Sony to Short-Change PS Stars Members with PS Plus Renewals Starting Next Year

If they want to get me to cancel they could've just asked, thanks Sony!

Sucks, but I also use Stars so rarely that it’s not a big deal (plus it’s free). Accidentally discovering that I had collected enough points over the years to earn 20€ just as Alan Wake 2 released was a happy accident that I didn’t expect to happen again anyway.

Doesn’t bother me I get the majority of my points from game purchases or doing the little quests and since I only subscribe a month at a time to premium I was getting only 193 points which is jack all so it is what it is.

The enshittification of everything continues. Carrot to customers, stick to customers but carrot to business, stick to business, death.

They just need to integrate the system in their console... crazy idea I know....

I like stars, it's free cash and even i like to collect those really not useful prizes for the virtual shelf, but man, it is really annoying to check the campaigns in the mobile every time...

@jrt87 yeah, just spent it in credit, is the most profitable option, These days I spending it when I have 1250 for 5€ every time. The games usually cost you more points than the money you can get with those.

It's always been a bit crap let's be honest. I doubt too many people actually use it.

Automatically noping you out is always much more preferable than just assuming they can sign you up for whatever. Stars was poorly conceived and poorly implemented. They should just go back to the drawing board with the whole scheme.

These are the same PS*’s that only seem to exist for some digital collectors mumbo jumbo, right? Or can you exchange them for currency like Nintendo Gold Points?

I almost dont buy anything in the store and as a physical customer you get next to nothing anyway.

Stars couldn't hold a candle to Nintendo's Gold Coin system, and then Sony decided to make Stars even worse... that sure was a choice alright...

Aside from the fact that at this point they may as well just cull it completely, did anyone read the email? It was written so badly.

I never signed up for Stars and I'm glad I dididnt. I'd rather them scrap stars and just offer cashback on our purchases in the form of in store currency similar to what Nintendo do.

Yeah I'm not surprised they don't want PS Stars to result in an instant $5 back if you do one of those monster annual subscription payments. If you combine PS Stars with Costco gift cards and buying digital games on sale you do pretty well.

Don’t care about the 13 month thing as I just get a £5 voucher as soon as available, but not getting points for subscriptions is a bit of a bad one. Then again, we need to put it in perspective. What is it? £100 a year or thereabouts when bought during the Black Friday sales or something? That’s about 100 points I think (someone correct me if I’m wrong I don’t really pay attention too much). That’s not even enough to get a £5 voucher. So effectively the yearly subscription just went up by a few quid a year 🤷‍♂️ prices go up. At least it’s not Gamepass levels of increase.

Now, if I was really going to complain about something, it would be that I could get no points when I bought the PSVR2 and Portal.

@jrt87 Just cash them in at 1250 each there's no advantage in waiting

It was really nice getting £5 off twice a year, hardly much of a loss for Sony. Greedy F**ks

Whoever made such a terrible decision deserves to be fired. Hopefully there will be enough backlash that they'll be forced to reverse this.

@RadioHedgeFund I've exchanged stars for several £20 wallet funds, so both.

I will not be accepting their update. They can keep that *****. Am only at level 4.

I’m sort getting further into this generation and realising that Sony are becoming the do little as possible to earn as much a possible company, which includes price increases on console and games first from the big three.

Even though I have issues with Xbox, sometimes I wish they had not gone multi platform with some games and competed more on the console hardware front and exclusives.
Because if and when they leave the hardware market, then welcome to more of all this from Sony.

I’ve not renewed my PS Plus in the last 8 months, I was convinced it would go 50% off over Christmas, but it didn’t. Since I don’t play online, and Stars only seems to incentivise getting games I’m not interested in, it’s a complete irrelevance to me now. Same thing happened for me with Nintendo points. Oh well!

PS Stars isn't available for my country Indonesia, which i don't know what the reason for Sony to exclude my country from the program.

But i finished some of PS Stars challenge with my US account and what i only got was that useless digital action figure of Robbit from Jumping Flash and og PS4. I never received any points that can be traded for PSN voucher or games.

I personally don't care about any rewards program because i think it's a complete waste of time.

I do understand why so advertise "For the Players" when its obviously not. It should be "For the Profits" 🙃

I couldn't care less. I'm only level 3 or 4. Sony is absolutely garbage this generation. Makes me look back fondly on PS3 and even 4. Sigh... 😢

I’ve probably got about £25 free from it, so not completely useless. I only ever do the campaigns that get you points to exchange for wallet credit.

But it’s not really fun in any way? Not sure what the point of it is but it is something for nothing so I think it’s ok.

