Playstation Mobile servers will shut down in September...

onmode-ky · November 10, 2015

This was announced a few weeks ago, but if you bought Fordesoft's PSM game, Super Blackout, the developer will give you a free upgrade to the recently released native PSV version. See this post on his blog for details on how to get your upgrade.

So... if I launch a PSM game on each of my devices they're now activated permanently? I saw a post on CAG claiming that you still can't swap memory cards without going online again to reactivate.

https://www.cheapassgamer.com/topic/348804-psn-weekly-deals-113-ubisoft-atlus-and-ps-specials-sales-10-trails-in-the-sky-14-volume/page-221?do=findComment&comment=13009906

If you swap memory cards, you have to connect to PSN before a PSM game will play, yes--but I don't think that's for activation of your device. Back when PSM was up in its normal state, PSM games had this annoying DRM where if you hadn't played for a while (let's say two weeks), starting a PSM game would open a connection to PSN to re-authorize the game. If you were offline, the game would refuse to start. Your device was activated, but the game's authorization had expired. Back around March/April, when (or shortly after) PSM's discontinuation was announced, authorizations were made to no longer expire (yay!). But even now, if you take a backup of a PSM game from one of your activated devices and then restore it onto another one of your activated devices, the newly restored copy will want to connect to PSN to authorize, because the backup image seems to include authorization only for the originating device (it's definitely not due to your device being deactivated, because existing PSM games won't try to connect to PSN when started, only the one that you just restored).

So, I think that the requirement to connect to PSN after swapping memory cards is game re-authorization, not device reactivation. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense if it's reactivation, because that "Update on PSM" posting said, "[W]e have set a new device activation method [in response to the fact that] it has become apparent that even if users activate their devices by following the [March 10th] procedure, their devices may become deactivated in certain cases." So, this new method, whatever it is, should address the problem of devices becoming deactivated involuntarily (e.g., through swapping memory cards).

Incidentally, the game re-authorization connection seems to do every game on your device at once. So, if you restored 5 games from backup images taken from a different activated device of yours, you would only need to connect to PSN once. Then all 5 newly restored games could be played offline.

Damnit these games look pretty good. Thanks, I added Crescent Isle to my Steam wishlist. The others I guess are gone forever. I did a little bit of searching for PC versions but couldn't find anything.

If you'd like to read more review-ish material I wrote about these games, you can refer to my PSPMinis.com forum posts here and here for Galatea (I also spoiled the game's entire story here, since I thought it unfortunate that no one else could buy the game now and enjoy the ending). I wrote briefly about Curse of the Crescent Isle DX here and about Eufloria Adventures here. I also wrote some thoughts on the PSM action RPG Emil's Task last night here.