Sony appears to be in the process of making it more difficult to buy old PS3 and PS Vita games through the PlayStation Store.
After the company was forced into an embarrassing U-turn over its plans to shutter the PS3 and PS Vita stores, you might think that it would want to leave these precious retro gaming resources well alone. But that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Kotaku has discovered a post on the ‘Important Notices‘ section of Sony’s support pages that outlines plans to hamper PS3 and PS Vita purchases over the coming weeks.
Starting from October 27, PS3 and Vita owners will no longer be able to use a credit or debit card, or even a service like PayPal, either to buy digital content directly or to add funds to their PlayStation Store wallet.
In fact, the only way for owners of these legacy platforms to add funds to their account will be to buy and redeem PlayStation Store gift cards. That means either in physical outlets or through a computer, mobile device, PS4, or PS5 console.
This will also affect games that have in-game stores for purchasing DLC, as these still rely on the PlayStation Store for funding.
When explaining away its poorly received decision to cut PS3 and Vita support back in April, Sony’s Jim Ryan cited “commerce support challenges” as one of the reasons behind the move.
Evidently those concerns haven’t simply gone away just because “incredibly passionate” fans have had their say on the matter, but Sony’s latest move still sticks in the craw a little.
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