Slashdot Mirror
Calendar Bug Disables Older PlayStation 3 Models
JohnWilliams writes "The Sony PlayStation Network appears to be inaccessible to older ('phat') PS3 units. Players cannot play games that require a connection, even in single-player, offline mode, e.g. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Also, the system date resets to January 1, 2000. Sony is 'looking into it.' Speculation abounds that it is a bug related to 2010 being incorrectly flagged as a leap year. The newer PS3 Slim models seem to be working properly."
On my UK PS3, the date was reset to 31/12/1999 (a value you cannot input yourself manually) and then rolled over into 2000 some hours (5?) later.
None of my downloaded PS1 games will start - just gives an "invalid copyright protection" error message.
With the exception of Wipeout HD, none of my downloaded PS3 games will start.
None of my Blu-ray game disks will start.
My PlayTV device is not performing scheduled recordings
VidZone cannot be used, since it requires signing into PSN network to determine what region you're from
Oh, man, the party is at Balmer's house tonight.
It's a bug. And it's not because of any kind of DRM system with the bluray games. It's because of the trophy system:
It's the same story for other games that feature dynamic trophy support.
Yeah, that's why I said with the bluray games. Downloaded games obviously use a little bit different system.
I hope Sony gets sued to absolute oblivion over this. Not being able to play games you have paid for is abso-fucking-lutely un-acceptable for any reason other than your console being physically broken.
Jesus fuck. Suing over temporarily not being able to play a game? The "sue everybody" mentality really has gotten ridiculous.
All these goddamn DRM schemes that backfire and companies never learn.. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my DRM-free games and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone!!!
What does it have to do with DRM? Calendar bugs have been a very common part of the computing landscape for many years.
... and then they built the supercollider.
It happened because two different time tracking systems disagreed with each other and were stupid. System 1 said "It's February 29th, 2010", and passed it to System 2. System 2 says "WHOA, that's impossible, nuke it from orbit and start over". Why did they do it like that? Who knows?
I hope Sony gets sued to absolute oblivion over this.
Jesus fuck. Suing over temporarily not being able to play a game? The "sue everybody" mentality really has gotten ridiculous.
Thats why I dont want to live in the US. Instead of solving problems like civilized people everyone sues right and left and demands millions in damages if you even looked angrily at someone. I demand, I want, me me me money money money for me.
Sorry, but what do "computer landscapes" have anything to do with being unable to play my games due to a calendar screw up?
I've been playing video games since Commander Keen was being sold as shareware on a 3.5 floppy at your local VHS rental store, and I have *never* had a single problem with my computer or video games because of a "leap year".
The only reason I can see a video game not working because of mis-matched dates is because of DRM, there is no - and neither should there be, any reason why a game should be dependent on any date.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
When I said the Millennium Bug would strike again, you all thought I was crazy! Who's laughing now?
\x72\x6D\x20\x2D\x72\x66
So you're saying it's ok for me to be locked out of my games because Sony's servers don't feel like giving out achievements at this time.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
While people are far too quick to yell "sue" needlessly, it is a legitimate complaint that otherwise offline, single-player games should be unusable due to this glitch. Whatever happened to gracefully handling failure? A network connection has no business being a requirement (to the point of failing to play without it) for a single player game.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
the clock that is displayed on-screen is just some application level date. it's for 'display purposes only. changing this has no effect on DRM licenses restrictions (such as when you download a movie with an authorization to watch it once over the next 7 days).
the 'real' ps3 clock is a hardware device (I guess they changed model between the 'phat' and 'slim' hardware releases, which is why slim is not affected). this clock has read-only access via the hypervisor only.i don't think it's even possible to reset it - at least that's what was claimed in a Sony document describing the PS3 Linux kernel
if the hardware RTC has a fault, they've got a real big problem
Dude, did you even read the article? SOME GAMES CANNOT PLAY OFFLINE. Lookup what offline means, its opposite of ONLINE.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Potentially could suppliers be forced into higher standards by the fear of consumer litigation?
