PlayStation 5 gamers hit with unexpected crashes because of one setting

Gamers around the world were hit with unexpected crashes on certain games yesterday, all because of one glaring oversight.

For those that might have been aware, yesterday was a fairly special day. See, 29 February doesn't actually come around all that often. The date is added to the calendar every four years to account for the fact the Earth doesn't actually orbit the Sun precisely 365 days. I'll be honest, I'm assuming you do know this, but I've got a word count to fill. Anyway, this rogue date actually played havoc with a few of our modern systems.

Over on Twitter, EA Sports was made aware of the fact a number of its games were crashing on 29 February. Why? Because apparently the software couldn't wrap its head around what it assumed was a made-up day. Incredible.

"Hello #EASPORTSWRC players," EA Help tweeted. "We are aware of an issue on console in which the game may crash on startup. This is currently being investigated and will be fixed as soon as possible."

Moments later, the support page offered the following guidance to gamers on PlayStation and Xbox: change your console's date to 1 March. Brilliant.

"EA games can't handle leap years," one user responded in what can only be described as an accurate description of the situation.

As it turns out, EA wasn't the only publisher to forget leap years are a thing. Square Enix was having issues with Theatrhythm Final Fantasy on Nintendo Switch. How we ever survived the Y2K bug is beyond me. I guess we didn't entrust EA with our overall safety, actually, which is a sensible place to start.

Let's hope four years from now our PlayStation 6 and next-gen Xbox consoles don't explode because Rockstar forgot to account for leap years on the GTA 6 next-gen re-release.