Update: According to Sony’s official website, the PSN licence issue has been resolved. However, many are still facing problems, rendering their catalogue of digital games unplayable. One solution we’ve seen suggested is to completely reboot your console, which worked for our very own Robert Ramsey overnight.
We’ll continue to monitor the situation!
Original Story: A wide-spread issue with PSN, which has occurred before, appears to be preventing PS5 and PS4 owners from playing their games. While it’s not impeding everyone’s experience, many on social media are reporting that they’ve been kicked out of their games – or can’t get them to boot up to begin with.
The most common error reads: “Can’t use content. Can’t connect to the server to verify your licence. Wait a while and then try again.”
As we alluded to at the top of this article, this has occurred before, and is usually caused by a hiccup to Sony’s servers which prevents content from properly being authorised. The Japanese giant has, at least, acknowledged the issue promptly: “You might have difficulty launching games, apps, or network features. We're working to resolve the issue as soon as possible,” a statement says.
May we interest you in some alternative entertainment, like learning how to pat your head while rubbing your belly?
[source status.playstation.com]
Comments 63
I'll never forgive Jim for this. Never.
This is why I buy all my games digitally and this is a reminder that nothing lasts forever
@JP80 I dont see any part of this article that implies this affects physical media only, surely all software needs verification.
deepsigh so much for wrapping frozen wilds up tonight...
Sooo.... Who wants to be the shoe, who will be the thimble?
All hail mighty-Jim!
It happened to me last month, my brother forgot to pay for the internet subscription, I went to play and I wasn't able to boot games from blue ray disc only after few minutes... Like was trying to check on system, I was able to play but the games takes ages to boot for the first time without internet!
Even physical media is affected!!
I wasn’t working an 1.5 hours ago, it it’s been working for about an hour now.
This is why i laugh at people that defend Physical media as it’s forever and somehow better than Digital outside of trading it or loaning it to a friend. The disc is so people don’t quit buying the console, otherwise it’s been dead for years. I’m aware this outage affects Digital as well, but that is not the point the physical media for 4 lifers explain. I think COD this year had like 200MB on disc.
@Green-Bandit Yeah, physical games don't exist anymore really. I bought The Callisto Protocol for PS4 and booted the disk and it was a mess, I installed the patch and finished the game without issues. I have bought some game of the year editions that still miss content like Final Fantasy 15 and Rise of the Tomb Raider. You can lend, sell or gift physical games but from a collector point or a gaming preservation point of view they are not that great.
I haven't turned on my PS5 yet today, so haven't seen this error.
@JP80 What does this issue have to do with physical or digital? I didn’t see any mention of that in the article….???
@Green-Bandit Physical is also cheaper both at launch as well as faster and deeper sales besides the option to buy used. That may vary from region to region though. And with CoD you pretty much picked the only example where there is no full gold master on the disc, at least on PS. I think this has become more common on Xbox where discs have truly become glorified keys.
@DETfaninATL any excuse for a physical Vs digital argument I guess
Oh the wonder of online game rental subscriptions.
@dschons i am not worried about price, I’d rather spend a extra few dollars and know i have the game on my console at all times and not worry about buying (cost) furniture to hold my cases, using that space in my house. Knowing there is a better environmentally way to consume the data than on plastic in a plastic case that takes gas to deliver it to a store, for the store to take their cut away from the Dev. Used games are my biggest joke. You have people online all the time playing finance manager about if Gamepass is profitable and good for devs, yet buy used games, that give $0.00 to the dev. Don’t get me wrong, i am happy physical is around for a few more years for those that enjoy it and before you say years? Yes, Sony sold a GOWR collectors edition with a digital download key. Should be all i have to say really. But the days of people driving to a store or ordering a piece of plastic with data on it from a online store that may or may not get it to you in time, vs downloading is just largely over. Don’t even get me started on the people that complain about games that require online to play and they’re waste of complaints. They can’t even put in a piece of plastic and play a game as of today without online and yet somehow online game requirements is this HUGE deal breaker.
@Green-Bandit uhm, I wasn't debating that the vast majority has gone digital and I have nothing against that. I was just trying to explain to you that for some, like me, digital doesn't have a single advantage over physical and that there's more than simply the ability to give it to a friend or trade it in.