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
If this a hardware/firmware issue, then I hope to god for Sony's sake that there's a quick and easy fix that users can apply at home. The problem is that even if they offer everybody a free trade-in to a PS3 slim (which would be cripplingly expensive), then a lot of users, self included, won't accept this. Trading from an original 60 gig PS3 to a PS3 slim is not an upgrade. It's a downgrade.
Why? Because the original first-gen PS3s had full PS2 back-compatibility, while the more recent versions don't. People like me, who got rid of their PS2 when they picked up a PS3, are not going to be happy in the slightest if it turns out we need to start hitting Ebay for PS2s.
The only reason I can see a video game not working because of mis-matched dates is because of DRM,
Well, if that's the only reason you can think of, you're not thinking very hard, are you?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What does it have to do with DRM?
The DRM for games purchased on PlayStation Network seems to require that it be able to phone home and validate everything before it lets you play the game. This is impacting all of the games I've tested so far which were purchased from the PlayStation Network. Many of them just fail with an inscrutable error message ("Error HEXADECIMALSOUP") and refuse to start up. Others give you "demo version" mode and behave like you need to purchase the full product still.
Calendar bugs are one thing, but DRM which fails and locks you out of a bunch of stuff you paid for in the presence of such a bug is another thing entirely. If Sony gives me a nice discount voucher or PSN credit by way of apology for this inconvenience, I'll be less peeved, but I get the feeling that Sony (and their ilk) consider their self-rights-protection technology to be so damned important that no amount of inconvenience on the part of their paying customers is too much to ask. They'd be more concerned if a calendar bug allowed you to bypass all that license-key crap.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
And sometimes they shouldn't.
This was an accident that is ultimately harmless, particularly in the long term, and will more than likely be resolved within a day or so.
A lawsuit is ridiculous at this point. Maybe if they let it go on for weeks, or if it actually destroys their peripherals.
I understand your explanation of the bug, I'm just arguing that a game shouldn't be crippled by a simple bug that should be trivial to game avaialability offline. I'm just saying a game shouldn't be crippled by the system date. And the only reason I can think of why someone would want the date sync'd or the game made non-working due to changed system date was because of some form of DRM.
Maybe I'm wrong but this is the only reason I can think of. I just can't find it easy to accept their explanation for this, that's all.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I view this a bit differently. If the drive-door fell off or the gears on the tray broke I would't suggest suing.
However, if your fridge doors locked and prevented you from using it each time you set the date wrong on the fridge, yes I would suggest suing.
I am not mad at the PS3 breaking, I am mad at the fact that rather trivial issues prevent people from playing fully functioning games on a fully functioning console system.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Instead of solving problems like civilized people everyone sues right and left
How do two parties in disagreement over financial liability solve things in your country?
Do not worry, if someone does sue, Sony will come to the UK and put a super injunction in place so nobody will hear about it.
It does affect consoles that have never had a network connection and never will.
It was refusing to install the Star Ocean Trophy set. I could get it to start Bayonetta, but when it attempted to load the first cutscene it just hung forever. Tried doing a number of things, nothing worked... And it wouldn't let me back up my data as the largest thumbdrive I own is 8gb and after removing ALL game data, installed demos and everything else I could strip, it claimed it still needed another 750mb of space (original claim was over 17gb). And of course it refuses to recognize either of my external USB HDDs as a target for backing up or reading data from...
So I started thinking "HD Failing" (it is an original PS3 after all). Figured I'd have it format the drive then reinstall and repatch my games. Nearly a 5 hour time estimate. Take a nap, wake up, see this.... "oh god damnit."
The DRM for games purchased on PlayStation Network seems to require that it be able to phone home and validate everything before it lets you play the game.
But that doesn't seem to be the case. I've played downloaded PSN games plenty of times without having any internet connection. This glitch seems like an entirely different beast.
