Today, 29th February, is Leap Day. It's the special occasion that only rolls around once every four years and leaves plenty of room for an extra 24 hours of surprises. Well, it looks like the surprises are coming thick and fast for Theatrhythm Final Bar Line players. Namely, the game won't work.
This phenomenon was first spotted by Vooks, which reported that Square Enix's latest rhythm game simply would not connect to the relevant servers when booting up, getting stuck on a "Connecting..." message and leaving the game unplayable.
We tried this out at Nintendo Life and found that we couldn't even reach the server page, instead being greeted by nothing more than a blank screen! It might not do much to illustrate our point, but you can find screenshots of said loading screens below.
Strangely, it all seems to come down to the mysterious Leap Day. Vooks reported (and we tried it ourselves) that changing the console date and going back into the game would fix the issue, and sure enough, it does.
It looks like the in-game date checker doesn't account for the bonus day and simply refuses to connect to the game's servers because of it. What's stranger still is the fact that you don't even need to be online to play. Very weird.
You would hope that Square Enix can get the issue fixed by the time the next 29th February rolls around in 2028. Until then, we struggle to think of a smarter way to get everyone to play Final Fantasy VII Rebirth...
Have you had similar Theatrhythm troubles today? Let us know in the comments.
[source vooks.net]
Comments 38
Sounds like a disturbance to the lifestream if you ask me.
As far as I can tell, it's not a server-related issue at all- the infinite "connecting" screen just seems to indicate it happens at a different stage in the process. Changing the date on your system will fix it in both scenarios.
Pathetic. They seriously couldn't remember that there was a February 29??
this game requires an online connection to play? why
Calm down guys. They just want to make sure everyone plays FF7 Rebirth.
@EarthboundBenjy I was about to ask exactly that. Is it unplayable without a connection?
What a fantastic case against the continued push for always-online games. Offline play is an after-thought for all these AAAs now.
Forget that. Forget 'em.
Never again will I buy a Square Enix game. I only hope that other game buyers make the same considerations.
@LadyCharlie Completely agree in principle, but I gotta get my jrpg goodness.
FFVII: Rebirth DLC music pack would be nice.
@Bobb I tried with my switch with online on the game start but get stuck in a connecting loop when it reach the title screen. Put my switch in airplane mode, game get stuck in a black screen before the title screen. I change the date on my switch to march 1st and restarted the game still in airplane mode, game launch and I played a few songs and
everything work fine. seems like the problem is in the game files it doesn't recognize february 29th and get stuck not understanding the date.
@Bobb @EarthboundBenjy I thought that was weird too, but read the linked article. This article appears to have misinformation. This has nothing to do with connection to servers. It’s not online embedded and the linked article even states that they can change the date and get it to work. The problem seems to be with the game not recognizing February 29th as a date but has nothing to do with connecting to the server
It's Y2K all over again!!!!
In what way the game needs to know what date it is to be playable? This isn't Animal Crossing, where the date and time does play a role in the game.
@Darthmoogle @nathatruc Thank you very much for the info. It's still weird that the game has to know what day is today to let you play but at least isn't some "always online" rubbish
I got the game about 3 months ago and I've been playing it pretty regularly, at least once or twice a week. Didn't play today though.
Quite a weird quirk. Leaves me wondering why it happens in the first place. I know the game rewards players for playing on anniversaries and you get the reward when you turn the game on so it probably fetches the current date from the system at that point but why would the comparison lead into an infinite loop? Maybe it has some kind of date time validation system and when the validation fails, it tries to fetch the date again? I just fail to see why they would validate against some non-standard date time system.
Someone pointed it out, so I'll just provide the memory
@Bobb when I put the march 1st date I had a special message because it's my birthday and they gifted me a gold egg. May be it's because of that.
@lazyboyblue There are plenty of other companies putting out JRPG goodness besides Square Enix.
@HammerGalladeBro it gives you gifts in different dates in which games were released or character birth dates, etc
I hope this doesn't mean that the game will be unplayable once the servers go offline.
There's a check on the date right at the beginning of the game. On special days you get additional bonus items (like the day FF8 launched, etc..). They didn't code for leap year, so it stalls as it always expects a date that passes or fails before continuing to the next instruction. This check is hard coded, so an internet connection doesn't matter.
@nathatruc Yeah, other people are commenting with similar information. It's probably calendar events, and somehow they probably forgot to code in leap years.
Anyways, Happy early Birthday!!
@LadyCharlie I feel like not buying any games from a game studio over the fact they make some online only games is a little bit of an overreaction. Just don’t buy the online only games. From what I’m hearing the problem with this game wasn’t a server issue but a date and time issue and is completely playable offline.
Reminds me of PS3 having that same issue back in 2010.
Oh no I can't play my game for one day. Yeah it's stupid yeah they should have thought of this (or not made the game have to call home for the dlc check before letting the player in), and will probably patch it in the next four years but seriously the dramatic responses lol get a grip. And I say that as someone who has been playing this game almost every day since it launched.
A lot of people here definitely don’t even play this game. It isn’t online only. You can play offline, and I’ve been doing so for a while. This issue seems to stem more from a bug with the game reading the system clock wrong more than anything.
Here we go again with games connecting online even when gameplay doesn't require it.
Here I thought they were trying to do an update for FF7 Rebirth. ^^;
That's gonna be havoc trying to get the birthday bonus for that game...
@Yosher someone in the comments checked: it's an internal game problem, not an online issue. It works fine when you cut off it's internet and change the date on your Switch!
@calbeau It isn't, they made a mistake in the OG article. The only online aspect is that it checks for extra final Fantasy birthdays and gives you a gift. Like: "final fantasy released 20 years ago today!" Here, have a bit of extra exp.
@garfreek That's good to know, thank you!
@garfreek Thanks for the correction... and also the EXP. Level up!
This shouldn't have happened in the first place and I hope they'll fix it for future leap days, but more than anything I'm glad to hear that the game doesn't actually have an always-online requirement!
@VoidofLight In my case that's true as I've unfortunately haven't started playing this game yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if even people who have played it but never offline didn't know.
Regardless, thank you for further confirming how it actually works!
@garfreek Yeah its effectively just for the birthday stuff and online play. The core of the game is singleplayer-only and offline.
I’m usually playing offline and still getting the birthday presents, so even those do not require online. Online is needed for new DLC notifications and online play.
@HammerGalladeBro Probably for its record keeping like if you got a higher score on a song, it keeps track of the date in which you got the high score on. But as someone also mentioned, it keeps track of birthdays too because you get bonuses if it's a character's birthday or your birthday. Not that I'm defending it because Square Enix is one of the greediest gaming development companies next to Activision Blizzard, but the devs forgot February 29th was a thing every 4 years and it's just an oversight.
Small correction to the corrections: the gifts don't need an online check either, they just read the date you set on your Switch. I used to catch up on birthdays/releases I missed all the time after not playing for a while and it never cared about the real date.
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