Discs are just glorified license keys and have been since the end of the PS3 era. I buy the cheapest option, which for PS5 is usually the physical copy, but I know what to expect. Even if it's nice to have the game on the disc, 99.9% of modern games require endless updates and patches at least double the size of the game itself to function properly or as intended anyway, so what you're left with is version 1.0 or 1.1 of the game in your hand. It's sad and sucks for preservation, which I still wish companies would just remove DRM for older software and just let you do whatever with it, but that's capitalist reality for you. Everything modern is going digital, pretty much.
The huge positive with physical that still thankfully remain is the sell, trade and lend aspect. The collection aspect, though, at least to me, has disappeared. My older games are complete on disc or cartridge and feel good to have, but I know the physical PS4 and PS5 games on my shelf are pretty much just license keys that I can sell if I want, and that's okay.
@dschons i mean i agree with that and like i said i am glad physical is around for a little longer for the people that like it. Just think from what I’ve read from people that like it, it’s reasons that isn’t even all the way true outside of what you mentioned. Us Digital only fans have to listen to a lot of reasons of why our choice is inferior, when it’s not our form of medium that is dying.
@Green-Bandit Well, telling someone that their preference is inferior is definitely weird and I hope you could see that this wasn't my intention at all. At the same time, it does not surprise me that this happens,lol
Need check my digital games as my disc play fine.
It happened to me, I restored my licences and was back playing 3 minutes later.
@JP80 Most of the PS physical single player games can be played offline, not sure what the hell you are talking about. lol
I cant download mafia definite edition on plus, says i already have mafia definite edition tracker, it is in my library already but cant access it to start. Tried restoring licences and rebuilding database, no joy lol
I buy all my games digitally I do not own a physical game at all and at least once a month I get kicked out of my game due to license issues.
So I do what it says and attempt to restore the licenses on my ps5 as soon as it's nearly 100% I get hit with an error saying the server is temporarily busy or the line is congested.
I haven't found a fix just have to shut down for the night and try again the next day as all the help option offers is Sony may be doing maintenance on the servers.
I have not experienced this problem but a couple of months ago I twice received a message something about game play would soon end because of lack of authorization. My play was not interrupted. I think it may have been Vice City that I had downloaded from Plus Extra.
I have had a problem of lost game saves with streamed games. Last week I lost all saves of 6 of 8 streamed games. No I had not made cloud backups, I do now. One game, Rage, is totally wack as I can not even save any game play to make a backup of.
Last week Sony "support" told me a fix is a high priority, but after a week I still can not save Rage. The other 5 games I lost saves I restarted, was able to save, and was able to do a backup. I switched to my PS3 and disc copy to replay Rage.
My PS5 has stopped logging "played time" since last firmware update last week. Zero hours so far on Hogwarts but in reality 10 or so hours just yesterday. Maybe that's related to the licenses too in some weird way?
I’ve read this article three times and can’t work out why it triggered a bunch pro digital hardliners to vent in the comments…
@Green-Bandit the environemenal impact of disc vs download is a complex one. Sure plastic is not great, but you also have to factor CO2. There is no recent study on the topic, I believe. Last one were saying that streaming a movie produced 2 to 4x less CO2 than the whole dvd production, transport and watching approach. However, that was like 10 years ago, based on HD movies and a much lower quantity of data to transport (so they were likely comparing a disk vs. ~10-20GB stream/download). You can extrapolate the CO2 cost of a disc vs download is likely the same at ~40 to 50GB likely, anything above, disc produces less CO2, anything below, download produces less CO2). These numbers are approximations, but they illustrate how we have very little conscious of the amount of energy needed (and hence CO2 produced) to download stuff ^_^
I've had this happen on both PlayStation and Xbox but never Switch... have Nintendo done something right?
Didn't affect me here this time.
@Green-Bandit
I’d be happy to go all digital for the convenience, but I’m not going to spend 5 times as much. Not that I can’t afford to, I’m just not a mug. I don’t agree with how the platform holders and publishers wish to push me to a future without the ability to trade my games as I wish. Allow for digital trading and returns and I’ll be all in on digital.
@Green-Bandit As @Kalime78 rightly said the environmental impact of physical game buying vs digital isn't quite as clean cut as you think. The few studies done (always with large caveats) suggest that it often depends on several factors. Not least as @thefourfoldroot1 said we can REUSE physical media by selling or trading with other players, which is never accounted for. That's HUGE environmentally.
Moreover if the industry goes fully digital to game streaming then it could be even worse for the environment, especially in cases where we play games for a longer time. (It quite efficient for trying a game)
Ultimately if you REALLY are concerned about the environmental impacts of gaming then playing on something lower powered like the Switch handheld is the way forwards. Internet connected next-gen consoles, downloading gigabytes of updates and tethered to 4K TVs aren't great, but typically a massive amount better than playing on a high-end PC. Switch >>> PS5/XSX >>>>> Gaming PC.
