On February 7^th, Ask PlayStation’s account on X stated, “We are aware some users might be currently experiencing issues with PSN.” A significant amount of PlayStation Network users experienced this outage, so this response from Sony seemed fairly underwhelming. At 12:07 on the 9^th of February, Ask PlayStation announced that PSN had “recovered from an operational issue” and that users of PSN would receive five free days of the service as an apology for the downtime.

Sony had, unsurprisingly, little to say about this network outage, leading many people to be curious about why Sony’s network had this kind of unexpected failure. In 2014, PSN was taken down by the notorious group of black hat hackers known as Lizard Squad who staged a DDoS attack against PSN. However, no group has yet claimed to have hacked PSN or otherwise attacked their network, and Sony is oddly quiet about what exactly caused their network (which over 100 million people use every month) to become available. This current situation could possibly be from a denial of service attack, although time will tell the exact details.

Author or copyright owner of this image is Unknown but presumably Lizard Squad

Digital versions of the PlayStation 5 were not capable of playing single-player games during this outage, and certain types of DRM (Digital Rights Management) prevented standard PS5 discs from being playable in certain cases. Setting a PS5 as the primary console can allow gamers to play discs, but changing that setting requires access to PSN. To further exemplify this issue, if an individual bought a PS5 and a physical game during the outage, they would not be able to play it because the initial setup and creation of a PSN account require that same network access. If someone purchases an add-on disc drive for a digital PS5, this device laughably also requires a network connection to pair the drive. The more network-only requirements for consoles and PC gaming services have simply increased the points of failure when trying to use these devices, making these outages increasingly devastating for companies.

Unfortunately, consumers who have purchased games on consoles, whether digital or physical copies, seem to barely own their games. Being able to play a purchased game at any time without having to rely on unusual stipulations is why gamers buy physical media, but that format is clearly as susceptible to outages as the digital versions, which is unnecessary and clearly problematic. Console gaming is rapidly becoming service-based, where users are permitted to play games only when Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo permit them to do so. Clear and understandable videogame ownership terms are becoming increasingly rare, and the same problem plagues many PC games that require a server connection before launching a game.

Microsoft is pushing for Xbox Game Pass as aggressively as ever, and if they were to have an outage like this PSN debacle, none of those games would be playable while the service is down. Games as a service at the bare minimum demand secure networking with high uptimes and faulty networks with weak security against attacks, making the future of gaming look bleak.

Thank you for reading. I will return with more updates as they become available.

-Ryan Richardson Barrett