EA, Square Enix Stumble into Leap Year Snafus | Push Square

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For those too young to remember, the Year 2000 Problem, also known as the Y2K scare, was a brief, glorious bit of chaos enjoyed in the late 90s when fears of a catastrophic computing apocalypse were rampant, a total collapse predicted because of differences in dating systems. We got to relive some of that magic today, as publishers EA and Square Enix were caught wrong-footed by the extra day in February, leading games from both to be temporarily rendered inoperable.

Fans of EA's Sports WRC could not boot up the game on the 29th due to a timezone issue, which was quickly rectified but required players to set their system setting forward a day to function. Meanwhile, Square Enix has its hands full, although the issue only appears to be affecting players on Nintendo and not PlayStation; the price of launching Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was Theatrythm Final Bar Line not booting up, apparently,

These issues already appear to be resolved from what we can see, but it shows how the little things can catch you when you least expect it. Did you have any Leap Year-related scheduling conflicts? Let us know in the comments section below.

Khayl Adam is the second-best video game journalist Australia has ever produced, and his ambitions of world domination have (thus far) been curbed by the twin siren songs of strategy games and CRPGs. He has always felt an affinity for the noble dachshund, the best kind of dog.

Very unfortunate for both games. Had my eye on WRC 2023, good to know.

Why do we need online checks/online games. It's hilarious. Sure it's one day and we have online updates that can be worked out but like seriously.

Accounting for leap years is a very rare thing but odd they never thought about it.

Even a message of the day or other things people would surely let alone a clock app/calendar.

Leaderboards, server connection timestamps, other things.

Well for offline wouldn't matter right only online services the date?

Or whatever it uses dates for that it messed up as, for