After reliance on digital stores became a large part of game sales on home platforms, large companies like the PlayStation Store began to follow a closed geographical division for each region, but adhering to special conditions.

These conditions are set according to the country, through which Sony commits to various agreements and policies, so there will be different payment methods, prices and systems from one country to another. This has caused Sony to use the Region Lock policy in its policy on the PlayStation Digital Store.

What is the region lock policy used on PlayStation Store?

Sony's Region Lock policy relies on the account being locked to work only within the borders of the country chosen when first registering with the store. Of course, after choosing the country to which the account will be permanently linked, a special Sony agreement is immediately adopted that binds the user to the terms of that region.

Then you will have to use the local currency for the purchase. While the products are subject to the tax laws assigned to this region according to the specified percentage agreed internationally. In addition, external payment methods such as Visa cards or PayPal accounts cannot be used unless they are registered with local addresses and linked to local bank accounts of the same region selected in the PlayStation Store account.

Why does Sony use region locking?

Sony uses a region-locking policy for consumer protection and also adheres to region-specific agreements. These agreements specify the tax amount and price difference that varies from region to region.

For this reason, Sony prohibits changing regions when creating a PlayStation Store account for the first time, because if the region is open, users will move from one region to another according to the price difference in search of the lowest price. For example, it makes no sense for you to be in Saudi Arabia and buy from the American store in the local currency and at the same local price, since the latter has different policies and tax system than Saudi Arabia.

For example, the price of Game A in the US Store is US$ 70 including taxes for the US PlayStation Store. But the same Game A, you find its price in the Saudi store, for example, US$80, although it is the same product and there are no differences.

This is where the role of commercial policy comes in, which causes prices to vary according to the region. Of course, tax plays the biggest role in the price difference between regions.

So if I want to buy game A from the American store through a Saudi PlayStation account from inside Saudi Arabia, this will affect the nature of the percentage distribution in which 3 poles will participate, which is the country in which you bought from your store (America), the country in which it was evaluated (Saudi Arabia) and finally the store owner (Sony). And each of them wants to extract a share of this business. Of course, there will be huge losses that will end up reflecting on the store owner, which in this case is Sony. Therefore, to avoid this problem, Sony created the so-called Region Lock.

Some believe that Sony should give people moving between regions the opportunity to change their region, but this could also open the door to scams and deception that some individuals could use to take advantage of the price difference.

Therefore, the only solution would be to create a PlayStation Store account dedicated to the region you want to buy from. This would be the best solution that can be used legally, although it is a detour with some doubts.

However, Sony allows you to use more than one account on your PlayStation, each linked to a different store, and the games purchased through these accounts can be used through the main account, regardless of the region. All you need to do here is create an account for the region you want and then activate that account on the same device to be able to access all the products that are purchased through it on your main computer.

Share with us in the comments section below, how many accounts do you use on your PlayStation device and what is the reason for opening more than one account on the device?