PlayStation’s Play at Home initiative is Sony’s way of prompting people to stay at home during the current events of the world. Having returned in 2021, the Play at Home program is bringing new games for people to enjoy for free. With ten new games added to the Play at Home program, PlayStation users are sure to find something to their liking.
While PlayStation Plus subscribers may be used to receiving free games every month, the Play at Home games are available to all PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 owners. Claiming these free Play at Home games differs slightly from claiming the free PS Plus games, so PlayStation owners may need some clarification on the process.
The Play at Home list of free games can be found in the PlayStation Store on either consoles or the PlayStation website. Sony has made a separate category for these games appropriately named Play at Home. While the PlayStation website allows users to add these free games to their existing library, the process is slightly different on consoles.
In the PlayStation Store on consoles, users may not see a prompt to “Add to Library” and instead simply see a “Download” button. PlayStation users who want the keep these free games in their library will have to start the download for each game individually. For PlayStation 5 owners with limited storage space, downloading all these new games may take up too much space on PlayStation 5. Luckily, there is a way around this storage problem.
Once users have started the download for any of the free Play at Home games, they can then go to their download page and select “Cancel and Delete” on any of the Play at Home games they do not currently want to be installed on their PlayStation. This ensures that the game is counted as owned by the user and only deletes the currently installed file. The games will then appear in the user’s game library as “Purchased” and be available to download at a later time.
The current Play at Home games are available to grab until April 22 at 8 pm PST. The highly anticipated Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition will become available on April 19 at 8 pm PST but will leave the Play at Home program a month later on May 14 at 8 pm PST. PlayStation owners are encouraged to grab these free games before they expire. Once owned, users will have these games even after they leave the Play at Home program.