Every Digital GTA 6 Copy on PS5 Might Need a Monthly Internet Check-In

If you are planning to buy Grand Theft Auto 6 digitally on PlayStation 5, you need to pay attention to what is happening right now with Sony's DRM policy, because it could directly affect whether you can play the game offline.

Reports emerged this week that Sony has rolled out a 30-day online check-in requirement for all digital games purchased on the PlayStation Store after the March 2026 firmware update. If your PS5 does not connect to the internet within 30 days of the last check-in, your license expires, and the game stops launching. Just to make it clear, you do not lose the game permanently. Reconnecting to the internet revalidates the license.

Unfortunately, during the period you're offline, which can go a long time for those who don't have constant access to the internet, the game you paid full price for won't work.

Interestingly, nobody can agree on whether this is intentional or broken. A preservation site says it is a bug. An anonymous insider says it is unintentional. Lance McDonald's own testing showed the system issuing a 26-day timer and then correcting itself to a permanent license 30 minutes later, which suggests the licensing system is malfunctioning rather than functioning as designed. On the other hand, PlayStation Support, in a direct exchange with a user, confirmed that the 30-day timer is part of the update and is not a bug.

Sony itself has said nothing publicly. The company has not issued a press release, a blog post, a tweet, or a FAQ entry. The silence is the single most concerning detail here.

For anyone who has not thought about the distinction between digital and physical purchases in the context of DRM, here is the breakdown:

If the 30-day DRM is real and permanent, every digital copy of GTA 6 purchased on the PlayStation Store after March 2026 will require your PS5 to connect to the internet at least once a month. If you live somewhere with unreliable internet, or your router breaks, or you're deployed overseas, or you're on a long trip without Wi-Fi, and even if Sony's authentication servers go down for maintenance, your $70 (or so) copy of GTA 6 stops working until you get back online.

Physical disc copies are unaffected for now. The disc itself is the license. Insert it, install the game, play it. There's no internet check-in required, no 30-day timer, no authentication server dependency.

With that said, this is still a whole lot of trouble for PS5 owners who own the Digital Edition and the PS5 Pro (which ships without a disc drive by default). If you own a digital-only PlayStation and the 30-day DRM is permanent, every game you purchase going forward requires periodic internet authentication. There is no disc fallback. There is no alternative license mechanism. Your entire library depends on accessing Sony's servers and having a functional internet connection every 30 days.

What's worse is that Xbox and Microsoft have shown this doesn't work without risking the wrath of the entire fanbase. The company tried this in 2013 with the Xbox One's announcement, which included a 24-hour online check-in requirement for all games. The backlash was so immediate and so severe that Microsoft reversed the policy before the console even launched, but the damage was already done at that point, and Xbox hasn't recovered since.

Regardless of what's happening here, Sony's silence is concerning. They've had days to issue a statement, yet, they haven't said a single word. If this were a bug, a one-sentence statement ("We are aware of a licensing display issue introduced in a recent firmware update and are working on a fix") would resolve the situation overnight. The fact that Sony hasn't said anything either means the company is still investigating, or it means the company is not sure how to position what is happening, or it means the 30-day check-in is intentional and Sony does not want to say so publicly because of the backlash it would cause.

GTA 6 launches on November 19, 2026. If the 30-day DRM is still in place by then, every digital purchase of the biggest game of the decade will carry a condition that did not exist six months ago.

The PS5 price increases that have now hit Southeast Asia make this worse. Players in the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, and other markets with less reliable internet infrastructure are the same players who just had their console prices raised by 30%. This update tells them that the games they buy on those more expensive consoles will stop working if their internet goes down for a month.

For now, the best course of action is to buy the disc version. The disc is the license. It does not expire. It does not require authentication.

If it's any consolation though, the third GTA 6 trailer will release soon, so Grand Theft Auto fans will atleast have something else to think about in the meantime.