On February 9, Sony announced that all PlayStation Plus members would receive an additional five days of service following a global outage that disrupted the PlayStation Network (PSN) for approximately 18 hours on Friday and Saturday.
Sony stated on Sunday that "Network services have fully recovered from an operational issue. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank the community for their patience," without specifying the cause of the outage.
The outage, starting late Friday, rendered users unable to sign in, play online games, or access the online store. By Saturday evening, the company confirmed that the PSN had been reinstated.
The PlayStation Network is a crucial service for Sony's gaming division, catering to millions of users worldwide.
At its peak, the outage impacted about 7,939 users in the U.S. and around 7,336 users in the UK on Saturday afternoon as reported by Downdetector.com, which monitors outages by compiling status reports from various sources, including users.
"PlayStation is back up again after being down for a whole day. Sony at least saved millions of Gamers their Sunday right after ruining their Saturday," expressed a user.
Sony has previously faced more severe outages, such as in 2014, when a disruption forced the PlayStation Network offline for several days during the holiday season. Additionally, a security breach in 2011 compromised the personal data of nearly 77 million users, resulting in a month-long shutdown and a regulatory investigation.