Sony appears to be testing a new PlayStation rewards programme. A number of posts on social media and Reddit have recently appeared showing that purchasing certain games from the PlayStation Store now comes with an associated wallet credit bonus.
A post from Reddit user JannJans ( spotted by PlayStation Lifestyle) shows wallet credit bonuses for both versions of The Blood of Dawnwalker on their US version of the PlayStation Store. Both the game’s Standard and Eclipse editions show a message that says “includes wallet credit”, with an offer end-date of 29th September.
“I was deciding between Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Blood of Dawnwalker and noticed a special offer with the latter,” the Reddit user wrote. Sure enough, after purchasing the game, $10 was sent to their PS Store Wallet.
Other users reported seeing similar messages, including outside of the US. The offer doesn’t appear to be limited to The Blood of Dawnwalker, either, with some reportedly seeing it attached to Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, Star Wars Zero Company and Halloween: The game – all of them recent releases.
While there’s no direct indication of the bonus being part of a larger rewards scheme, PlayStation Lifestyle did also uncover a PlayStation Store app called Wallet Credits in February, so the two could be connected.
The idea of offering store credit with certain purchases obviously isn’t new – it’s used around the world in many stores. Console competitor Microsoft has used this approach for years on the Xbox Store; we recently saw Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 pre-orders offering a $5 / £4 credit for a limited time.
As to why the offer is available to some players but not others, we don’t know, but it could be related to PlayStation’s experimentation with dynamic pricing, which allows it to offer games at different prices for different customers, based on its assessment of the likelihood of them buying it.
It’s also possible this is part of a larger rewards or loyalty programme Sony is working on, and perhaps preparing to announce, and that the players experiencing it happen to be at a tier designated to receive it.
