PlayStation Network outage live updates – PSN is back and compensation announced

Hello and welcome to our PlayStation Network outage live blog. I wish I had good news to report but right now the service remains down.

We first realized there were problems with PSN when Downdetector outage reports spiked at around 6pm ET / 11pm GMT yesterday.

The graph below shows the huge volume of reports on the US version of the site:

The UK version of Downdetector tells a similar story – and indeed it appears to be a worldwide problem.

So what is Sony saying about it all? Not very much, unfortunately.

As you can see above, the official PSN Network Service Status page is a sea of red, with the rather understated message "Some services are experiencing issues" written above them.

Open up any of those sections and you'll see that the last update there was filed at midnight today – which I assume is midnight ET, so nearly 12 hours ago.

The fact that there's been no change to the page since then suggests that this is a big problem – and one that may not be fixed for some time.

Sony has provided an update on X/Twitter – but not a particularly helpful one.

The main PlayStation account and North American support account both posted the same message, stating that “some users might be currently experiencing issues with PSN,” but there were no further details given beyond a link to PSN Service Status page, and there have been no messages since.

As you might imagine, PlayStation gamers are not happy about the situation.

In fact, that's an understatement; thousands have flocked to Reddit and X to share their frustration at the outage – and the lack of communication from Sony.

I have of course reached out to Sony for any info they can provide, and will share any news with you as soon as I have it.

Though I should also admit that as the proud owner of a Steam Deck OLED, the PSN outage will not be impacting me personally. Sorry.

This is far from the first – or worst – PSN outage of course.

A quick flick through the TechRadar archives turns up a PSN outage in October 2024, a big problem in May 2022 and one in February and March 2021.

But the biggest by far occurred in April and May 2011, when a massive hack – or "an "external intrusion" – saw servers down for a whopping 23 days. Here's one of our reports from the time, if you're interested in a bit of tech history.

It's understandable that PS5 (and PS4) gamers are upset – because many will have a PS Plus subscription, and it's not a cheap service to subscribe to.

As you'll see in our full guide to the PlayStation Plus Tiers, even the cheapest Essential tier costs $9.99 monthly / $24.99 quarterly / $79.99 yearly in the US, £6.99 monthly / £19.99 quarterly / £59.99 yearly in the UK and AU$11.95 monthly / AU$33.95 quarterly / AU$95.95 yearly in Australia.

The Extra tier, meanwhile, is $14.99 monthly / $39.99 quarterly / $134.99 yearly, or £10.99 monthly / £31.99 quarterly / £99.99 yearly in the UK, or AU$18 monthly / AU$54.95 quarterly / AU$169.95 yearly in Aus.

And finally, the Premium offering will set you back $17.99 monthly / $49.99 quarterly / $159.99 yearly in the US, and £13.49 monthly / £39.99 quarterly / £119.99 yearly in the UK (Australia has a slightly different set up for the top tier).

We have no idea whether Sony will refund anyone for the outage, but you can see why people who are paying more than $150 a year might be angry at not being able to access the service.

However frustrated you may be, spare a thought for user Bubbleigh526 on Reddit – who reports that they "finally saved up enough money to buy a PS5 yesterday and when we got it home we couldn't even log in."

Now that's really bad timing.

One of the most annoying things about this outage is that it isn't only impacting online and multiplayer games – with the problem being that digital copies of even single-player games need PSN access to verify the game's license.

This is something that Jacob Krol, TechRadar's Managing Editor, News, has directly experienced. I'll let him explain…

Jacob Krol

"I just turned on my PlayStation 5 – slim with a disc, in case you're wondering – and while the PlayStation Store is accessible and my home screen generally looks familiar, I can't open a single game I have downloaded.

"So, the hours-long PlayStation Live outage appears to prevent you from playing a digitally downloaded title, even if you're playing locally. I tried to open a few games, including Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, Astro Bot, Star Wars Outlaws, and Marvel's Spider-Man 2.

Interestingly, the only game I can get to open is Astro's Playroom, but that came ready to go on the console after unboxing. For all other titles, though, I was presented with one of two errors, with the first being the most common:

Can't use this content. Can't connect to the serve to verify your license. Wait a while, and then try again.

If you enable [Console Sharing and Offline Play] on this PS5, you can use your content even when the server isn't available. To enable this setting select [Settings] > [Users and Accounts] > [Other}. For details about console sharing and offline play, refer to the user's guide.

Can't use this content. Can't connect to the server to verify your license. Wait a while, and then try again.

"I suppose I can play Astro's Playroom for a bit, but it makes me wish I purchased a few of these titles on a disc. I assume that works and that I don't need to check with a server to allow the game to start.