By the way don’t all attack it’s just an observation over the last few years with Sony.
I have a PS5 slim and looking forward to the PS5 Pro.

It’s like I have a Sony X95L 65” amazing tv and best upscaling and motion control I’ve ever seen.
But Sony so annoy me how they only have 2 HDMI 2:1 sockets and one of them you have to use for earc, leaving you one free.

It’s seems to always be the way with Sony, yes the best but some sort of cost cutting and sacrifice when you buy their products or services etc.

Never signed up for it, never cared. Would rather save money buying physical copies of games anyway..

My last 4-5 store purchases over the past two weeks have not earned me any points. Anyone else having that problem again?

I don’t have it because I don’t buy an awful lot digital. But it’s just following MS nerfing their rewards.

Expect a ps plus price rise soon.

Was this really necessary? Surely the people most interested in PS stars are some of the most loyal/biggest spending customers, and this is how you reward them? It's not a huge deal, but still seems greedy

My bigger complaint with PS stars is that it doesn't seem to reward you for a campaign to pre-order or buy a game if you have already completed the purchase before the campaign was made available. I've missed out on a number of rewards purely because I had already bought what it was asking me to buy.

I have picked 10x 5£ till now.
But in general it is 4% Cashback. That means in 13 months you have to spend in PS Store atleast 125£ to get those 5£ and/or gain some points by completing tasks. I don't do any of those tasks. If you spend less per 13 months, then Stars program is good only for those collectibles.

@Kevw2006 yeah, there is 0 backtracking. Only giving bonuses for new purchases. I guess that is intentional to push for extra purchases and give nothing for those who already did tasks before promotion.

This is simply not a big deal, and it will affect few.
If theres a story about stars thats of some relevance, it will be that its still not available to people on their actual console! Fix that and make it so that pre purchase or day one purchases count towards tasks aded a few days after launch and most users would be pretty happy.

I just got an email last night about resubscribing. Ridiculous.

@jrt87 Any points you have now will expire two years after earning them, same as they always have.

PS Stars is terrible anyway. However, obviously some people were getting "too much" value from the service and opting for the credit instead of the useless rubbish for the virtual shelf.

Firstly, there's no reward for having bought a game physically. Secondly, there's no reward if you've bought a game recently. I.E. I bought a game, digitally, only to see it had extra points available but since I didn't check and start the promotion, I can't get the bonus points.

Finally, not getting points for my PS Plus subscription is a slap on the face. I'll likely never get enough for £20 in credit ever again.

@jrt87 - On the other hand, I don't think PS Sstore credit ever expires (unless you don't use the account for multiple years) so at least there's no rush to spend them.

I instantly got Sony Rewards program flashbacks. I remember how they slowly killed that program. They may as well kill this program now as far as im concerned.

That's pretty ruthless but I'm not going to cancel (because I'm not a child)

Man, I know this is small but it just seems another crappy way of value being taken away from consumers and just.....un needed.
Leaves a bad taste in my mouth and the whole console space just seems so limited and annoying to me these days, can't explain why though honestly.

I'm fully done with consoles now - I'm gonna be doing a gaming PC for myself to hook up to the TV I think.

@Glotny Thank you, you made me check my account and realize I also have €20 worth of points ^_^

I’ve had £40 off them in vouchers without buying more subscriptions (already subscribed until 2027). So it doesn’t really affect me. The coins are a nice little bonus but they wouldn’t affect my buying habits.

I've had a £20 voucher from purchases before and I've currently got enough for another £40 so I might as well cash them in. I went on a bit of a spending spree over the last couple of months because they've had some very aggressive sales on the store. And they just keep coming I've noticed. Obviously they're trying really hard to entice the remaining physical collectors to go digital. While this move doesn't bother me too much (stars) I can see why some people would get upset over a baffling unnecessary change that wasn't doing Sony any harm. It takes a lot of subscription points or purchases to earn enough to make them viable.

I am disappointed by this anti-consumer practice from Sony. They have been in the business of displeasing their fans and customers lately.

I've gone digital-only for the past 5-6 years and it felt good to get a little something back by spending money on the service and game I like and have been connected to since I was 5.

Since PS Star was released I have redeemed about 50 euros via the points I have gathered (PS extra fees and game purchases). A drop in the bucket but better than nothing.

if its 13 months to spend your earned points then that is not great but what choice do we have.
I am cancelling PS+ in December, so that part wont matter.

Well, this has been fun and I did earn some nice collectibles alongside a bit of PSN credit. But I think I'll cancel when the time comes.

@Luminous117
Cancel what? Stars is free. 😂

Lmao this is probably the worst points system of all time.

