The Playstation 4

Because you can presumably set a length of play without being restricted to specific hours? Or do you never want him to access it without explicit permission? At any rate, by your description earlier, that the new account was bypassing the restrictions you had set up, it sounds like it wasn’t set up as a child account.

This is “game sharing”. Activate the secondary (upstairs) PS4 as your home console. That’s it.

PS4’s controls are per-account so you’ll need to set everything the way you want it on his account. As stated previously, make sure his account is a child account of yours.

I set it as the home console, then any purchases I make on my main account on the downstairs (secondary) PS4 are playable upstairs as well on her non-PS+ account? I could never find a straight answer when trying to google & gave up. Thanks!

Yes, I just started doing this very thing recently, after I got a PS4 (my son has had one for years). The machine where she logs in without your account, make that one the primary. She can use anything on your account and even get PS+ benefits.

You log in with your account on the other machine to access everything. The one downside (as I understand it) is that if the internet is down, you won’t be able to play anything on your system.

It sounds convoluted, but it really isn’t.

This is the goal.

I’ll try to make a new account again and set the same restrictions I have for mine, but that’s what I did previously that didn’t work.

The web page for Sony’s PS4 parental controls is strangely hard to find. Here’s what I have bookmarked:
https://id.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com/id/management/#/p/family_management/list?entry=family_management

On that page I see my account, my wife’s, and one for each of my three kids. I am the “family manager”. My wife is set as “parent/guardian”.

Still selling like hotcakes!

PS4’s parental controls are a steaming pile of dogshit. Without whitelist options and per-game restrictions, they’re useless. I have to turn every single restriction off so that my 8 year old can play Minecraft. (ESRB age for Minecraft is 10, so any age restriction blindly follows that and you can’t whitelist it.) I had to turn on the web browser for my son to be able to play Steep–one of this month’s free PS+ games and a ton of fun for him. (UBISOFFFFTTTT!!! &!^$%^%!!)

I appreciate the fine-grained privacy controls, but those are the same on my account. The parental controls are hideous. Much like Amazon developers, I’m not convinced that Sony’s devs have ever interacted with or even seen a child before.

Looks like someone already updated this page.

10 million more to surpass the Wii.

The mysterious Gilson B Pontes is at it again:

Damn it, who is this idiot and who lets him release so many shitty games on PS4. I thought the bar was a little bit higher on PS4.

I forget how this all works as I don’t us the PS4 all that much.

I have a profile on my PS 4 and it’s tied to a playstation account online. I want to create a profile for my son. He doesn’t play online multiplayer. Up until now he just uses my profile. Is there a benefit for him to create his own profile? His own set of save games I guess would be one, anything else? If he has his own profile, he’d get to use my PSNow or PS Plus if I got it, right?

Does PS Now work well? I’m looking for some stuff for my son to play and that would be a quick way to get access to some games. Would I be better off with PS Plus?

Thanks

You need a second profile to do couch multiplayer: Overcooked, Rocket League, Minecraft, etc.

If he’s a subaccount of yours, he’ll have access to anything on your console. Whether he can actually play them depends on your privacy and parental control settings.

There is a caveat, or at least used to be, I don’t know if it has been changed: If your son is approaching teen years, his sub account will ALWAYS be a subaccount, so when he leaves the nest, he won’t be able to take that account with him, get his own PS+, etc…

When my son left for the service several years ago, we found out this harsh reality and he lost all of his hard earned K/D ratios =)

EDIT: Speiling

Does he need an online playstation acount for anything? I use mine to buy games, but if he is just playing what I buy can he only have a local profile?

When you talk about a sub account, is that an online playstation account or a local profile?

My son isn’t a big gamer, so he probably would be OK with needing to start over with a new account when he gets old enough to move out (he’s 11.5 years old now).

He does occasionally use his money to buy a game, but by the time he is on his own it’s not like he would be playing what he would buy now.

Thanks again

I think to play anything online with his friends, it would need to be a sub-account. To play couch with you probably local account is fine? I’ve had people drop by during social gatherings and do a quickie local account for couch play without needing something more.

What I am reading in these last few posts here is @robc04 is using his son to increase his personal PS4 trophy stats. :)

I’m pretty sure that would be a very slow process! He isn’t the most skilled game player.

Didn’t we used to have a speadsheet pinned with peoples’ Steam/ Playstation / xbox tags? I was going to send out some PS4 friend requests.

I’m robc04 on the PS, so anyone can feel free to send a friend request.

Yep! No clue how up to date it is.

https://creator.zoho.com/monofurioso/qt3-gamer-tags/#View:Qt3_Gamer_Tag_Input_Form_View

Ahh, thanks!

Hey you’re not accepting friend request right now!?! :-)