this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
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If you're wondering what this is about: The PS4 used to require its internal clock to be correct to play any game, even disc based ones, and the only way to do so is to connect to PSN, meaning that in a distant future when the PSN goes down (or Sony no longer allows PS4s to connect to it) all your games would become useless. And the worst part? They did all of this because of trophies.
Sony has fixed the issue on Update 9.0, but the fact that it was ever an issue and caused by a totally non-essential feature is baffling.
That’s strange, I have a friend with no internet and he used his ps4 for half a decade before ever connecting it to the network.
My guess would be that it shipped from the factory with a "correct enough" time for the system to not care.
Had it shipped with a dead CMOS battery, the date would have been reset to 1970 or something, then it would complain.
Oh? They fixed the cbomb?
no way that's not related to drm lol
how would it know if the time wasn't correct
If it can't get an encrypted timestamp signed by a particular private key then it knows it doesn't know what time it is
Getting some strong the missile knows where it is vibes here. 😅
The timestamp knows when is it’s because it knows when it isn’t.
Probably it's like the Nintendo 3DS, the user facing clock is just an offset to the official internal timer, so when the user changes time, it's just an aesthetic change and has no effect to time/date game unlock mechanics (mostly lPokemon games). When CMOS dies, internal clock resets to 1970, a clearly invalid date where all the signing certificates are invalid, and the user can't set internal clock without hacking the console