Playstation: A strange "game expired" phenomenon is affecting players affecting Chrono Cross and other classics

Playstation: A strange “game expired” phenomenon is affecting players affecting Chrono Cross and other classics

Gaming News Playstation: A strange “game expired” phenomenon is affecting players affecting Chrono Cross and other classics

Published on 09/04/2022 at 18:02

Another hit for fans of retro games. On Playstation 3 and Playstation Vita, several users cannot play their titles due to… an expiry date. Bug or drastic decision by Sony? Nothing is certain at the moment, but the mysterious phenomenon is starting to get people talking about it.

the strange phenomenon of expired games

Several Playstation users are currently reporting a very mysterious thing. In fact, many Playstation 3 and Playstation Vita owners are unable to play retro games purchased in dematerialized form. The cause ? Your copy would simply be outdated. This is when a user has shared their situation with the game chrono cross that the phenomenon has grown. As such, he is unable to launch the Square Enix title as his copy expired… in December 1969. A funny situation that has enough to stir up trouble.

The affected ports are only those of the Playstation 3 and the Playstation Vita. If people who have this problem thought for a while about a decision by Sony and Square Enix to push players to buy Chrono Cross’ Radical Dreamers remaster, other titles seem to be affected, like Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI .

But it’s not just Square Enix titles that are being affected, as several players are reporting that their entire catalog is now unavailable for the same expiration date issues, citing 1969 or 1970 as the years mentioned. Finally, not all user-to-user and console-to-console copies appear to be affected.

Error or editor’s choice? Radio silence from Sony

According to our colleagues from kotakuthe problem could be a bug affecting the “unix epoch”, an arbitrary start date set to 1970. A malfunction in Sony’s system would then reset the expiration date on those copies to an arbitrary date of 1970.

At the moment nothing has been confirmed and the mystery remains. Sony has been contacted by several affected users, while Kotaku has also contacted them directly with no response. In any case, the situation remains particularly frustrating for those affected and we naturally expect a quick response from Sony.

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