One of PlayStation's all-time greats is locked behind a $159 paywall, no wonder it's failing

PlayStation is on a downward spiral right now and it’s not hard to see why - it’s locking its history behind paywall after paywall.

It’s just one of the many problems currently plaguing PlayStation at the moment. Xbox is struggling just as much but for different reasons entirely.

Between the pair of them they’ve brought forward the end of physical games media, laid off thousands of employees and either shuttered or let go of the only studios that could turn things around. It’s quite literally the worst it’s ever been.

On PlayStation’s plans for an all-digital future, the company seems reluctant to make a U-turn, no matter how much of a fuss gamers kick up about the situation.

It’d be all well and good if the company would actually support digital media at the same time. But, years later, many are still paying $159 for a PlayStation Plus Premium subscription just to play games that came out decades ago.

PlayStation Plus subscribers are paying $159 to cloud-stream God of War

God of War was one of the best-selling PlayStation 2 games when it launched in 2005, kicking off a series that’s still getting new entries today. God of War Laufey is shaping up to be a very different God of War game, but it still owes its existence to the hack-and-slash classic that started it all.

READ NEXT: God of War Laufey Confirmed To Explain Series' Biggest Plot Holes

Yet over 20 years later there’s no simple way to play this banger on PlayStation’s current hardware.

It’s only accessible through PlayStation Plus Premium, and even then it can only be cloud-streamed. Unless you have a really good internet provider it’s not an ideal way to play, so why should we pay such a premium price for it?

God of War isn’t the only title that suffers under PlayStation Plus’ most-expensive tier.

The only saving grace is that Santa Monica Studios is currently working on remakes for the entire God of War trilogy, which will likely launch either next year or in 2028 (don’t expect a physical disc).

Provided they’re good remakes, you should hopefully be able to enjoy these iconic parts of PlayStation’s history for around $80, which is still a lot of money but miles better than the cloud-streamed slop we currently have to put up with.

PlayStation wants to do-away with physical media production and yet it fails to make so many of its own first-party titles playable on modern platforms.

Xbox ransacking and shoving Obsidian Entertainment into making a new Fallout game is embarrassing, but at least you can play Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas without a subscription (PlayStation Plus Premium is needed to play these games as well).

For a company that clearly has a deep admiration for its history, so much so that it filled Astro Bot to the brim with cameos, it’s baffling that we’re still asking for easily emulated games on the PlayStation 5 in 2026.