Games removed from Playstation Now when it changed to Playstation Plus Premium.

[Harrison]

Sony recently revamped their monthly subscription plans.

Originally you had PS Plus to give you online multiplayer access and free monthly games. And PS Now offering a Gamepass style service of about 700 games to download, plus many to stream such as PS3 games.

Sony merged the 2 into a new PS Plus subscription with 3 tiers. Essentials is like the old PS Plus with a few free games and multiplayer. Extra adds the gamepass style games library, and Premium adds streaming, plus classic games from PS1 to PS3 and game trials.

I've got the Premium plan as I subscribed to both before, but noticed some of the games I'd installed from the PS Now library were now showing with a padlock. This used to mean a game had been removed from the Now library. But now it's a bit random and I don't think Sony quite thought of people with games still installed from Now when they changed it.

When I selected a game with a padock it showed an error saying the license wasn't valid. And offering to go to the store page. But this is where it gets random. Sometimes the game is acutely still in the new library but somehow no longer linked. The site page shows the download button. Selecting it goes to download the game, but then does an error saying it already installed. Then it links it correctly again. So fixing the issue.

But for other games they are gone from the PS Plus library, so the store page just shows the price to buy it.

But for some other games I had installed from the Now Library, they are actually completely gone from the whole Playstation store, not just the PS Plus library. And this includes games like Dirt 4. It actually no longer exists and has no store page. That's always a danger with digital catalogues and libraries, but until now I hadn't noticed Sony removing anything from the PS store. I wonder what those who own games like Dirt 4 can still see. I hope like Steam the owned games are still available to download from your library and it's only the store page that has gone.

So I've found the following full list of the games that were removed from the PS Extra/Premium library then it transitioned from the Now library. And it's a lot of games. It makes me think I'm not getting the same value for money as I was before, and there are a few games I had installed and played a lot so well have to buy them now, however they are now including PS5 games as monthly giveaway games to all PS Plus subscribers and in the Plus library.

Also I did notice some games in this list for PS1-PS3 games are back in the classics library now. And you can download and play them locally now. Emulated and upscaled. Before you could only stream PS2 and PS3 games. 2 games that are gone and in very sad about though are the 2 Bomberman games. I hope they come back soon.

Here is the full list of games removed:

