It’s a new year, and the PlayStation Network’s still experiencing problems.
Some PlayStation gamers are reporting difficulties logging into Sony’s online network, leaving them unable to play games online, sync trophies, or even watch Netflix in some cases. The PlayStation support site says that the network is experiencing “heavy network traffic,” and the official PlayStation Twitter account reports that engineers are “on the case” and trying to solve the problem. For gamers who pay an annual subscription to play online on PlayStation 4, it’s a serious inconvenience.
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— PlayStation (@PlayStation) January 7, 2015
Today’s problems come after a sustained distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the PSN and Xbox Live over the holiday period. Hacker group Lizard Squard claimed responsibility for the attacks, which DDoS defense expert NexusGuard says showed serious power. “Lizard Squad’s attacks exceed that of your typical DDoS group,” NexusGuard’s chief scientist Terrence Gareau recently told GamesBeat. “Their infrastructure is bigger than your typical script-kiddie DDoS.”
Sony has already responded to the Christmas outage by extending all PlayStation Plus accounts by five days and mailing out a 10 percent discount code to use in the PlayStation Store.