PSN Outage Free Gift Is Giving PlayStation Fans a Major Problem

The new PSN Outage free gift from Sony that is being given to all PS Plus subscribers on PS4 and PS5 for last month’s historic PSN crash is giving some PlayStation fans a major issue. For those that somehow missed it, between February 7 and February 8, PSN suffered a global outage for 24 hours, the second longest outage in the history of PlayStation Network and the longest in over a decade. At the time, PlayStation did not reveal what went wrong, and it still hasn’t revealed what went wrong. What it did do is announce a free gift.

The following day, on February 9, PlayStation announced free PlayStation Plus for PS Plus subscribers. There was no word when the free gift — a free PS Plus extension of five days — was going to release. That said, earlier this week PlayStation users began to receive the free PS Plus previously promised in February. There is a problem with the free gift though.

Rather than give PlayStation Plus subscribers on PS4 and PS5 a free code to use whenever, the extension is being automatically applied. For many, this is not an issue. However, for those that specifically time their renewals around sales, their strategy has just been thwarted.

For example, many PS Plus subscribers specifically set up their subscriptions to end during the annual PlayStation Plus Black Friday sales in order to renew during this sale at the special sale price. An automatic five day extension throws a wrench in these various strategies, and subscribers aren’t very happy about it.

“I really dont want this, it affected my last sub, not my resubbed one. It’ll most likely put me outside the range for the next February sale,” says one subscriber of the matter. “Why do I run the risk of being penalized when I’m being ‘compensated’?”

Another PlayStation fan adds: “There goes my window to buy PS Plus on next sale. Have to wait five months now, not even worth it. Wish they gave us a choice to redeem it or not.”

Of course, if the extension was meaningful then this wouldn’t be a problem as it would offset any loss. However, the free compensation, five days of PlayStation Plus is only worth about $1.

It remains not entirely clear if those whose subscription lapsed between the outage and the release of the free gift will get this free gift at all. Unfortunately, just like with the PSN outage itself, PlayStation has been poor with the communication of the resulting PSN free gift.

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