PSN Downtime Makes BBC News

The PSN’s been down now for well over a day, with sign-in still currently unavailable (even though queued downloads will still work) and there’s no sign of anything changing any time soon.

We’ve come up with ten things to do whilst the PSN is down, but Sony haven’t updated for ages now, so we’ve no idea what’s going on other than Anonymous, responsible for downtime earlier in the month, are saying they’re not involved.

“While it could be the case that other Anons have acted by themselves, AnonOps was not related to this incident and takes no responsibility for it,” said an apparent official statement.

“A more likely explanation is that Sony is taking advantage of Anonymous’ previous ill-will towards the company to distract users from the fact the outage is accutally an internal problem with the companies servers.”

Worse for Sony, however, is the news reaching the all-seeing eye of the BBC, with a story on the news site today.

The article, which will hit more people than (presumably) all the gaming sites in the world put together (and wrapped twice around the moon) will mean that Sony’s public perception will be taking a battering.

Sony’s lack of updates is starting to grind.

83 Comments

  1. I mentioned on twitter that london midland’s twitter team puts out regular updates to services that effects a could hundred people, whereas sony don’t for over 10 million

    • The sponsored ad on this page says ” Be the first to know when your website is down. Email, twitter, txt alerts” . How fitting lol

  2. I feel like I’m missing a crucial bit.

  3. They had the same problem with the leap year glitch last year. Which was reported on by the BBC. Though at least that lasted a day. Hope its back up tomorrow other wise it will be more Dissidia for me.

  4. Been building on Minecraft after completing Portal, I really want to play Portal’s co-op, I hope whatever’s going on is resolved soon…

  5. This is beginning to annoy now -.-

  6. Hopefully this will make Sony be a bit more open in future, I don’t normally complain when stuff is free, but the lack of official info is becoming a bit irritating now…

    • I’m not sure why everyone is complaining about not been kept informed? Sony clearly stated on 21st April that PSN may be down for 1 to 2 whole days. That covers them until 23rd April if I can do maths? If there’s still nothing by this time tomorrow then sure, get worried, but for now they’re covered. Everyone stop whining and let them do what they gotta do.

      There is obviously a reason it’s been down for this long – they wouldn’t just keep the service offline for teh LULz.

      • I’d do it for teh lulz tbh. Get everyone out into that oh so horrible sunlight!

        I’m away from my PS3 atm anyway so I can cope ^.^

      • It’s just kind of unprofessional. Take a look how Amazon is dealing with a few of their AWS (cloud) services being down:

        http://status.aws.amazon.com/

        It wouldn’t even take much to put peoples minds at rest. Something like “we’re having some power issues after the whole tsunami thing” or “we’ve had some corruption of data, we’ve got plenty of backups, it’s just restoring and testing, might take a few hours”.

  7. At least its not on tv

    • If it was on TV there might be a better chance of getting a statement from them (although I suppose it wouldn’t be good for them from a sales perspective etc)

    • It is. Well…. Subpar tv. Bbc3 60 second round up mentioned it. And showed someone using a 360 controller…. Fail

      • oooh, they must have had some fanboy abuse as they have now corrected their error

    • lol I seen that…

  8. Played Motorstorm earlier today and it downloaded an update so I got a bit excited thinking it was sorted but still get the “down for maintenance” message.

    • Yeah, updates still work. I was going to play Pain (thanks plus), but was greeted by an update -> made me think it was fixed too.

    • I installed a new update for Fallout NV too, if the PSN is down how is it still getting updates? Obviously their not connected….

      • No. Game updates and psn are not connected.
        I assume it is because you have to download the right version of the update, even if you’re playing a foreign version to your account.

  9. Bit OTT really IMO!

    • True dat. People can go a few days without PSN, its probably doing them good.

  10. If anon are attacking, we would understand and be sympathetic to Sony. If they have a major technical problem, we would understand and be sympathetic to Sony.

    But sticking their head in the sand (after lying last time about the ‘sporadic maintainence’) is a disgraceful way to treat your customers.

    • There’s nothing disgraceful about it. They’ve acknowledged the problem, and have said they’re investigating. They’ll let us know as and when anything changes.

      I don’t understand why some people feel the need for hourly updates which would say “nothing’s changed, still looking into it” when that’s clearly a given.

      To keep banging on about “we want updates” is as ridiculous as repeatedly pressing the button to make the lift arrive quicker, or pressing harder on the remote when the batteries are flat.

      Christ, you’d think Sony had deliberately turned it off for Easter just to piss people off.

      It’s been a lovely day – you could/should have gone outside. Or, if you’re allergic to fresh air and sunlight, I’m sure 99% of your games have a single-player mode you can play instead. (That’s a general you/your, not aimed at anyone in particular.)

