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Sony won’t charge you to access the PlayStation 4’s wealth of social features, despite what we predicted earlier in the year. Back in April, we pondered whether the platform holder would lock access to functionality such as the ‘Share’ button behind a paywall. But despite confirming that the company is to start charging for multiplayer, SCEUK executive Fergal Gara told Videogamer.com that that won’t be the case.

“The social features of the PS4 and PS4 games sit outside of the [PlayStation Plus] subscription service,” he said, furthering that functionality such as auto-update will also be available for free. “We're trying to be as balanced and as fair as we possibly can. If you choose not to subscribe, we are still gating relatively little in many senses, so access to online catch-up TV and online movie services sit outside of the gate.”

Gara added that PlayStation Plus will continue to offer outstanding value moving forwards. “A subscriber for the PS4 comes away with a hell of a lot," he said. "First of all, the subscription applies across all three platforms [PS4, PS3, and Vita], so if you have the three platforms, then you have an instant game collection on all three. So that's hugely powerful in its own right.”

Members will get a free copy of DriveClub for the PS4 on launch day, though this will be a basic version of the release without all of the cars and tracks included. It’s unclear if you’ll be able to purchase the missing content via microtransactions, but it definitely seems likely. Are you against the idea of stumping up an extra fee for multiplayer, or are you comfortable with the added cost? Let us know in the comments section below.

[source videogamer.com]