How to restore trophies lost during the Sony PlayStation Network problem

The PlayStation Network problem has passed, Sony says. But some issues remain, including missing PS3 trophies.

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Sony
The PlayStation Network problem is over. Yet there are still problems to clean up – unless you own the new PS3 Slim (pictured).

Seems Sony didn't need to patch the PlayStation Network problem that struck Sunday night. The PS3 bug corrected itself. It is now safe to turn on the video game console.

"We are aware that the internal clock functionality in the PS3 units other than the slim model, recognized the year 2010 as a leap year," Sony posted to its PlayStation blog last night. "Having the internal clock date change from February 29 to March 1 (both GMT), we have verified that the symptoms are now resolved and that users are able to use their PS3 normally."

The malfunctioning clock wreaked havoc for gamers both on and offline yesterday. First, players lost access to Sony's online features. Then, single-player, offline games refused to launch because they "failed to install trophies." In some cases, the PS3 would even erase a player's hard-earned trophies. (We collected a full list of problems here.)

The Sony Apocalyps3 – as some forums have dubbed it – is over. But if any symptoms still linger, here's some advice on how to fix them.

This leap-year problem caused many systems to think it was the year 2000. "If the time displayed on the XMB is still incorrect," says Sony, "users are able to adjust time settings manually or via the internet."

CVG asked Sony how to recover PS3 trophies lost during the bug. It published this response:

It is possible that some users who experienced the connection problems yesterday and tried unsuccessfully to access a game (online or offline) may find that trophy data for that title is no longer displayed. To resolve this issue, the user will need to re-access the game to reinstall the trophies, then exit the game and sync their trophy collection to the server in order to regain previous achievements.

A CVG forum member tinkered around and reports that if you tried to launch a downloaded game during the outage, that file may be permanently broken. But Sony's online store lets you re-download purchased games for free.

Update: In some cases, earned trophies that do not appear on your machine will still show up when comparing trophy collections with friends. This means the Sony server recognizes that you've achieved the award, but your machine is still confused. Sony has not announced a fix for this issue.

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