I will try to keep this brief, but detailed;
About 2 weeks ago my plus subscription lapsed for a short amount of time; after renewing it that same week, my access to all the free games I have on my account is now gone and only this months games are available. This is years worth of plus content on PS3, VITA, and PS4, gone.
The specifics;
Earlier this month I got the normal "your subscription to plus is about to expire" warning emails. In the past I have gotten these even with a year + left on my account, but the system didn't register it until the current year ended and then it auto continued. Unsure if I had purchased another year and it would do the same, I decided I would wait until that day and see what happened. If plus turned off I would buy a new year, simple way to avoid buying more time when not needed, rather do it during a sale.
That day happens and sometime that morning while I was at work I noticed I no longer could see the free plus games for that month as "free". I then logged into my Playstation credit card account and turned in points for a 1 year plus code. I attempted to try to use it on the website, but it told me I had to do it from a Playstation device.
I get home form work that night, log into my PS4 and input the code; bam the yellow + appears next to my name, looks all good.
Now I work 60+ hours a week and go to school full time while also being a husband and father; I don't play playstation every day and sometimes not more than once a week. I happened to be having finals these last two weeks, so even less time.
So Saturday I am playing War Thunder on PS4 and notice I can't see the micro transaction store for the game. My friends say it works fine for them. I log into the PS Store, search for the game, find it, buy a 99cent gold eagle to test it. Switch back into the game, no new gold eagles. Strange enough, maybe I need to log out and back in I think so I decide to try that later when we are done playing.
Night ends, friends are tired, so I decide to try out the new Resogun expansion. I had purchased the season pass several days before and had not tried it yet. Go to launch Resogun and it has a lock icon next to start. "Cannot start the application. The application has expired." I then check my other games, all my free plus games other than the current month have this icon.
I get online and contact chat support. Nice guy, tries help me out but no luck. He has me delete a game and try to download it again. All the game sin the store are showing up with their retail prices, would have to buy them to download them. Check my download list on the website; all my free games are there, but when I click download to PS4 it flickers and does nothing. I click another regular game, it starts downloading.
I look at my library on PS4 and non of my free games are there despite several still being installed on the PS4. He apologizes and advises me to call phone support when they open the next day and ask to have my problem escalated.
Sunday; call phone support, explain the situation, nice lady, apologizes and asks me to hold on while she talks to the next level support. Gets back on with me and tells me something like - Sorry but they can't do anything, developers have agreements that sometimes preclude you from getting the game again once the period has expired.
I respond; ok but I have lost EVERY plus game I have ever owned on my VITA, PS3, and PS4 except this months games, that is 3 years of content, that is 80% if my VITA library! I then continue to point out that not only is that absurd, but it contradicts everything they have posted on the topic.
Playstation Plus FAQ (official Sony forums)
Playstation official Blog
She apologizes again and asks me to hold again to tell them that I insist on talking to someone. Finally I get yet another nice person who apologizes and listens to me. She isn't sure what they can do, but promises to talk to corporate and call me back the next day (today). She theorizes that maybe something got messed up on their end and they didn't know it yet (maybe with the recent changes to plus?)
In the mean time, I happened to also notice that War Thunder was not listed in my library despite being there and playable on the launch screen. I verify I can still download it and subsequently delete the game and re-install it. Log into it and voila, the eagles i bought appear (I had checked twice before this to verify it wasn't needing to log out).
I will update this once I hear back from them today, but I felt people should be warned that either things have changed with the Plus policy or a glitch might be occurring they should avoid. I know at least 1 or 2 others have posted similar issues in the support forums as well and have not had luck with this being resolved.
UPDATE
July 1 - Called support yesterday after not hearing back form them; was assured that person would still get back to me and noted I called on the case#. Have yet to get a phone call back.
UPDATE 2
July 6 - Called support again, still no call back from them. Level 1 support informed me that my level 2 support person needed to talk to level 3, and they don't work today. Advised to try calling tomorrow....
UPDATE 3
16th No update yet, try calling again in a week.
UPDATE
24th - Phone support again, my case is currently "closed", which is to say they can't help me on the phone and I need to wait for a resolution form above. Support says they have no record of me calling on the 16th and case was closed on the 8th. Spent another hour troubleshooting with the guy, eventually he let me talk to his supervisor. Supervisor tells me if it was more than 24 hours I lose content permanently. Argued the facts and told him I was told otherwise and sources on their website say that is not true. On hold again.
Update
Two people reached out to me here, and my problem has been fixed. I was asked to not mention who, so I won't go further than that. The solution ended up being adding more plus time. Once I added an extra month of plus, all my plus content came back. So if you have this same problem, extending your subscription should fix it, and customer service is aware of it and looking at how to prevent it from occurring again. Thank you everyone for your support and help, without good people here, I may never have solved this problem.
