A major breakdown of Sony's online gaming network has paralyzed many gamers.
On the night of February 7 to 8, Sony experienced a problem that lasted a long time before the network was finally restored. This network is the PlayStation Network - Sony's network for its PlayStation consoles - and the outage prevented millions of gamers around the world from enjoying their favorite pastime. The first reports of the outage came from gamers, of course, in the late evening of February 7. Inconveniently, rather than being quickly rectified by Sony, the worries quickly spread, and the DownDetector site soon recorded tens of thousands of complaints.
Sony was slow to acknowledge the scale of the problem, and the firm's first message didn't arrive on X.com (formerly Twitter) until the middle of the night. At the time, there was no mention of any explanation for the problem, and Sony simply referred to its own network status site. A page which today indicates that the network is fine, but which - of course - was completely in the red at the time of the outage: without the slightest explanation and, above all, without any indication of how to remedy the situation, this kind of information is of little interest. What's more, the breakdown lasted several hours longer, leaving many gamers wondering what the Japanese brand's technicians could have done.
Today, the situation has fortunately returned to normal, but Sony has still not explained the reason for the breakdown. No maintenance was announced by Sony, which may therefore have been the victim of a cyber-attack. To be continued. For our part, we'd like to remind you that the absence of a network is not inevitable when playing on PlayStation. So, of course, online games will be strictly impossible without the PSN. Similarly, some single-player games require a license check before they can be run, so you won't be able to launch them when the PSN is down.
On the other hand, it is still possible to activate an offline mode to continue playing. To do so, your PlayStation 5 console must be considered a "main console". It will then be able to validate game licenses without an Internet connection, without PSN: the option is activated in the machine's settings, via the Users and accounts section. There, simply go to Others and click on Console sharing and offline play to activate this option. It's not a magic solution, but it does prevent a few setbacks during PSN outages.
Fortunately, this weekend's outage didn't last 48 hours either. Sony announced (again on X.com) on the morning of the 9th that everything was back to normal: " All services are operational ". On the other hand, the company still hasn't indicated the exact cause of this giant breakdown, referring simply to " an operational problem ". Not very precise, is it? Finally, to show that it is taking the scale of the problem into account, Sony has also specified that PlayStation Plus subscribers will benefit from 5 days' free subscription.
