There have always been exploits and backdoors to Sony's PlayStation Store, often by changing your primary region for access to special offers or PlayStation Plus titles. Not only that, switching stores from the account's original country to access banned titles was a way to work around regionally banned titles. The latter is a similar case of what Sony's update earlier this week addressed in the Chinese PlayStation Store.
Chinese residents managed to find a backdoor in the store to access more titles outside of their region. Owners of Chinese PlayStation models were able to find a specific pattern of buttons to press while in the store to switch its region to another, allowing them access to all the titles they couldn't on the Chinese PlayStation store. Sony had to take down the PlayStation Store in China earlier this month, and notified users through Weibo it was to perform a “system security upgrade.” During this period, the only way users could purchase PS4 titles is through physical retailers until it came back up again.
For information, as of March 2020, there are over 4,000 games published so far for PS4. In contrast, as of April 2018, there were over 150 of them available for Chinese PlayStation owners. Since then, only a few more games have been approved by Chinese regulators. This is considered an improvement when compared to the 14-year ban imposed on console gaming that was lifted in 2014.
However, there are reports surfacing on social media and other platforms that those who managed to follow the steps and activate the backdoor prior to Sony's update, they will still be able to access the foreign versions of the PlayStation Store despite using their Chinese accounts.
Do you think Sony will put more security onto their systems leading up to the next-generation of consoles? What do you think of the restrictions on the Chinese PlayStation store? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section down below.
