Sony’s PlayStation Network is currently experiencing issues and is offline, meaning that millions of PS3, PSVita and PS4 owners are unable to connect to the network or play games online.
There have been issues with the PlayStation Network for several hours now and Sony have acknowledged that they are experiencing problems but so far have failed to resolve them and bring the service back online. As of yet, there is no sign of the issue being resolved or an estimated time-frame for service to be restored.
We’re aware that some users are having trouble accessing PSN. Thanks for your patience as we investigate. https://t.co/HmIuBnB2sZ
— PlayStation Europe (@PlayStationEU) January 4, 2016
It’s unclear what the reason behind the network going down is, although some have speculated that it is most probably down to a DDOS attack, which is when networks of computers flood the servers with so many requests that it crashes them.
This isn’t the first time PlayStation owners have experienced prolonged outages, with the most severe one coming back in 2011 when PSN was hacked, leading to the service being offline for 23 days. There were also issues over Christmas due to DDOS attacks, although those attacks weren’t as severe as the ones experienced back in December 2014 by Lizard Squad.
DDOS’ers Phantom Squad had threatened to launch attacks against the PlayStation Network and claimed responsibility for the service going down last month, however their Twitter account’s have since been suspended.
Hopefully the service will be restored shortly and that this isn’t a serious problem.