You don't because 99% of it is hosted by servers in the developer/publishers office unlike Xbox Live way back when. There is hardly any cash coming out of Sony's pocket to justify this racketeering.
The servers for the PSN store, achievements, PS Stars, friends related stuff like invites, messaging, voice chat, drm, Remote Play (its device connection and security/drm) outside home, user account management and stats (like hours player), anti-hack security etc., maintenance and backups of the whole infrastructure, for 100M+ MAU users aren't free or cheap at all.
Same goes for the online content of the around 50M PS+ subbers: the invites/party management, text chat, voice chat, matchmaking, online leaderboards, cloud saves, Share Play, anti-cheat security and (for many games) dedicated game servers hosted by PSN (when the publishers don't use their own ones and decide to rent them to Sony) etc.
As the server related stuff scales it gets more complicated and expensive to maintain at certain points of growth, the costs per user aren't linear like just adding more servers per X amount of users. There are other solutions that are needed, like including let's say regional "buffers"/"mirrors" to reduce the server saturation for certain stuff already downloaded recently by someone relatively close to you.
And well, this is just the online infrastructure. PS+, even in the Essential tier, also includes the games, discounts, exclusive betas/game content, etc. The games included were the main reason of why people subscribes to the service according to some surveys that were made over time.
Depending on the profitability of each PS+ layer (I assume the higher the more profitable), if they continue increasing the % of subbers that are in Extra or Premium because of the games & similar content included there, maybe at some point they may put some features that now require PS+ essential free for everybody and replace them for some other content.
Something that I don't think is likely in the short/mid term, because Sony wants to increase the SIE profitability to reduce the risk of super expensive AAA games tanking/getting cancelled, something that always happens from time to time even in the top companies.
I d rather pay and have good service no cheaters etc.
Do u ever play on pc, supposed amazing free service?
Pc online s filled with hackers, cheaters, boots....Souls, battlefield, cod....
Its free for a reason. Trolls dont want to admit it.
Also do u buy digital? Ps plus gets me some nice saving on sales etc.
We also have to consider that console manufacturers, unlike PC stores, also have to pay, in addition to the things I mentioned above -some of which you also mentioned-, OS and drivers development plus also to recover from the loses generated by selling hardware at a loss. So the more revenue they generate the better.
And well, in the case of Sony unlike Valve, Epic or CD Projekt they also develop a shit ton of games at the same time, most of them big AAA titles, which means a ton of yearly money that goes for development. So to have extra revenue also helps to keep the stuff profitable.
