➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: PS Plus free weekend

• 🥳 PlayStation multiplayer is free for short window

• 💪 You’ll be able to enjoy PS Plus online multiplayer from December 11 to December 12

• 🙁 Only online access is available, though, not the free games

• 📉 Sony will likely be hoping to shore up its ailing subscription service

PlayStation multiplayer is going free for the weekend, letting you dip into the online modes of PS5 and PS4 games even if you don’t have a subscription to the premium service.

Sony announced the free weekend, which will run from December 10 to December 11, on Twitter. To participate, all you’ll need is a PSN account and, of course, an internet connection.

If you’re not currently subscribed to PS Plus, the free weekend is a handy way of checking out the online modes you’ve been missing out on. You might have bought Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, along with seemingly everybody else, but if you’re not playing online you’re missing out on the biggest part of the game.

However, this isn’t a full PS Plus freebie weekend. Only online access has been made available, so you won’t be able to pick up December’s free PS Plus games – which include Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, BioMutant and Divine Knockout – unless you’re a subscribing member.

Sony revamped and relaunched PS Plus earlier this year, turning it into something of an Xbox Game Pass rival. It now has three tiers: Essential hands you monthly free PS Plus games, Extra gives you access to a library of downloadable games to play whenever you want, while Premium adds a roster of classic games and a streaming service that’s a little like Xbox Cloud Gaming.

It doesn’t look like the platform has become the Game Pass competitor Sony had hoped for. The number of PS Plus subscribers actually fell by nearly 2 million after the three-tier revamp was introduced. Microsoft’s subscription service, meanwhile, continues to attract new subscribers, even if recently fell short of its growth target for the second year running.

PS Plus Extra, the platform’s middle tier, offers a great way of playing some of the best PS5 games if you’ve managed to secure a PS5 restock. But

In his PlayStation Plus Premium review, he praised its generous library of classic PlayStation games but wasn’t impressed by the absence of day-one, first-party releases. It leaves PS Plus looking a little meager, especially in comparison to Xbox Game Pass’s bumper crop of first-party games that drop straight to the platform.

If you have an Xbox, you might be best off subscribing to Xbox Game Pass, which you can do for cheap using our discount code.