It's hard to say if the PlayStation Plus is a good deal without having an ideal of how much of a benefit it would be to a person. The games that are free are either games that you would play or games that you would never play
The easiest legal way is to join Playstation Plus and they have free games every month. They are not quite free the downloads are only good as long as you are a Playstation Plus Member. There are also free demos from the Playstation Network.
Downloads are sold they are not free and the Playstation Downloads that are free from the Playstation Plus are not free they require membership in Playstation Plus and expire if your Playstation Plus membership expires.
Playstation Plus does not have anything to do with hacking on the PS3 and is a Playstation Network premium service
The bundle for the PS4 includes Playstation Plus in some packages and is only a pricing difference where you save $10 over purchasing it at the Playstation Store. Since you can use your existing Playstation Plus Subscription from the PS3 some users do not need to have the 1 year subscription. The Playstation Plus subscription is not required for online play or Playstation Network Accounts so other users might not even want the subscription
Yes, PlayStation Plus is required to play any PlayStation game online.
Ones ones that were purchased even at a large discount
No it is not. Of course you can purchase Playstation Plus it just will have no value for the PS2
Playstation Plus was first released on the PS3 on July 10, 2010
PlayStation Plus updates their game on the first Tuesday of the month.
No it is not free to download PS2 games unto a PS3. Most PS3 can not even play PS2 games but even the old 4 USB Port PS3s that can play the PS2 games can not download them for free. Even the old PS1 games that the PS3 can play are sold at the Playstation Store. Sometimes Playstation Plus customers are offered free games that expire with there Playstation Plus membership
You can join both Playstation Plus and Playstation Now. Though it should be noted that Playstation Now is in beta phase and you can only sign up for a chance to use it.
Playstation Plus subscriptions are automatically renewed