As previously mentioned, we now have a PS5 in the household. My handicap is that I have no experience with modern consoles, so I therefore have a few questions. Basically, we have multiple users, each with their own controller and PS account, and I haven’t entirely figured out how games, saves, and purchases work.

If offspring A buys a game, can offspring B play it? (Are the games/purchases tied to the console or the user?)
If offspring B plays a game, will his progress/savegame only be for his user?

  • @KellyEnglish
    22•6 days ago
    • Each account has their own saves.
    • Each account has their own digital purchases
    • Each account can nominate one physical console as their “primary”*, any other account on that console is then licenced to run their games. Note however:
      • child accounts can be restricted from running mature content
      • accounts that don’t own the content can run the games but not install them. This is a hassle for me because I own my family library but have to cycle through the games when my son wants to replay something.

    * technically each account can have one primary ps4 and one primary ps5, in the cross gen period people you use this to lend their ps4 console and library to family/friends but that isn’t so relevant today.

    Edit:

    For digital purchases the owning account can login to other non-primary consoles and access their library there (for the duration of the login session). This can be used to share the library when visiting other households but does require careful consideration about who should own each title.

    • @[email protected]
      5•6 days ago

      Console ignorant person here with a question, does this mean that in a classic setup where Alice, Bob, and Charlie all have separate profiles on the machine so they can get that sweet achievement chasing high then one of them must essentially be the master account used for managing what games everyone can play or, alternatively, random games are on random accounts and you need to cycle through them if you want to find the right one to reinstall from?

      • @KellyEnglish
        7•6 days ago

        Yeah, if you want to have a master list of games available to install then the purchases have to be under one account.

        Otherwise each account will see their own list of available titles, if purchases are arbitrary then these lists may appear random.

        I have 99% of my family’s games on my account but have placed titles gifted to or purchased by my 8yo on his account. This isn’t important now while we share a loungeroom and set of consoles but as he grows up we will need to separate our libraries at some point.

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      5•6 days ago

      If an account is associated with only one console, is that automatically designated as their primary?