PlayStation 3 and Vita owners have been unable to play classic PS games for the past few days, as an apparent glitch lists older titles as “expired”. The issue caused the original PS games to display an expiration date of December 31, 1969, raising concerns about Sony’s maintenance of its digital storefronts – even for customers who have already purchased and downloaded the games.
Affected players have notified Sony support channels, but none of the suggested fixes work. Users are told to do everything from re-registering their console to performing a full factory reset, all to no avail. Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy 8, and Fez are among the games that would be affected by this expiration date, though a Reddit user claims it happened to their entire library.
As reported by Kotaku, the bug doesn’t allow players to redownload titles they can’t play, just repurchase them. In the case of games downloaded via PS Plus, it seems like ending/restarting your subscription doesn’t work either.
Adding to the confusion, there’s not even much consistency. While a gamer can play Final Fantasy 8 just fine, another cannot start at all. As in the case of Chrono Cross, they are told that it expired on 12/31/1969. Funnily enough, they can play Final Fantasy 7, which they bought at the same time.
It is unknown if this is a related issue, but players are also reporting that they cannot connect to PSN. With these two issues in mind, some gamers are rightly concerned that Sony is planning to scrap its older consoles again, after its early attempts proved so controversial.
Despite numerous players reporting the issue and coverage from major news sites, Sony has yet to respond. His support account on Twitter is primarily intended to help PS5 gamers and has offered no public advice to those affected.
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