Last night, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced the incredible Play At Home initiative. As part of the ongoing efforts to stay at home and save lives, PlayStation will be making two classic PS4 games available to download and keep.

From April 16th until May 6th, we’ll be able to get our hands on and Technically, that’s games. Three stunning remasters of the first three games in Naughty Dog’s critically acclaimed action-adventure series, and one of the most well-loved and respected indie games of all time. These are being .

As if that wasn’t enough, SIE CEO Jim Ryan explained on the official PlayStation blog that there would be a second component to the Play At Home scheme: a $10 million fund to support the smaller studios that will inevitably find themselves impacted by the current crisis.

“Independent developers are vital to the heart and soul of the gaming community and we understand the hardships and financial struggles that many smaller gaming studios are facing,” Ryan wrote. With that, SIE has developed a fund to support them during this time. We have earmarked $10 million to support our independent development partners. More information about the fund, including participation criteria, will be made available soon.”

So just to recap: two (but really four) free games and a massive fund to support the studios that work to make so many of those games that we love so much. I remember reading Ryan’s blog post (it was only last night to be fair) and thinking to myself: “You’d have to be a sod of the most epic proportions to have any kind of a problem with this.”

And then I made the mistake of seeing what other people thought of Play At Home, in the comments under our posting of the news on Facebook. All I can say, really, is… wow. Below you’ll find a small sample of what some warm-hearted chums of humanity had to say about the scheme. The scheme that is trying to do a good thing and give us free games with no strings attached.

“Those games are the best they can give?”

“So they are giving us a game for free that was free 2 months ago , amazing move that Sony, don’t get why people slag you off for not understanding the needs of your customers.”

“This is disappointing, should make more games free, not ones that were free already.”

“If you had PS Plus then you already got both titles. I mean it’s fine I guess thanks for the free games but next time really make me wanna stay home.”

“This is stupid? Uncharted Collection was just on PS PLUS and Journey was on PS PLUS a while ago.”

“Thanks for giving free games that were already free for PS Plus just good job there PlayStation. Just a fantastic job there.”

Can’t you just feel the overwhelming wave of entitlement coming from these giant, whining babies? I’m genuinely stunned that, even when a company decides to do a good thing and offer up some free games, there are those who will turn around and complain those free games good enough.

Personally, I’d kind of love to have so little to be worried or upset about in my personal life that I decided to be a thunderingly massive turdsack because the free sh*t I’d just been offered wasn’t exactly what I wanted.

The main “reason”, and please note the inverted commas there, that these stains are worked up about and being free is that they were already made available to download through the PlayStation Plus subscription service – the first earlier in 2020, the second back in 2016.

In other words, already have (or had) these games for free, so it’s not fair. The abject selfishness of that line of thought is just astonishing to me, even by the low, low standards by which I usually judge the kind of person who spends their time complaining and attacking video game companies over social media.

I don’t know who exactly needs to hear this, but not everybody has a PS Plus subscription. In fact, only 37% of PS4 owners are subscribed to the online service, so that’s a huge number of people with a PS4 who probably haven’t downloaded these excellent freebies.

Hell, even if the majority – let’s say 50, 60, or 70% – of PS4 users were subscribed to PS Plus and had already downloaded these games, that’d still leave a large number who’d be getting freebies they hadn’t played before, and PlayStation would be doing a good thing.

I’d also just like to clarify that I’m aware that this is the usual spiteful minority and that most of us (including many of our brilliant readers) have reacted with nothing but positivity and support for this whole thing. It’s just that could think it was okay to complain about this initiative has really mashed my potatoes.

Because let’s be really clear, here. Staying inside like this is hard for all of us, yes. But it’s not our to be rewarded for it. We shouldn’t be doing it because we expect a pat on the back and incentives like free games to keep us inside.

We’re doing this because it’s slowing the spread, taking the pressure off healthcare systems, and saving lives. Any cool freebies companies like Ubisoft or Sony might want to chuck our way to keep us entertained should be accepted gratefully, not thrown to one side because some of us already own those games.

That’s the kind of behaviour I’d expect to see from a very small child, and even then, I’d assume that child was a real piece of work. PlayStation doesn’t owe you anything. Stay in, play games, save lives… and grow the hell up.