But these things are all relative. As the EG article says even something like a beautiful walk in the countryside might be worse for the environment if you have to drive to get there.
Short term: stop streaming video and watching pron.
Here are a few links if you are interested:
Outdated, and flawed, Polygon article on Physical v Digital,
Game streaming v digital Study,
Eurogamer article on digital and the environment
@Green-Bandit I'm halfway there in going digital, in that I still buy big PS5 titles (typically the exclusives) on disc, but everything else - particularly indies - digitally. I agree the days of physical are largely over. And environmentally, rightly so.
It happened to me one time, almost a year ago. I was playing Assassin's Creed Liberation Remastered on PS5 and suddenly was ejected from the game and couldn't boot any game, and the licenses weren't verifiying either. I think it can happen more often if we enable the console as secondary, and the primary account in another one (you know for what).
@ShogunRok
JIMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
@themightyant interesting take on environment is your comment on watching less pron... ^_^
with our 1billion GB per sec of internet traffic, 20g CO2 per GB and 40 billions tons CO2 total emission per year, internet traffic is about 1to2% of total CO2 emission. Pron is estimated at 15 to 30% of total traffic... so there you go, maybe half a percent of world total CO2 emission could be coming from just streaming naughty stuff... may that be the "fact" of the day ^_^
@Kalime78 Yes all video streaming including smut, Video on Demand and YouTube etc. has a HUGE cumulative impact. It covers approximately 70-80% of internet use.
Last I looked the internet was higher than you stated, around 3.7% of CO2 emissions and growing, it's likely higher now. Which would make all the video content around 2-3% of global CO2 emissions.
Game streaming, which is even more intensive would add to this, it's several times more wasteful per minute, but it's also less widespread. Not sure how that balances out, but it would be another tranche.
@TripleKing333 I agree, but to be fair it's usually the other way round and you have articles about digital sales filled by people saying how much better (they believe) discs are, even though it has no relevance.
and the stubborn boomers still think they’re safe when they use physical . newsflash guys , it’s all media .
The update to the article says it’s digital libraries that are affected not physical but ok. Let’s all keep marching towards oblivion haha
There's a great video from MVG that covers that state of Xbox's "Smart Delivery". I am aware that it's not strictly PS related, however it does point out the risks of a digitally only future.
@themightyant
Perhaps, but streaming also stops people getting in their cars and going places. Cinema, or whatever. As such it’s hard to say what the net impact of streaming anything actually is.
@PushSquare
Shouldn't that be "PSN Licence Issues Prevent PS5, PS4 Owners from Playing Their Games" rather than "PSN Licence Issues Prevent PS5, PS4 Owners from Their Playing Games"?
@dschons you were very cool about it. You are the reason i am glad physical media is still around. It’s the other’s that sometimes annoy me about Digital media. Happy gaming.
@Kalime78 that was very informative, thank you for sharing that. I will further look into it. Stores around me are starting to have hardly any physical games left to sell. I was in a GameStop, target and Best Buy all within the last week and they had less games on in stock that i would have thought. Have the GameStop store is stuffed animals and T shirts.
@thefourfoldroot1 i can see some sense in that for sure. Microsoft lets you return digital games below a certain amount of play time. Sony is really behind in the terms and agreements of the PSN store. But i do see your point for sure.
@themightyant Good info buddy, but does that take into account the electrical usage for GameStop’s and Stores to power their retail stores for 12 hours a day. The gas we have to use to drive to the store. I mean i ain’t trying to be an environmentalist quack here. I am just not seeing physical media as having nearly as many benefits as i am told by the Digital haters. I do appreciate and recognize there are pro’s and Con’s to the debate. But i have been 100% digital for years on all media. Couldn’t imagine switching, but i guess never say never, but unlikely.
@Notoriousmakavel yeah it’s been a while for COD. I didn’t remember if it was 5 years but i knew for sure the last 2-3.
@thefourfoldroot1 Agreed, we don't know what the real opportunity cost is, but that doesn't make these figures false. As I said above "even something like a beautiful walk in the countryside might be worse for the environment if you have to drive to get there."
@Green-Bandit No. Not all factors, on all sides, will ever be included in any study, hence I said at the top there were large caveats. My point isn't that these are hard factual numbers, only to suggest there is more nuance and debate than "digital definitely is better for the environment that physical".
