I got 2 PS3s(1 downstairs as a dedicated blu-ray mainly), the third that was sent out activated, my college roommate's that I played on cause it was in the main room, and this idiot on my PSN friendlist who kept bugging me for a gameshare and then turned into a total douchebag. I doubt the person I talked to even understand what I was talking about, kept asking to talk to a manager or another person who might know, and she kept saying, 'no, nobody knows, nobody knows someone who knows.' Yadda, yadda yadda.' I sent in a system without deactivating my account, not realizing how the system worked - I thought each game got 5 downloads total - and I got a replacement.Ĭalled customer support and asked about getting it deactivated. Simply deleting the profile associated with your PSN account or formatting the HDD is not enough. So if a friend of yours is using your PSN account and decides to dispose of his PS3 system, tell him to do the deactivation thing (log in as you > Account Management > Activate System > PlayStation 3 (this system) > Deactivate system), otherwise you'll lose one of your possible activations. It has to be 'manually' deactivated from the account management page in order to free one of those 5 activations. If, say, you want to share your PSN account with a new friend but have all those extra 4 activations already in place on other PS3s, you have to de-activate one of these so that your new friend can activate his system under your PSN account.Īlso note that deleting a profile via the XMB from a PS3 doesnt automatically deactivate it under the PSN account associated to that profile. When a grand total of 5 PS3s are activated under the same PSN account, no more PS3s can be activated, therefore you cannot share your PSN account with more that 4 other people at a time. Once they log in as you, their PS3s are automatically activated (hence, by accessing the 'Download List' section on the PS store, they can re-download for free and run on their systems all the stuff you purchased).

So you basically have to give them your log in data (email + password). To do so you have to let them log in as you from their PS3s.

This is mostly useful when you want to share stuff you downloaded (purchased) with other people. Deactivate your system > try launching any already downloaded game (wont work) > re-activate your system > content will now work fine as before. The activation is automatic the first time you log in with a given PSN account, meaning whatever you download from then on will work fine.ĭeactivating a PS3 (or a PSP) basically makes content downloaded under a given PSN account unreadable on that system. When a PS3 is activated under a given PSN account, it can run the software downloaded (purchased) from the PlayStation store under that PSN account.

Ps3 must activate psn stuff