Driveclub PS+ Upgrade Clarified, Playable When Subscription Expires

On Wednesday, the PlayStation Blog detailed the DriveClub PlayStation Plus edition, which comes included in your subscription, with eleven cars across ten tracks in the region of India.

They also explained the upgrade path to the full game – you’ll be able to spend £42.99 to turn the PS+ edition into the full digital copy of the game.

http://youtu.be/Ss–cO6ZnZA

But there was a catch, where the fully upgraded game would only be playable as long as you were subscribed to PS+. Naturally, many people weren’t happy with this, and felt like this edition wasn’t a very good deal at all.

Now Sony have clarified the deal, and changed their stance somewhat – if you upgrade for £42.99, you won’t have to keep your PS+ subscription, so that probably works out quite well for some people who aren’t interested in other PS+ offerings.

While this does show once again that Sony listen to their fans, the clause was a bit silly in the first place, and I’m glad they’ve removed it. Naturally, since PS+ comes with online play, and Driveclub is a socially-driven game, it would make more sense to be subscribed either way.

Source: PS blog

19 Comments

  1. I’m not convinced they’ve changed stance, I just think the original blog post was very badly worded.
    Quite why anybody would want driveclub anyway if they don’t have plus if beyond me since it relies so heavily on online features which will only be possible if you have a plus sub.

    • They have changed stance as they tell in the update on the PSBlog.
      It probably wouldn’t be a problem for most people since they would keep their PS+ sub running, but what does Sony have to win on locking the upgraded game behind PS+ if almost everyone still uses PS+?
      It’s just bad practice.

  2. Hurrah for common sense!

  3. Just wait, Drive Club will turn out to be one of those always-online games (like Need for Speed apparently) which will require PS+ to play simply because of the online aspect.

  4. Whilst it’s a good thing that they’ve decided to change their policy, they still need to address the pricing. It’s $50 in the US, which equates to approximate
    y £30/€36 … even with tax, the upgrade shouldn’t cost us more than £36/€43.

    • I’d rather download it on NA PSN ID…. if its still possible on PS4.

  5. Good to see backlash had an effect on this matter, though there’s not much to lose from making this decision. As people say, it’s a online game, so the devs wouldn’t lose that much money. Nevertheless I agree with above comments, it was bad practice in the first place.

  6. Ok so that’s the stupid stuff put right, how about making it reasonably priced (I.e less than it will cost to pre order from shopto/amazon/zavvi/wherever)

  7. I kind of get the fuss that was being made, but seriously…. With this game, who on earth will get PS+, play DriveClub online with PS+, upgrade and then cancel PS+ to play a social racing game offline. Why did the internet explode?

    • Agreed Tom, my major grumble was the astronomical upgrade price being charged to acquire full game status. It’s being treated like a standard demo upgrade post completing level one and jingling the full game’s availability in store…..full price!
      They really should meet half way on the price issue else render the digital version useless in favour of retail disc.

      • Logically the upgrade price is spot on. You get one fifth of the game for free (sort of?!) the other 4/5th is £43 which is about 4/5th of a RRP of £55. It’ll probably be the cheapest way to get it either way. Haven’t seen the disc version for much less than £50.

  8. Just as I predicted on the original article. Standard sony.

    • Yeah it’s really good that they’ve listened :)

      • They were always going to reverse it. Planned in advance to give the impression of listening.

      • Is there a source for this?

        That would be very silly of them to do for multiple reasons.

  9. This is still just going to be a demo for me. Just to tide me over till Project Cars comes out.

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