PS4 Error Has PlayStation Fans Worried They May Lose All Their Games

The PS4 reportedly has an error that can result in PlayStation players losing all of their games. According to dataminers, the PS4 has an error when the PS4 cmos battery dies — ERROR CE 34878-0 — that renders all PS4 digital files unusable without a server reconnection. The error also pulls the plug on disc playback. As a result, if you can’t connect to PSN, the error could render all of your games — both digital and physical — completely useless.

Word of the error comes the way of Does It Play and Lance McDonald, the latter of which reveals the error is because Trophies on PS4 require the console’s internal system clock to be correct. It requires this to prevent players from changing their PS4 date/time to make it look they got trophies earlier or later than they actually did. And as they note, this means that if your PS4 clock battery dies, all of your games die as well until you connect to the PSN network.

Of course, this is really only a problem if PSN ever goes away. There’s a good chance your PS4 cmos battery will eventually die. In fact, it’s basically inevitable. However, it’s hard to imagine a future where PSN doesn’t exist. However, when and if that future arrives, this will be a huge problem, though thankfully it can be fixed, and it can also be avoided completely with a jailbroken console.

“Just to emphasize: you can fix this by just putting a new battery in then syncing your console to the PSN once,” adds McDonald. “We are just pointing out that the console will be bricked in some imaginary distant future when the PSN goes away (if ever?).”

That said, while it’s unlikely this puzzling engineering decision will come to haunt PlayStation players, the thought of it is enough to have them worried and outraged.