@GADG3Tx87 I know Stars is free, what I mean is not accepting the new terms and cancelling my PStars membership XD. It says in the email I have to either accept the new terms or cancel it.

@Luminous117 fair enough. I don't see the point in not though since you're not paying for anything and you might get something out of it just for normal habits. Just my thoughts though but to each his own.

I don't know, this is still a great cherry on top for me. Logging once or twice a year and getting some extra dollars is all I'm doing with this programm.

@jrt87 no it is definitely not worse than Nintendo’s coin system. While you may get 1/5th of the coins for a physical purchase compared to digital purchases, you can only use the coins directly on games. Unlike stars you cannot use them to purchase store credit that doesn’t expire. At least with stars I was just able to redeem $20 for the ps store before the points expire that will remain in my store wallet until I need it. With Nintendo coins I only have a year to use them directly on purchases with no way to bank them for afterwards.

Doesn't bother me. I signed up but never expected to get much out of it as I don't buy games digitally if I can avoid it, so never earn many points anyway. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I'm level 3 with 2051 points, and I had to look that up to tell you... that's how disinterested I am in the whole thing.

Don't know why they even bothered with Stars. If they don't want to reward users then why even introduce the system in the first place? Also what about the month or so lost when the system went down? Did that count towards a month? The whole system seems like a game of move the goal posts and if you're an average PS purchaser and lucky you may get a discount. Whales are the ones who benefit most from the system.

I've just redeemed my 10k points for £40 credit, sod it. Just to be safe. That's a grand total of £65 I've had out of them since I started using it. Atleast it's better than nothing and I'll just use that on Until Dawn Remake which then only cost me £20.

Doesn't bother me too much as for some reason I am only paying £64.99 a year for Premium

@Paranoimia
That amount of points amounts to what, £7 or so? Not exactly worth getting excited about, but not complaining if someone wants to put that in my pocket either. You should probably at least be interested enough to just claim the PSN credit voucher

As much as I love PlayStation, it has to be said that Sony is one of the worst consumer friendly companies.

@EVIL-C lmao I hate people like u say that there plenty of games on PS5 u just don't want to play them

@Shwing like every company no company is consumer friendly they all want money

100% But some companies do go the extra bit to provide a better experience. Sony isn't one of them.

In my region still 900 odd points short of reaching the elusive $30 7500pts,so sadly guessing I'll unlikely hit it before the changes start influencing things...

Albeit even if they'd announced it on the PS Blog, I get stuck in an endless loop logging in on the Web or the App -but then doesn't allow me leave any posts/feedback anymore!😕🤐

Goes to show not much has changed in the post Jim Ryan era to the previous one with this & pricing on remakes like Until Dawn.

@Shwing I feel the same way about Nintendo. It's why I stopped buying their hardware and games. Expensive hardware for the specs and highly priced first party games that almost never get significant price cuts.

I prefer Sony, though they've made a few disappointing decisions lately.

Taking away the point earning for subscriptions is a bit of a blow to be honest. It was nice having the odd £5 off here and there… and actually made me buy things I probably wouldn’t have otherwise, always spending over the £5 discount, so really they’re the ones loosing out.

Very odd move. Sometimes it feels like they actively dislike their customers 😄. But big corporations are always gonna big corporation I guess. On it goes.

This means the economic balance of the service wasn't thought out well and some whales are getting free redeems every other week.

Kind of sucks as I don't buy that many games (got a massive backlog to get through). Almost have enough for the £20 reward

Will it be 13 months starting from now or when you originally got them? Because my rewards are from over the years

ive canceled my ps stars because i hardly use that rubbish anyway

The only time I had any real gain in points was when I renewed ps plus extra every year so now it's just gonna be a waste of time and any interest I had in ps stars is gonna slowly disappear because I don't purchase many games at all these days.

Since I often use the PS app to grab my free PS Plus games each month (since you can claim PS5 games even if you do not own a PS5 that way), I subscribed to PS Stars from the beginning. Didn't really engage with it for years, but got Exit The Gungeon for free from it recently, so already worth it for me. The digital collectibles are neat but baffle me with their useless existance.

This while “Reward System” is so half baked. Why is there not more initiative for awarding points for earned trophies or more in game challenge opportunities to get points. I feel so let down and this just makes less appealing. Some of the digital collectibles are cool, but I’m not spending points on something that is just pixels on screen to look at. Sony really needs to revamp this program.

@OldGamer999 the lack of HDMI 2.1 ports is what lead me to the LG Oled. Which in itself is the slightly better gaming TV overall. But i used to only buy and use Sony TV’s. Always had great luck with them. But only 2 HDMI’s with 1 being usable on a high end TV is just pathetic. So i passed. If they fixed that i might return. However my LG C2 Oled has been great. Dolby Vision and Atmos on Series X is really good. HDR on PS5 is nice as well.

