Days Gone Remastered follows Sony's trend of strange upgrade policies

With Days Gone Remastered releasing next month, players have been eager to get their hands on the new improvements through the game's $10 upgrade. However, most players will be disappointed to find that they'll need to pay full price or buy a disk to jump into it.

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When the PS5 released in 2020, the PlayStation Plus Collection allowed subscribers to redeem a base catalogue of titles including Fallout 4, God of War, and Days Gone. The service was discontinued in May 2023, but since then, it's allowed a large proportion of gamers to maintain a PS4 version of Days Gone in their libraries.

However, as outlined on the PlayStation Store "PS4 game redemptions via PlayStation Plus are not eligible for upgrade". Players who have redeemed the collection will be required to either buy the full $49.99 edition of Days Gone Remastered, or purchase a physical copy of the game to be eligible. If you have redeemed the PS Plus version, you'll also be ineligible to purchase discounted copies of the base game.

The outcome is understandable, but somewhat misleading for PS5 players. The game's marketing naturally leads the audience, the majority of whom own it through PS Plus, to believe that they'll only be paying for an upgrade. When in reality, the update is only available to a small subsection of the PlayStation audience.

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Sony has implemented similar upgrade policies in the past. Fallout 4's next-gen upgrade in 2024 was initially unavailable to PS Plus users, requiring them to purchase the new version until Microsoft and Bethesda later addressed the issue. Strange upgrade policies also occurred with Spider-Man Remastered in 2020, which was initially only available on PS5 through the purchase of Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Edition. Horizon Forbidden West faced a similar backlash in 2022 when Sony initially planned to charge $10 for a PS5 upgrade before reversing course and offering it for free.

While ports and remasters are undoubtedly lucrative for Sony, the transparency and consumer-friendliness of these policies leave something to be desired.