PSN crashes, sparking anger among users
This outage has been causing outrage among PSN users, who have taken to social media to vent their frustration
Since Friday evening, the PlayStation Network, also known as, PSN, has been experiencing a multi-hour outage. This online service is what allows Sony consoles users to play online, and allows them to connect with other gamers around the world. This outage has interrupted their gaming plans.
Sony's PSN status page indicates that there are ongoing issues with account management, gaming and social services, PlayStation Video, PlayStation Store, and the PlayStation Direct website.
The PSN outage is all around the world. Photo: Independent UK
According to Down Detector, an app designed to offer real-time status and uptime monitoring for hundreds of services, including telecommunication outages (internet, phone and TV service) in 45+ countries; users started to report issues with PSN around 3pm PST/6pm EST on Friday, Feb. 7, with more than 71,000 users reporting the outage to the site.
Why are people so mad?
The outage made the online features of games like Fortnite, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, and Marvel Rivals unavailable, and also led to problems with license verification for offline single-player games. Even access to their own accounts.
The PSN offers a premium subscription model that costs £13.49 per month, £39.99 for three months, or £119.99 for 12 months. Many gamers have raised concerns about these fees while complaining in social media with Sony, and are demanding that this month's fee should be free.
Another reason why the users are terribly frustrated with this situation, is because on weekends, there are supposed to be some special events in some video games and there are a few that were supposed to host special tournaments today; as is the case for FC 25, a very popular soccer simulator, who should have been holding their tournament known colloquially as “weekend league”. Thousands of players spend hours in the game trying to get their "dream team".
Call of Duty fans will be unable to play during the promotional weekend and will miss out on the double XP (experience points) event in Black Ops 6 and Warzone.