Over the weekend, YouTuber Modded {Hardware} found a brand new expiration date for digital PlayStation video games that prompt gamers can be locked out of their purchases with out common on-line checks. Confusion ensued, adopted by shades of Xbox’s disastrously acquired digital DRM plans forward of the launch of the Xbox One. Sony has lastly stepped in with an official assertion on the matter.
“Gamers can proceed to entry and play their bought video games as typical,” a spokesperson for the corporate instructed GameSpot in a brand new assertion. “A one-time on-line test is required to verify the sport’s license, after which no additional check-ins are required.” As Kotaku beforehand reported, the worry was that gamers would want to routinely connect with the web to be able to proceed accessing their digital video games. As a substitute, it seems that new purchases now merely have a brief license that must be authenticated in some unspecified time in the future to be able to convert it right into a everlasting license.
“The best way we perceive it at the moment is that there was an extra layer of DRM launched to fight fraudulent behaviour from customers,” DoesItPlay’s proprietor, Clemens Istel, instructed us. “Our greatest guess is that this might need to do with a refund rip-off we’ve heard about. It may also be in regards to the just lately reported exploit surrounding the Star Wars Racer sport.”
Sony’s assertion doesn’t tackle that hypothesis about why the change was applied, and it actually looks like it does introduce at the very least one extra layer of on-line checks that didn’t exist earlier than. Nevertheless it’s nowhere close to the Malicious program for a brand new period of aggressive DRM on PlayStation that some gamers had been worrying about.