@themightyant that makes sense, you did provide excellent insight to it tho. I found it useful for sure.
I love how this turned into a physical VS digital argument about Sony's authentication, if the game uses any form of online play it gets authenticated. If it was offline only which is incredibly rare it would still connect to servers for updates as no game is released actually finished anymore. That being said you could play said game completely disconnected from the internet and never have this issue at all, something you couldn't do with digital copies 😝.
Actually though me and a friend were playing Godfall, I have physical copy, he has digital and his booted him from the game twice (we gave up after 2nd boot) and I never received a single error. So for my it's a physical copy win 🤷♂️ lol
Hah! Also did not see the update till I got to reading someone's comment about marching into oblivion 🤣. Thanks whoever that was now, physical FTW 😁😁😁😬
Not suffered from this issue but i did boot up WRC G for the first time in a few weeks and i had lost all my save data. Very annoying to say the least.
Porn left a big footprint when it was a pile of magazines, vcr tapes, and then discs. High definition streaming and downloads has to be a smaller footprint. However gone is the privacy of store purchases 100 miles away and with cash👹
Physical gaming on consoles had privacy until the PS3/360 gen except for the small fraction that played a game featuring online play. Now, disc or digital, all is known as soon as we sign in to visit the store or enable the internet for all the patches now needed.
I can live with some lost privacy, but I still like physical for playing unpatched versions, offline play, and replays where I can load large files from a disc instead of download. Also game rentals and used purchases. Then there is the feeling of ownership that only playing a physical copy can provide. Like playing a 20 year old PS2 game on a DVD in my PS2, no internet, licenses, or PSN account needed.
@nomither6 No, as not all games need an online check to play. Switch especially is nearly immune to such a problem.
Physical FTW. 🦕
@EVIL-C they can revoke the license through their hardware even if you have physical for switch too. if for whatever reason legal issues happen with a game , the moment your switch connects to the internet , say bye to your little paper-weight cartridge, haha
@nomither6 You have an example of this being done?
@nomither6
Sigh..
We can STILL play tons of single player games OFFLINE with physical discs. So unless you ONLY play online dependent games, then this scenario (which happens a bit too often tbh) mostly affects digital only users. And is a clear reminder that being “only digital” has some clearly irritating drawbacks….
Personally I own tons of games on both physical and digital. I love the simplicity and how convenient digital is, but hate scenarios like this.
With physical I love how much cheaper I can buy the games and that I can resell them.
Both have pros and cons ofc.
@EVIL-C
"4. Limited License.
A. Nintendo. Nintendo grants you a limited, non-sublicensable license to access and use the Services for your personal use only. Such license is subject to these Terms and does not include: (a) any resale or commercial use of the Services or the Materials therein; (b) the distribution, public performance or public display of any Materials; (c) modifying or otherwise making any derivative uses of the Services or the Materials, or any portion thereof; (d) downloading (other than the page caching) of any portion of the Services, the Materials or any information contained therein, except as expressly permitted on the Services; or (f) any use of the Services or the Materials other than for their intended purposes. Any use of the Services or the Materials other than as specifically authorized herein, without the prior written permission of Nintendo, is strictly prohibited and will terminate the license granted herein. Such unauthorized use may also violate applicable laws, including without limitation copyright and trademark laws and applicable communications regulations and statutes. Unless explicitly stated herein, nothing in these Terms shall be construed as conferring any license to intellectual property rights, whether by estoppel, implication or otherwise. Nintendo may revoke this license at any time."
Nintendo ToS
@RamboMike but you can play digital single player games offline too
@nomither6
Legal boilerplate aside, I can't think of one physical game that has been disabled from booting. That's what I was pointing out. One side is theory, the other is putting it into practice.
There's no example (yet) of this happening. 🤔 So, physical buyers are still a bit safer.
@Notoriousmakavel i wasn’t aware of that, but i ain’t surprised to learn it. Thanks for sharing, i ain’t trying to be against Physical media, i just don’t think the people that sing some of its praises wrong understand until this happens and then they understand.
Ah it's annoying, saying about psn being down and even then you cannot enable offline sharing option and it says about psn.
Cannot renew license and they are expecting this to be digital one day of problems like this happen it won't work.
This happened a while ago maybe December too? I got a notification saying in 15 mins my license etc but my mates I was playing with on warzone 2 had no issue, seems to be just me it happens too. I uninstalled mw2 in hope just having warzone 2 may fix any future issues as they only have warzone 2 installed.
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