Sony’s PlayStation Network is up after going down for several hours on Thursday afternoon, annoying legions of gamers right in the middle of E3. The gaming network restored service shortly after 3 p.m. Pacific.
Users began to encounter PSN errors early in the afternoon. For hours, PlayStation’s network service status page showed issues across the board — including with accounts, social features, PlayStation Now, PlayStation Video, PlayStation Vue, the PlayStation Store, and PlayStation Music.
“We’re aware that some users are experiencing issues logging into PSN,” Sony wrote on the Ask PlayStation customer support Twitter account. “Thank you for your patience as we investigate.”
Users quickly rejoiced as the network restored service, sharing their joy on Twitter.
PSN IS BACK ONLINE #PlayStation4 pic.twitter.com/L8LarGBce4
— PioneerYourSelf (@PioneerYourSelf) June 13, 2019
PSN BACK ON FINALLY!
— obey y6x. (@leftalone2die) June 13, 2019
The outage came at the tail end of E3. Even though Sony didn’t participate in the video game conference this year, the major outage has hit right as gamers are at their most hyped-up for future games.
Popular photo-sharing service Instagram also went down on Thursday afternoon, with legions of fans complaining about the outage. It’s not clear if the two outages were connected, but we’ve reached out to Facebook and Sony to see if they can give us any clarity.
Still, the outage was nowhere near as bad as the famous multi-day-long outage that took place in 2011. The hacker group Anonymous was blamed for that outage, after launching a denial of service attack that managed to initially slow down the PlayStation Network.
Since then, the network has seen its fair share of outages, leading some to criticize games companies that rely on always-online or multiplayer only features for their games. A network requirement means that outages are extra nasty, since the game you spent your hard-earned money on is suddenly useless. There’s also the added heartache of finding the perfect time to play online with your friends, only to be faced with an error screen.
Now that service has been restored, you can go ahead and play your favorite online games on PSN. And for the next time there’s an outage, well, there’s plenty of single-player games on our guide to the best games for PS4.
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