Some of us may have received hundreds of games from PS+ over the years, all of which as of now would be rendered useless as soon as the subscription needs to renewed again.

However there will come a time (or maybe not discuss below) when all online servers on each console will be completely shut down, rendering a PS+ subscription useless. What will be the consolation prize for those who have amounted so many PS+ games before the inevitable closure of these online servers?

Will Sony Unlock all PS+ games, meaning that as long as you have them downloaded before the servers are offline they are yours to keep?

Will Sony keep them locked, meaning even if the games are installed on the console they can never be played again?

Will Sony still require an active PS+ subscription on a future PlayStation console (Which is then somehow cross-linked with your profile on a PS3/VITA/PS4) so that the PS+ games installed on the console can still be played?

I'm assuming they'll just let you keep them as long as you have them downloaded.

And subscribed to PS+.

If the servers go down then they'll just unlock them all. Though will they ever necessarily go down if PlayStation exists? There's always going to be psn servers so what would prevent a PS3 from connecting to them?

I don’t think anything will happen to them. Even when the PSN servers shut down for things like friends list and online multiplayer, I see no reason why the PS Store and download libraries won’t still remain accessible to users of older devices.

The PS Store was shut down on the PSP, so I assume there are some hidden costs to keeping the store and profiles running on older hardware.

They couldn't be bothered to update the store for psp anymore, though that doesn't equate to a simple check if your account has ps+ or not.

Just like all digital games they will go away.

I think it's pretty clear you're going to lose all games. PS+ is a rental service. Steam is a rental service. Want to keep a game? Buy it on disc, problem solved.

The reasoning is that Sony doesn't own these games. There are hundreds of publishers and 3rd party studios involved, so it's likely that there's no legal way for Sony to basically hand out free digital copies.

Anyway, it's likely that when they shut down PSN for a console, it's because it's so old that almost nobody is using it anymore. Looking at how Live works, the OG Xbox was still active on it until 2010.