We tried this when my son had his PS3 over here a month or so ago. After we deactivated his (#3) and reactivated (#2), his (well my) DLC from the Collectors Edition (Chromeline cars) are no longer usable! Not only that ALL DLC from PSN games to map packs to Rock Band Import keys & Rock Band and Guitar Hero songs to LBP costume packs prior to this colossal screw up no longer works on his PS3!
Trust me, if you had 3 PS3's under your roof, you would be pissed off too. Several of these fracking games we have bought 3 times!!! Thanks Sony for rewarding your loyal consumer base.
I have no idea what you are doing, but I have my account on multiple PS3s; my old launch 60gb, my new slim, my brother's launch 60gb, and my nephew's slim - and have activated and deactivated on these dif PS3s with no problems being able to play and access the content I paid for.
This won't really impact me at this time as I only have two PS3s one upstairs and one downstairs. But what happens if you buy a new PS3 because one broke? I would hope that Sony take this into account, especially GT5 and other games with allot of DLC I don't care much for game sharing but this development could hurt people with genuine issues. Hopefully it won't.
As mentioned before, you can own dozens of PS3 and still be able to download and play all the games you paid for... and you can even play the same game on two different PS3 at the same time for the most recent games, and up to five different PS3s at the same time for all the games and DLC purchased before last November.
(And as has already been mentioned, even if you do not own a PS3 that has your account on it that you wish to deactivate your account on, you can contact Sony and they will be able to see all the PS3's that have your account currently activated - and thus you can have them deactivate any of them - but as a cautionary note, they also know the location of all of those PS3s, and if any of them are registered, they will also know the owner, and if it appears you are game sharing, you risk the possible consequences.)
Heck, this change doesn't even prevent game sharing, it just makes it less convenient to do something we are not supposed to do in the first place.
For those freaking out because they can't play the games they bought after this change, at the same time on three or more PS3 at the same time - I wonder how they manage with disc games? Hmmm... Either they bought multiple copies or they copied them illegally right?
The fact still remains, while it is a violation, you can still share games, and you can still play and access all the content you paid for on as many PS3's as you like - you just can not have more than two of them activated at the same time - and that's only for content paid for after the policy change.
