Over the weekend, YouTuber Modded {Hardware} found a brand new expiration date for digital PlayStation video games that steered 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 regular,” a spokesperson for the corporate advised 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 concern was that gamers would wish to routinely connect with the web with a view to proceed accessing their digital video games. As a substitute, it seems that new purchases now merely have a short lived license that must be authenticated in some unspecified time in the future with a view to convert it right into a everlasting license.
“The best way we perceive it at the moment is that there was a further layer of DRM launched to fight fraudulent behaviour from customers,” DoesItPlay’s proprietor, Clemens Istel, advised us. “Our greatest guess is that this might need to do with a refund rip-off we’ve heard about. It may additionally be concerning the lately reported exploit surrounding the Star Wars Racer recreation.”
Sony’s assertion doesn’t tackle that hypothesis about why the change was carried out, and it actually looks as if it does introduce at the very least one extra layer of on-line checks that didn’t exist earlier than. But it surely’s nowhere close to the Computer virus for a brand new period of aggressive DRM on PlayStation that some gamers had been worrying about.
