According to numerous reports, Sony is targeting cheeky PlayStation 5 players who are exploiting a loophole to sell access to the PlayStation Plus Collection to PlayStation 4 players. It seems that the PS5 owners are providing a paid service in which they log in to the user accounts of the PS4 owners on their PS5.
This appears to automatically unlock the PlayStation Plus Collection on the PS4 user’s account, making it available to them via their own PS4 console. Sharing your account details with a stranger is risky business, to begin with, and paying for it is even worse, so we most certainly do not recommend this process to anybody, regardless of the repercussions from Sony.
Thousands of PSN accounts have been banned, and according to community discussions, these accounts are concentrated in HK(@PlayStationHK ), and have in common the receipt of Sony's PS Collection service for PS Plus, which contains serveral PS4 games for free. pic.twitter.com/ECWPRgVuO2
— ??? (@zhihuwong) November 26, 2020
Most of accounts will be unplayable for the next two months, including the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's holidays.
Worse, some PS5 consoles get banned.
Gamers call it "SIE Thanksgiving Day Massacre".
PlayStation HK has not responded to the issue at this time. pic.twitter.com/Y27LHCmDPC— ??? (@zhihuwong) November 26, 2020
According to users that have already had their accounts/consoles banned, the ban is scheduled to last for at least two months, permanently blocking them from all network activity. From what we can tell, so far, it seems as if Sony is automatically targeting consoles that are logging into multiple PSN accounts in a short duration or a single day. It is possible that this is to protect the accounts from fraudulent schemes but it is equally possible that this is also to prevent sharing of the PlayStation Plus Collection which was intended to be exclusive to PlayStation 5 owners.
