enix for example puts Guardian of the Galaxy on Gamepass they are pretty much making their game accessible for 1$, a game that even today still costs more than $30 to buy. To me that is just a slap in the face of the people that bought the game.
 
Last edited:

onesvenus

Member
Based on that, the PSNow sub would always be the one converted for the longer time.
So no, you can't read.
If you look at the link I posted three times already, you'll see that the FAQ on the PlayStation blog, that was updated on Tuesday, says that if you have both services you get PS+ premium for as long as the longest of your active subscriptions
 

Godot25

Banned
Is the person paying $1 instead of $15 by doing something that takes 1 min (creating a free email) while providing no false info the real moron?

I already have like 5 emails that I use to keep things separated, so that pretty much already gets me 5 months of Gamespass each years for $5 with zero effort, I'm very unlikely to use all 5 given the rate that games I want to play are included there and 1 months is more than enough to play most games.
Well. In my books yes. But you do you of course. I know a guy who steals physical copies of games from store (he is a employee) and he is sleeping well so what do I care?

But again. I really doubt many people are doing it.
 
Well. In my books yes. But you do you of course. I know a guy who steals physical copies of games from store (he is a employee) and he is sleeping well so what do I care?

But again. I really doubt many people are doing it.
Yea, I'm having a hard time sleeping lately, it must be the fact that I'm using MS system in the way it was designed to function. As I've mentioned before there is no way in which this is an oversight due to how easy it would be to fix.

The funny part is that I don't even really use it or bother doing it anymore, my backlog has more games I'm interested in playing. Might do it again for Starfield if it ends up being all that.

MS has Roblox on their platform exploiting children, they came up with paywalls on consoles for basic features that were free, engaged in false advertising multiple times, were the first to push for microtransaction, I'll give them as little money as I can and I'll sleep like a baby, if they don't like it they can just fix their poorly designed trial.
 
Last edited:

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
Whether some of you like it or not, subscription services are the future at least until the next revolution.
I mean - revolution already happened, GaaS accounts for more than 80% of total market spend now. Subscription services are a welcome alternative, but I'm not convinced they'll ever compete for engagement on the same scale.
 
I mean - revolution already happened, GaaS accounts for more than 80% of total market spend now. Subscription services are a welcome alternative, but I'm not convinced they'll ever compete for engagement on the same scale.
GaaS are mostly F2P now the antithesis of what a subscription service is trying to be.
 
Last edited:

FrankWza

Member
So no, you can't read.
If you look at the link I posted three times already, you'll see that the FAQ on the PlayStation blog, that was updated on Tuesday, says that if you have both services you get PS+ premium for as long as the longest of your active subscriptions
Like I said, I thought this was closed out when they stopped the PSNow purchase last month. You haven’t been able to add PSNow to an account for weeks. If someone was intending to stack psplus subs against this to get the premium tier and take advantage of a loophole it should have been done weeks ago. Ps plus is already going to be psplus and if you aren’t able to add PSNow anymore, the only people who can benefit are people with an active now sub or people who were able to get in last month when they closed out the link to their site that was still available.
 

Punished Miku

Gold Member
Like I said, I thought this was closed out when they stopped the PSNow purchase last month. You haven’t been able to add PSNow to an account for weeks. If someone was intending to stack psplus subs against this to get the premium tier and take advantage of a loophole it should have been done weeks ago. Ps plus is already going to be psplus and if you aren’t able to add PSNow anymore, the only people who can benefit are people with an active now sub or people who were able to get in last month when they closed out the link to their site that was still available.
But they literally advertised this on their blog 2 days ago saying that you will be converted to the time limit of your longest stacked sub. There's only 2 subs, PS+ and PS Now. It's extremely clear what that means.

Regardless of one's opinion on the pricing or policy changes, it's undeniable that this was communicated to consumers extraordinarily poorly. Retailers selling the cards still don't even know this.
 

