when buying a Sony PC game on Steam for your child at Christmas becomes an ordeal

Giving a loved one a video game for Christmas should in theory be a simple and hassle-free operation. Offering a PC video game should be similar, in the best of all possible worlds.

But in this world of PC gaming made up of launchers, mandatory accounts and other DRM protection systems of all kinds, everything can actually be much more complicated.

This is notably what a Reddit user from the r/pcgaming community relates, who details the 23 steps necessary to offer a PC game published by Sony to his child on the Steam platform. If the case is particular, it draws an edifying observation on the friction that video games on PC can generate.

Christmas shopping in 23 steps

In a post shared on Reddit, a user says he purchased a Steam key for the game Lego Horizon Adventures to his child. The game was obviously offered via the platform’s gift system to a Steam account protected by parental controls.

If the story should have ended there, it has only just begun. Sony has made it mandatory in 2024 to connect to a PSN account to play all of its titles released on PC, including single-player games. The affair caused a lot of noise for Helldivers 2 at the beginning of the year, the obligation had been maintained for other releases like Ghost of Tsushima and God of War: Ragnarok.

In some cases, it was only imposed for multiplayer mode (Ghost of Tsushima for example), but for many others it is actually necessary to access the game’s main menu.

Lego Horizon Adventures integrating local and online multiplayer components, the child in question was therefore unable to launch the game which thus required the creation of a Sony account to be launched. Wanting to do things right, the parents began creating a “child” PSN account dependent on another already existing “adult” account.

It was then necessary to log in using two-factor authentication, create the child account, log in and verify this newly created account via the Gmail address used. Sony then asks adults to prove their identity using their credit card for a payment of 50 cents which was only successful after the 3rd try.

A “dystopian” experience

After multiple payment and connection errors, but also several conditions of use to accept, the entire process took more than twenty steps according to the parent’s testimony. The user defines the experience as “ depressing and dystopian » and admits to having the impression of trying “ to get a loan for a car« .

All of these steps are actually not necessary if you are lying about your age like the vast majority of cases, but the parents here wanted to stay in compliance by using the system wanted by Sony. Without it, parental controls are a little more complex and account recovery can be just as complicated in the event of a lost password.

While it is always possible to play down the drama (we are talking here about the simple purchase of a PC game), it must be admitted that publishers do not often make life easy for PC players. However, the situation seems to be changing for the better, when we see certain publishers like EA no longer imposing their own launcher on a game as anticipated as Dragon Age : The Veilguard.

In the case of Sony, the American-Japanese giant actually has no technical reason to impose such an obligation. Other than perhaps inflating the number of users with a PSN account, no doubt.