PlayStation’s online services, including the PlayStation Store and some game servers, have been down for at least the last eight hours. Gamers who are still very upset about Sony’s planned demise of game discs aren’t letting this outage slide. On DownDetector, thousands of users reported early on Friday that PlayStation Network seemed to be experiencing issues. PlayStation’s status page still says the PlayStation Store is on the fritz. While Gizmodo was still able to access some PlayStation Network services, including the store, we spent nearly five minutes trying to join a match in Battlefield 6 before receiving an “Unknown Error” report, so your mileage may vary. Judging by the number of less-than-pleased posts you find on X, some users are evidently still out of luck. It’s unclear when Sony’s online services will get back to normal. Sony has not exactly been helpful in that regard, with no official statements from Sony when players can expect a fix. Gizmodo reached out to Sony for comment, and we’ll update this piece if we hear back.
As for the cause for the outage, that’s still up in the air. Amazon resolved an AWS outage Friday morning, but that seemingly hasn’t fixed PlayStation Network. The outage is further exacerbated by Sony’s love affair with hardware DRM (digital rights management). Users require an internet connection in order to install a PS5 disc drive. PlayStation games purchased on the PlayStation Store also use DRM, and they require an internet connection to confirm a game’s license.