I'm digital only for awhile now and managed to get over $100 in points just by buying stuff and even more points from campaigns so this is kinda stupid 😑

Soon as i get enough points i get 5er cards here and there and use them to get games in the sale. Stars has been very generous.

Not really bothered never earned any points anyway as I'm not a PlayStation Plus subscriber nothing is free

Eh, not really bothered by this as I exchange points for store credit as soon as I have enough, and use the credit next time I buy something. As they state the points will expire but not your credits, I shouldn't be impacted.

@HonestHick
Hi buddy, great tv and the newer LG oleds are even better.
I’ve been over on Pure Xbox getting annoyed with Avowed being 30fps only, the series x is getting a bit let down with this approach.

@OldGamer999 yeah all Oled’s are a good choice these days it seems, but the lack of the HDMI’s on Sony’s was a deal breaker for me. Yeah the 30fps sucks, but we are seeing that become the normal now. Even most games on PS5 will be 30. The Pro might be able to help some. PC seems to be the place to be for 60fps and above of course. This gen hasn’t been very good so far. Really hope it picks up in 2025 cause it’s a little stale at the moment.

What are stars then? They keep cropping up and as yet couldn't give a hoot.

@OldGamer999 Who ever is on top is this way. Sony was this way going from the PS2 to the PS3. Xbox was this way going from the 360 to the Xbox One. Now Sony is doing it again going from the PS4 to the PS5. It's unfortunate it's this way, but these gaming companies only show alot of fan fare when they are losing. Xbox being the case now.

The one silver lining is if MS goes full third party it can't get any worse than it has on Playstation the last four years.

@HonestHick
Sony studios if and when will show the way on the PS5 as they have done with say spider man 2 60fps and will do with Astro Bot.

God people just moan about everything!

And most if not all complaints are from people who don’t even use the feature 🙄

Grow up.

Its hard to complain about something free, but sony does seem bent on removing any incentives to further spend on the ecosystem.

They cancelled sony rewards, are nerfing stars which was already pretty poor to begin with.

Ive already started altering my purchases as a result of these changes. Preordered visions of mana yesterday and went xbox on my xbox credit card. Points on the card and with ms rewards. (Sonys card had the program pulled)

Ive also decided to cancel my ps premium since it went up so much and i dont play online.

I almost feel as if sony is actively trying to lose the gamers like me who are platform agnostic by removing incentives to stay.

This constant fleecing of value by Sony, MS and whoever else just makes me wonder why they have “loyalty” programs at all.

Just get it over with and scrap it Sony!

Not ideal but not the end of the world. As long as I get points for my digital game purchases I'm good. I typically get around £25 out of it plus a number of games that benefit from the PS plus discount and a ton of decent games I don't own to play so I'm good.

It's easy to moan about what they are removing, but this is effectively free credit they are giving out, so naturally they are going to try and balance how you earn points. Id rather have this that earn nothing for my purchases like the other 20+ years I had a playstation. (No previous rewards program in the UK to my knowledge).

The campaigns are kind of a scam, buy astro bot digitally and get an extra 150 points.
A $5 credit costs 1250 points meaning you get the equivalent of 60 cents for your preorder.

I guess it's a good thing I stopped buying digital games.

My ESO+ subscription and Premium are how I gain most of my points. This is absolute BS!

People are really like “Oh, Sony is so bad!” Like, which company is good? They’re all like this! And the all holy Nintendo is the worst! It sucks what they’re doing to Stars but it is what it is. Can’t really be pissed when something that’s already free changes to a different thing that’s still also free. I mean, you can get mad. But I won’t.

@OldGamer999 i would like to see more 60fps games and if Sony can pull them off on the base and the Pro then that would really be awesome. Stalker 2 on Series X has said they will be 60fps. I think we might see that with others. But it will depend on the dev team and what they want to push. Fidelity sells more than performance, so we will likely see some of that. I hope Gears Of War E day is 60fps.

Never used it, as far as I can remember. I did use Nintendo gold coins, though, which got me excellent discounts already. PlayStation needs to up their game, these services are less and less interesting if you don't play online games.

@HonestHick
I have always said as you know. The Avowed 30fps issue and other games on release day like Redfall and Starfield is because Xbox developers have to make for series s and x, PC and cloud gaming all for day of release and to a time scale.

Sony and Nintendo developers make games for one console and can focus on its power and get the best for that console.

If Avowed developers were making the game just for Series x, it would be 60fps.