About 2 weeks ago my plus subscription lapsed for a short amount of time; after renewing it that same week, my access to all the free games I have on my account is now gone and only this months games are available. This is years worth of plus content on PS3, VITA, and PS4, gone.
The specifics;
Earlier this month I got the normal "your subscription to plus is about to expire" warning emails. In the past I have gotten these even with a year + left on my account, but the system didn't register it until the current year ended and then it auto continued. Unsure if I had purchased another year and it would do the same, I decided I would wait until that day and see what happened. If plus turned off I would buy a new year, simple way to avoid buying more time when not needed, rather do it during a sale.
That day happens and sometime that morning while I was at work I noticed I no longer could see the free plus games for that month as "free". I then logged into my Playstation credit card account and turned in points for a 1 year plus code. I attempted to try to use it on the website, but it told me I had to do it from a Playstation device.
I get home form work that night, log into my PS4 and input the code; bam the yellow + appears next to my name, looks all good.
Now I work 60+ hours a week and go to school full time while also being a husband and father; I don't play playstation every day and sometimes not more than once a week. I happened to be having finals these last two weeks, so even less time.
So Saturday I am playing War Thunder on PS4 and notice I can't see the micro transaction store for the game. My friends say it works fine for them. I log into the PS Store, search for the game, find it, buy a 99cent gold eagle to test it. Switch back into the game, no new gold eagles. Strange enough, maybe I need to log out and back in I think so I decide to try that later when we are done playing.
Night ends, friends are tired, so I decide to try out the new Resogun expansion. I had purchased the season pass several days before and had not tried it yet. Go to launch Resogun and it has a lock icon next to start. "Cannot start the application. The application has expired." I then check my other games, all my free plus games other than the current month have this icon.
I get online and contact chat support. Nice guy, tries help me out but no luck. He has me delete a game and try to download it again. All the game sin the store are showing up with their retail prices, would have to buy them to download them. Check my download list on the website; all my free games are there, but when I click download to PS4 it flickers and does nothing. I click another regular game, it starts downloading.
I look at my library on PS4 and non of my free games are there despite several still being installed on the PS4. He apologizes and advises me to call phone support when they open the next day and ask to have my problem escalated.
Sunday; call phone support, explain the situation, nice lady, apologizes and asks me to hold on while she talks to the next level support. Gets back on with me and tells me something like - Sorry but they can't do anything, developers have agreements that sometimes preclude you from getting the game again once the period has expired.
I respond; ok but I have lost EVERY plus game I have ever owned on my VITA, PS3, and PS4 except this months games, that is 3 years of content, that is 80% if my VITA library! I then continue to point out that not only is that absurd, but it contradicts everything they have posted on the topic.
Playstation Plus FAQ (official Sony forums)
Playstation official Blog
She apologizes again and asks me to hold again to tell them that I insist on talking to someone. Finally I get yet another nice person who apologizes and listens to me. She isn't sure what they can do, but promises to talk to corporate and call me back the next day (today). She theorizes that maybe something got messed up on their end and they didn't know it yet (maybe with the recent changes to plus?)
In the mean time, I happened to also notice that War Thunder was not listed in my library despite being there and playable on the launch screen. I verify I can still download it and subsequently delete the game and re-install it. Log into it and voila, the eagles i bought appear (I had checked twice before this to verify it wasn't needing to log out).
I will update this once I hear back from them today, but I felt people should be warned that either things have changed with the Plus policy or a glitch might be occurring they should avoid. I know at least 1 or 2 others have posted similar issues in the support forums as well and have not had luck with this being resolved.
UPDATE
July 1 - Called support yesterday after not hearing back form them; was assured that person would still get back to me and noted I called on the case#. Have yet to get a phone call back.
UPDATE 2
July 6 - Called support again, still no call back from them. Level 1 support informed me that my level 2 support person needed to talk to level 3, and they don't work today. Advised to try calling tomorrow....
UPDATE 3
16th No update yet, try calling again in a week.
UPDATE
24th - Phone support again, my case is currently "closed", which is to say they can't help me on the phone and I need to wait for a resolution form above. Support says they have no record of me calling on the 16th and case was closed on the 8th. Spent another hour troubleshooting with the guy, eventually he let me talk to his supervisor. Supervisor tells me if it was more than 24 hours I lose content permanently. Argued the facts and told him I was told otherwise and sources on their website say that is not true. On hold again.
Update
Two people reached out to me here, and my problem has been fixed. I was asked to not mention who, so I won't go further than that. The solution ended up being adding more plus time. Once I added an extra month of plus, all my plus content came back. So if you have this same problem, extending your subscription should fix it, and customer service is aware of it and looking at how to prevent it from occurring again. Thank you everyone for your support and help, without good people here, I may never have solved this problem.