... and then they built the supercollider.
It is not a bug, it is the Sony timer.
No, the reason you shouldn't sue is that suing someone because they pissed you off makes you an asshat.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
Give the guy a break, he could just be stupid.
Or he could be following the longstanding tradition of not knowing what the hell you're talking about when bitching on the Internet.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
My PSX games, actual PSX discs, work just fine.
Dunno about Blu-ray movies, but I know my Netflix disc won't work. None of the $2,000 in games I bought work (every single one has trophies/achievements.)
Also, try to play that game, it wipes your trophies. Hopefully those will come back once the servers fix themselves.
This is what they get for making varying hardware in the first place. They should have introduced ONE MODEL, with backwards compatibility all the way through. Leave in EVERY ADVERTISED FEATURE EVER, and ship a solid unit. Don't make different hardware revisions just to save money - they cut corners somewhere along the way and it is starting to come back to bite them in the ass.
There really needs to just be a massive uprising against Sony in court - they've rootkitted our PCs, they've given us crap invasive DRM, they've advertised one feature (BC) and stripped it from 100% hardware to part hardware part software in the next revision, then to full software in the next, and then pulled it totally the next hardware refresh, and now with the PS3 slim advertising campaign they're saying right on the kiosk wall in Best Buy "It does everything" when in fact it does NOTHING close to what the original did. IT IS PURE AND SIMPLE FALSE AND MISLEADING ADVERTISING, and they need the shit sued out of them so they'll NOT DO IT AGAIN. Screw the money - we can sue for a full injunction, and force specifically SCEA to stop operating in the USA until they get the consumers what they originally were advertised on TV, in magazines, - a PS3 with BC and the ability to install another OS. Damn hard drive size, since we can upgrade that ourselves. Give us the hardware and quit trying to dictate everything in our damned lives.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Do you mean Y2.01K?
We talk to each other. We try to come to an agreement. If that fails a third party might get involved, especially if it's a disagreement between a company and an individual customer.
And once all those options have been exhausted...then we might bring in an actual lawyer.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
No, DRM is and has always been about killing 2nd hand sales. The piracy non-issue was just an excuse that no one would question whilst they went about removing your consumer rights. For over a year now publishers have been openly equating the 2nd hand market to piracy. The ultimate goal is to destroy all media they don't control, if DRM isn't stopped in the near future all games will require an authorised console, with authorised media, on an authorised display device and an authorised user and if any of these things fail authorisation then the whole system will stop working (for you at least).
/.ers are in the US) about DRM.
So at least write to your representative (I know in the US this will do nothing but not all
I've said it before and I'll say it again, consoles have DRM built into the hardware. This makes it both more prevalent and more aggressive then DRM on the PC. It also makes it harder to remove.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Guys, it's really not that hard:
GregYear <- (appropriate year for start of Gregorian era in locale)
IF (month = 2 AND year MOD 4 = 0 AND (year < GregYear OR year MOD 100 > 0 OR year MOD 400 = 0))
{MaxDayForMonth <- 29}
ELSE IF (month = 2)
{MaxDayForMonth <- 28}
ELSE IF (month IN (4,6,9,11))
{MaxDayForMonth <- 30}
ELSE
{MaxDayForMonth <- 31}
(pseudocode style adapted for Slashcode)
I ran into this problem last night trying to watch Netflix on the PS3. the Netflix disc gave me a cannot connect error.... Being a slashdot reader my first though was I'd done something weird with my router ports.. So Mucked with those for awhile first making sure I hadn't done something weird. Then I noticed the system date was wrong on the PS3. I tried "Set Time via Internet" which failed, then I Set time manually and tried Neflix again and it works as normal. I'm sure the Servers figured that a 10 year old packet was "timed out" and didn't respond (or the PS3 won't respond to communication from 10 years in the future).
Worked for me, didn't try any games yet though.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
We talk to each other. We try to come to an agreement. If that fails a third party might get involved, especially if it's a disagreement between a company and an individual customer.
