I cancelled PlayStation Plus after 12 years. Here’s why.
Despite me being a massive Nintendo player now, I never used to be like this. Growing up, the only console I wanted was a PlayStation 1 and when I finally got one at 12 I was overjoyed. To me, the world opened up through PlayStation and even all these years later, I still regard PlayStation as one of the core systems I need in my life.
But why would someone who is a self professed PlayStation player completely stop using her consoles and find herself in a position where she cancels her subscription to PlayStation’s online service? It was a long thought through decision, but it still feels like the right one. This is why I decided to finally hit the “cancel membership” button.
What is PlayStation Plus?
First off, we need to go through what PlayStation Plus actually is as I know some of you reading this may not be console users outside of the Nintendo Switch. PlayStation Plus is a subscription service to PlayStation which gives you exclusive benefits. These range from a basic package which gives you access to online multiplayer, cloud saving and free games every month all the way up to services which let you access Game Trials and access to cloud streaming.
Destruction AllStars on PlayStation 5
At time of writing, PlayStation plus has three plans: PlayStation Plus Essential, Extra and Premium. Each of these come at different price points and have differing amounts of time you can subscribe to it from 1 month up to 1 full year. If you were to buy a full 12 months on each of the plans, PlayStation Plus Essential would cost you £59.99 / $79.99 USD / €71.99, PlayStation Plus Extra costs £99.99 / $134.99 USD / €125.99 and PlayStation Plus Premium costs £119.99 / $159.99 USD / €151.99.
Price increases have hit PlayStation Plus which, whilst understandable due to the cost of living affecting every item and service you subscribe to, it’s also led to some people feeling stung when you need to pay for online multiplayer, which wasn’t required for playing PlayStation 3 games. Granted, not every game has online multiplayer, but for those who live in an increasingly online world, it gets to a point where nearly every game has some online element and you subsequently have to subscribe to their services to be able to enjoy a game with friends. So, at that point, PlayStation Plus for me was starting to feel more like a tax to get full access to the games I was playing.
However, when my notification came through that the price had increased and I was going to be paying roughly £10 a year more for a service I had barely used across the last few years, I had to ask myself if that cost was really worth it to get access to some of these perks.
PlayStation Plus monthly games
Let’s talk about those monthly games for a second as I have thoughts and opinions on them. When I first signed up to PlayStation Plus back when I got my PlayStation 4, I wasn’t fully aware that you got free games every month. As I became deeper entrenched into the PlayStation world and I learnt of this benefit, I was downloading every game offered to boost my library of titles.
It’s lovely to have 2-3 free games every month, and it’s not one to sniff at, particularly when not many services do allow you this option. However, for the last few years there have been fairly consistent complaints about the monthly games being not the best quality or games people would actually want to play.
PayDay 3 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S & X and PC
Let’s take February 2025’s monthly line up as an example, the game options are Payday 3 (PS5), a multiplayer shooter where you work together to complete heists. High on Life (PS4/PS5), a first-person shooter (FPS) game which is a comedic take on the genre; and Pac-Man World: Re-Pac (PS4/PS5), which is a Pac-Man game that is a remake of a PS1 title.
None of these games are cosy, are calming, or fun for me and this has been the standard of monthly games for a while where either every game is mediocre or all of them don’t carry any interest to me. As a result, I’ve found myself downloading fewer and fewer titles which I can grab for free and fill up my back catalogue of games.
Lack of PlayStation 5 games
When I bought my PlayStation 5, I was excited about playing all the next generation games. I loved my PS4 and there was an amazing back catalogue of games which I could pick up and enjoy at any point, but I was looking forward to trying new games which gave me excitement for the new generation. And….that hasn’t particularly happened.
The last time I checked, there were fewer than 20 PlayStation 5 exclusive games and that list continues to shrink as some of these titles are now being released on PC. So, playing on my PlayStation 5 is becoming increasingly obsolete as more and more titles move onto PC where I can more easily get higher performance than a home console.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure on PlayStation 5 and PC
There is also the issue of there not being as many games which appeal to me on PlayStation. Increasingly, I have noticed that Sony and PlayStation are moving towards the live service style games, such as Destruction AllStars (a first party PlayStation game where you compete to be the last vehicle standing) and away from the narrative driven or single player experiences that I look for in games generally.
The last game I bought for my PlayStation 5 which was exclusive to PlayStation at the time was Sackboy: A Big Adventure, I still haven’t finished it and in the time I’ve not been playing it, it has since launched on PC. With no more games coming out that draw me into the PlayStation ecosystem, I’ve found myself questioning if continuing my membership to PlayStation Plus is the right thing to do when I know there aren’t going to be any good PlayStation 5 exclusive games for me coming in the future.
What happens when you cancel PlayStation Plus?
The biggest thing I was worried about when it came to deciding to cancel my PlayStation Plus was what happens to all of the games that I’ve downloaded through the free monthly games for PlayStation Plus. I have known for a while that as long as you are a PlayStation Plus member, your games are yours to keep forever, but if I cancel my membership then I would lose the games I bought.
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture on PlayStation 4 and PC
It took me a while to research this to find out exactly what happens, but it appears that when my membership finally expires the games remain on my console ready to play, but they will be locked so I won’t be able to play them without signing up for PlayStation Plus again. Whilst this is a bit frustrating for me, I guess this actually works out better for me. Rather than paying yearly for an online subscription service I’ll barely use, now if I fancy playing a game from my backlog, I can pick up a month long subscription and play one or two games which are locked behind that paywall before going back to my normal life. Whether or not I do this though, will remain to be seen.
Would I go back to PlayStation Plus?
If I had to be honest with myself though, I honestly don’t think I would go back to PlayStation Plus right now. The cost of the service in the UK has ballooned to a level which I am honestly not comfortable with, even more so for a service that I’ve barely used in the past couple of years.
But what about all those games that I downloaded over the years for free? Surely I want to play all of them and enjoy working my way through a backlog on the system? I kind of do, but at the same time, I’m of the opinion that if I’ve not played those games by now, I’m probably not going to go back and play them. If that does change though, and any of them are worthy of being spoken about on my blog, then I will definitely review them in time.
However, the biggest kicker to me is a lack of decent current generation games for a cosy gamer. My gaming tastes and my life have changed over the years. Now I don’t have hundreds of hours to sink into sprawling RPGs and I certainly don’t want to see blood and gore on my screen! I’m focusing more on shorter story driven games which make me feel more connected to the world and until I can see more games like that on PlayStation, I think I’m mostly going to be sticking to small indie titles on PC and Nintendo Switch.
