During the weekend, YouTuber Modded Hardware discovered a new expiration date for digital PlayStation games that suggested players wouldn’t be able to complete their purchases without regular online checks. Confusion ensued, followed by shades of Xbox’s disastrous digital DRM plans ahead of the Xbox One’s launch. Sony has finally stepped in with an official statement on the matter.
“Players can continue to access and play their purchased games as usual,” a company spokesperson said. said GameSpot in a new statement. “A one-time online verification is required to confirm the game license, after which no further registration is required.”
As My city previously reportedthe fear was that players would need to connect to the Internet regularly to continue accessing their digital games. Instead, it appears that new purchases now simply have a temporary license that must be authenticated at some point in order to convert it to a permanent license.
“The way we understand things currently is that an additional layer of DRM was introduced to combat fraudulent user behavior,” DoesItPlay owner Clemens Istel told us. “Our best guess is that this might have to do with a refund scam we’ve been hearing about. It could also be a refund scam. the recently reported exploit regarding the Star Wars Runner game.”
Sony’s statement doesn’t address speculation about why the change was implemented, and it certainly seems like it introduces at least one additional layer of online controls that wasn’t there before. But it’s not at all the Trojan horse of a new era of aggressive DRM on PlayStation that some gamers were worried about.