If you’ve ever dabbled with retro gaming tech, it will be no surprise how important the tiny puck battery found in some consoles and cartridge games is. In some cases a dead battery means you lose your saves. In other cases, it can result in the total bricking of your system.
The specter of death may be setting its sights on the PS4. Sure, it may not be that old of a console, but Sony’s infrastructure that allows games, both digital and physical, to function has a flaw that is dependent on the tiny CR2032 battery.
We caught wind of this story via Niche Gamer where the death of the PS4’s internal clock battery results in the ‘ce-34878-0‘ error message. If the system cannot access the needed servers to re-verify your system, downloaded games will be locked and the same goes for those you may have on disk.
This error is because Trophies on PS4 require the internal system clock (the one you can’t see / alter) to be correct, so people cant change their PS4 date/time to make it look like they got trophies earlier than they really did. If your PS4 clock battery dies, all your games die https://t.co/8y9aZzL9vC
— Lance McDonald (@manfightdragon) March 23, 2021
Now, replacing a CR2032 isn’t too taxing on a technical level. Thankfully, Sony didn’t pull a Philips where the CD-i’s battery was housed inside of a casing that had to be chipped away at to replace. The repair steps for the PS4 are relatively easy if you’ve ever pulled apart a console of a PC.
This repair option is only a temporary fix. A replacement battery will die, eventually. That may come well after Sony has decided to shut down servers for older systems’ libraries. CR2032 batteries can be tough little pucks, though. They can last several years, even into the decades. Ultimately it will be down to Sony.
We found this guide showing a system teardown and battery replacement that will help:
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