Between price hikes and holiday spending, you might be wondering now more than ever which of your active subscriptions is worth bringing with you into 2026. If PS Plus Essential is one of them, you might want to keep it around, as even though it only costs $80 per year, subscribers were entitled to $1,500 worth of free games throughout 2025.
Thanks to Push Square crunching the numbers, we now know that, if you had claimed all 39 of the games up for grabs through Essential this year, you’d now have a library that includes $1,500 worth of games you didn’t have to pay for. Well, didn’t have to pay for outside of the price for a subscription, which, as Essential is the cheapest tier of PS Plus, costs $80 per year, so a fraction of the price of the games given away.
$1,500 Of Essential Games In 12 Months
There have been some very big titles among those 39 Essential giveaways, too. Like it or not, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League being an Essential game just a year on from its release was a big deal, and contributed $70 to that $1,500 total. Dragon Age: The Veilguard was the big Essential game in March, just five months on from its release. Other heavy hitters given away throughout the rest of 2025 included Psychonuts 2, Alan Wake 2, and Lies of P.
There are some caveats. For starters, quite a few of these games have been included in various PlayStation Store sales. Kill The Justice League, for example, has been available for less than $10 on occasion. For the sake of keeping things simple, the Essential total uses the MSRP of all the games that were given away.
Every Game Coming To PS Plus Essential, Extra, And Premium In December 2025
Every game added to Essential, Extra, and Premium and the dates you’ll be able to play them for free.
The Games Are In Your Library, But You Don’t Technically Own Them
There’s also the asterisk next to your ownership of said games, or more specifically, the lack of it. Unlike other gaming giveaways, like the run currently going on through the Epic Games Store, Essential games aren’t yours to keep. If your subscription lapses, then your access to those games is revoked unless you buy them. They will still be there waiting for you if and when you re-up your subscription, though.
PlayStation has been giving games away through Plus for years, and it shows no sign of ending that tradition in 2026. That’s unless you’re still doing the majority of your PlayStation gaming on a PS4. PlayStation has confirmed that, starting with its Essential giveaways in January, PS4 games will not be included as standard each month. Until now, each monthly haul has included at least one PS4 game.
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