How to Access PlayStation Games Early in 2024
There’s a brand new game or DLC coming out on PlayStation, and you’re excited! You want to be one of the first to play it. Thanks to the dubious magic of preorders and preloads, you absolutely can! And with some preorders, you might even get early access! Truly, we live in an age of small miracles.
But to your dismay, you find that people halfway around the world are still going to play the game first. Why? Because of gosh-darned time zones! How dare they? Your early access just isn’t early enough.
But hey, you can fix that. All you have to do is change your PlayStation region, right? Right? Well, it’s not that simple. Changing the region for your existing account just isn’t an option. The only way to access other regions with your PlayStation 5 is going to involve jumping through a few hoops, and a good gaming VPN.
Quick Guide: How to Change Your PS5 Region with a VPN
To start, you need PIA VPN, an address in the country you want, and a payment method.
Table of Contents
How to Change Your Region on PS5Can You Change Your Timezone to Play Games Early?
If You Preorder a Game, Can You Play It Early?
Why PIA Is the Best VPN for PlayStation
FAQ
How to Change Your Region on PS5
Alright, here’s the longer version. PlayStation makes it real hard to change your country, even if you’re moving. Switching countries on the fly in your account settings is not possible, and is just not going to happen. Forget any of the old tricks.
You need to pretend to be in another country in every way: your “physical” address needs to be there, your IP address needs to be there, and your payment method needs to be “local” as well. Fortunately, PlayStation gift cards can get you around that last barrier, and there are plenty of options for buying PlayStation gift cards and codes from other countries.
Here’s the basic process, in more detail:
- Configure your router to redirect your internet traffic to a PIA VPN server in the country of your choice.
- Note: to make this work, you’ll need a router capable of connecting to VPNs in this way. Not all models support this, and if you need to buy a new router, we do have a few recommendations on this site.
- In a pinch, you can set up a PC or your phone as a hotspot, run one of our native VPN apps on it, and connect your PS5 to the internet through that hotspot.
- Connect to the country in question, and maybe restart your PS5 just to be safe.
- Create a brand new PSN account on your console. The account must be registered to the country your IP address says you’re in. You will also need a valid physical address for the account to be registered to.
- Buy gift cards from that country as needed on another device, and purchase the game with them on your PlayStation, in the new account.
- Download the game and play.
Caveats:
You might notice that I keep going on about how this requires a separate PSN account. Keep in mind that this means the game, your achievements, and even your friends list would all have to be separate from your primary account. Want to play the game on your main account when it’s available in your region? You’ll have to buy it again.
In other words, you should only use this method with games that you absolutely, positively HAVE to play early, and don’t mind not playing on your main account. It’s perhaps an even better option for free-to-play games, so you can try them out before committing to them on your main account. Either way, just keep the separation of digital concerns in mind.
Can You Change Your Timezone to Play Games Early?
Nope. These sorts of tricks might have worked once upon a time, in days long past, but game devs and publishers have been wise to them for some time now. Nowadays, games won’t be released to you unless your account region, your IP address, and the server clocks all agree that you should be allowed to have the game.
That being said, there are still a few games here and there – mostly single player games – that will unlock certain time-based progression bonuses if you set your clock forward. But even these games are becoming few and far between.
If You Preorder a Game, Can You Play It Early?
This depends entirely on the game in question. Only some games include early access as a preorder bonus. Nowadays, even the games that advertise this sort of early access aren’t guaranteed to work properly. Multiplayer and live service games in particular have seen issues arise, and people don’t always get to enjoy the early access period.
One notable example was Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which was taken offline after only an hour of early access. This was due to a bug that incorrectly marked the story as complete the moment you opened the game.
Then it was taken down AGAIN not long after, further cutting into the early access period. Just a few things to consider. You might choose to play your games on their full release, but still “early” in terms of time zones.
Why PIA Is the Best VPN for PlayStation
In this particular case, PIA makes a great PlayStation VPN because it has a world-wide network of 10-Gbps servers that pretty much covers every country where PlayStation operates. This means that no matter what time zone a game is coming out in first, you can probably get an account there and play.
PIA will also help you get smoother – and sometimes even faster – connections to game servers by helping you bypass connection issues and even lower your ping. The same tech that lets you pretend to be somewhere else can also help hide your identity from attackers, and mitigate DDoS attacks.
In short, PIA covers all your bases, and then some, with military-grade encryption, 24/7 customer support, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
FAQ
Only by changing your location with a VPN. Changing the time zone on your PS5’s local clock won’t mean anything unless the time zone coincides with your IP address, which is something that game publishers absolutely check. It’s been a long, long time since this sort of workaround… worked. More’s the pity.
Yes, but you’ll need to do a couple of things. First, you’ll need to get PIA VPN and connect to a VPN server in the country of your choice. Then, you’ll need to register a brand new PSN account in that country. To do that, you’ll need a local address, and a local payment method. Keep in mind that gift cards do work for this.
That depends entirely on the game. Some publishers offer early access for testing purposes, or for people who have preordered the game. Whether or not they offer this perk on the PlayStation specifically is really up to them, but early access is usually a cross platform thing. Just keep an eye on the game’s marketing and announcements for details.
To do this, go to the Settings Menu, then System > Date and Time > Set Date and Time / Date Format / Time Format. It’s generally best, however, to use the Internet Time option, when you have the right time zone selected. Some few single player games do still base certain game functions on the system clock, so there you have it.
Yes, sort of. The process outlined above for changing your location effectively changes your time zone too. If you want to do this via the PS4’s settings, that won’t help. Gone are the days when game devs relied on local system time for that sort of thing. They compare your IP address with online clocks to determine when games are released.
Yes, you can, in the settings menu. Just follow the instructions above, and you can change the date in minutes, or less. Again, that’s the Settings Menu, then System > Date and Time > Set Date and Time / Date Format / Time Format. Just use the internet clock to set your date for you, as manually changing it has little effect on most games.
Sometimes. You see, your ping is determined by a couple of factors. First, there’s the distance between your gaming device and the game server. Then there’s other things that can slow your signal down: misconfigured servers, congested networks, etc. If you connect to a VPN server close to the game server, you can sometimes bypass all of that.
PIA makes a great gaming VPN, especially for PS5 gamers, because it actually comes with console support. It hides your IP address to help protect your identity, and prevent DDoS attacks, and can even help you to get lower ping under the right circumstances. You can try it out risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
