I’ve heard of people refunding games or past purchases getting their accounts deactivated. For example, if your kid wracks up a $1,000 in Fortnite skins on PlayStation and you say “fuuuuck that, give me a refund because I’m not paying for that shit” they will most likely just ban your account.

Sony generally doesn’t allow refunds, meaning the only recourse is to issue a charge back. They’ll ban you for that.

I see the other argument about this, but allow me to give you my personal example of where I am regarding charge backs, banned accounts and Helldivers using the PSN.

I love Monster Hunter. Monster Hunter World first released as a console exclusive, and I had a second hand PS4. Not wanting to give Sony my credit card due to previous data leaks, I purchased a pre-paid PSN gift card and wanted to use it to purchase Monster Hunter. I dig through their labyrinth of a store, found the game, selected on it, and was looking for a way to pay using the pre-paid card. Unable to find it, I googled and discovered I had to back up to some account menu. Being a primarily Switch+PC player, I am used to right face button for confirm and bottom for cancel, so when I came back to the console I picked up the controller and pressed the bottom face button, “X”. Suddenly I had made a purchase using a credit card I didn’t even know they had. One hour-long conversation later, their support agreed to refund the purchase, walked me through removing the credit card from my account, I bought the game with the prepaid card, and all was well.

Later, I wanted to play online. Well, I don’t trust giving them my credit card after the last fiasco for certain, so I get my hands on a 12-month prepaid card for PSN. I add the card, hunt monsters online with my friends, no issues.

One year later, I get a notification: a ~$80 purchase from PlayStation was charged to my credit card. Uh, the fuck? So within 15 minutes, I am talking to their support, asking why in gods name they charged a credit card which I removed from the account for a purchase I didn’t request. It is explained to me that when you use a pre-paid card to get a subscription to PSN, the automatic renewal is turned on. I, of course, say, “sure, but you guys walked me through removing my credit card the last time I interacted with you and I used a prepaid card to intentionally avoid autorenewal”. Then, I am told that using a prepaid card turns on auto renewal with the last known payment method. I am shocked, demand a refund, am told that won’t be a problem, then about 5 minutes later am instead told that I’ve used my “one lifetime refund request on a purchase of Monster Hunter World”. There is more discussion and I explain that I will be getting my money back via charge back if they will not refund the unwanted purchase. They tell me my PSN account will be banned if I do that, so I restate, clearly, that I am receiving my money either way and they get to choose whether or not they have a customer after this conversation. I am politely and professionally told to fuck off, so I request the refund, and sure enough, my PSN account is banned.

Sony has, unfortunately, done nothing illegal by banning my account. The whole auto-renewal thing may set off some alarms in the EU, but here in North America, no one bats an eye.

Enter Helldivers. I see it requires a PSN account. I am concerned, but Steam has a gracious refund policy, so I purchase it. When I am met with the PSN account screen I consider: I could try my old account. It’s likely I’ll see a message about how this account can’t be used to play this game, possible that it’ll just work because the game doesn’t really use the PSN, and at worst, it’ll be permenantly bound with my Steam account, I will be banned and I’ll just refund the game. Not wanting to give Sony anything that resembles new information due to a combination of my previous experiences and their penchant for losing customer data in security breeches, I try my ~5 year banned account. It works, first try, without issue. I’ve played ever since.

Now, with this renewed discussion on PSN account linking, the whole narrative from the Dev side is “this is so we can manage bans across both platforms”. I am, obviously, concerned. Evidence suggests I am about to be retroactively banned from a game I purchased, have only used lawfully and ethically, and I will be long outside my refund window. I am waiting patiently to see how it all shakes out before I attempt a refund request via Steam.