Discussion Console DRM discussion

[fokkusu]

Saw an interesting article in IGN regarding the Sony PS3 and PS4 digital games DRM. If your console's internal battery is dead and Sony has stopped their services you cannot play the games you bought any longer.

PS3 DRM Kills Digital Games: Report

If Sony’s servers go down so does your digital library. PS4 owners have it worse though.

in.ign.com

It seems that if your PS3 is unable to connect to Sony’s servers or that if the battery powering its internal clock is dead (also known as CMOS battery) or has low charge, you won’t be able to access any of your digital PS3 games. This includes PS1 classics as well as PS3 digital downloads. At best, some digital purchases may revert to trials which was a little used feature that allowed you to play a game for up to an hour and save your progress and trophy over to a purchase of the aforementioned game.

It seems to be even worse on PS4, you cannot even play physical games:

PS4 owners have it worse as IGN India reported earlier this week. If Sony decides to take down its servers, you also lose access to your physical game library. According to trusted hacker Lance McDonald this is because trophies on the PS4 need the console’s internal clock to work correctly so as to prevent users to change date and time values and exploit the PS4’s trophy system.

Probably stops me buying another Sony console in the future. I wonder is the situation same in PS5 and/or in Xbox, Switch world?

 

[MomoVideo]

It's worth pointing out that according to the article you can replace the CMOS battery.

 

[fokkusu]

Yes true, but if the Sony services are down you cannot activate certain things and brings console useless in some scenarios.

 

[MomoVideo]

Yeah, I can only imagine that it will cause a lot of trouble for less tech-oriented people. Opening a console to restore an ability to play legitimately bought games should never be a thing.

 

[texhnolyze]

With how Sony was so willingly kill their servers for anything that's not profitable anymore as soon as they can, people's library are basically on Sony's mercy. The battery issue is just another thing to add the pile of concerns. With PC games, we have multiple official stores/platforms that host them. And even if they somehow go under someday, there will be unofficial ones storing the games for people in the future. That said, it looks like Sony finally realized that they can't keep changing their architecture anymore on each new gen. That's why the PS5 is mostly backward compatible with PS4 games. It should be fine if this continues to their future consoles.

But that still doesn't fix the concern that the PS3 and PS4 will stop working at some point due the servers being shut down. Meanwhile, people can still play on their old PS1 & PS2 without worry.