The system prevents players from holding multiple licenses for the same game at once, which can lead to complications.
Sony routinely provides PlayStation Plus subscribers with curated collections of games. Titles included in the monthly lineup can be added to your library and played later — they remain available while your subscription is active.
However, under certain circumstances a license can be revoked. A user known as shannonator96 experienced this firsthand when they lost access to Mass Effect Legendary Edition.
The collection was available several years ago, back when the player still had an active PS Plus subscription:
Some time later, after my PS Plus subscription had lapsed, I subscribed to EA Play, which also includes Mass Effect Legendary Edition. I downloaded and completed the game via EA Play, and later tried to re-download and play it under PlayStation Plus — but I couldn’t.
After contacting PlayStation support he received the following response:
You can have only one digital license for a game at any given time.
For shannonator96, this means the Mass Effect license obtained through EA Play appears to have overridden the earlier PS Plus license. The player warns others to be cautious:
The same thing can easily happen with other games that are available across multiple subscription services, so I strongly recommend not using any subscriptions other than PlayStation Plus. If you want to play titles from EA Play, it’s safer to purchase them outright to avoid similar problems.
Source: iXBT.games