And once all those options have been exhausted...then we might bring in an actual lawyer.
Sometimes even "talk[ing] to each other" and "try[ing] to come to an agreement" result in complaints from the Slashdot peanut gallery. A cease-and-desist notice over a fan-made derivative work, for instance, is just "talk[ing] to each other". And a lot of disagreements don't make the news until "all those options have been exhausted", which biases news coverage in favor of lawsuits.
You must be the sort of dissatisfied customer that every company dreams about: Rants angrily on the internet and purchases $2K worth of product...
"Why should I wait for Sony to fix it?
Because the other alternative is . . . . not waiting for Sony to fix it? Forcing Sony to hire a team of time-traveling coders to travel back in time and fix the bug before it happened? I fail to see what alternative there is besides waiting for a few days. Deciding to sue Sony won't make your PS3 work any sooner than just doing something else for a few days and then coming back and installing the update that they put out to fix this.
Look, I know you're upset that a bug in the PS3 calendar has managed to trigger some sort of DRM switch. Sony is rightly at fault, and is guaranteed to fix this in a matter of days. But your over-reaction is well outside the realm of what is reasonable.
Ayn Rand is not exactly a good source for economic insight.
Uhhhh...wouldn't that pretty much cover every lawsuit ever filed in history? I mean it isn't like someone is gonna go "hey I really like you, BTW I'm suing you ass!"
As for the bug, it just shows something we have ALL known for quite a long time-QA is currently extremely shitty, especially for anything having to do with gaming. Who here has NOT ever been bitten in the ass by shitty code gaming? Thought so. Why do you think every fricking games needs patches up the wazoo? Because these companies kick out some truly shitty code, why expect the consoles themselves to be any better? The first gen PS1s died quite often, the first gen Xboxes had shitty DVD drives, and of course the RRoD on the x360, and to a lesser extent the YRoD on the PS3. They just don't QA like they used to, it is the "get it out the door and we'll patch later!" attitude across the industry.
Anybody who has been gaming for awhile really shouldn't be surprised by this. Hopefully Sony will release yet another patch, that with any luck won't brick the machines, and it will be back to business as usual. That just seems to be the way things are done now, like it or not.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
To me, as an individual, a cease-and-desist doen't feel like you're trying to talk to me, it feels like you're trying to bully me. If you're trying to talk to me, give me a call or send me an informal email, from one human being to another.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Actually, if everyone goes to buy a new PS3, SONY will lose money hand over fist. They sell their units at a major loss.
That would be correct; her views fall under the purview of politics and philosophy. I do not think that she ever even studied econ; she instead tried to put forth her vision of a free society, utilitarianism be damned. That's how I see it, anyways. Other than that, she wasn't a very good writer; the only book of hers I could stand was Anthem, which just so happens to be very short. She also wanted to claim that she invented libertarianism.
SSC
This bug is something different. I've been able to play downloaded games and games with trophy support even when the net connection has been down before, but not with this bug.
Are they really trying to kill gaming on all platforms?
I don't know, but they've pretty well made me decide not to get a PS3. I was waffling, so I know I'm not their target demographic in the first place, but I'm frankly sick of phone-home DRM. Here's a perfect example of it failing and locking out legitimate users.
2 months ago my PS3 died (i've replaced it since)... so I decided to show to my kids what kind of games we played when I was a kid. So I dug out of the basement my old ps1, my sega genesis and my 30 years old mattel Intellivision... All of them worked. I didn't expect anything else! (now I remember why we were playing real hockey outside ...) But it make me wonder, will my ps3 still be working in 15 years (or maybe 30)... A simple drm check and everything is down... I have COD warfare 2, and it has to connect to the net ?? I didn't know that.. And I sure would'nt have buy that game if I knew that...
What if the current ps3 network is not compatible with the network in 30 years.. what if sony's servers are down next year?
