PS3 and PS Vita users have a problem playing old games they bought. The copyright notification system has expired.

There are a lot of PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita users. I’m having trouble accessing some games I’ve previously purchased digitally through the PlayStation Store, with a message that says: “ has expired on December 31, 1969, 7:20 p.m.,” which has been more than half a century. Most of them are classic games like Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI and many others.

The issue is even more puzzling when GamesHub’s Edmond Tran found that he might play Chrono Cross on the PS Vita normally, but mightn’t find it on the PS Store. It’s available for download on the PS Store, but even so. I can’t play it following downloading it once more.

Here’s something shitty:

– The PSOne Classics version of Chrono Cross can’t be found on the PS Vita store anymore, only on your download list if you bought before. Runs fine though.

– It’s on the PS3 store, but trying to install and run it tells me it expired? In 1970?? wtf pic.twitter.com/o0xz96izmF

— Edmond Tran (@EdmondTran) April 4, 2022

worst case It was reported by one Reddit member who claimed that it wasn’t just 1 or 2 games, but that “all” games in the library were not playable at all.

So far there has been no clarification from Sony, including a report on the fix, Kotaku noted. This might be caused by a bug in the software backend that is related to Unix time, also known as Epoch, because the date and time in this system started on January 1, 1970.

This incident caused a debate among the gamers. In the end, is it safer to buy physical games on physical discs or cartridges in the long run? Although buying scams digitally is more convenient, it’s true. But there is a risk that in the future it will not be playable as in this case or in other cases, such as the game being removed by the developer from the store. or the platform terminates the service, etc.

Source: The Verge