My 9 year old son is unable to play the game on PS4

[MrNumnuts83]

Hello,

It was my son's 9th birthday today and he wanted PvZ GW2 for the PS4 so he got it and was so happy to be able to play it however when we started the game up we got the following message: "You are too young or don’t have the correct permissions to access online features". He isn't too young he's 9 while the game has a 7 rating also his PS4 sub account is restriction free and allowed to use the Playstation network. To try to resolve the issue I created a child account for him on the Origin client hoping he could link his PSN ID to it but there was no option to do so. I then contacted EA support twice by phone and live chat to try to link the accounts but ended up with "agents" who seemed like they had no idea what they were doing or what the problem might be. I am hoping that someone here can help me out with a solution who may have gone through a similar situation or even get a chance to chat to a real EA customer support staff member who can actually understand what to do about it.

Regards,

Dave

[CoreZye88]

Same issue here, My account works fine and we can create a guest account to play on the console, but My sons account wich is also 9 is unable to access the game, 

I have changed all setting to full permissions both on the PS4 and on his account but nothing changes.

My account Is not connected to this Origin/Ea account as far as I know. (Well it seems to be connected but I don't remember doing it,, do I need to make an Origin account for my son?)

[MrNumnuts83]

I gave up on EA as they gave me no help whatsoever. The only way my son can play it is by using my PSN account which isn't ideal but it's the only choice. I find it absolutely ludicrous that EA release a game aimed at kids with a 7+ rating and not allow them to play on the game. It just boggles the mind and pure stupidity on EA's part. They could release a patch to fix it but I have no hope of that ever happening. Typical EA!

[pandareno1999]

I've asked for a response on this from an EA employee.  However, our assigned community manager is on vacation and his replacement may not arrive for a day or two, so I apologize if response is slow.

The short answer is that a federal law called COPPA (Child Online Privacy Protection Act) forbids allowing online interaction with children under 13 years of age.  Only online play is disallowed.  They may still participate in any solo play - the solo campaigns, backyard, garden or graveyard ops and all multiplayer modes, against AI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act

Ea cannot be blamed here, except for your disappointing interactions with customer service, which to be frank I've encountered myself.

[EA_Darko]

@MrNumnuts83 @CoreZye88

As @pandareno1999 has said, due to the COPPA law it is not possible for underage children to access the online aspect of many titles. Your children will be able to play certain parts of the game such as single player and offline content, which you can set up by following the instructions here: https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/account/give-your-child-access-to-games-on-their-child-account

[MrNumnuts83]

I totally get that, it's disappointing because he can play online in all his other games but okay. The issue I have is that he can't play ANY part of the game. He can't even get to the main menu because the game keeps automatically trying to access the EA servers and because of this he keeps getting the message "You are too young or don’t have the correct permissions to access online features". The game WON'T let him pass this error message. From what I see, I suspect that when the game starts, the EA server is reading his PSN profile and reads his age which then blocks him from playing the game, otherwise there would be no way the game could know what his age is. It's ridiculous that EA have the game locked down so much that children over 7 (which the game is rated for) are unable to play the game in any way online or not.

[LEB316]

I have tried to follow the instructions for creating an underage account for my 9-year-old son which are located on this site:  
https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/account/how-do-i-set-up-an-origin-account-for-my-child/#

I am able to create an ID and password for him, but as soon as I enter his date of birth, I get the following message:

"Unable to Create an Account

We're sorry, but you are not eligible to create an EA Account at this time."

I never get to the point of entering my email and associating his account with mine.  Do you know of any additional instructions?  Do you know of a different way of creating a child account?

[EA_Darko]

@LEB316 Are you ensuring that you are creating a child account and not setting up an overage account for your child? I was able to set up a child account just there so most likely it is just something small on your end.