Error 8001050F: What We Know About the Death of the PSN
Lots of PlayStation 3s can't play games; we explain why.
by Greg Miller and Chris Roper
March 1, 2010 - It should have been a calm, simple Sunday night, but on Feb. 28, 2010, all hell broke loose. In the blink of an eye everyone went from happily gaming on their PlayStation 3s to being totally screwed by the biggest system blackout in the history of the videogame industry.
This is the curse of Error 8001050F.
Yes, an error in the internal settings of the PlayStation 3 is crippling certain consoles. The affected PS3s can't play games or connect to the PlayStation Network, and their system clocks have been automatically reset to 12/31/99. Worse yet, Trophies earned before syncing the system appear to be lost and in some cases "corrupted", which would make it seem like you'll never get them back again.
It's a sad day to be a PS3 owner.
Rather than weep in an IGN HQ that has zero PlayStation 3s running for the first time in years, we thought we'd walk you through what we know – there's a lot of misinformation out there.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What systems are affected?
Right now, only the older PS3 "Fats" are in trouble; but not all of them (though it is the majority). The newer PS3 Slims are operating without issue.
What the hell happened?
In short: bad stuff. Sony says that there's a bug in "the clock functionality incorporated in the system". What that means is that affected systems are resetting their internal clocks to 12/31/99, and this is causing a whole mess of problems including the inability to log into the PlayStation Network, start games and play certain video rentals. In addition, Trophy data for the games you're trying and failing to play turns into "corrupt data".
How do we fix it?
We don't know yet. Sony says that its engineers are working on it and that they hope to have it resolved by Tuesday morning. There are a handful of fixes that users have come up with floating around Internet forums, but we'd suggest waiting it out for an official fix.
I have a fat PS3. What should I do now?
Don't turn it on. Sony's asking you to keep it turned off until they have a fix in place.
When will it be fixed?
We don't know yet. Sony tells us that its engineers are working on it and that they hope to have the issue fixed in the next 24 hours (Tuesday morning).
My Trophy List shows corrupted data. Will I ever get those Trophies back?
Officially, we don't know, but off the top of our heads, you're screwed if you had stuff on there that you hadn't synced with the PlayStation Network yet. See, until you sync your Trophies with the PSN, they live on your system. If that data gets corrupted, you can't sync it with the Network; you'll lose those Trophies. Sony's even preparing you for this sad truth with its official line of "In the meantime, if you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data." Thankfully, if you synced before the corruption, you should be able to sync when all this is over and get your Trophies back on your system. Or we hope so anyway...
What about my saves? Are they corrupted, too?
Unlikely. We have a corrupted system, and our saves appear to be fine, but we won't know for sure until this is all over.
Mon Mar 01, 2010 11:56 am
