Sony has updated the PlayStation Plus (PS Plus) catalog of Extra and Premium tier games for October, and one of its most interesting offers — Yakuza! Like A Dragon — is sadly one that you might be better off not getting, at least for now.
Or risk losing it forever. Like, ever forever.
Kotaku notes (via PlayStation Lifestyle)that an ongoing bug on Sony’s digital marketplace will likely make any previous ownership of SEGA’s Japanese mafia-centered game void, in favor of the new download. The technicality of it might sound complicated but it’s actually rather easy to comprehend: you know when you save a game session, then you progress further from it and save the game again? Well, usually, what happens is you overwrite the old save file with the new one, right?
The PS Plus situation is kinda like it, except instead of a save file, it’s the entire ownership of the game: essentially, if you ever had Yakuza! Like A Dragon before, and then you download the new offer, Sony’s system will see that as a new purchase of a game you already have — voiding the previous ownership in its entirety.
Which sucks because it is an incredibly cool game — one that completely revamped the franchise, no less, by introducing a new, turn-based action combat system with over-the-top visuals and a witty dialog to boot. Why wouldn’t you download it, right?
Wait, did Sony ever give away Yakuza! Like A Dragon on PS Plus?
I am so glad you asked because, as a matter of fact, yes, they very much did: back in 2022, Yakuza! Like A Dragon was one of the Essential tier plan’s giveaways.
Reason being: back then, what is now known as the Essential plan was, well, the only plan available for PS Plus users. It was a sweet deal, as Sony gave away two games per month for subscribers and encouraged them to keep logging into their accounts to check out for the monthly updates. One of those was, of course, Yakuza! Like A Dragon.
Also, at the time, any downloaded game was yours to keep as long as a PS Plus subscription was active. A few years later, Sony overhauled the entire digital store, making it look closer like Game Pass — in fact, we recently put out an explainer on how it actually works — and established several tiers of subscription, the “Essential” being the one closest to what it was before.
The thing is, like we said, if you happened to pick up Yakuza! Like A Dragon back then, the current offer, if downloaded, will overwrite the previous license.
“Cool”, you might think, “but as long as my subscription is active, I can still play it”. Eh, kinda right, but kinda wrong too: you see, alongside the store’s overhaul, Sony established that, every month, a handful of games end up leaving the service altogether, and the only way to get them back is to buy them, full price, within the digital store (or, you know, owning a physical copy).
Sure, a gift card or your credit/debit piece of plastic would take care of it, but the point is: a freebie is no longer a freebie. Definitely, a new chapter on the longstanding debate of gamers not actually being the owners of games they buy, but actually renting a license of use that can be revoked at the grace (or lack thereof) of a digital store and/or their makers.
Either way, before getting any offer from PS Plus, make a case of checking your library just to make sure you don’t have the stuff you’re trying to download.
