With Sony's focus on the PS5 console, it's inevitable that the company's older PlayStation hardware will be shutting down its services as time goes on. This includes the PS3, where the console's support had discontinued in 2017. Despite this, the console is supported by various gamers, either to play many blockbuster titles released on the system or even some older classic titles that were sold on the PlayStation Store, most notably various PSOne and PS2 Classics like Final Fantasy 7, Persona 3 FES, Mega Man Legends, and more.
The PS3 and Vita storefronts were originally announced to be shut down last year, which many fans rebelled against. Sony then walked that announcement back, allowing for the stores' services to continue functioning. While many fans praised the move, others were concerned about the company's lack of care regarding video game preservation, as a number of the titles on both storefronts haven't been made available on modern systems. This ire seems to be coming back, as several users are reporting that their PS Classic games on the legacy consoles are currently unplayable.
This was first seen with a user on Twitter who saw that their purchase of the PSOne classic version of Chrono Cross had suddenly received an expiration date of 12/31/1969 and could no longer play the game on their PS3 or Vita. This issue is unrelated to the Chrono Cross Remaster that recently released, as another user showed that their purchase of Final Fantasy 6 had ran into the same problem and had the same expiration date.
Threads on Reddit reported that various PlayStation Classic games became unplayable, with one Reddit user claiming that their entire library of digital games were purchased and downloaded will not launch on the Vita, with an error message saying that the content has expired. Kotaku theorizes that this issue is related to something known as the "Unix epoch," which is an arbitrary date that engineers designated as the beginning of a system's lifespan. It then further theorizes that some kind of glitch on Sony's system caused the PlayStation game expiration licenses to default to this Unix epoch, which made the games unplayable after January 1st 1970.
While this issue doesn't seem to be affecting every classic game or user, it's still a big frustration for players. Not only does it prevent gamers from accessing some of their favorite classic PlayStation games, but also highlights the topic of video game preservation. As the gaming industry pushes towards an all-digital future, so many older video games become impossible to play, and digital releases can suddenly disappear or not function properly. Sony has yet to comment on these issues.