recently, some players have discovered that digital games purchased from the playstation store now come with a new digital rights management (drm) policy: a “validity period” label appears, displaying the start date, end date, and a 30-day countdown. if the gaming console does not connect to the internet within those 30 days, the game license will expire, rendering the game unplayable until online connectivity is restored.
since sony playstation has not issued a public statement, and some players report that they have not found any corresponding information in the official database, the matter has remained unconfirmed. however, with the release of an explanation by the playstation support assistant, it is now clear that this is not a bug or a setting specific to individual games—it is, in fact, a new official policy from sony playstation.
starting with the system update in march 2026, all digital games purchased from the playstation store will require the gaming console to connect to the internet at least once every 30 days to verify the authenticity of the game. if the console remains offline for more than 30 days, the digital version of the game will fail to launch until the console reconnects to the internet, undergoes re-verification, and regains authorization, at which point gameplay will resume.
players have already conducted various tests to determine the exact conditions under which this rule is triggered, and the results show that digital and physical games purchased before the march 2026 system update will not be affected. sony’s move has clearly sparked strong dissatisfaction among players, who have directly compared it to microsoft’s drm policy on the xbox one in 2013.
back then, microsoft required consoles to connect to the internet and check in every 24 hours, while also imposing restrictions on the resale and sharing of used games—actions that drew fierce backlash from gamers worldwide. sony even used this incident to criticize microsoft. ultimately, microsoft announced that it would remove the online authentication requirement, region-locking, and restrictions on the resale of used games from the xbox one.
