A PlayStation Network bug is causing digital PS3 and PS Vita games to expire, rendering them unplayable. The issue was brought to light by several Twitter users, who’ve been met with a message that their games expired on December 31, 1969, and they no longer have access to them. Kotaku’s investigation found that the issue impacts random games but mainly PlayStation Classics. Affected games include the original Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, Final Fantasy Origins, War of the Lions, Rune Factory: Oceans, and more.
Why digital PS3 and PS Vita games are randomly expiring
As users are scrambling to make sense of what’s happening and why, Kotaku has found one plausible explanation: Unix epoch, which is an arbitrary date picked by early Unix engineers. A bug on the PSN backend is likely setting license expiration dates to December 31, 1969, making the games unplayable after midnight UTC on January 1, 1970.
So did @PlayStation expire the PSOne Classics versions of #ChronoCross and #ChronoTrigger by setting the date on new downloads to 12/31/1969? This is preventing me from playing my purchased copies on Vita and PS3. @ModernVintageG @dark1x pic.twitter.com/wxRebNIZWh
— Christopher Foose (@FooseTV) April 8, 2022
@AskPlayStation what happened here? A game I bought years ago is expired 1969 really? How can I fix this. Should I re download and install again it is under Purchased downloads pic.twitter.com/kIDRDXl5Sf
— Steve J (@Crono96) April 5, 2022
Over on Reddit, one unlucky PS Vita owner has reported that they have lost their entire library of games to this bug and none of the solutions that they’ve tried, including factory resetting their console, have worked. Sony has been contacted about the issue but has yet to publicly acknowledge it or provide a fix. We’ll keep an eye out for our readers.
In other news, former Sony boss Jack Tretton wishes the company had supported the Vita better, and Supermassive’s The Quarry comes with a mode that turns the game into a movie.
[Source: Kotaku]
