PSN Having Problems, Sony Working on Solution [Updated]

It seems the Playstation Network is looking at some serious issues today, and this writer got himself caught up in all of it. Apparently, a few hours ago, some gamers started to experience a problem when trying to load up some games, Heavy Rain among them. When booting the game, it would try to load trophy data, fail, and boot the players out of the game. When trying to check on their trophies, some even noticed missing trophies! Players are being given error code 8001050F. Even playing offline games will not work, it seems, as long as they're trophy-enabled.

Now, I've had a marathon of Heavy Rain going since about 4:30, and I know my trophies were working fine up until at least 6:14 PM. From that point on, I stopped earning the trophies I was supposed to (though, I was so engrossed in the story, I didn't notice until I finished the game about an hour ago).

The Playstation forums, along with many others, are rampant with complaints and cries for help. Sony has officially acknowledged the problem as of thirty-five minutes ago with this tweet from @SonyPlaystation:


And just like they say, stay tuned for updates. As soon as any new info arises, I'll be updating this post. This problem should, hopefully, be fixed before long.

Update: Sony finally tweeted some more, albeit vague, info.

Followed by:


The latter part is something I should have put in this original post, and has been confirmed by fans for the better part of two hours or so now. That first part at least marks some progress. Many are worried that this is some kind of general hardware failure, others worried about lost trophies, and still others who have been completely screwed out of Platinum trophies from this. A friend of mine had been playing his PS3 since early this afternoon, and had finally reached rank 40 in the Bioshock 2 Multiplayer, the last trophy he needed for Platinum. It didn't unlock, and now he can't (or it's at least incredibly difficult to) re-earn that trophy and gain his Platinum.

PS3 owners are starting to get rabid. Waiting to hear about the mob surrounding SCEA's offices. Updates will come as soon as possible.

Update 2: Many users on several different forums have been agreeing on the possibility that this is some kind of calendar glitch on the older PS3 models. Something to do with incorrect leap years, and 2010 being the first even non-leap year in the console's life cycle. Still, it is nothing official, as Sony have said nothing of the sort. It's also inconsistent, because even though Sony confirmed that the Slims are working, people have reported having these same problems with slims, as well as people with older "fat" systems reporting no problem at all. More to come as the story develops.

Update 3: There haven't been any more updates from Sony in over eleven hours (!) now. But, it seems the bad news just keeps right on coming. Developers have been reporting that their debug consoles are also being effected by this error, to the point where they can't even play games currently in-development This problem just sounds worse and worse. Many claiming technical knowledge on different forums have said that this won't be able to be fixed by update, and Sony will eventually be forced to recall all of these old consoles. If that's true, we may as well forget the RROD ever existed, for the Leap Year of Death is a much bigger problem than the RROD ever was. Keep your eyes here for further updates.

Update 4: While PlayStation US has been silent, @PlayStationEU has tweeted a few times in the last two hours. Mostly the same "We're working on it" material. However, they did have this to say:
So, this means one of two things. For the less trusting of us, it means that some people have hit the nail on the head, and Sony's trying to keep people from believing it. Or, that everyone (or most people) are wrong, and Sony's trying to keep people from going crazy at this incorrect speculation. Hopefully there will be more to come soon. Some have theorized this problem will fix itself when the GMT time zone hits midnight March 2nd. If this is the case, then Sony may just be waiting things out for an otherwise impossible-to-fix issue.

Update 5: A moderator on the EU Playstation Forums has informed everyone that the source of the problem has been found and the technicians are working on it, but it's still "impossible to say when or how the problem will be fixed." The page is here, but it's in French, so reader beware.

Update 6: Finally, an update out of @SonyPlaystation. They've linked to a blog post on Playstation.Blog. In it, they confirm that the source of the problems is a bug in the clock functionality, but that's all. They also list the errors that users are running into, but we're all aware of that. Users are warned not to use their PS3s if they've run into any of these errors, and Sony hopes to have the issue fixed within 24 hours. You can find the blog post here.