"Further, while I can browse the PlayStation Store, I – expectedly – cannot download an already owned item, a free item, or get to checkout to purchase a new title. The online status for my account shows as "unavailable" as well."

Here's some more from Jacob:

"Just as quickly as I could still browse the PlayStation Store and PSN tabs, my luck has run dry. I now see a 'Can't load' text display and the option to return home. Simply confirming what we already knew – PlayStation Network is down.

"Under 'Your Collection,' I can still view my entire library within Game Library. I am also attempting to download some other titles, including EA Sports Madden NFL 25. I'll report back if I can get them to install, and if that happens, whether I can play the title or at least open it. For now, the download is starting."

And here's more from Jacob:

"I've also fired up a PlayStation Portal, which can either connect to a PlayStation 5 console on my local network or play a game through the cloud.

"When trying to connect to stream a game from the PlayStation Network, it actually ironically pulls up a base Android error with an HTTP_response_code_failure error. It's a little strange, but it likely means that it can't connect to the cloud and freezes the Portal itself.

"I then shut the PlayStation Portal off, and on a fresh boot, it shows the PlayStation logo with a loading bar underneath and then displays a similar error code, though I can't really make it out."

Matt Bolton

"I'm finding that I can play downloaded games on my PS5 (original launch-day flavor, thank you very much), as long as I've played them at some point in the past. My partner's been paying the Horizon remake for hours and had no idea there was an outage, and I could fire up other stuff I've played recently.

"But as soon as I delved into games I'd downloaded on a semi-regular PS Plus browse, but had never fired up, I got the same kind of errors that Jake's been seeing. Well, I got an especially bad one where Temtem got stuck in an error message loop that meant I couldn't even access the switcher menu (pressing and holding the PS button got me to a menu I could actually use, though).

"It's clear that the problem is the inability for the PlayStation servers to validate that you're allowed to play the game file, but it seems that if you already got the licence, you're okay – well, in my case, at least."

Always look on the bright side of life – as this Redditor points out, maybe people will get a free game out of this… Not sure there's many that Sony can offer that the most-affected won't already own, but we can dream.

The comments on that post are a lot less optimistic about the chances, mind you…

The only positive thing from r/playstation

Of course, the big occasion when Sony gave out free stuff as a result of a PSN collapse was when PSN went down for a colossal 23 days, which was the fabled 2011 PSN outage Marc mentioned below.

This was, just a reminder, several years before the PlayStation 4 had even launched – it was the beautiful beast above that everyone was struggling to play on.

I don't know that a gaming company could get away with a 23-day outage now. There'd be revolution in the streets.

I don't want to get anyone's hopes up, but I am seeing some reports on Reddit of people being able to get back online.

However, I've just tried again on my PS5 and right now there's no change – it's still not working for me.

I will of course keep you updated if things do get back online. But as I say, that's not the case for me yet.

I mostly cover TV & audio products, and over the last year, I've seen an example of failure to communicate well over a technical problem wreck a company's reputation: you need only look at Sonos.

The company changed its app in 2024 to a new version that was way less technically reliable and missing a bunch of features, and then communicated terribly about it to customers for weeks.

We're now months on, and the app performs far better and the vast majority of reliability issues have been fixed, but every article and video about Sonos is full of people saying "I won't ever buy Sonos because of the app".

Now, one day of PSN being down won't have the same kind of effect, but you can see people getting agitated about Sony's typical lack of communication, and idly wondering if their online loyalty is in the right place.

The longer this goes on, the more chat like this there will be – though I doubt many would actually switch platforms.

Incidents can happen. Absolutely no communication to your customers is an other thing from r/playstation

As Jez Corden, from our colleagues over on Windows Central, says on X – the PSN outage isn't just bad news for Sony and players at home. Every gaming company, from indies up to Ubisoft, relies on it as a key way to make money, especially with the death of dedicated gaming stores the world over.

Jez is particularly referencing the fact that Microsoft is increasingly launching its games on more platforms, and there's been some fear that the company would abandon its own hardware, given how much it's struggled for success against both the PS4 and PS5.

It's not like this outage will affect the imminent launch of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on PS5 in Spring 2025, though. Well, we hope it wouldn't last that long…

Obviously, there's been lots of talk about PS5 owners in particular, but I fired up my trusty PS4 Pro to check everything is the same there. And it is! Same thing that I can play games I already played, and so had some kind of licence/verification for – but nothing downloaded that I hadn't played before, and the Store was completely down.

However, I actually was able to download the latest system update, pictured above, in order to have the ability to fail to access all these services. So it wasn't a total washout.

