Due to last year’s Covid-19 lockdown, more people than ever were staying home and playing video games. Launched in April of 2020, PlayStation’s “Play At Home” initiative aimed to capitalize off this through free giveaways from the Epic Games Store, allowing players to download and keep certain high-quality PlayStation exclusives with no strings attached for a limited time. The result was more than 60 million games downloaded through the initiative.
“It struck us as everybody was struggling with the first lockdown, we thought this would be a nice thing to do, said PlayStation CEO and President Jim Ryan. “We were able to do it and we were very happy with the reaction. And then we got through Christmas and we started lockdown again, and everybody… it was a bit miserable. We thought it would be a nice thing to reprise.”
Having already started strong with titles like Journey and Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, “Play At Home” gained much buzz over the past few months by featuring blockbuster titles like Horizon: Zero Dawn and 2016’s Ratchet & Clank. It even managed to raise money for promising indie developers in the process. Although the “Play At Home” program didn’t offer up any full games during its most recent giveaway in May, there was free DLC content and in-game currency available for multiplayer titles like NBA 2K21 and Brawlhalla.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to more and more people trying out video games, with even the World Health Organization recommending video games as a good pastime during last year’s lengthy lockdowns. With players unable to access brick-and-mortar gaming outlets and short on the money needed to purchase games online, it fell to free offerings from the likes of the Epic Games Store to provide players with interactive entertainment during the long months of 2020, despite these free giveaways costing Epic a great deal of money to implement. There’s no word yet on whether Sony will give away another round of free content over the next few months. However, Jim Ryan said Sony might consider bringing back the initiative in 2022 if the complications and lockdowns from Covid-19 continue into next year.
(All information was provided by Screen Rant)