PS4 parental control irritation

[Durzel]

Bought a PS4 for a mate for Christmas, he has a 6 year old daughter that naturally has learnt how to operate pretty much everything electrical. Because of this he's had to lock down his Sky box etc so that it asks for a PIN every time you try and watch anything sufficiently age rated.

Anyway, as far as I can make out the parental controls on the PS4 are mostly useless. Straight off the bat we tried to create a sub account (apparently the correct way to do it) off the master account. This worked fine, except that you can't set seperate parental controls for this account - so if you restrict the "level" of the control, so she can't play GTA 5 for example, this carries across to the master account too, even though it is PIN protected.

So basically my mate has to manually remove the restrictions every time he logs in on his master account, otherwise he can't play anything (no option to enter PIN to play, or any temporary restrictions lift, or whatever) AND - critically - remember to put the restrictions back on when he finishes playing. If he doesn't do this the next time his daughter logs in she could play GTA5 (but "helpfully" doesn't allow her to use PSN features in game because of her registered date of birth).

This seems totally half assed to me, unless I'm completely missing the point of how it is supposed to work. Why can't I set seperate parental controls (e.g. access to web browser, game age rating "level" allowed, etc) that stick on the account?

[JohnStitch]

Yep, same problem here. It shouldn't be so difficult should it. Such a convoluted process that doesn't actually work properly anyway.

Not too concerned about my 7 year old daughter as all she does is play Minecraft, but my 3 year old boy has learnt how to switch the PS4 on, fires up YouTube, then a few times I've found him sitting there watching videos of American kids playing GTA V shouting F this, F that etc...Stupid thing is, I can't even restrict that on YouTube. Tried deleting the app from the PS4 but still shows in the menu, therefore he just downloads it again....Last resort to keep him off it was to put a Pin onto the user accounts, which seems to have stopped him, but then he gets hold of the iPad, TV etc and does the same thing

[Dare2Fail]

This seems to suggest that you can have different age restrictions on each account :-

http://www.graphicalincoln.co.uk/elib/wp-content/u...

Does this help?

[JohnStitch]

The problem is that whatever restriction you put on the child account, those restrictions are also applied to the master account, which is a total pain the arse.

[northwest monkey]

We got our 7-year old son a Wii U for his birthday & set it up the other way round (if that makes sense). We put him as the master account with his DOB etc so that automatically restricted him from YouTube and age inappropriate games etc then set me up as an extra user (PIN protected) with access to YouTube / older games etc.

The YouTube app is still there but doesn't work (over 13 only apparently) unless he watches it once I log him in as me.

Maybe that's a way of doing it, or maybe Nintendo just make it work better.

[Durzel]

JohnStitch said:

The problem is that whatever restriction you put on the child account, those restrictions are also applied to the master account, which is a total pain the arse.

That's it exactly.

It seems the parental restrictions with regard to web browser access, game "level" allowed (don't get me started on how unintuitive the level system is), etc and set for the whole console, rather than per logged in account.

It essentially makes the whole concept of sub accounts etc useless in my mind because my mate either has to remember to reset the restrictions every time he stops playing (realistically he's going to forget sooner or later), or not bother with seperate accounts at all - meaning his daughter won't be able to play on it at all because the whole master account would have to be protected with a login PIN.

It seemed so broken and illogical to me that I was convinced for several minutes that I must've been doing something wrong, but no..

[Dare2Fail]

Durzel said:

JohnStitch said:

The problem is that whatever restriction you put on the child account, those restrictions are also applied to the master account, which is a total pain the arse.

That's it exactly.

It seems the parental restrictions with regard to web browser access, game "level" allowed (don't get me started on how unintuitive the level system is), etc and set for the whole console, rather than per logged in account.

It essentially makes the whole concept of sub accounts etc useless in my mind because my mate either has to remember to reset the restrictions every time he stops playing (realistically he's going to forget sooner or later), or not bother with seperate accounts at all - meaning his daughter won't be able to play on it at all because the whole master account would have to be protected with a login PIN.

It seemed so broken and illogical to me that I was convinced for several minutes that I must've been doing something wrong, but no..

That seems to go against what the link I've posted suggests (sorry if I'm wrong, I've never used the parental stuff). The link suggests that if, for example, you have two sub accounts each one can have its own restriction setting (for example, one could be a max restriction and the other could be free from restrictions). Not sure how it works with regards to master account and sub account, but it does appear that it doesn't have to apply to the entire console.

[stargazer30]

Oh it gets worse....

PS4 sub accounts can never be upgraded to master accounts, ever. Even when the kid grows up
PS4 account can never be deleted, want a new one? need a new email address.

The DOB on the account is propogated to 3rd parties - watch out for EA games here! Oh it will let you buy the game but try to play it on the sub and boom, guess what if he/she is too young you're stuffed and there's not a damn thing you can do, no refund either. You can only play it on the master account.

I'm no MS fanboy but the family settings work much better on the green side vs the blue.

[JohnStitch]

Dare2Fail said:

That seems to go against what the link I've posted suggests (sorry if I'm wrong, I've never used the parental stuff). The link suggests that if, for example, you have two sub accounts each one can have its own restriction setting (for example, one could be a max restriction and the other could be free from restrictions). Not sure how it works with regards to master account and sub account, but it does appear that it doesn't have to apply to the entire console.

There are a couple of things that you can restrict on sub accounts that don't affect the master, such as web browsing, but the application/game access is based upon the levels 1 to 11 (I think) which apply to the whole console. So it is a totally half arsed attempt at parental controls. We bought my daughter a HUDL2 for Xmas and the parental controls on that are fantastic, and simple. I.e everything is blocked unless I unblock it for her. Don't know why Sony have to make such a balls up of it.