Playstation Network Down for 18 Hours, Millions of Players Thrown Into a Digital Fix

Key Takeaways

• Sony’s PlayStation Network faced a major outage starting Thursday night, disrupting gaming, the PlayStation Store, and multimedia apps.
• Over 71,000 reports flooded DownDetector, with X (Twitter) filled with memes and complaints about login failures.
• After 18 hours, PSN was back online, and PlayStation offered 5 extra days of service to Plus members as compensation.

Sony’s PlayStation faced some issues on Saturday and users couldn’t access online services, stores, and multimedia apps. The app has now been restored and is functioning smoothly. 

PSN has been restored. You should be able to access online features without any problems now. Sorry for the inconvenience! – official X handle of PlayStation

According to DownDetector, the major outage started late Friday evening, with a few users reporting issues about the unavailability of certain features. The issues kept piling and by Saturday, millions of users experienced issues with gaming features, the PlayStation Store, and other multimedia apps of the company. 

This was PSN’s second major outage in recent months, with the last one having taken place in October, which has now been restored.

The recurrence of these outages led to some serious backlash from players, and the fact that it happened on a Friday and Saturday didn’t help the case as much. 

Song acknowledged the outage and shared a link to their updates page through which users could track when the PSN was back up and live. However, it didn’t share any reasons for the outage or a timeline for when it would be fixed while addressing the issue. 

Users Reaction to the Outage 

With over 71,000 outage reports recorded on Downdetector and several Xeets, it was clear that the users were frustrated with login failures and error messages. X, formerly known as Twitter, was flooded with memes and jokes about the condition of gamers being deprived of PSN on a weekend. 

According to reports, some users experienced a complete service outage while users were still able to access certain games and services. To make up for the inconvenience caused, PlayStation has offered an automatic addition of 5 days of service to its Plus members. 

Almost all PSN features requiring an internet connection were acting out for around 18 hours, making it one of the most significant tech outages in recent times. However, it still doesn’t top the 2011 disruption that led to a 23-day-long shutdown and an investigation into the user’s privacy.  

Vlad is Tech Report’s Executive Editor. With over a decade of experience in tech content, he’s passionate about computer hardware, an advocate of online privacy, and strongly believes in the open-source, scarce-money nature of cryptocurrency.
When he’s not working, he’s traveling with his partner and their cat, learning Python, or reading good books. He never owned a PC he did not build.

View all articles by Vlad Melnic