Vita locks users' trophies to game cards... but not quite as stringently as it first appears

The problem with consoles coming out in Japan first is that, importers aside, a lot of user reports are mis-translated and then reported as fact in the Western world. And so it's been with PlayStation Vita games, where it appeared that Trophies were linked to retail cartridges to the extent that you couldn't earn trophies on a different user account if you played the game on another machine.

Turns out that's only partly true. You do get greeted with a big warning screen when you try to play someone else's pre-played game, but it's not as scary as it looks. In order to earn Trophies in a pre-owned Vita game, all you need to do is delete ALL of its data, thus making it factory fresh once more. To be honest, that's the first thing we do anyway when we buy a pre-owned game. Would anyone want to continue someone's half-finished story mode on Uncharted? Of course not.

Above: Big scary message is scary. But it's not so bad really...

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So this is a non-story? Not quite. It highlights a very possible restriction that Sony could enforce in the future - flicking a switch to turn off the 'delete data' option in new games should the pre-owned market become too big a problem. That would surely be a fair but strict method of reducing sales of pre-owned games. PS gamers do love their trophies...

Source: Twitter

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Justin was a GamesRadar+ staffer for 10 years but is now a freelance writer, musician and videographer. He's big on retro, Sega and racing games (especially retro Sega racing games) and currently also writes for Play Magazine, Traxion.gg, PC Gamer and TopTenReviews, as well as running his own YouTube channel. Having learned to love all platforms equally after Sega left the hardware industry (sniff), his favourite games include Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, Zelda BotW, Sea of Thieves, Sega Rally Championship and Treasure Island Dizzy.