MonarchJT

Banned
I mean - revolution already happened, GaaS accounts for more than 80% of total market spend now. Subscription services are a welcome alternative, but I'm not convinced they'll ever compete for engagement on the same scale.
don't know data are saying otherwise ...we are living in a time where two generations coexist, that of the "physical" and the one of 100% digital, that of "I buy and own" and the one of subscription service or bust....like 25/30 years ago everyone complains on the amount of time social media and the internet stole from real life ... today practically no one would live without those. It is always like this at least a part of the older generations grown up and indoctrinated to follow another type of model will always have difficulty in changing and accepting others. This applies to any market. The industry is growing incredibly thanks to the gaas and the real money (80 +%) is brought precisely by the new models. It must be accepted.
 
Last edited:

FrankWza

Member
But they literally advertised this on their blog 2 days ago saying that you will be converted to the time limit of your longest stacked sub. There's only 2 subs, PS+ and PS Now. It's extremely clear what that means.

Regardless of one's opinion on the pricing or policy changes, it's undeniable that this was communicated to consumers extraordinarily poorly. Retailers selling the cards still don't even know this.
If you were sitting on say, 5 ps plus cards, you could have added them at any time. There was never a limit. A few weeks back they stopped ps now from being added. If someone was intending to stack their cards against a shorter PSNow sub, they had an additional few weeks before it was closed. I thought they closed it out or changed that policy weeks ago. You can’t add psnow anymore because the codes aren’t for sale. Why would anyone wait to stack psplus cards once they saw that and now complain weeks later when it is closed? They didn’t even rush to close it last month when they pulled the PSNow cards and when they shut down the website where people were still able to add PSNow.

 
Last edited:
don't know data are saying otherwise ...we are living in a time where two generations coexist, that of the "physical" and the one of 100% digital, that of "I buy and own" and the one of subscription service or bust....like 25/30 years ago everyone complains on the amount of time social media and the internet stole from real life ... today practically no one would live without those. It is always like this at least a part of the older generations grown up and indoctrinated to follow another type of model will always have difficulty in changing and accepting others. This applies to any market. The industry is growing incredibly thanks to the gaas and the real money (80 +%) is brought precisely by the new models. It must be accepted.
I mean it just ended up destroying our society. Maybe people complaining were right? How have Facebook, Instagram or Tik-Tok enriched my life? Nothing is more dystopic than looking at everyone looking down on their phones when you go out. We all should've know better but of course we didn't.
 
Last edited:

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Theres always a way in some people’s mind to fault/shit on MS even when it has literally no connection at all with the topic.

Why would Xbox lossing money with GamePass be shitting on MS? They are losing money on it by design. It's okay. It's a feature, not a flaw. To be honest, Sony not allowing this type of stacking of PS now subs is actually a bad sign. It means they want to artificially depress the amount of people that will be on the service on day one. THAT'S NOT GOOD!

They should want and support PS Now stacking so that on day one, there's as many people as possible downloading and streaming 1st and 3rd party games. The fact that they are limiting the amount of day one subs for PS+ Premium shows you that it's not a top priority for them (compared to Microsoft). Again......I think this is bad. Sony should WANT to lose money (when I say lose money I mean profit less than they are now) on their new PS+ service for at least the first year.
 
Last edited:

Punished Miku

Gold Member
If you were sitting on say, 5 ps plus cards, you could have added them at any time. There was never a limit. A few weeks back they stopped ps now from being added. If someone was intending to stack their cards against a shorter PSNow sub, they had an additional few weeks before it was closed. I thought they closed it out or changed that policy weeks ago. You can’t add psnow anymore because the codes aren’t for sale. Why would anyone wait to stack psplus cards once they saw that and now complain weeks later when it is closed? They didn’t even rush to close it last month when they pulled the PSNow cards and when they shut down the website where people were still able to add PSNow.
I think it's a case of people seeing the blog post, and literally buying PS+ cards after being told by Sony that this works. And then those cards being blocked from being redeemed just in the last few days.

It really has little to do with several weeks ago. If you've subbed to Now already, you could follow Sony's advice and buy more PS+ since they literally told everyone that works in the blog 2 days ago.