100ft robot golf
A bastard’s tale
A boy and his blob
Act it out!
Active soccer 2 dx
Adam’s venture origins
Adventure time pirates
Aegis of earth
Air conflicts Vietnam ultimate
Alchemic jousts
Amazing discoveries in
Anodyne
Another world
APB reloaded
Arcania the complete
Asdivine hearts
Assault suit leynos
Assetto corsa
Azkend 2
Back to bed
Backgammon blitz
Bard’s gold
Baseball riot
Batman arkham city (PS3)
Batman arkham asylum GOTY (PS3)
Battalion commander
Battle worlds kronos
BF4 (PS3)
BFH (PS3)
Ben 10
Bentley’s hackpack
Blazblue 5 games (PS3&PS4)
Blazerush
Blood bowl 2
Bokosuka wars 2
Bombing busters
Borderlands 1 (PS3)
Braid
Brick Breaker
Bridge constructor
Broken age
Brut@l
Castle invasion
Castle storm definitive
Catherine
Choplifter HD
Clockwork tales
Costume quest 2
Counterspy
Crimsonland
Dark arcana
Day of the tentacle remastered
de blob 2
Dead island 3 games (PS3&PS4)
Dead space 3
Dead to rights retribution
Deathspank the baconing
Desert child
Destroy all humans! 2 (2006)
Dirt 4
Dirt rally
Dishonored (PS3)
Doki-doki universe (PS4)
Don Bradman cricket 14
Ducati 90th anniversary
Escape plan (PS4)
Eternal sonata
Everybody’s gone to the rapture
Everyday shooter
Extreme exorcism
F1 2020
Fairy fencer f advent dark force
Farming Simulator (PS3)
Farming simulator 19
Fat princess adventures
Firefighters the simulation
flow (PS3)
Flower (PS3)
Forestry 2017
Gal gun double peace
Galaga legions DX
Gem smashers
Go! puzzle
God eater 2 rage burst
God eater resurrection
God of war origins collection chains of olympus
God of war origins collection ghost of sparta
Gravity crash
Grim fandango remastered
Guacamelee! PSNow bundle
Guilty gear Xrd revelator
Guilty gear Xrd sign
Handball 16
Harvest moon a wonderful life special edition
Harvest moon save the homeland
Heavenly sword
Hohokum
Hunter’s trophy 2 america
Hunter’s trophy 2 australia
In space we brawl
Industry giant 2
Inside my radio
Ironcast
Jeremy mcgrath’s offroad
Journey (PS3)
Katamari forever
Killzone 1,2,3 (PS3)
King oddball (PS4)
Legend of kay anniversary (PS4)
Lego harry potter Year 1-4 (PS3)
Lego harry potter Year 5-7 (PS3)
Lemmings
Limbo
Lone survivor the director’s cut
Lords of the fallen
Lost sea
Lumines supernova
Machinarium (PS4)
Mafia 2 (PS3)
Mafia 3 standard (PS4)
Majin and the forsaken kingdom
Mantis burn racing
Marvel puzzle quest dark reign
Mastercube
Megadimension neptunia VII
Miko gakkou monogatari
Minutes
Mirror’s edge (PS3)
Monster energy supercross
Monster jam steel titans
Mordheim city of the damned
Mortal kombat komplete edition (PS3)
Moto racer 4
MotoGP13
Motorcycle club (PS4)
MXGP3
Mystery chronicle one way heroics
Need for speed rivals (PS3)
Neon chrome
Nidhogg
Nitroplus blasterz (PS3)
Obliteracers
Oddworld stranger’s wrath HD
OlliOlli
OlliOlli 2
One upon light
Pac-man championship edition DX full version (PS3)
Pac-man championship edition 2
Painkiller hell and damnation
Pixel herose byte and magic
Pixeljunk monsters
Pixeljunk nom nom galaxy
Pixeljunk shooter (PS3)
Pixeljunk shooter 2 (PS3)
Pixeljunk shooter ultimate
Pixeljunk sidescroller
Plague road
Professional farmer 2017
Project cars 2
Real farm
Red dead redemption Leaving PS Now 126 days
Red dead redemption undead nightmare Leaving PS Now 126 days
Red faction guerrilla (PS3)
Reus
Ride 3
Risen 3 enhanced
Rive
Rugby 15
Rugby world cup 2015
Saints row the third the full package (PS3)
Saints row IV (PS3)
Saints row IV re-elected
Saints row gat out of hell
Sebastien loeb rally evo
Shadow of the colossus (PS3)
Siegecraft commander
Skyscrappers
Slay the spire
Slime-san superslime edition
Sly cooper thieves in time
Sniper ghost warrior 1,2
Soul axiom
Sound shapes (PS4)
Sparkle 2
Sparkle unleashed
Spec ops the line
Spelunky (PS3)
Square heroes
Starhawk
Stick it to the man
Strike suit zero director’s cut
Styx shards of darkness
Super dungeon bros
Super mega baseball
Super stacker party
Super stardust ultra
Super time force ultra
Super toy cars
Syberia 2
Table top racing world tour
Tachyon project
Tales of zestiria (PS4)
Tekken 7
Tekken tag tournament 2
Tennis in the face
Tetraminos
The bug butcher
The deer god
The keeper of 4 elements
The last of us left behind stand alone (PS3)
The last of us (PS3)
The legend of heroes trails of cold steel 1,2 (PS3)
The lego movie videogame (PS3)
The metronomicon slay the dance floor
The raven legacy of a master thief
The sly collection
The spectrum retreat
The treasures of montezuma 4
The unfinished swan (PS4)
The wolf among us bundle(Ep 1-5) (PS3)
Tiny brains
Titan quest
Torment
Touhou scarlet curiosity
Trine (PS3)
Ultra street fighter IV (PS4)
Uncharted 1,2,3 (PS3)
Under night in-birth exe late
Vegas party
Velocibox
Velocity 2X
Wasteland 2
Way of the samurai 3,4
Wet
Whispering willows
Wizardry labyrinth of lost souls
World to the west
Wuppo
Ziggurat
Zombie vikings
Zotrix

[Kin Hell]

I think you need to get out more H.

[Harrison]

Just doing consumer research to aid my fellow gamer. ;-)

This is whilst stuck at home with covid. Went to play one of my favourite games, Pac-man championship edition 2, and to my horror is was padlocked. That's when I discovered it had been removed and I would need to buy it.

