The logic behind the Play At Home initiative is simple - give gamers free games and they’ll stay at home.
What Is Play at Home?
Play at Home is an initiative that Sony started way back in April 2020, in an attempt to encourage players to social distance and stay at home, just when the COVID-19 pandemic was starting to spread all across the globe. To do this, Sony made some of their best PS4 titles for free. During the initial run, Sony gave away games like Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection and Journey for free. Although the program did not last for a long time, it was a resounding success. In fact, it’s been estimated that around 10 million players claimed the free title, Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, alone, which has a playtime of around 30 hours in total for casual gaming and 60 to 100 hours if you want to complete everything the game has to offer. Similar to the PlayStation Plus games, any and all games included in the Play at Home initiative are yours forever. The main difference here is that you don’t need to pay anything at all in order to download and keep the free game. All you have to do is to add it to your library - that’s it.
What Is The First Play at Home Game?
As with before, Sony is starting the initiative with a Sony-exclusive title. The first game to be given away via the Play at Home initiative is the 2016 remake of the classic platformer, Ratchet & Clank. Sony will start giving away the game starting on March 1 and you’ll have until March 31 to add it to your library. Now, if you already have the game on your library via the PlayStation Plus Collection, it’s still worth downloading. Why? Because unlike with the PS5-exclusive collection of titles, this one is free for you to keep forever. You don’t need to keep on paying the monthly PlayStation Plus fee, which, by the way, is an excellent value as we’ve explored in a previous discussion. Sony has yet to announce what other games they’ll give away as part of the initiative. A new game in the action platformer franchise, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, is scheduled to release on June 11 for the PlayStation 5.