I don't know what this has to do with people waiting, or PSNow. They literally put out a statement 2 days ago. Let's talk about 2 days ago.
 

onesvenus

Member
If you were sitting on say, 5 ps plus cards, you could have added them at any time. There was never a limit. A few weeks back they stopped ps now from being added. If someone was intending to stack their cards against a shorter PSNow sub, they had an additional few weeks before it was closed. I thought they closed it out or changed that policy weeks ago. You can’t add psnow anymore because the codes aren’t for sale. Why would anyone wait to stack psplus cards once they saw that and now complain weeks later when it is closed? They didn’t even rush to close it last month when they pulled the PSNow cards and when they shut down the website where people were still able to add PSNow.

Keep being a fanboy 🤦‍♂️

Many retailers are still selling PSNow cards today. Just Google them and you'll see
 

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
Does the current tier price change? Does it cost more to get the same benefits as now?
 
Why would Xbox lossing money with GamePass be shitting on MS? They are losing money on it by design. It's okay. It's a feature, not a flaw. To be honest, Sony not allowing this type of stacking of PS now subs is actually a bad sign. It means they want to artificially depress the amount of people that will be on the service on day one. THAT'S NOT GOOD!

They should want and support PS Now stacking so that on day one, there's as many people as possible downloading and streaming 1st and 3rd party games. The fact that they are limiting the amount of day one subs for PS+ Premium shows you that it's not a top priority for them (compared to Microsoft). Again......I think this is bad. Sony should WANT to lose money (when I say lose money I mean profit less than they are now) on their new PS+ service for at least the first year.
Yea, you are going to have to explain it to Jimbo and they top guys at Sony that the should be aiming at losing money.

It's pretty simple what they are doing, they just want people to pay the full price of their service, what is the harm? I don't get it. That is what I would do if I were them.
 
Last edited:

Thirty7ven

Banned
I mean - revolution already happened, GaaS accounts for more than 80% of total market spend now. Subscription services are a welcome alternative, but I'm not convinced they'll ever compete for engagement on the same scale.

Considering gamepass users only play 40% more games than non gamepass users, it gives credence to the idea that when it comes to gaming people still stick to a few games and spend more time on them instead of shuffling. It makes sense, because getting good at a game isn’t the same as getting good at a tv show.
 

MonarchJT

Banned
I mean it just ended up destroying our society. Maybe people complaining were right? How have Facebook, Instagram or Tik-Tok enriched my life? Nothing is more dystopic than looking at everyone looking down on their phones when you go out. We all should've know better but of course we didn't.
oh for someone like me that grow up playing my rickenbacker guitar bass with my band around the city of course .....but as I said before ... try asking a kid today if he would be willing to give up all this "digital" in exchange for a few football matches in the streets below his house.
 
Last edited:

FrankWza

Member
I think it's a case of people seeing the blog post, and literally buying PS+ cards after being told by Sony that this works. And then those cards being blocked from being redeemed just in the last few days.

It really has little to do with several weeks ago. If you've subbed to Now already, you could follow Sony's advice and buy more PS+ since they literally told everyone that works in the blog 2 days ago.

I don't know what this has to do with people waiting, or PSNow. They literally put out a statement 2 days ago. Let's talk about 2 days ago.
This was announced last month,no? The blog update from 2 days ago added this info or it was already there?
 
oh for someone like me that grow up playing my rickenbacker guitar bass with my band around the city of course .....but as I said before ... try asking a kid today if he would be willing to give up all this "digital" in exchange for a few football matches in the streets below his house.
Try asking a kid if he wants to go to school or eat vegetables. We shouldn't be listening to kids, they know nothing, that's why they fall for every trick in the book, by the time they wise up it's already too late.
 
Last edited:

Punished Miku

Gold Member
This was announced last month,no? The blog update from 2 days ago added this info or it was already there?
That I don't know honestly. I just know they literally said 2 days ago that this works, and then abruptly blocked people from doing it after they bought some cards, and are not giving them a refund either.

I don't think there's much of a story otherwise. Most people know Sony is in profit mode recently.
 
Top Bottom