Hi all, Marc back again here 👋. I'm seeing an increasing number of reports from people saying that they are able to get back online again – or at least to access some services.

For clarity, there's still no word from Sony, and the number of reports on Down Detector has not changed much over the past few hours. But on Reddit and X, at least, people are posting that they are either able to access the PS Store, or to log in to certain games.

It's a start, at least.

A potential workaround!

And there's more good news!

Thanks to a tip from Chiana Dickson, a content editor at TechRadar's sister site Homes & Gardens, our editor Jacob Krol is now able to play some of the titles downloaded to his PlayStation 5.

Here's Jake:

"It's all about restoring a license for a game – think of this as renewing the title.

"Head to Settings on the PS5, select 'Users and Accounts', and then Other. You might notice that all the other sections fail to load, but fear not. Under 'Other', then select 'Restore Licenses' and select the titles you'd like to do this process for.

"I selected Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, and after about a four-minute process, the license was restored, and the game began to open. Aside from a long loading time of the game opening, I was able to hop back in and start playing.

"Seemingly, this appears to be a workaround for at least playing titles on the PlayStation 5 that were downloaded during this PSN outage. I'm trying it for a few others now, but if you have luck, send us an email to let us know. And a major thanks and shoutout to Chiana!"

Even more good news (for some)!

Hi, Jacob Krol taking over for a bit here!

Whether or not that restore license fix gets you back to gaming locally, Krispy Kreme wants to make up for PlayStation's outage. In a new post on X (formerly Twitter), the doughnut chain that's pretty popular in the United States is offering free sweet treats from "5-7 PM" today at what we assume will be participating locations.

The tweet reads, "Calling all gamers: this play station still works 🍩 Grab a free Original Glazed Doughnut today from 5-7 PM—because sweet rewards don’t need a server."

It's clear some social media managers are having fun today, and who knows, this might encourage PlayStation to provide an update on the outage. For what it's worth, the original glazed is also arguably the best Krispy Kreme flavor.

While there are scattered reports of some services returning from users, here's a quick status update. We've had no further update from PlayStation officially, and the official status page shows basically everything in red with the reading, "Some services are experiencing issues."

Some good news is that there is away to restore licenses for downloaded games to play those locally – you can scroll down a bit further to see those instructions.

Regarding my online status on my PlayStation 5, it now shows the green circle for online, but under connection status, my console failed to reach the PlayStation network.

If you're having any doubt or hesitation about trying to restore licenses as a route for playing already downloaded games, fear not. I confirmed it worked on a family member's console – a PlayStation 5 Digital Edition – and we've gotten a few emails from TechRadar readers confirming that it is indeed a fix, even if it's just a temporary one.

I had already used it for Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, but it also worked for a few other titles. Here are those steps again:

Head to Settings on the PS5, select 'Users and Accounts', and then Other. You might notice that all the other sections fail to load, but fear not. Under 'Other, ' then select 'Restore Licenses' and select the titles for which you'd like to do this process.

Sony's PlayStation status page shows many services are experiencing outages. Still, we've received some good news emails from TechRadar's readers, with some reporting that parts of the PlayStation Network are back up and that restoring game licenses appears to be working.

A few have said they've been able to rejoin lobbies, while another let us know that the PlayStation Network app appears online and can view their profile again, trophies won, and a complete game library.

I can view the PlayStation Network and Store tabs on the PlayStation 5, and my online status is back, but the connection status under network still shows that it's failing to connect. I also see a few more positive posts on X (formerly Twitter) under the PlayStation Network and PSN Down tags.

It seems that games with multiplayer are beginning to recover as well. Jaz in the UK shared that it was all backup and running as of 8:40 PM GMT, which matches up to about 3:40 PM here on the east coast of the United States. Jaz was able to join a lobby and the waiting room for Gran Turismo 7, and once in the race, said it was "as smooth as it was before the outage."

We're still waiting for an official update from PlayStation, though, as the last time the company commented was close to 20 hours ago. The @AskPlayStation account on X (formerly Twitter) hasn't been silent, though, with a likely pre-scheduled post about how to expand storage going live about an hour ago.

Hopefully, it will encourage them to provide a fresh update.

Yes, my PlayStation 5 here in New Jersey, US, is still failing to connect to the PlayStation Network, but that's not stopping me from adding this month's PlayStation Plus Games to my library.

I successfully added Pac-Man World Re-Pac, Payday 3, and High On Life to my library, and I am currently attempting to download the Pac-Man title. We'll see if that works, but I am keeping my fingers crossed.

