It’s about time to celebrate the end of summer with the long Labor Day weekend here in the United States, but you might have to hold off on doing anything game-related to kick off your three-day weekend.
PlayStation Network is down for a large number of people on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3, according to complaints on social media. This is preventing people from enjoying the online functionality in several games. That includes the multiplayer modes in releases like Call of Duty and Destiny as well as the single-player campaigns for titles that require a connection to a third-party server. The downtime is also interfering with the performance of some video services like Hulu and Netflix.
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As usual, we also like to point out that these server problems do not always affect everyone equally. If you are online and enjoying PlayStation 4 games as you read this — first, congrats on your multitasking abilities, and second, stay online because the problems often strike when people try to sign in for the first time of the day.
PSN going down is not a rare occurrence. Sony’s online infrastructure has had multiple major outages since the beginning of the year. We’ve documented most of them right here. But PlayStation consoles are not alone in having problems. Xbox Live has had its fair share of troubles as well.
Finally, while it’s never the right time for a paid gaming service to go offline, the timing of today’s outage is rough for a few reasons. It is Friday night for most of the world, and the rest of the U.S. is about to join it. That’s always a huge time for gaming. Additionally, one of the biggest games on PlayStation Network these days is developer Bungie’s online shooter Destiny, and that game has some time-limited challenges that are about to go away forever on Wednesday, September 9. If PSN’s troubles last through the night, that’s a whole day lost for people trying to get those Destiny accomplishments before time runs out.