So instead decided to play a bit of Super stardust ultra and discovered that was removed too and needed buying.

That's why I dug deeper and started going through the games I had installed. I found 10 games that now needed to be purchased, and 3 games no longer exist.

One of the games now gone forever is Eve: Valkarie. If you don't know this game. It is a multiplayer space dogfighting shooter set in the Eve Online Universe. And designed to use VR. It was great fun without all the seriousness of Eve Online. But at the same time as Now changed to PS Plus Microsoft decided to shut down its servers and kill Eve: Valkarie. Very annoying.

Another game that annoyed me, but isn't actually in that list above, was Olympic games Tokyo 2020. Sony gave this away free to all PS Plus subscribers when the Japanese Olympics started. It's a great multiplayer game and my wife really enjoyed playing it. Sony said it was a gift to Plus subscribers to keep forever. But it's gone.

[Kin Hell]

Nothing is forever H.....

[Harrison]

That's why I'm a big supporter of game preservation projects. Not to pirate games to play them for free, but to create digitally perfect copies to store and safeguard for the future.

This is becoming much more of an issue, and will only get worse. When games and software was only supplied on physical media it was a far easier job to archive. For games that needed a serial number or online account to register, a simple "patch" (no serial crack) was all that was needed to preserve the game in a working form for the future.

But now so many games rely 100% on downloading content to install them. And a lot now rely on online only services, accounts or servers to login and work. And the majority of games are now provided digitally it is more important then ever to try and archive wirking offline copies/versions to safeguard them.

Even Nintendo fell into this trap. But it was for SNES games. They wanted to release some retro games, I think it was either Wii-U or Switch, but couldn't find their original code for the games and had no easy way to reverse engineer or get hold of the game code to do so. So they actually had to turn to the emulation scene and get hold of a cracked rom version to use. The very people they had been going after for years to close down. Now that is irony.

[Demon Cleaner]

I thought you could keep them forever, that was one thing that always annoyed me with the Gamepass and I had to check which games got removed. Some bigger titles are not played in 5 hours or such, so getting to know that they are removed in 1 week means you can't really play them without having to buy.

I also have the premium tier but didn't use it so much yet. Only things I'm playing from the PS3 catalogue is Motorstorm Apocalypse and Split/Second.

I've read yesterday that Sony lost already 2.000.000 subscribers since PlayStation Plus was launched.

[Harrison]

You get to keep the 3 PS Plus games forever that are given away each month. But the new PS Plus Library is the same as the old PS Now library and works the same way as Xbox Gamepass, so you only have the games whilst they are in the library. The list I posted above are games removed from the Now library. But the monthly games given away to PS Plus subscribers.

[J T]

You get to keep the 3 PS Plus games forever that are given away each month

My understanding was, you get to keep them forever, but can only play them while you have an active subscription.

I find the naming and stuff a little bit inconsistent, and especially with the different naming in different countries, and of course some of the old stuff that isn't even a thing any more.

This is becoming much more of an issue, and will only get worse. When games and software was only supplied on physical media it was a far easier job to archive.

I thought a very similar thing just as I was about to tip all of my CDs into a bin.... If something happens to my subscription to Spotify and/or Apple Music, all of a sudden I've lost access to a whole bunch of music.

Not that I have a CD player or a hi-fi system either. But still, I couldn't quite bring myself to toss those CDs.

[Harrison]

Yes, that's correct. You keep the PS Plus games forever but can only play them when your have an active subscription.

And yeah, same for me with music CDs. I have a collection of hundreds, but it's been many years since I actually played any of them. I would just throw them away though. Some, especially boxsets cost a lot at the time. I do still have CD players. There is still one in my current car. But I don't have any setup as a hifi any more. Tend to stream Spotify via Alexa through an Echo in most rooms these days. But I can play a CD through my soundbar in the living room via the PS4 if needed, or through my AV amp via the PS5 and other systems in the games room. But thy actual Audio CDs are boxed up in the attic so not simple to do.

It's quite a shock these days if the internet for down. You suddenly realise how much you rely on it.

[Kin Hell]

I still have a bunch of burned Music CD's & original ones....

If I didn't have a Marantz Signature to play them on, I would probably have moved to the Bin option years ago.

Regarding owning for ever though, an active subscription is one thing, but games fall off the listing from what I've read or mis-understood.