"When I discovered it, I deleted the account from my PS4.
"I lost my 35 Euros because I don't want to get in trouble," they told me.
One user, who asked to remain anonymous, purchased an account associated with a copy of Mafia III, but when they logged in, someone's credit card was still attached to it. To learn more about the service, I spoke to several others about their experience with PSN Games, and found stories with all manners of red flags. "My version of Overwatch had the same issue," said another user in reply.īut these are just anonymous comments. "The account got banned after only 24 hours," said one user.
It'd help explain how his password got out there.Īnd you don't have to go far to find to find more proof of a hit-or-miss relationship with PSN Games, like these reviews on. When I ran Fok's email through, it showed his login information had been compromised on a number of websites.
But if PSN Games is simply buying keys and making their own accounts, how exactly did Fok's account, complete with legitimate username and password, get mixed up in there?Īgain, PSN Games did not respond to requests for clarification on this, but this provides fresh reason for people to immediately add two-step verification to their PSN accounts, download password management software like 1Password, and check to see if your accounts have been previously compromised by using services like. PSN Games' website says the games are purchased "from distributors in cheaper regions," and the reason they tie them to accounts is so that people from other regions can use them.
"I only found out cause PSN asked me to do a routine password change," said Fok, "and I guess I locked him out."įok had stopped playing Overwatch on his PS4 months ago, after buying it on PC. This is how Bennett Eglinton was able to log in to Mic Fok's account, download his copy of Overwatch, log out of Mic's account, switch back to his account, and start playing Overwatch. (Sony only added two-factor authentication to PSN last year, long after it'd become the standard elsewhere.) Sony did not respond to my request for comment on PSN Games or clarity on how it might better protect some of its users in the future. Additionally, Sony doesn't notify you, via email or notification, if the primary device for an account has changed, so if you're the original owner of the account, you likely won't notice that this has happened. That way, PSN has no way to verify what's happening. PSN only kicks someone person off if they're on the same account. On a PlayStation 4, if a game is locally installed, you can play it, even if you're logged into a different account. After downloading the game, you're supposed to log out of the account and switch back to yours. You then sign into that account and mark your PlayStation 4 as the primary device, which grants you access to play the game locally on your machine.
After checking out, PSN Games sends you the login information for an account, complete with email address and password. Right now, PSN Games is offering it for $41.99.
Let's say you want to play Mass Effect: Andromeda, but don't want to pay the game's full price, $60. Here's how PSN Games, which claims to offer "legal and genuine digital downloads, but sent in the form of an account," works. "The site claimed to buy games in other regions, put them on an account, and the sell them for cheaper." "A quick search on them didn't show anything negative, so I decided to try it out," said Eglinton. They also sell a lot of Microsoft software?) (Though called PSN Games, the website sells accounts tied to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One games. Eglinton discovered PSN Games while looking for the cheapest way to get the game through a website called, which aggregates key sellers, including PSN Games.