Fears mount that PlayStation has "re-armed the CBOMB" issue which stops you playing purchased games, amid 30-day DRM and AI chat bot confusion

PlayStation users have discovered an issue whereby some digital games become unplayable unless an online connection is made every 30 days - although further community digging suggests it seems to be only a one-off, temporary form of digital rights management (commonly known as DRM).

The 30-day countdown appears to have been first discovered on 25 April by YouTuber Modded Warfare, who noticed its presence next to newly bought PlayStation 4 games. The initial suspicion was that this was a new form of DRM suddenly added by Sony, which required an internet connection at least once every 30 days for purchased games to be playable.

This was the suspicion because, as discovered by subsequent testers of this new validity countdown such as Spawn Wave on YouTube, if it reached zero before an internet connection was established, access to purchased games was locked off. This DRM does not impact physical games, nor games bought in the past.

On the PlayStation 5, this problem exists as well, though with a few interesting differences. For one, the aforementioned timer is not viewable. In addition, an error message pops up when starting a game if not verified with an online connection.

This also impacts consoles with a dead CMOS battery, which is a non-rechargeable power source for a system's internal clock. With this issue, if your console CMOS battery dies, digital games on the PS4 from then on could be rendered unplayable.

Some of you might remember those: dead CMOS batteries were a source of fear surrounding the "CBOMB" problem a few years back. Players found they were locked out of digital games if their CMOS battery died, and while this was quickly fixed by Sony, a digital timer to validate digital games would essentially replicate this problem.

Following the discovery of this latest digital timer, the initial suggestions were that its implementation was a bug. Video game preservation outlet Does it Play claims to have been informed by an anonymous insider that this DRM issue was "unintentional", and that Sony had "accidentally broke something while fixing an exploit".

Even if this was implemented unintentionally, the fact this sort of online validity check exists is an eyebrow-raiser. That's doubly true amid ongoing consumer rights debates such as the Stop Killing Games movement, which has spoken in EU parliament in recent weeks. Being denied access to games due to a lack of internet connection has historically not been popular in video games, for obvious reasons.

Others, such as a user who goes by Andshrew on ResetEra, have done some deeper digging, and discovered another wrinkle. According to Andshrew, it appears newly acquired games are given a temporary 30-day offline license. Then, once players connect to the internet after the 15th day of ownership, this transitions into an infinite offline play license - in other words, one which no longer requires you to connect to the internet every 30 days to maintain access. In the past, players were given this infinite license indefinitely.

So why has this been implemented? Some are looking at the transition from limited license to infinite license on the 15th day - coincidentally right after the refund window cutoff - as a sign this DRM is some sort of response from Sony to potential exploits. As Andshrew put it: "I am speculating that perhaps people were exploiting the fact that you could purchase a game, grab the indefinite license file for the thing off of an exploitable PS4 and then refund the purchase - and Sony is currently mitigating this issue by time limiting the initial license that you are issued."

In the meantime, in lieu of any public acknowledgement from Sony, some PlayStation owners have decided to raise the issue with Sony customer support, and it's here things get interesting. Screenshots of Sony customer support bots confirming the existence and apparent intentionality of the 30-day online checks have emerged online.

However, the validity of these screenshots have been called into question, thanks to both the proliferation of generative AI for faking images of this kind, and a lack of official response from Sony. Eurogamer tried using Sony's PlayStation AI support bot to replicate these conversations as seen in the apparent screenshots, but had no luck.

On top of those doubts, these support chat bots are also powered by generative AI themselves. As such, if the screenshots of support conversations are indeed valid, another question arises: whether the information passed along by those bots is true, or instead merely a regurgitation of the already existing public speculation online.

So, why should a regular PlayStation owner care about this stuff? Eurogamer contacted Does it Play for insight into how this could affect the run-of-the-mill Sony fan.

"As with every DRM, it represents an additional hurdle for customers to access their purchases," Does it Play said. "That on principle is an annoyance, although you can understand that Sony wanted to close the refund exploit. The problems now are that, for one, they didn't communicate any of these changes, and for two, that makes for a bad surprise for people who thought they were fine after purchasing the game.

"Previously, setting your console to primary let you play your digital games indefinitely without additional checks. Now, everyone who doesn't actively look for the timer on PS4, and every user on PS5 (since there is no timer visible) will be surprised by another mandatory online check and be locked out of their games, if they went offline after the purchase.

"There are of course countless reasons why you would want to be offline (not being harassed by automatic updates, not being forced to download updates you don't want, etc.) and reasons why people might not be able to go online (ISP outages, missing infrastructure in remote areas, etc.)."

For Does it Play, the CMOS battery issue is a particular concern, one that Sony doesn't yet appear to have an acceptable solution for. "The bigger issue is that this DRM update re-armed the CBOMB for new purchases. If your CMOS battery dies, the system can't track time and therefore [cannot] verify licenses. We need to see what happens for games when the 14 day period expires and they are supposed to get the eternal license after the additional online check.

"In general, adding to the fact that you rely on Sony to keep the downloads available for the games to have access to them, you now also need them to keep the authentication available or mitigate it at End of Life (EOL) for a console. Otherwise, you might lose access to your purchased games. Likely a short window at the end of a console's life, but it is a concern."

Eurogamer has contacted PlayStation for comment on why this was implemented, and how dead CMOS battery concerns will be addressed.