PSN Game Sharing - your Pain for my Eden - The Something Awful Forums

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Yodzilla: Apr 29, 2005; Now who looks even dumber?

Beef Witch

Since the old thread is dead and gone and people are starting to fill up the standard PS3 thread this one is for all of the discussion and organization of all PSN game sharing.

Holy poo poo! What is game sharing?
Most games on PSN, once purchased, allow you to download them on up to five different PS3s. This means that when you buy something and download it if you share your account info with four of your friends they can download it too! No this isn't illegal as Sony wants as many people as possible to play their games. Besides if five people get together to buy a game none of them were in the first place then that's still one more sale! But enough talk, have at you!

You said most games are sharable. Some aren't?
As of right now the only games that you can't share is Warhawk but that's loving awesome and you should buy it anyway.

OK, I've got some people that want to share a game. What's the easiest way to do this?
From my experience the quickest and easiest way to get a game share going is to follow these steps.

As the share starter/game purchaser:

Collect money from the rest of your deadbeat friends before giving out the goods. The easiest way for this to happen is to just have them PayPal you their portion of the charge. For example if five people want to buy Siren and 1942 ($50 total) each of your four friends should send the you + something extra to cover PayPal fees.
Create a new email address somewhere on a throwaway site. Something like Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail. You need a unique email address to create the new PSN account. You'll see later but this is the address you need to share with your friends.
Create a new user account on your PS3 for the share. To do this go all the way to the left on the XMB and go through the create procedure. Call it whatever you want but remember this is going to have to stay on your system in order to play the game even if you're not logged into it.
Sign in under your new user name.
Go to the Playstation Network icon on the XMB. Create a new PSN Master account and fill in all of the necessary details like your name, address, user name etc. When it asks you for your email address use the new one you created in the first step. Also enter in a password that's easy to remember. The email address and password entered here is what you'll be sharing with your friends.
Fill in your billing information (attach a credit card to the account or use a PSN card)
Go shopping! Sign in to the PSN and go into the store. Add the games you want to share to the cart, purchase, and download.
Leave the store and go to your PSN options & preferences. Delete your credit card information if that's how you paid for the game. You don't want other people buying poo poo on your account!
Once the game downloads have begun you can sign back in as your regular PS3 user. This will not disrupt the download in any way. Once the game has finished downloading you can install it and start playing! Yaaay!
Remember that to continue to play this game you must keep the user account that purchased it on the system. Simple enough, just don't delete it.
Now you can send the information (email address and password) of the purchasing PSN account to your well behaved and paying friends. They deserve it.

As the good friend that paid his portion of the game share:

Retrieve the PSN account information from the game purchaser. All you need is the newly created email address and password.
Create a new user account on your PS3 all the way to the left on the XMB. This can be called whatever you want but it must permanently remain on the system in order to play the shared game.
Sign in under this new user.
Go to the Playstation Network icon on the XMB. Sign in under and existing PSN account and enter in the email address and password that the game purchaser sent you.
Go into the PSN store.
Access the previously downloaded items for that account. This is accessed through an icon in the upper-right (?) of the store interface.
Download the games that are being shared to you.
Once the game downloads have begun you can sign back in as your regular PS3 user. This will not disrupt the download in any way. Once the game has finished downloading you can install it and start playing!
Remember that to continue to play this game you must keep the user account that purchased it on the system. Simple enough, just don't delete it.
Set high scores and earn trophies

_inFrequently Asked Questions:

Dodger_ posted:

Does the password on the PSN Master account need to stay the same or can it be changed after you have shared with someone and they are finished downloading?

You can change it. If you're sharing a game out of your master PSN account (instead of a special one you created just for sharing) this is pretty much the way to go. Once someone has gone into the store and grabbed the goods he should never have to sign back in with that PSN account again.

Kengi posted:

This will sound odd, but I'm currently under the impression that there is tax on the games, and I'm not 100% sure of why...

Will someone please confirm / deny this?

Right now it seems like it varies from state to state. One person from New York has reported paying taxes but living in PA I have not had to.

UPDATE: Taxes may be calculated based on your location when you first signed up, not your current address. I may have signed up under Delaware which has no sales tax hence no PA tax for me now.

oxy posted:

What is the preferred mode of money transfer? PayPal?

As outlined above this seems to be the easiest way to collect money to me. The other way to do it is this:

set up the purchasing PSN account
one at a time each person in the share group signs in, enters their billing info, adds their share of the money to the account, deletes their billing info, and passes the account off to the next person
once everyone's money is in the last person buys the game(s) using the account balance, downloads what he needs, and passes it back to everyone else in the group

The downside to this method is that you can only enter funds into a PSN account balance in set increments and it's hard to make that work out evenly most of the time. The upside is that no one person holds the money and there's no PayPal fees involved. Your choice really.

shodanjr_gr posted:

I am wondering, does this work if for instance the master account has a US locale and i am from the EU?

This should work fine since the sharing PSN account is the one that holds the location information not your actual PS3. The first share I did was with a guy in the US getting Tekken 5 off of the Hong Kong store.

Shmoogy posted:

I know that you can share an account with up to 5 PS3s, but lets say that somebody decides to go in for lots of game-sharing. Is there a limit to the amount of logins that the PS3 will take before giving them any problems? I ask, because I'm going to probably partake in lots of future game shares, and it's a concern, albeit a small one.

If there's a limit I've never heard of anyone reaching it. If someone has info to the contrary let me know.

Dominic White posted:

TIP!

Only one person can be logged into a single account at any given time, so in a five-man share, try not to hog the login. Log in, start your downloads and queue them as quickly as possible, then log back into your own account and let someone else have their turn.

