Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

As PlayStation Plus turns 10, Sony offers three free games

 

Sony’s PlayStation Plus service turned 10 on Monday, June 29, and the company is offering up some freebies to celebrate.

Recommended Videos

Sony said on Monday that it will offer a commemorative PlayStation 4 theme and free online multiplayer on July 4 and 5 to celebrate the anniversary. Sony also announced that

NBA 2K 20

,

Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration

,
and Erica will be available for free between July 7 and August 3.

Each month, PlayStation Plus subscribers get two free games with their membership, but Sony will bump that to three next month as part of its 10-year celebration. PlayStation Plus subscribers can currently get Call of Duty: WWII and Star Wars Battlefront II for June at no charge.

Sony launched PlayStation Plus on June 29, 2010 to deliver online multiplayer and other perks to PlayStation 3 users. Since then, it has attracted more than 41.5 million users who pay $60 per year, $25 for three months, or $10 a month for access to free monthly games, 100GB of cloud storage, and online multiplayer. The service also comes with Share Play, which allows people to let friends remotely watch or play a game from the host’s library.

According to Sony, more than 1,000 games have been made available for free since PlayStation Plus started the monthly offers in June 2012. The 2007 Call of Duty: Modern WarfareSonic Forces, Shadow of the Colossus, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and Destiny 2 are the five most-redeemed monthly freebies since the service’s launch.

Still, PlayStation Plus is significantly smaller than Microsoft’s Xbox Live subscription service. To compare, Microsoft said in April that it now has 90 million monthly active Xbox Live users and more than 10 million Xbox Game Pass subscribers who pay $10 a month for access to more than 100 Xbox and PC games, which is comparable to Sony’s PlayStation Now subscription.

Sony hasn’t discussed its future plans for PlayStation Plus, but it’s expected to live on in some form when the PlayStation 5 launches this holiday season as it did when the PlayStation 4 came out. In a PlayStation 5 event earlier this month, Sony promoted online play in GTA Online when it revealed Grand Theft Auto 5 would come to the new console. A title card accompanying the announcement read “PS Plus required to play,” suggesting the service will be required for online multiplayer on the PS5.

Don Reisinger
Don Reisinger is a freelance technology, video game, and entertainment journalist. He has been writing about the world of…
How Astro Bot charmed its way to becoming our Game of the Year
Game of the Year: Astro Bot

The process of picking one “game of the year” is a journey marked by second-guessing. Not a December goes by at Digital Trends where we aren’t agonizing over our annual top 10 list. Do we actually love Baldur’s Gate 3 as much as we think or are we giving in to the pressures of critical consensus? Is Elden Ring a lame year-end pick when we could be celebrating something like Immortality that still sticks with us years later? Are we weighing independent games enough in our deliberations? These are the kind of questions that keep us up at night as winter begins.

This year, we were faced with a similar mental puzzle. After 12 months of obsessively tracking our GOTY front-runners in detailed spreadsheets, one game was left standing: Astro Bot. The delightful platformer had won our hearts thanks to its precise platforming, good-natured attitude, and toylike design. It seemed like a no-brainer, but it was still hard to combat that lingering doubt as one question still haunted us.

Read more
Why I kept coming back to Final Fantasy XIV in 2024
A character sits on a "fatter cat" mount

The MMO genre is overflowing with titles vying for the attention of anyone willing to invest significant portions of their time in a single game. There are no doubt plenty of killer choices you can make based on what type of combat, endgame, and payment model you prefer, ensuring that you'll almost certainly find one that fits you just right. I've been investing off and on in the genre for over two decades, with thousands of hours poured into everything from old, niche titles like Silkroad Online (which I just learned somehow still exists) to worldwide successes like World of Warcraft and Guild Wars.

In recent years, though, I find myself disappointed in various aspects of many popular MMOs, whether it's an overwhelming focus on endgame raiding, too much PVP-centric content, or unfriendly communities that make me cringe when I even glance at the chat. None of that is a problem when I return to Final Fantasy XIV. I somehow feel at peace each time I load up Square Enix's long-running MMO, and it's becoming harder and harder for me to want to venture elsewhere.

Read more
Sly Cooper, Jak and Daxter added to PS Plus as part of 30th anniversary
Jak and Daxter smirk at one another.

PlayStation Plus Premium is getting some new games for its Classics catalog for December, and as it's nearly time for the official PlayStation 30th anniversary, it's set to be big.

PlayStation announced the special additions to PlayStation Plus for December on Wednesday that includes three classic games: Sly 2: Band of Thieves, Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, and Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. The company also stated in the announcement blog post that they'll have "more news on the full PlayStation Plus Game Catalog and Premium lineups later," which seems to indicate there will be even more games coming to the service.

Read more