UPDATE: Forgoing Sony's advice to wait for official word, I have found the bravery to boot up my PS3 again and previously nonworking DLC appears to be working again. As far as I can tell from cursory inspection, everything is now in order, save for some missing trophies and the fact that my system clock now says the year is 2020. So, this article has become obsolete only minutes after publication. Hooray!

Conan O’Brien loses his job, earthquakes decimate Haiti and Chile, and now the great PS3 Disaster.

2010’s off to a hell of a start, don’t ya’ think?

For those not “in the know” as the saying goes -- if you haven’t turned on your Playstation 3 lately, for the love of God, don’t! According to Sony, there is a glitch in -- of all things -- the damn calendar. At 7 p.m. Eastern time (midnight GMT) on February 28, 2010 all hell broke loose. As the PS3’s internal clock rolled over from 11:59 p.m. GMT to 12:00 a.m. something happened. What kind of something? Who knows? The theory is that the algorithm that determines whether or not this is a leap year choked on some low-level mathematical minutiae.

Why now? Beats me, but some have pointed out that this is the first even-numbered non-leap year since the system’s release. Apparently, all PS3s come standard with a fear of even numbers.

Or at least most do; the word is that the newer “slim” models are unaffected. So, if you own a slim, away with you. Go do something constructive with your time like pwning noobs in Modern Warfare 2.

For the rest of us, there is no PSN connectivity (leading to some of the initial erroneous reports of a network issue), our system calendars tell us that it’s ten years ago (last night I was so confused I partied like it was 1999 again), our DLC won’t work, disc-based games employing dynamic trophies refuse to play (even offline), the games that do work aren’t saving trophies properly, and we tend to see error code 8001050F a lot.

“Wait!” I hear the ignorant portion of the readership declaring, “If this is a calendar problem, just change the date in your PS3 settings! I’m so smart!” Yes, theoretical reader, you are indeed brilliant to come up with the first thing to cross the minds of every single person in the world with a pre-slim Playstation 3. Bravo for you. We have, of course, already tried this. I can personally verify that it does not work.

Some are hopeful that the problem will rectify itself once the internal date rolls over again and the Playstation is no longer convinced that it is the nonexistent day of February 29, 2010, but for now Sony is working (I assume) furiously and hopes to be able to solve the problem “within the next 24 hours.” In the meantime, Sony is advising people not to turn on their PS3s, y’know, like, just in case.

What’s the extent of the damage? Ask me again when this is all sorted out. Hopefully, nothing permanent, but this has to be an embarrassment for Sony. The problem may not ultimately be as severe as the ever-popular Red Ring of Death, but it is a lot more dramatic. Think about it: every PS3 manufactured before 2009 essentially came with a self-destruct timer. If this were the setup of movie plot, that shit would be so awesome.

This “ApocalyPS3,” as some are calling it, is basically the gamer equivalent of the destruction of Alderaan. A million nerds cried out in terror … then hit the message boards.

For official word on the issue and to find out when it’s safe to go back into the metaphorical waters of the Playstationiverse, see the Official Playstation Blog.