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PSN Down for 6+ Hours, But Finally Recovering
PlayStation Network suffered widespread disruption for more than six hours, affecting log-ins, friends lists, game downloads, the PlayStation Store and the PS App. Services began recovering on Friday evening, although Sony’s status page still reported issues; the outage mattered because it prevented many players from accessing online and library features.
The problems appeared to be linked to an earlier Amazon Web Services incident, with AWS saying it had restored its own services and routes were continuing to recover. Reports varied by user and region, while Down Detector showed a major spike in US reports and growing reports in the UK; by 6:25pm, some users could again log in, browse games and download software.
In short
- PSN disruption lasted over six hours before recovery began.
- Downloads, friends lists and store access were affected.
- An AWS incident was considered the likely cause.
Explained simply
PlayStation Network is the online service that allows PlayStation console players to log in, access the games they have purchased, connect with friends and buy new games. When PSN goes down, players are locked out of their accounts and cannot access their game libraries.
A major outage hit PlayStation Network on Friday, primarily affecting the United States whilst causing disruptions in the United Kingdom and other regions. The problems affected core functions including player log-ins, friends lists, game downloads and the PlayStation Store.
The outage appeared to be linked to a broader incident affecting Amazon Web Services, the cloud infrastructure company that provides the technical backbone for many internet services. When AWS experiences problems, any service relying on its systems can face disruption, which is what happened with PlayStation Network on Friday.