Ongoing PSN Outage Disrupts Gaming and More

PlayStation Network (PSN) has been hit with a prolonged disruption that began Friday evening. According to Sony’s PSN status page, several services are encountering issues, including account management, gaming and social features, PlayStation Video, PlayStation Store, and the PlayStation Direct website. Specifically, players may find it difficult to launch games, run applications, or access network features. Sony is committed to resolving these issues “as soon as possible.”

When I initially published this article at 7:28 PM ET, a colleague faced difficulty loading their purchased digital games and couldn’t see their friends, trophies, or online status on their PS5. Later, at around 11:45 PM ET, I attempted to play Fortnite on my PS5 but was met with an error message that prevented me from logging in. Despite this, I managed to start my digital copy of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth without any trouble. Sony acknowledged the situation in an 8:46 PM ET announcement on the @AskPlayStation X account, stating they were aware some users were experiencing PSN issues.

Sony’s status website notes that complications arose at 7 PM ET, while Downdetector started recording user reports about an hour earlier, around 6 PM ET. At their height, Downdetector logged just under 70,000 issue reports, while an r/PlayStation thread concerning the outage garnered over 9,000 comments. Sony did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It’s worth noting that PSN also experienced an approximately eight-hour outage in October and faced a partial service interruption in May as well.