Can’t get online? Here’s a trick that might help fix PSN for you.
Sony says that its online service is back up and running, but many people are still having issues playing games.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1632530,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"C"}']Last night, PlayStation Network started booting back up for many people after an outage that lasted for several days kept gamers offline. PSN, which enables you to play with friends online, is now working for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita. But Sony admits that some people may still run into problems as the PSN servers return to full operational status. PSN went down on Christmas Day as the result of an alleged cyberattack.
“PS4, PS3, and VITA are presently online,” reads Sony’s PSN status site. “Intermittency may be experienced when accessing some network services. We will update you with any changes that may occur with the status of the network.”
Sony goes on to explain that PlayStation Network is still not “fully restored.” And it says it will update its Twitter account when everything is working as intended.
Sony is not alone in having network problems. Microsoft’s Xbox Live also went down on Christmas Day — although it returned later that night and has only had minor disruptions since.
Outages like these are potentially very damaging to Sony and Microsoft in several ways. For PlayStation gamers, they are angry because many have not had the chance to play the new games they received as holiday presents. This includes online shooters like Call of Duty or Destiny, but it also includes single-player games that need to connect to a third-party server like Far Cry 4 and Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Big outages also hurt Sony and Microsoft on a financial level. When gamers cannot get online, they cannot get onto the digital stores to purchase goods. This can cost thousands (maybe even millions) of dollars in lost sales.
That last part is particularly relevant for the people who are potentially responsible for all of this. On Thursday, the cyberattack group Lizard Squad took credit for bringing down both services using a distributed denial-of-service barrage. This type of digital assault overwhelms a chosen server with junk data. This is an illegal web trick — especially if it causes monetary damages.
Yesterday, Sony seemingly confirmed that its network was down due to a coordinated effort.
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“PlayStation Network and some other gaming services were attacked over the holidays with artificially high levels of traffic designed to disrupt connectivity and online gameplay,” Sony Computer Entertainment America consumer experience boss Catherine Jensen wrote in a blog post. “This may have prevented your access to the network and its services over the last few days.”
Sony did not mention Lizard Squad by name, and it did specify which other networks suffered similar attacks.