More reports of PlayStation Network returning

It seems downloads are back online, as Pac-Man is ready to play on my console. And in even better news, 'Connection Status' under 'Network' shows that I am signed in to the PlayStation Network as of 5 PM ET. There is still no update from PlayStation or a change on its status page, but it appears to be coming back for many impacted users.

One TechRadar reader, Andrew in the UK, shared that the PlayStation Network is back and that his son could play Rocket League multiplayer, which is excellent news.

While DownDetector reports did spike to over 70,000 at the spark of this outage, they've since decreased to just a few thousand, currently sitting at 3,203 reports as of 5:02 PM ET. Those will likely continue to drop as some PlayStation users across the globe – in the UK and the United States – are porting that service is returning.

We are also approaching the 24-hour mark of this outage, but we haven't heard from PlayStation in any official capacity in many hours. The official status page still shows all services are impacted, but it could be a while before we see an update from PlayStation and even longer before a cause is revealed.

If you're still impacted and trying to play downloaded games on your PlayStation, you can reset your license. The instructions below worked for us and several TechRadar readers.

Head to Settings on the PS5, select 'Users and Accounts', and then Other. You might notice that all the other sections fail to load, but fear not. Under 'Other, ' then select 'Restore Licenses' and select the titles for which you'd like to do this process.

And while I did need to perform those steps earlier to get some titles to open, games are back to loading as they should on my PlayStation 5 console. So that's a good sign as well.

If you're near a Krispy Kreme, it might not be a bad idea to visit if you're still waiting for PlayStation Network to come back online or just in the mood for a doughnut. The popular chain is offering a free Original Glazed doughnut from 5PM to 7PM.

Additionally, reports on Down Detector are still trending downwards, which is a good thing, and some folks are commenting updates on the service, noting that PlayStation Network is returning. It's far from an update from PlayStation itself, but as is generally the case with outages, those impacted greatly help to tell the story.

Down Detector also shows this outage's scale from over 70,000 to around 2,600 reports. The same can be said for the countless posts on X (formerly Twitter) and the many threads on Reddit.

We're past the 24-hour mark, and while PlayStation has said nothing in many hours – and didn't provide much clarity in its only released statement – it seems that some parts of the PlayStation Network are recovering. We've heard from several TechRadar readers that they're back online, and my console appears to be back with regular connectivity.

Many other PlayStation users have taken to social media to note it's back online, at least in some capacity, and reports of issues on Down Detector are slowing down. It appears the service is slowly but surely returning, and that's a good thing!

We're still keeping an eye on things, and we'll be keeping this live story going, especially considering the official status page still notes, "Some services are experiencing issues."

Of course, if we hear back from PlayStation or if another statement is posted widely, we'll share it here.

PlayStation Network 'has been restored'

After an over 24-hour outage, PlayStation has just posted that "PSN has been restored." on the @AskPlayStation account on X (formerly Twitter). Additionally, the post points folks to the official status page that now reads, "All services are up and running."

PlayStation also took the moment to apologize for the hours-long service outage, but the cause is still unknown. The statement in full reads: "PSN has been restored. You should be able to access online features without any problems now. For more details: https://status.playstation.com Sorry for the inconvenience!"

The outage was wide-reaching and even stopped some folks – myself included – from playing some already downloaded games. I, for one, and many other users who felt this outage, hope PlayStation eventually comments on what went wrong.

Whatever the cause, the good news is that we're up and running now. Reports on Down Detector have dropped steeply, and there are multiple posts on social networks from gamers happy that they can get online.

That said, many remain frustrated at both the length of time it took to restore services and the lack of communication from Sony during the outage. It will be interesting to find out what caused it and what repercussions, if any, there will be.

I'll keep an eye on things for a while to make sure nothing changes – but assuming it doesn't, I'll let you get back to your gaming.

Good morning, Marc here again.

And it is a good morning for PlayStation gamers – because not only is PSN back up and running with (seemingly) no glitches, but Sony has also announced that all PS Plus subscribers will receive "an additional 5 days of service."

In a post on X/Twitter, the @AskPlayStation account described the outage as "an operational issue" and thanked the community for their patience. Presumably they didn't spend too much time online yesterday, because patience did not appear to be the overriding emotion on display.

An extra five days of PS Plus might sound fair, given that PSN was only down for around 24 hours – but some may have preferred a free game or financial compensation. It's also notable that non-subscribers won't get anything, even if they also were also impacted by the outage.

Regardless of the compensation being offered, some PlayStation gamers are still unhappy – and with good reason, some would say.

Here's our full report on the 5-day PS Plus extension and the reaction to it.