PlayStation Network down for many gamers around the world

Sony’s online infrastructure is going through another hiccup this morning.

PlayStation Network isn’t working for everyone right now. An outage is preventing gamers from logging into the service to play games or use apps on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and Vita. This is causing errors when players try to get into online multiplayer games like Call of Duty: Black Ops III, but it is also an issue for primarily single-player releases that rely on a connection to a third-party server. Additionally, these problems are preventing apps like Netflix and Amazon Instant Video from loading.

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We’ve reached out to Sony for more information, and we’ll update this post with any comment from the company.

This is a problem because PlayStation Network is the key way that Sony engages with its dedicated gaming consumers on a daily basis. The platform enables online multiplayer, social functions, and more. Keeping players happy with what PSN provides is crucial for Sony as it tries to funnel the millions of PS4 owners into upgrading to its PSN subscription service PS Plus or into buying digital games through the PlayStation Store. But when these features malfunction, it is easier for fans to begin questioning why they would rely on Sony’s digital content.

Gamers are complaining about the outage on social media, where people are claiming they are getting a message about maintenance. But the PlayStation Network server-status page presently says everything is up and running as normal. We’ll notify you all in this story if that changes. The company did, however, confirm the connectivity errors on Twitter.

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We're aware that some PSN users are experiencing connectivity issues. Thank you for your patience as we investigate.

— Ask PlayStation (@AskPlayStation) February 1, 2016

Players have grown accustomed to interruptions in their online service for PlayStation consoles. PSN went offline more than a dozen times in 2015. And all that came after a cyberattack forced the service into a five-day-long outage during the 2014 Christmas holidays. Today’s attack is probably not the result of something malicious — instead, this is just the nature of running an online gaming platform.

And Sony isn’t alone in having these problems. Microsoft’s Xbox Live has had almost as many outages since the 2014 cyberattack took it down for 24 hours.

Updated at 1:25 p.m. Pacific time: PlayStation Network has started coming back online for some, but others are still reporting problems getting connected.