I have a serious question here, are we really all going toward this kind of drm in everything (tv, blueray, fridge, beds (whatever..)) or is it dying (like for the mp3s) ?
This is not DRM. I understand this is sony and anything that odd gets blamed on them being evil!!!!!!!!111 but that isn't what happened here.
Well, if that's the only reason you can think of, you're not thinking very hard, are you?
Neither are you apparently, otherwise surely you'd have provided some examples of additional reasons instead of simply insulting GP.
While personally I side with GP, I will point out that games do use dates for a variety of reasons. Pokemon games starting with Gold and Silver for the GBC, and the Animal Crossing series, all have date-specific events. Of course, none of those refused to play if their internal clocks did not match the clocks of some central server. Heck, you could even set your clock to before the time of the last time you played, and it would still play just fine (though some Animal Crossing residents might be like "it's been hundreds of years since you've visited me!").
Except maybe the Wii version of Animal Crossing, have yet to touch that.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
This reminds me of the "must be connected" to XBox Live to play the arcade games you purchased after you had the RRoD.
It took a while, but Microsoft gave in and made an incredibly convoluted solution to "fix" the DRM being tied to a console that died. This error is a bit more than "no trophies at this time".... but like Microsoft, Sony's DRM has showed us all the dark side of this whole "you don't own anything" mantra of this generation's consoles... (Including the Wii...)
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Actually, you lose some non-net based functionality as well. All my downloaded add-on content is fubared at present, free or paid. This is a pretty significant loss.
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
Can it be a date bug in the PS3's hypervisor (or other internal 'security' functions)? The units that that maintains among other things the DRM and copyrights.
If that insists that the date is 29/2-2010, I can hardly imagine the number of things that will get decoded wrong.
We may be lucky, that tomorrow the clock will claim it's March 1, at least that is a valid date. or the hardware will continue being 1 day behind, screwing up the DRM again tomorrow.
If you see hundreds of fan works and instead of thinking "damn, the customers love us" you think "how dare they make fanart without paying us for it", you probably don't deserve the customers.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
You despise Sony, yet you spent $2,000 on PS3 downloadable games? Nerd rage troll detected!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Still afaict this is a defect in original workmanship (not a wear-out and not a random failure) that renders the product largely unusable.
If sony doesn't sort this out quickly i'd expect lawsuits in the EU at least.
What? This is exactly that.
I've had one Dreamcast since 9/9/99 that's run flawlessly to date. In that span I've had: -2 N64's (#1 from '96 croaked in '02) -2 PS2's (#1 died after 1 year) -1 Lonely Gamecube -2 Xboxes (okay they both work, but #1 is sounds like it's on its deathbed...) -4 or 5 360's (#1 broke in a week, RROD gave me 3 or 4 different 360's in Spring/Summer '07) -2 Wii's (1st was broken out of the box) -1 PS3 (although it was sidelined last fall after a Sony 'update' broke it, and demanded $150 to fix. A user fix resolved the problem and it's been ok til now). But that system from going on 11 years ago (and a launch day system at that) is still going strong. Long Live the Dreamcast indeed.
Lucky for me I read up on this before using my PS3 at all today. I seem to have circumvented the issue to a degree. I unplugged the power my wireless router and then fired up my PS3. From there, I noticed my date/time was set to 12/31/2000. In the system settings, I disabled internet connection and reset the time manually to 3/1/2010. Now that internet was disabled, I plugged my router back in. I tested a few games, and all worked. Granted, this does not solve the issue of trophies and getting into PSN, but at least I can play single player games until they come up with a fix.
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
I've got a fleet of GPS vehicle trackers that crapped out last nite when they hit "00:00 March 1st" UTC. Working with the vendor to resolve :(
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
but I'm frankly sick of phone-home DRM. Here's a perfect example of it failing and locking out legitimate users.
Except that isn't what happened. It's a clock error. It has nothing to do with phoning home.
... and then they built the supercollider.