Sony PSN Activation Destruction

PSN Activation and Deactivation is the bane of my existence right now.

I bit the bullet and hit the “Deactivate” button on the Accounts management site the other day. All was working, on all devices, sort of. We thought. We didn’t do anything on our devices but play games. No “activation” or “deactivation” at all on the devices. Whatever.

…It seemed everything worked on PS3’s and PSP’s …

Odd things started yesterday. Well the 1st oddity was the very day of the once-for-now (every 6 months) button clicking, in the vague Play Station Systems area (Accounts, Media and Devices …) there was only 1 Play Station Systems (their mistake, the “s” –not mine!) under GAME. It was FULLY unclear which device that was. Totally. And to make it even more murky than it was, it really seemed that we could play any PSN games still on all the devices. Hmmm.

Yesterday my two of my children were playing LBP2 on the PS3. They went to put on certain costumes and found they weren’t there. So I went to the Account area in my browser on my laptop and started looking at all of this again.

Still only 1 was activated. So then I went back to the PS3 and went to my User Profile (yes, I made them quit playing! So mean. 🙂 ) … my Tron Evolution theme wasn’t there. Eeeek! I went to Theme Settings, and a whole bunch of themes were just “THEME” and no information as to what they were. Huh. Not every theme, just a whole bunch of them. They are all free, or PSN+ free,  but only one is premium $ and that was my Tron theme.

So I then went to the PSN Store and looked at the download list (well, after trying to use it under Account Management, but it kept crapping out) and there in the store it kept working and looking at things there, I found the costumes in questions for LBP2 and my theme, and re-downloaded them.

Went to Theme Settings and found that ALL the themes were there again, lovely as they should be, able to see what was there fully. This is not a mystery, obviously that device wasn’t activated beforehand, and was afterward.

But it really doesn’t make much sense: when I went to play Warhawk with my hubby later, I was joining a game he was in and it wouldn’t let me in because I didn’t have the DLC for it. Yes I do!

[I was on PS3 #2 at that point. Hubby was on PS3 #1 which was the device I was working with about Themes, and LBP2 costumes. ]

So I quit Warhawk and went to Account Management and “Activated” the PS3 #2 for GAMES.

Started Warhawk again and voila! I can play any of the matches again as I used to (but only knew for a minute that I couldn’t.)

So after that I had to do something about understanding what was going on. It wasn’t the PS3’s that were in the running for being that 1 Activated GAMES device in Accounts & Management on the pc. It ends up with what I did after that, it was MY psp.

Weird.

It gets weirder. So on each device I did a total deactivation. Then checked the website (had to logout and login again each time to see the changes each time) to see which one “changed” things. That was it. My PSP.

So then I re-upped each thing, starting with PS3 #1 … fine, 1 PSS. OK, PS3 #2 … fine, 2 PSS. OK. Next up, PSP’s: Mine … 3 PSS. OK. Next PSP … fine, 4 PSS. OK. Wait, no, not fine, what is this …

On the management site for the PSN accounts there is that other area under the DEVICES tab. There it showed me having 6 Play Station DEVICES! No, at this point I had 4 things activated for GAMES and that was it.

Now for this to make perfect sense, the PSP’s are capable of video and music and comics, up to 3 devices per account. That stuff USED to be changeable on the site before Sony changed the GAME activation stuff. I know it was because I took those video\comic things away from this old device that we no longer have that was stuck in limbo in our account.

The next part of the perfect sense is that only 1 PS3 is activated per account for VIDEO. So with that in mind, now understand what went wacko. It’s not understandable from this point of view. It’s just what is.

When I first did the big Deactivation from the website I had listed on the Devices tab 4 Play Station devices. 1 PS3 and 3 PSP’s.

My PS3 #2 disappears  when Games are Deactivated since it can only do GAMES. It re-appears if I Activate it, but any label I gave it is obviously gone. Now this is the weirder: With PSP #2 Activated suddenly we go from having 5 total devices to having 6.  Yes, the actiavtions for video, comic, music are tied to 3 PSP’s and only 1 of those is right. The actual devices have been in use since 2007 and 2009 and holy cow, all of the sudden the system doesn’t recognize them as themselves. It’s a mess.

There is no way to fix this on our end. It’s exactly, sort of what was going on before, that I wanted cleared up, getting rid of that old PSP that broke out of my account. Phew! That’s done, but now all this. Ugh.

Hubby was going to call them yesterday, but ended he forgot, or with my Pie making busy-ness I didn’t remind him, whichever he wishes to put the blame on, whatever, whatever, whatever. Just call them and get this straightened out!

They used to let us (if we knew about it) manage some of that extra content junk on the web, and now they don’t, and it’s given me 2 wonderful, useless devices that are virtual only. No enjoyment of any of it’s wonderful capabilities. They used to be real, but now are only relics in PSN’s database. Wonderful.

Thank goodness I don’t want Music Unlimited, or Video Unlimited, or care about Comics on my PSP or the other ones either. But, I don’t want to be locked out if … (fill in the blanks) __________, or ___________, or __________.

So, before Sony allowed 5/5 for most Games on PSN, and 1/3 for Video, Comics. Before, they’d would allow you to access your account and manage that stuff online, video, comics.

So they put the power in our hands NOW? No, just shifted the power, um, while down-shifting as well. It wasn’t much power to begin with. Then they cut it in half, at the least. Great news, we can DEACTIVATE online from our PC’s! Hallelujah! (rolling eyes)

It’s not cut and dry, it’s totally a new thing, give us less devices to use PSN content on, let us Deactivate every single device from our GAMING activations with one fell swoop, but only 1 time in 6 months. You used to be able to control media other than GAMES on devices via the web, but that’s locked up and F’d.

Don’t push the button unless you really want to, need to. Make sure you have every single device that you need activated, deactivate everything! ALL content activation bye-bye. See if that makes your device(s) disappear from the website. If so, good, hit that button. If not, maybe it’ll work, or: could be like mine, 1 will seamlessly attach again but the others make ancient virtual devices of the ones you have in the account. For some reason, they think they are different and there’s nothing different about any of them. Nothing. NothING!!!!!!!!