A wave of concern is spreading across the PlayStation community after reports surfaced about a sudden ’30-day timer’ appearing on recently purchased digital games bought through PlayStation Network. The issue gained traction after modder and dataminer Lance McDonald claimed that newly purchased PS4 and PS5 digital games now require an online check-in every 30 days. “Hugely terrible DRM has now been rolled out to all PS4 and PS5 digital games. […] If you buy a digital game and don’t connect your console to the internet for 30 days, your license will be removed,” he wrote on X (previously Twitter). “This can NOT be avoided by using ‘Activate console as primary.'”
The report quickly spreads like fire, panicking some PlayStation owners. Some players began sharing claims that a 30-day ‘Valid Period’ countdown shows up on new purchases, fueling fears that Sony had quietly slipped in a major DRM change on PSN. However, the situation doesn’t seem as clear-cut and panic-worthy as some expected. A ResetEra user andshrew reported that while a game purchased in early April initially showed a limited, 26-day offline license, it later quickly refreshed into a permanent license shortly after. Meanwhile, older purchases, ones that were bought before March, seem completely unaffected, behaving exactly as expected with indefinite offline access.
“So something is broken with how Sony issue licenses for offline play, at least on the PS4 where you can visibly see the state of the installed license. But it also seems that they have a process in place which is automatically fixing this after a period of time,” andshrew wrote, noting that there’s ‘100% no change’ to Sony’s DRM policies.
That’s not all, as a game preservation account, Does It Play?, added that an anonymous insider tipped them that the PSN DRM issue seems to be an ‘unintentional accident.’ According to its source, Sony may have accidentally ‘activated’ its licensing system while addressing a separate exploit, with a fix potentially already in progress. “From what we gathered, Sony accidentally broke something while fixing an exploit. They’ve known about the confusing UI for a while, but didn’t see it as urgent,” the account wrote on X.
This sudden DRM problem also isn’t the first time something similar has happened on PSN. There was a precedent back in 2022, where a licensing bug made PlayStation 3 and Vita digital purchases have expiration periods before being corrected. It definitely adds weight to the idea that the current issue is something technical rather than Sony deliberately limiting game ownership.
For now, there’s no confirmed change to Sony’s PSN DRM policy despite rumors of a ‘major overhaul.’ We will keep you updated on this debacle. For more news on PlayStation, keep checking GameObserver!
