The CMOS battery inside the PS4 posed a serious threat to gamers. The tiny object acted as a gateway between gamers and their games. Should your CMOS battery ever go flat in your PS4 console, the device will then render useless as you would be unable to access your digital games and content. What the CMOS battery does is keep the time and date active even while the console is off and unplugged. When you turn the console on, it then connects to the internet to verify the time it has stored. After which, the console enables game access. Without internet access, a flat CMOS battery would also crash games.

Should your CMOS battery ever go flat and Sony’s PS4 servers were offline or perhaps, permanently taken down in the distant future, users could no longer access their games. Thankfully, Sony has now fixed that issue in a new firmware update for the console. PS4 consoles will now play physical and digital games on consoles with a dead CMOS battery.

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Sony has yet to announce this fix publically but according to users, the latest PS5 system update 9.0 came with the new feature. Destruction Games on Twitter tested their PS4 console with a dead CMOS battery and was able to launch their games and even earn trophies.

According to the user, they booted up their console with the date set to 1969 at 17:00, which is the default date on the PS4. They then changed the date, turned off the console and rebooted it. The date reset itself back to 1969 meaning the CMOS battery did not store the information. They were still able to launch games and earn trophies. This was done offline and online.

A dead CMOS battery in 2021 is a rare occurrence. Usually, these batteries last quite a number of years before going flat. So most PS4 owners have nothing to worry about. However, for those who plan on hanging onto their console, the battery could have been an issue. They would either have gone flat at some point and you would need to open up your console to replace it, or Sony might shut down the PS4 servers in the distant future and prevent gamers from accessing their titles.

If you are worried about this, make sure you keep your PS4 console up-to-date.

My date when booting my PS4 was 1969 and 5:00PM which is the default date and time the PS4 falls back on with a dead battery, so my battery is definitely still dead.

Also here’s a pic of a trophy I just earned, with the date and time earned being blank pic.twitter.com/ENOANw5afn

— Destruction Games (@desgamesyt) September 21, 2021