It’s been a busy time for PS Plus. It recently revealed the upcoming PS Plus free games for May 2022 (FIFA 22, Curse of the Dead Gods, and Tribes of Midgard), while it also confirmed the release date for the new PS Plus Premium tier model as June 13 shortly before that.
In preparation for the upcoming merge of PS Now and PS Plus, many subscribers had been stacking up subscriptions. Essentially, anyone who is subscribed to both PS Now and PS Plus will be upgraded to the highest, most expensive PS Plus tier once it releases. Whichever subscription has the longest time remaining on it when the upgrade hits is how much time subscribers would have on PS Plus Premium. So by purchasing PS Plus now, fans have been able to extend their subscription, and in a roundabout way, get PS Plus Premium cheaper for a while.
However, it appears Sony is blocking that method. Several reports that players have not been able to redeem vouchers through pre-paid cards or even through the consoles themselves have surfaced online, across all social media. Among those, some have reached out to PlayStation customer support where representatives have stated that Sony has disabled the ability to stack prior to PS Plus Premium’s release date. These changes are said to be temporary; after all, the only real purpose this serves it to prevent users from getting PS Plus Premium at a cheaper cost.
At launch, PS Plus Premium will cost $17.99 monthly or $119 yearly. A month of PS Plus costs $9.99, or $60 yearly. Stacking now clearly would save subscribers a ton of money. Per PushSquare, PlayStation Support told one customer that “…there is a temporarily deactivated function for PS Plus/PS Now subscriptions which does not allow for stacking of either membership on already active memberships.”
Unfortunately, perhaps the worst part of it is that Sony has done this quietly. It never announced it would temporarily deactivate the ability to stack. On one hand, it makes sense as many would have rushed to get the cheaper months stacked ahead of then, but on the other hand, Sony likely foresaw something like this coming when it announced these PS Plus changes and could have done something. Some have been able to stack since the announcement, but now it seems no one else can.
Of course, whether or not the highest tier of PS Plus is worth the cost is up to the individual. Alongside all the benefits of PS Plus Essentials and PS Plus Extra, subscribers get will a big library of PS1, PS2, PSP, and PS3 games to play via download or stream, and it seems 2-hour demos for many big PlayStation games too.
PS Plus subscribers get a handful of free games every month.
Source: PushSquare (via Eurogamer)