Sony Introduces Free Game Trials for PlayStation 5 in UK

During early days of PlayStation Plus online services, Sony Interactive Entertainment introduced a Game Trials feature on PlayStation 3 consoles for players to try out titles they were interested to play ahead of making a purchase decision.

Although it has been largely absent throughout PlayStation 4-era of gaming, Sony is apparently bringing back this fan-favorite feature once again for newer generation of console systems for a very limited time, throughout October 2021.

Sony is currently offering limited time Game Trials for two notable PlayStation-exclusives, Death Stranding: Director's Cut and Sackboy: A Big Adventure on PlayStation Store of UK for few select hours, only until October 28, 11:59 PM PDT.

Heading over to PS Store page of any of these two games will show you an option to download a free Game Trial. Death Stranding trial comes along with six hours and Sackboy offers you only five hours of playtime, for once per console.

Once you hit download on PlayStation 5 or "add to library", a timer goes off and it may take few hours before you can start playing. Any purchased add-on/DLCs of these games will work on full version only, including save data and trophy.

For a simple workaround to save time, you can create a throwaway account on same region as your main one. Start downloading from new account and the switch to main and click download to play as you don't need to download again.

Sony recently sent emails to owners of PlayStation 5 consoles living in United Kingdom, offering them Game Trials for first-party titles. However, they should extend such offer to regions other than UK and also allow PS4 version in future.

Over a decade ago, offering a demo or free trial was pretty common industry practice, which is almost non-existent these days. Sony is seemingly trying to bring that back with PS5-exclusives to invite new players inside their ecosystem.