PS4 games prompting to join PSN for family members

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I've just got a PS4 and set up local child profiles under family management for my kids. When they go to play Gran Turismo Sport it recognises they are a child account (screen says some settings may be restricted by parental controls) but still prompts for them to join PSN and they are unable to save progress.

My expectation was that they would not need their own PSN login as they are children under my PSN account – is this correct?

I'm not sure if this is a general thing or a GT Sport specific thing

They don't have email addresses of their own, and I don't really want to set up full blown PSN accounts if I can avoid it

Best Answer

GT Sport is one of the few games on the PS4 that requires PSN connectivity for the game to function, which is why your child accounts are being prompted to "sign-in" or "create account".

Usually, the child does not need their own PSN account unless they with to play games online, but with GT Sport it may be a requirement for some of the functionality to work.

If you don't want to create email addresses for your children, but want to create PSN accounts so they can play GT Sport (and other games), I suggest using this clever thick with Gmail Accounts. Assuming you have a gmail address for yourself, you can use your existing email to create a new PSN account for your child. This can be done by extending your email address as follows.

  • Lets assume your gmail address is john@gmail.com
  • Lets assume your child is called Sam
  • You can create a new PSN account using email: john+sam@gmail.com

Gmail will ignore anything after the + in the email, and so anything sent to john+sam@gmail.com will actually go to john@gmail.com. This way, you don't need to create an email address for your child, and you can monitor any emails sent to your child's virtual email address.