hey what's up everyone it's clay from
howtoapps and right now i'm going to
show you a few different ways to
troubleshoot unlocking your ps4 games
that have suddenly become locked and
have this little padlock symbol next to
where it says start now this is a
problem that can have a number of
different causes but i'm gonna be going
over a lot of different scenarios in
this video that will hopefully address
the specific issue that you're having
okay let's get started so as i'm sure
you've noticed the padlock only appears
on downloaded games not disk based games
this is because the principle behind
downloading any content from the
internet is that you obtain the license
to be able to use a piece of software as
a replacement for purchasing a physical
copy which having that in your
possession automatically makes you the
owner of it right so the root of the
locked game issue then is due to your
ps4 just not recognizing that you are
the licensed owner of that game so it
lacks it because of some error it had
with verifying that it was indeed you
even though the game might even be
technically downloaded on your console
basically i'm going to be showing you a
few different ways to ensure your
playstation 4
is recognizing your game licenses
okay so the first way is to make sure
you're connected to the internet so
since you purchased all your downloaded
games through your playstation network
account the ps4 needs to connect to the
playstation network servers in order to
verify that you made those purchases but
i mean you know sometimes you just get
disconnected from the internet for any
reason i mean you you brought it over to
a friend's house or you got a new wi-fi
router or you change the password i mean
anything can happen and so then your ps4
might become disconnected and then all
of a sudden you've got these locked
games on your downloaded games it's
happened to me before and it scared me
but all it is is just connecting again
and so to get back there you just need
to press up and go to the settings right
here i'm already hovering over it press
x
and then go down to network
and then you'll see here that i have
unchecked uh next to connect to the
internet now this is normally doesn't
come unchecked for any reason i just did
it because
for the purposes of this video and
showing you this example but you know
it's it's worth checking just to to make
sure that you do indeed have this
checked
connect to the internet so i'm going to
check that again otherwise you're going
to want to go to setup interconnect
internet connection to make sure that
you are indeed connected to whatever
wi-fi that you're near
but otherwise i'm going to go back
give it a second to connect and
hopefully in a moment that lock there it
goes it just disappeared so there you go
that's one of the easiest ways to fix
this problem the next way is to make
sure the console you're on is using that
you're using is set as the primary ps4
so without doing this
one user on the same console
won't be able to play games that were
downloaded by another user with a
different psn account so let me show you
what i mean i'm on this specific user
this is the main one that i use and
therefore this is the one that i use to
purchase all the downloaded games onto
this console i'm going to switch users
and go to
a different one
go to this one
and okay here's the disk space we want
disk based one i can play this just fine
but i go over to here go to tony hawk
again and metal gear solid and those are
locked still that's because i don't have
the license to be able to play these
games on this particular user because
it's a different playstation network
account
but there is a way to be able to allow
shared licenses pretty much
and that is through setting your
playstation as the primary ps4 and so
i'm actually going to go back to the
other user because you're going to want
to do this
for the user that has the account that
made the original purchase
so go back up to settings
let's go to account management and then
down here second from the bottom you'll
see activate as your primary ps4
click on that
and as you can see it is not activated
for me so i'm going to press activate
and that's going to give you the benefit
of sharing licenses for downloaded games
sharing benefits for
playstation plus things so like playing
online and
playing
free games that they offer every month
so that's
now that this is activated you're going
to be able to do all that across all
different users no matter what account
they're using
all right so another way is to go down
to this option right below it
and click on restore licenses
all right so this is pretty much
playstation addressing this particular
problem if you're unable to use content
you downloaded from the playstation
store i'm reading it just verbatim right
here
there might be a problem with the
licenses for the content try restoring
the licenses and so all this takes is
just clicking restore right here
any applications that are open will be
closed and so it's going to go through
all the licenses
of all the applications that you have on
your console uh in this case i have a
lot on this user because this is the one
i use mainly
so we're gonna give it a few more
seconds see if we have any errors
no license is restored okay
we're gonna hit okay and so
let me show you i forgot to check back
on that other user and see if that
worked so i'm gonna go do that real
quick
all right
yeah there we go
so now i can play these downloaded games
on this different user
all right so the final way to
troubleshoot this problem that i want to
show you is to view the status of the
playstation network services so you know
every once in a while doesn't happen
very often but every once in a while
the playstation network will go down for
whatever reason their their maintenance
or
for whatever reason it gets hacked you
know it just goes down sometimes and
therefore
your playstation's not going to be able
to connect to it to be able to verify
that you indeed made purchases and so
even though you're connected to the
internet and you have it set as your
primary ps4 they're still going to be
locked because the network is down
so you know that this is kind of like
the last ditch effort
all right so i believe that it's going
to be in network
i'm going to go to network
and i was correct go down to here second
from the bottom click on view status of
playstation network services so this is
actually going to open up a browser
window
all right and it's going to show you the
status okay all services are up and
running
okay so nothing's wrong with the network
if uh so then whatever
connection
problems that you're having it's gonna
be on probably on your end and not on
playstation's end so we're gonna go back
and really if all else fails you know
just it never hurts to just try logging
out of a particular user or restarting
your console altogether i mean you may
actually be able to fix your problem
through one of the messages i just
showed you but for whatever reason it
won't take effect until you log out and
log back in or turn your console off
and turn it back on
all right so those were a bunch of
different ways to tackle the locked
games problem that you're running into
hopefully one of them addressed the
specific issue you were having but if
you're still having trouble don't
hesitate to leave us a comment we'd be
happy to help you out further otherwise
if this video did help you out please
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this thanks see you later