Yeah don't be an account hog you jerks :argh:

Goon Recommended PSN Games
These are pretty safe bets that everyone should have in their collection:
- Bionic Commando Rearmed
- Burnout Paradise
- Crash Commando
- Gran Turismo 5 Prologue (sharable???)
- GripShift
- PixelJunk Monsters + Expansion
- Super Stardust HD
- Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
- Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection
- Wipeout HD

Good games that are not everyone's cup of tea:
- 1942: Joint Strike
- Age of Booty
- Blast Factor + Advanced Research
- Calling All Cars!
- Echochrome
- Everyday Shooter
- Fatal Inertia EX
- fl0w + Expansion
- High Velocity Bowling
- LocoRoco Cocoreccho!
- Mega Man 9
- Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 1
- Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 2
- PixelJunk Eden
- PixelJunk Racers
- Piyotama
- Prince of Persia Classic
- Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords - Revenge of the Plague Lord
- Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty
- Siren
- Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
- The Last Guy

You've gotta like the genre or be in the right mood for these:
- Brain Challenge
- Elefunk
- Geon: Emotions
- Go! Puzzle
- Go! Sudoku
- High Stakes on the Vegas Strip: Poker Edition
- Linger in Shadows
- Novastrike
- Nucleus
- Pain + Amusement Park and retarded characters I guess
- Rocketmen: Axis of Evil
- Super Rub-a-Dub
- Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars
- Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3

Terrible:
- Cash Guns Chaos
- Go! Sports Ski
- Jeopardy!
- Sky Diving
- Snakeball
- Toy Home

Oldies but goodies (maybe):
- Castlevania Chronicles
- Championship Sprint
- Gauntlet II
- Joust
- Lemmings
- Mortal Kombat II
- Q*Bert
- Rampage World Tour
- Rampart
- Street Fighter Alpha

PSEye games:
- Aquatopia
- Mesmerize: Distort
- Mesmerize: Trace
- Operation Creature Feature
- The Trials of Topoq
- Tori-Emaki

Warhawk:
- Warhawk (buy it)
- Operation: Omega Dawn
- Operation: Broken Mirror
- Operation: Fallen Star

Yodzilla fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Dec 19, 2008

# ? Jul 25, 2008 13:37

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# ? Apr 24, 2024 19:04

Yodzilla: Apr 29, 2005; Now who looks even dumber?

Beef Witch

To get things started here is my share group for Siren and 1942

Shmoogy
Yodzilla
Tenacious Dan
Aardark
Dominic White

Everyone has paid and account info has been sent out to everyone. This was a good share. :zombie:

Yodzilla fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Jul 25, 2008

# ? Jul 25, 2008 13:41

MUFFlNS: Mar 7, 2004

I forget how it works now but is it that each console can share downloaded content with 5 other consoles, or is it that each PSN account can be shared with upto 5 other consoles? I've got a few different PSN accounts with downloaded content on now from different regions, some have been shared and some haven't. Just curious how it actually works.

# ? Jul 25, 2008 13:44

oxy: May 14, 2008

I'm down for doing this with some people. What is the preferred mode of money transfer paypal?

# ? Jul 25, 2008 13:46

Yodzilla: Apr 29, 2005; Now who looks even dumber?

Beef Witch

AWWW SMACK posted:

I forget how it works now but is it that each console can share downloaded content with 5 other consoles, or is it that each PSN account can be shared with upto 5 other consoles? I've got a few different PSN accounts with downloaded content on now from different regions, some have been shared and some haven't. Just curious how it actually works.

I'm getting to that! Updating the OP now.

oxy posted:

I'm down for doing this with some people. What is the preferred mode of money transfer paypal?

That's my preferred method.

# ? Jul 25, 2008 13:49

Aardark: Aug 5, 2004; by Lowtax

Yodzilla posted:

Bolded people are the ones who have paid and downloaded the game successfully. Aardark and Dominic White are still pending payment. Leeeeeeet's go!

I actually sent mine about six hours ago, you didn't receive it yet?

# ? Jul 25, 2008 13:50

Kengi: Sep 22, 2006; Gamer, geek, and ladies man

Do you want to help set up these with other people, or just let us fend for ourselves?

Regardless, here's my set from the other thread:
PSN Newbies
Kengi (PSN Kengi01)
Myrddin Emrys (PSN ???)
Rirse (PSN ???)
YOUR NAME HERE!!! (PSN ???)
YOUR OTHER NAME HERE!!! (PSN ???)

If I'm correct, none of us really have any games purchased, which means getting games will be really nice since everyone would pay equally.

Since Pain and PixelJunk Monsters are both on sale for $5, I say we get on this soon.

I can create the account. I already manage 2 Xbox 360 accounts, why not 2 PSN?

And any games that enough people want that we're all okay with, let's add to a list.

I vote for Pain, PixelJunk Monsters, Blast Factor Bundle, LocoRoco Cocoreccho, Super Stardust HD.
I'm fine with 1942, since I think it looks okay but I wish there was a demo, and up for suggestions on a lot of other games. I'll play almost anything.

Kengi fucked around with this message at 14:10 on Jul 25, 2008

# ? Jul 25, 2008 13:53

Kengi: Sep 22, 2006; Gamer, geek, and ladies man

This will sound odd, but I'm currently under the impression that there is tax on the games, and I'm not 100% sure of why...

Will someone please confirm / deny this?

# ? Jul 25, 2008 14:01

Yodzilla: Apr 29, 2005; Now who looks even dumber?

Beef Witch

^^ i'm in PA and I didn't pay any tax last night. maybe in some states?