Some Videogames Suddenly ‘Expiring’ on Classic PS3, Vita Consoles
“Digital purchases are mysteriously expiring on traditional PlayStation consoles,” Kotaku studies, “rendering a random assortment of video games unplayable.”
The glitch is “affecting customers’ capacity to play video games they ostensibly personal.”
Upon re-downloading the PSOne Basic model of Chrono Cross, for example, Twitter consumer Christopher Foose was instructed the acquisition expired on December 31, 1969, stopping him from enjoying the sport on each PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. GamesHub editor Edmond Tran described a similar issue. Attempting as well up Chrono Cross on PlayStation 3, Tran stated, gave him the identical expiration date and time, solely adjusted for his location in Australia. Tran did point out, nonetheless, that he was in a position to obtain the PSOne Basic from his library and play simply high-quality on Vita regardless of the sport’s obvious delisting from the hand held’s retailer.
Whereas at first this felt like an try at encouraging Chrono Cross followers to buy the brand new Radical Dreamers remaster, Kotaku rapidly discovered proof of this similar downside occurring with completely different video games. Chrono Cross labored simply high-quality for content material creator Phrases, but not its spiritual predecessor Chrono Trigger, the license for which someway lapsed 40 years earlier than the sport was added to the PSOne Basic library.
Steve J over on Twitter requested PlayStation instantly why the expiration date for his copy of Final Fantasy VI was modified to 1969, however by no means obtained a response….
The one potential rationalization I’ve seen for this concern to this point entails what’s often called the “Unix epoch,” or the arbitrary date early engineers designated as the start of the working system’s lifespan. Some bug or glitch on Sony’s backend could also be defaulting PlayStation recreation license expiration dates to the Unix epoch, primarily telling them they can not be performed after midnight UTC on January 1, 1970.