PlayStation users say digital purchases wiped due to 'software bug'

In slightly worrying news for PlayStation fans, a small amount of people seem to have lost all their digital purchases due to a software bug.

The story has been setting the PlayStation subreddit alight, and you can see why.

The good news is that only a tiny amount of gamers seem to have experienced this misfortune.

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A recent Reddit post from user dSuds23425 has been gathering traction - with 2.9K votes and counting - discussing this issue.

They wrote: "For the last few months, there has been a bug impacting a relatively small amount of PSN users in which all digital licenses (including purchased games & titles added to one's library via PS+) become decoupled from your transaction history which shows you purchased those things."

Perhaps the scariest thing about this is, according to the post, your transaction history will look "totally normal", but your Games Library will apparently only show anything you bought after you were affected by the bug.

"Any games before you were hit with the bug will be inaccessible on console," the post says.

"If you try to download them, it will want you to rebuy/re-add from PS+, but when you try to do that it will tell you that you already own the content. Installed games impacted by the bug will show a padlock icon and can't be launched."

So, it looks like it could trap you in a bit of a gaming purgatory - your digital purchases could be wiped from your library, but there's seemingly no way of even rebuying them.

But, there's another bit of good news - the post goes on to say: "It does appear that some degree of impact from the bug may be able to be mitigated."

The poster recommends that you avoid running the 'Restore Licenses' process on your console if you find yourself in this scenario, because they suspect that's what barred them from accessing their games.

One user also posted on a PlayStation Reddit support thread to say their account had been fully restored.

While it seems like there's very little info around about this supposed bug - and it's not affected many gamers, with the post suggesting only around 50 people have been hit - the Redditor also suggests a fix could be coming in March.

Of course, if you're really scared about losing your games, you could make sure you buy physical copies, rather than the digital versions. However, as the Redditor points out, not all games have physical versions - particularly indie titles - so it's not a failsafe option.

Sony has been contacted for comment.