A number of PlayStation owners reported issues playing certain games starting on Friday. Soon after the reports started rolling in, Sony updated its PlayStation Network status to indicate that it is experiencing issues in its 'games and social' category -- an issue that has persisted through Saturday and into Sunday with no clear relief in sight.
Only a day after Microsoft fixed its Xbox outage issue, Sony is experiencing similar things with its PlayStation Network (PSN). The company's current outage, which has been happening for the past several hours, impacts game and social features across the PlayStation product family, including the PS4 and PS5, as well as older devices like the PS3 and PS Vita.
The Internet has definitely made the world a smaller place but that does have its price. Being an Internet-dependent culture means that when Internet services go down, many have no recourse but to sit it out and wait for things to go green again, hopefully, sooner rather than later. That's especially true for critical services like email and search but even games these days can be blocked by a remote server outage. That's apparently the case with Sony's PlayStation Network that suffered a sudden and unexplained outage across many of its services.
Better late than never, as they say, and that applies especially for squashing software bugs. All non-trivial software have bugs and that's true both for games as well as the platforms that run these games. Although the PlayStation 5 is just around the corner, Sony is still giving its current PS4 console some much-needed attention by opening up its bug-hunting program to the public at large.
It's that time of year again -- Sony is back with another PlayStation Store Spring Sale, this one offering up to 50-percent off the cost of games. As with past PS Store sales, the new spring sale covers both familiar and obscure game titles, some discounted so deeply that they're nearly free, while others are substantially discounted compared to their usual price. The sale comes just in time for everyone stuck in quarantine.
It seems that Internet services promoting this period of forced or voluntary quarantine as a perfect opportunity to catch up on videos and games may have been a tad premature. In Europe, the Internet is groaning under the sudden strain coming from significantly increased use both for work and especially for play. That has prompted many streaming services to throttle their quality to give way to more important uses and Sony's PlayStation Network is no exception.
This week, Sony finally made it possible for PlayStation users to change their PSN ID, a request players have been making for years. Ahead of the feature's broad launch to all customers, however, Sony published a long list of FAQ about the change and usernames in general. Among other things, players were warned their new name shouldn't violate the company's guidelines, and now we know what happens when someone doesn't follow that rule.
Refunds are a tricky thing when it comes to digital games, and today, we see Sony attempting to navigate just that problem by silently updating its refund policy for the PlayStation Store. The good news is that full digital games, DLC, themes, avatars, and season passes all come with a 14-day return policy. The bad news, however, is that there are some fairly restrictive requirements when it comes to refund eligibility.
Almost everything is connected to the Internet these days. One benefit of that is the availability of data and services almost everywhere. One disadvantage is that it can take little to bring connected devices down. That was the hard truth that PlayStation 4 owners learned over the weekend when a simple message sent through Sony's PlayStation Network or PSN would cause the console to crash repeatedly. That exploit has reportedly now been fixed but, for some PS4 owners, the damage has already been done.
After a round of rumors suggesting as much, Sony has confirmed that it will indeed be allowing PlayStation Network users to change their names. This feature has been requested endlessly since the PlayStation Network was launched back in 2006, and now, nearly 12 years later, Sony is finally ready to flip the switch on this functionality. If you've got one of those PSN names that makes you cringe every time you look at it, you'll soon be able to do something about it and leave that name in the past.
PlayStation 4 owners have been complaining about issues with the PSN service most of today (Thursday), primarily about trouble getting into in-game parties and joining voice chats. Sony updated the PSN status page with a warning about Gaming and Social issues earlier today, saying about 4PM EST that it was investigating the issue. No update has been given and the issues persist.
Sony has taken PSN in a direction few of us were probably expecting today. The company has launched a new service called "My PlayStation," which allows you to access some parts of the PlayStation Network through a broswer on a PC, Mac, or on mobile devices. At the moment, there isn't a whole lot you can do using My PlayStation, but it still has some basic features in place.