Officially, PSN is only supported in a handful of countries.
This is an issue that dates all the way back to the origins of Sony’s online network, and it’s generally been accepted that the “workaround” is to create an account in another nearby country, spoofing the address.
If you’re like me, you’ll have multiple PSN accounts – I have one in the UK, US, Japan, and Hong Kong, for example. Sometimes you want to buy or download a game that’s not available in your own region.
I’ve never had any of these accounts banned or disabled, but I assume “technically” it’s not supported by the terms of service. It’s one of those quirks of the PSN that everyone’s just, well, accepted.
But it’s rightfully attracting scrutiny of late because it’s prevented some fans from buying Sony games on PC, where a PSN login is required. Most recently I reported on this in regards to Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls.
And it’s particularly messy with GTA 6’s physical editions, which include a code in the box.
These are region locked, so if you want to purchase a boxed copy of Rockstar’s latest and you’re not from one of the few countries officially supported, you’ll have to import from a different region and then create an associated PSN account for that nation.
For the record, these are the countries where you will be able to redeem a GTA 6 digital code. And remember, in Japan, these will only be valid for 170 days.
- Brazil: Brazil.
- LATAM: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay.
- North America: Canada, United States.
- Korea: South Korea.
- Japan: Japan.
- United Kingdom: United Kingdom.
- Saudi Arabia & UAE: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates.
- Rest of Asia: Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand.
- Rest of EMEA and Asia: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine.
I think people from affected countries will be well aware of the situation here, and will know the way to work around the restrictions. But I concede it’s far from ideal.
This is just a reminder of how messy the PSN is, and I think if Sony is insistent on enforcing an all-digital future on us, it should probably put some elbow grease into finally resolving these problems for good.
