There has been a lot of concern among PS5 and PS4 owners today about the alleged DRM system introduced by Sony which seems to suggest that the proprietary software will expire within a 30 day period.
However, it is important to warn that the reporting so far is inconsistent, there is no comment from the company itself, and there have been some suggestions of the issue that has been resolved.
Here’s what we know so far:
- Others newly purchased PS4 games have started showing a 30-day warranty period.
- Based on our testing, the problem seems to only affect PS4 games purchased in the last few weeks.
- We were unable to replicate this announcement on the PS5, although some on social media said they saw the message there as well.
Some reports suggest that this timer is reset when you connect to the Internet after it expires; we have not been able to verify this ourselves.
Some unverified reporting claims your license will be revoked completely if you don’t connect your console to the Internet before the expiration date; again, we have not been able to confirm that this is the case. (Though it sounds like a guilty plea if it’s true.)
The issue first surfaced at the end of March
Reporting on this began to spread towards the end of March, although it has received a lot of attention on social media today.
It is worth pointing out that a very similar problem occurred with the PS3 and PS Vita back in 2022, which was resolved.
One X (or Twitter) account dedicated to game preservation, Destruction Games, says that if the CMOS battery in your console dies or is removed, any games that show a confirmation window will no longer start.
You may remember that there was a big hullabaloo around this in 2021, which Sony really fixed.
A CMOS battery is effectively present to store the date and time information, allowing the console to confirm the opening of the Trophy. Like any battery, it has a shelf life and will eventually stop working.
But while it’s an easy feature to change, earlier versions of PS4 firmware required the console to connect to PSN to verify the date and time when changing.
Many were worried that in the distant future, if PSN were ever taken off the Internet, this handshake would be impossible, rendering all software unplayable.
Sony actually fixed this in v9.00, so it’s nice to see a new problem rear its ugly head five years later.
It can be a bug
One thing we should report is that some users on Reddit are saying that the verification time was present in their games until recently, and has since been removed.
Is It Playing, meanwhile – an account dedicated to testing whether the software will work offline – says it heard from an “anonymous insider” that the problem is “unintended”.
The account writes: “From what we gathered, Sony accidentally broke something while tweaking the action. We’ve known about the confusing UI for a while, but didn’t see it as urgent.”
Wait for More Information from Sony
Our opinion on this is that it may be a mistake.
While we certainly understand the criticism and concerns about this, the reporting is not very consistent for this to work as intended. As we explained in this article, some people see the error and others don’t. It also seems to only happen with newly purchased software especially on the PS4.
We will be the first to criticize the host if this it does has been a new form of DRM, but with no communication from the company and a lot of misinformation flooding social media, we would urge everyone to remain calm until more details emerge.
In the meantime, we will contact Sony for comment and update if and when we hear back.