Hugely terrible DRM has now been rolled out to all PS4 and PS5 digital games. Every digital game you buy now requires an online check-in every 30 days. If you buy a digital game and don’t connect your console to the internet for 30 days, your license will be removed.
…Trophies on PS4 require the internal system clock (the one you can’t see / alter) to be correct, so people cant change their PS4 date/time to make it look like they got trophies earlier than they really did. If your PS4 clock battery dies, all your games die
Newly purchased PS4 games now have 30 day valid license timer.
Most likely introduced in March 2026 firmware.
Could be a bug similar to an incident from 2022.
PS5 is affected too, but only shows an error when starting a game.
Update x2: not a bug - PlayStation just quietly confirmed it’s intentional.
Any digital game you buy after the march 2026 update now requires you to go online at least once every 30 days or it won’t even launch.
Same, except I dumped them a lot longer ago. (And frankly, I didn’t own much from them even before that, except a '90s Walkman and maybe a few other small things.)
This is bad news for me – I was planning to buy Sony but if they’re going to be assholes as well, only PC is clean, and then only GoG, Humble Bundle etc.
I mean, it’s not GREAT, it still fucks you over by requiring updates for games (it literally will not let you play a game that has an update available without updating), and I’m a bit squiffy about the offline mode and whether it’d work offline long-term, but they don’t seem to be ACTIVELY malicious (with offline mode I’m more worried about it like, forgetting your login details and wanting a re-login, than i am about intentional “it’s been X days since you were online, you’re not allowed to play!” crap).
GOG is of course better for guaranteed offline availability. For stuff that’s available on GOG. A lot of stuff isn’t. But for stuff that is, GOG’s pretty great.
Also, you do have to trust that Valve won’t turn terrible. And they might do that as soon as GabeN dies. No way to tell. Even if they do turn hostile, though, there are apparently Steam API emulator tools that you could use to bypass Steam DRM checks (which of course does nothing for games that have e.g. Denuvo, but a lot of games on Steam just use Steam’s stuff (that’s probably the entire reason Steam even has DRM, is to let devs use that instead of something more invasive) and a lot of games on Steam are actually DRM-free even, but they don’t tell you that in advance, it’s just ‘does the game launch without the Steam API working or not’).
Indeed, ineffably marvelous artists at Steam and Valve!
Just in case, it’s worth to mention that Steam DRM is opt-in by default. The developer is solely responsible for implementing and activating it.
The Steam DRM wrapper by itself is not an anti-piracy solution. The Steam DRM wrapper protects against extremely casual piracy (i.e. copying all game files to another computer) and has some obfuscation, but it is easily removed by a motivated attacker…
The Steam wrapper can and should be used in combination with other DRM solutions. To do so, apply the Steam wrapper in compatibility mode first before applying any other DRM. Apply it first so that it does not interfere with the DRM solution. Compatibility mode will disable DRM capabilities of the wrapper.
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Further reinforcing my decision to hard dump Sony after the PS4.
Same, except I dumped them a lot longer ago. (And frankly, I didn’t own much from them even before that, except a '90s Walkman and maybe a few other small things.)
This is bad news for me – I was planning to buy Sony but if they’re going to be assholes as well, only PC is clean, and then only GoG, Humble Bundle etc.
Steam actually isn’t terrible, fortunately.
I mean, it’s not GREAT, it still fucks you over by requiring updates for games (it literally will not let you play a game that has an update available without updating), and I’m a bit squiffy about the offline mode and whether it’d work offline long-term, but they don’t seem to be ACTIVELY malicious (with offline mode I’m more worried about it like, forgetting your login details and wanting a re-login, than i am about intentional “it’s been X days since you were online, you’re not allowed to play!” crap).
GOG is of course better for guaranteed offline availability. For stuff that’s available on GOG. A lot of stuff isn’t. But for stuff that is, GOG’s pretty great.
Also, you do have to trust that Valve won’t turn terrible. And they might do that as soon as GabeN dies. No way to tell. Even if they do turn hostile, though, there are apparently Steam API emulator tools that you could use to bypass Steam DRM checks (which of course does nothing for games that have e.g. Denuvo, but a lot of games on Steam just use Steam’s stuff (that’s probably the entire reason Steam even has DRM, is to let devs use that instead of something more invasive) and a lot of games on Steam are actually DRM-free even, but they don’t tell you that in advance, it’s just ‘does the game launch without the Steam API working or not’).
– Frost
Indeed, ineffably marvelous artists at Steam and Valve!
Just in case, it’s worth to mention that Steam DRM is opt-in by default. The developer is solely responsible for implementing and activating it.