It turns out you've been renting PS4 games after all

"Last month, well-known hacker and modder Lance McDonald suggested that in a few years, PS4 players might not be able to play PS4 games offline when the CMOS battery inside the console dies. Fast forward a few weeks and a Twitter user has now posted proof that this is indeed the case."

https://wccftech.com/ps4-no-offline-games-cmos/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

They're not know worldwide as Phony, the one and only, for nuttin ya know. :P

This phony naystation whore mostly collects dust anyways.

We gots the emulators. Worry not.

It's why I buy physical games whenever possible. Every other platform is the same. You're buying a license to play the game that can be revoked at any time.

Oh great another thread where the alts get together and have a circle jerk over not-news.

If having to be online to play is so bad, what does that mean for Gamepass? Trying to understand this braindead logic of hating one thing for it while ignoring it on another.

Yikes!

@Telekill: Yeah but according to this you won't be able to play physical without connecting to the servers too.

best stock up on CR232s then

@ghost_of_phobos: On some games (those with an online aspect), this was already known. Games like Destiny, For Honor, etc... They're all dead eventually.

@ghost_of_phobos: You can already play games without a online connection (unless it's an online only game, aka destiny) so what exactly are you talking about?

This means any online game because the internal clock isn't in sync with the server clock. The server will reject any communication that has bad timestamps.

Luckily the PS4 pro is so pro that it doesn't have this battery.

Maybe i missed it in the tweets: but what would happen if someone just corrected the time on the Ps4 manually?

quick someone send me a PS4 and some PS4 games...for science. er yeah thats it.

Things on computers can get very messy when the clock is screwed up and/or the CMOS has crapped out. I thought my PC was completely dead because the CMOS battery decided it had enough.

Did sony make it easy to replace on the PS4? on the PS5 it appears they did not. it requires quite a bit of digging.

Okay, we need clearer f***ing titles in our threads.

Anyway... yikes! Sony just killed the PS4 as a future retro console...

Let me get this straight ... hardware failure results in your console not working anymore?

Are XBOX gamers renting their games if the power lead stops working?

Not sure if I would classify this as a hardware failure though...

I think people's beef with this is that once the CMOS battery is replaced the console needs to connect online to allow you to play your games again (If I understood correctly). And there's no telling how long those servers will keep working.

@vfighter: @Zero_epyon: @Telekill: no - read the article.

You cannot play offline games offline when the cmos goes, and that inculded testing with a disc game. You can play offline games when online, however - because the drm check can be completed.

@xantufrog: There's ways around it.

@Telekill: what are they? Not that I expect my PS4 to last forever

Couldn't you just buy another PS4?

@silentchief: well, it would be much cheaper to replace the CMOS battery, lol.

Well, no PS4 will last forever, obviously.

That being said, my PS1/2/3 are all still functioning perfectly. If they had the same component, would it have failed by now?

That being said: PC. Worries over.

So what's stopping me right now from taking my PS4 offline and playing games? Is it because the PS4 will hit some error when the battery goes dead?

That is the heart of the issue, yes.

right that's what I meant. The DRM process is online, not on dics, so whatever external process that handles it will fail because the timestamps are invalid.

Has anyone checked to see if this shit is the PS5s?

The poor lads are shooked, so you need to give them some time for the information to settle. 😂🤣

You won't be able to play online games when the servers go down? lol... some news.

LOL, CMOS batteries. That's quite a blast from the past.

For the less tech-literate people here, CMOS is a small memory chip that stores your BIOS settings, including system clock, and needs a constant flow of very small amount of electricity to maintain. A common way PC builders used to reset BIOS settings was to remove the CMOS battery and put it back in.

So yeah, once the battery dies, you lose your BIOS settings and your console can't boot up properly. Digital or physical games, doesn't matter, you're bricked. Usually you have the option to reset to factory settings, but as long as the battery is dead, it won't remember those settings and you'll have to do it again the next time you boot it up. The wiped system clock is trickier to solve, but syncing with an online server usually fixes that. Again, once you turn off the console, however, you'll have to sync your clock all over again. The only way to fix this permanently is to replace the CMOS battery.

These days, BIOS settings are usually stored in Flash memory, which doesn't need a battery to maintain, so the CMOS is very much an obsolete tech.

@madrocketeer: If I recall correctly, the CMOS simply stores settings. If the battery is dead, it cannot save the settings which would translate to simply the settings not saving and return to defaults each boot. I am not sure I get why the system would not be able to play games without the CMOS battery, unless it is a DRM thing which is kind of dumb especially for physical games.

Yes, your hardware usually resets back to factory settings stored in the BIOS when you boot it up without the CMOS settings, but it depends on whether the hardware manufacturer accounted for that option. I haven't looked at this specific case in detail, but that's what usually happens.

The trickier part is that your CMOS also stores your system clock setting, which factory settings do not account for. You either have to set it yourself or sync with an online server. It depends on how much of your console's functions depends on that system clock. For most PCs, this is little more than a nuisance where you just have to boot up the OS and manually reset the clock. Consoles, being much more streamlined and closed systems, might be different.

I booted up my older systems and it just needed me to manually set the clock and that was about it. It is very odd that it would prevent games from functioning.

Yeah, that's what is usually supposed to happen, though it won't remember your settings until you replace the CMOS battery.

The PS4 seems to function a bit differently. Maybe it's DRM or some software oversight. Again, it depends on which and how much parts of the PS4's systems depend on a correct system clock.

It's not a mystery at all. The PS4 seems to have an internal clock that runs independently from the OS clock. Sony must have done this to prevent a user from being able to access content behind a time barrier. The DRM system relies on the internal clock that users can't manipulate. If the battery dies, then the clock is off and the DRM auto rejects based on that.

Yup, that seems to be the most likely issue here. I just hesitate to be so certain without a full technical review.

Just read what I wrote and that didn't really make sense lol. I was trying to reply while I was working. Don't recommend it.

Like I said to Pedro, internally, it tries to check the date and gets a bad one which will fail the process. If it works online, it's because it's not looking at the system time and instead the time on the request itself if the internal drm fails for whatever reason. In this case, a bad battery.

Yeah the solution is to replace the battery then hopefully get the time synced after connecting to PSN.

Didn't even know consoles used CMOS batteries. I don't think any of the Xbox consoles do... Do they?

I've opened a few up and don't remember seeing one.

@HalcyonScarlet: the Dreamcast does at least, lol. Kickin' it old school.

Xbox doesn't use batteries. I think they use capacitors instead. I remember there was a big deal about the clock capacitors being faulty with the original Xbox which could leak and damage the system. I'm sure they're still using capacitors and they're much better quality.

Yeah, the capacitor in the original Xbox will get damaged. But all that means is that if you unplug it from the mains, the time and date reset. Otherwise there's no issue playing it.

Well yeah that's a different issue. Sony tied their DRM to it, which was a mistake.

@Zero_epyon: or planned obsolescence

Cows are in denial.

Sounds like this. Easy fix by replacing the CMOS battery.

@Zero_epyon: So all that needs to be done is replace the cmos battery, I'm failing to see why this is the end of the world (like some are trying to make it out to be) unless I'm missing something?

@Zero_epyon: So all that needs to be done is replace the cmos battery, I'm failing to see why this is the end of the world (like some are trying to make it out to be) unless I'm missing something?

If/when Sony shuts down servers for PS4 this could render those units with a dead battery obsolete (if true).