In order to help keep folks at home (and entertained while locked down), Sony is currently offering two of the best PS4 games for free right now.
As part of its Play At Home initiative, Sony is letting PS4 owners download Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection and Journey for free from today until May 5. Unsurprisingly, the idea is to encourage people to stay at home, and thus reduce the spread of COVID-19, which is currently a pandemic-level public health crisis.
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While far from being the latest PS4 games available, Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection and Journey are both PlayStation exclusives, and critically acclaimed games. (Technically, a collection of critically acclaimed games, in Uncharted’s case.)
Journey is a very relaxing and visually evocative game with a surprising social element, so it could be exactly the right game to distract one’s mind from the coronavirus pandemic. Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection contains the first three Uncharted games, remastered to harness the PS4’s power. So there’s enough in both games to keep those under lockdown occupied.
“People all over the world are doing the right thing by staying home to help contain the spread of COVID–19. We are deeply grateful to everyone practicing physical distancing and take our responsibility as a home entertainment platform seriously, so we are asking our community to continue supporting the safe choice and the need to Play At Home,” Sony’s president and CEO Jim Ryan explained.
To access the free games, you just need to log into the PS Store and download them to your PS4. There’s no need for any additional subscriptions or PlayStation Plus access.
But there’s more to Play At Home than just a couple of free games to keep people inside. The initiative will also establish a fund to help finance smaller independent game studios, which might be experiencing financial difficulties from the spread of COVID-19.
“Independent developers are vital to the heart and soul of the gaming community and we understand the hardships and financial struggles that many smaller gaming studios are facing,” said Ryan. “With that, [Sony] has developed a fund to support them during this time. We have earmarked $10 million to support our independent development partners.”
Sony’s PlayStation arm has long had a good relationship with independent studios and indie developers, so this support fund makes sense. And with the PS5 due to launch at the end of the year, having a slew of developers onboard will help Sony’s next-generation console square up to Microsoft’s Xbox Series X.
