Before you could download licenses for everything you owned even without the game being installed. Now you must install a game first before you can get a license for it. This will have major implications for jail breaking.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I am trying to think of scenarios where this will screw with normal users because companies never do moves like this unless they're after some sort of grift.

But I am not seeing it at present. Maybe I'm just too tired and my brain isn't working, but if a game is downloaded digitally and the license comes with it, there's effectively no difference. Take it offline, you still have the license, no issues.

The only potential impact I can think of is if you have two users on a console that is the home console for neither person, and both of them bought the same game digitally. User 1 downloads the game, the license comes with it, and they take the console offline. User 2 then uses the console, tries to play the game they own, and gets a license error because the console is offline and doesn't know they own it and therefore it can only be played by the person who downloaded it. But I think that's how it works already, since User 2 would still need the console to be online to import their licenses.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Is this an actual edge case?:

Someone whose hard drive is full and buys a bunch of new games and wants to go play PS5 at a cabin in the woods

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

But you'd still need to download the games onto the ps5 in the cabin in the woods, assuming this doesn't apply to games on disc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Well, they would get unpatched games which won't be playable anyway 😀

But no, this only happens for downloaded game, and even then it's generally for games you have downloaded as part of subscription. If you stay offline for long period of times (don't know exact time these days, but I think it's at least more than a month), then PS needs to recheck if you still have the subscription, or if the game is still present in subscription.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I could be wrong but it seems like before, licenses for games you owned but hadn't downloaded were already loaded o to your account when you logged in. So in your example, if user 2 bought a game and didn't download it on that console, then user 1 bought and downloaded it and took the PS5 offline, user 2 could still play it because his license was already there. Now, user 2 has to go online to grab the license first.

Seems like it will have a minimal impact.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

And only if the PS5 isn't user 1's home console, which if it is, the license extends to any other user on that console.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

What this means is that you can't restore your games from backup while offline because uninstalling them also removes the license, forcing you to put the console online again to download the license again.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

To be fair, I'm pretty sure that's how PS5 handled that scenario even before this update.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

That's the same conclusion I arrived at, but wasn't 100% sure. Since the act of downloading a game and the act of obtaining/transferring licenses both require the console to be online, I couldn't see what difference there would be to the user experience compared to before, even if the order it does those steps in is switched.