When selecting a game to play on your PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, you may run into a game that has been locked, which is indicated with a white padlock icon on its image.
If you have this problem, then you can follow this guide from Seeking Tech for some potential fixes.
Why games are padlocked on PS5
When a game has a padlock, it means that you don’t have permission to launch and play the software.
This is due to several potential factors:
1. If you played a game via a physical disk on your PlayStation 4 (or PlayStation 4 Pro), the same game will show up as locked on your PlayStation 5 in your Games Library.
2. If you played a game that was purchased on a different user account, then the same game will show up as locked on your PlayStation 5 if you don’t enable “Console Sharing and Offline Play” on your system using the user account that is tied to the purchased game.
3. If you acquired a game through PlayStation Plus on a different user account, the same game will show up as locked on your PlayStation 5 if the account tied to the PS Plus game is no longer subscribed to the PlayStation Plus service.
4. If your PlayStation 5 has parental controls enabled, your parent or guardian may have put an age restriction on the game.
How to restore game license on PS5
The first step we recommend taking is restoring the game license on the PlayStation 5.
To do so, you can take the following steps:
1. Power on your PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 5 Digital Edition and then log in with the user account that was used to purchase the locked games.
2. From the Home Screen main menu, go to the “Settings” option. This is located on the upper tab on the right side of the screen. It is the gear symbol located to the left of your profile image.
3. In the “Settings” menu, select “Users and Accounts.”
4. In the “Users and Accounts” menu, select “Other” on the left tab and then “Restore Licenses.”
5. Afterwards, select “Restore” to restore the game licenses.
How to enable console sharing on PS5
Other option you can take to fixing the locked game issues is to enable console sharing.
You can do so with the following steps:
1. Turn on your PlayStation 5 or PlayStation 5 Digital Edition and then log in with the user account that was used to purchase the locked games.
2. From the Home Screen main menu, go to the aforementioned “Settings” menu.
3. In “Settings,” go to “Users and Accounts.”
4. In “Users and Accounts,” go to “Other” in the left tab and then select “Console Sharing and Offline Play.”
5. If the top message shows the following message: “You don’t have a PS5 with [Console Sharing and Offline Play] enabled,” then you need to select the “Enable” to turn this feature on.
You can find out more about PS5 game sharing with this tutorial.
Other Potential Fixes
If you believed that you are getting a locked game because you previously play the game on a physical disc on another system, you can try deleting the game data from storage (you can do so by going to the “Storage” menu from “Settings”) and then reinstall the same game (rather if you are using a physical disc or downloading from the PlayStation Store).
If you believed that you are getting a padlocked PlayStation Plus game, you need to resubscribe to the service using the same account that was used originally acquired the game through PS Plus.
If you believed that you are getting unintentionally locked out due to parental controls, then you can go to the “Family and Parental Controls” menu in “Settings” and change some of the settings there.