      —–

      On the subject of the problem – I’m beginning to doubt its an attack by outsiders. Even when Anonymous were making a concerted effort, it wasn’t a total lock-out as it is now – some, myself included, could occasionally sign in.

      Plus, I’m sure someone would have claimed responsibility by now. There’s little point attacking something as relatively trivial as PSN without making it known why you’re doing it.

      Sony haven’t confirmed or denied an attack by outside forces, nor have they accused Anonymous. They simply said they’re investigating the possibility, which is logical given the recent Anonymous actions.

      • Couldn’t have said it better. I mean they could talk in technical terms if the average gamer would like to be baffled by a bunch of jargon which they won’t understand? Or they can ask for a day or two (which they have) and get cracking on it. I’d much rather the second option tbh.

      • Absolutely 100% spot on!!

      • Looks like it’s to do with Japan as their main data centres are held there!
        Remember because of the failed nuclear reactors there is a shortage of power in Japan. This could be one of the reasons why it is down!
        http://26star.com/profiles/blogs/psn-signin-problem-due-to

      • ‘Mike likes this’

        We always want to keep up to date with what’s going on, which could be attributed to 24 rolling news – like BBC news, but unfortunately it’s not always possible. I’d rather have Sony fix the problem ASAP than trying to answer everyone’s questions.
        I’m sure they will update us in the very near future and everyone will be happily gaming again (although there’s some great single player action to be had on the PS3.

      • Take a walk and let us weep.

      • That only makes sense if you think Sony are incompetent, which they aren’t. They won’t still be investigating at this point, they’ll know precisely what’s wrong, why this happened and how long it will take to fix.

        Seriously, I’m not saying this because I dislike Sony, in fact, it’s the opposite. Sony are providing a service and they need to realize that this service is now competing with Xbox Live. And while XBL has actually had longer downtimes than the PSN, the situations were much better dealt with. Major Nelson kept everyone constantly updated and afterwards, compensation was given (though the PSN is free, PSN+ is not).

    • Nobody wants hourly alerts. And it is a disgraceful way to treat your customers.

      If you think not, then know nothing about customer services or how companies conduct themselves this century in the slightest, or your head is so far up Sony’s ass they could regurgitate any old shit and you’d lap it up.

      • Lovely way to treat someone with an opinion cc_star.

        He didn’t aim anything directly at you but you have really insulted him there. Be a bit friendlier, he is giving him opinion. Also, I would agree with him. What do you expect ? You NEVER PAID FOR THE PSN !!!!! IT IS FREE !!!! WHEN YOU BOUGHT THE PS3 YOU DID NOT PAY AN EXTRA FOR THE PSN, IT IS A FREE BONUS SERVICE. AND GREAT TOO, I MIGHT ADD. THE SERVICE IS ONE OF THE BEST I HAVE SEEN THAT HAS BEEN OFFERED FREE OF CHARGE.

        So stop insulting people with childish and offensive comments and let people have their own opinion !

      • Pretty strong stuff cc_star. It really don’t think it’s the end of the world. I can last a few days personally. If it was a couple of weeks I’d be getting upset. I find it hard to get upset about not having access to something I don’t pay for anyway.

      • I have wondered many times how you’re a write for TSA when this site is well known for its politeness ESP when it comes to any banter. But many times I read your comments are there always rude and coming from a rather aggressive approach to the conversation.

      • I’ve always rather appreciated cc_star’s (sometimes overly) direct replies, especially since I often agree with him, heh.

      • The capslock button is just next to the A button. Use it anonymus212. Sony are really bad at Customer Service. And as for PSN being free? It’s not. You pay.

      • Somewhat of an ironic reply to customer service don’t you think? People don’t read this site because they have to, rather because they feel a connection to the writers and the way they report gaming news.

        Conducting yourself in this manner will only alienate your core readership, when they were merely offering an opinion.

      • As usual, lovely and polite to a frankly better reasoned and more sensible argument than your own.

        If Sony are having problems then it would be much better to just get on with it and try and fix it, instead of releasing the same statement every hour just to please impatient gamers who dont have anything else better to do. As I believe they have done, issueing one statement to say they’re working on it should suffice until there is anything else new and worthwhile to tell us.

      • No cc_star you should be ashamed at your pathetic bias.

        Microsoft gave very little in the way of updates during it’s two whole weeks of Xmas outage..

        http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/03/xbox-live-outage-day-13-still-up-and-down-still-preventing-fu/

        Yet that got mostly brushed under the carpet, as Microsoft are american, as are most of the gaming blogs that write their own stories (rather than sites like this that just rely on copy and paste of American stories)..

        Needless to say the whole gaming industry and news is pretty much lead by 2 or 3 gaming blogs/sites,all American and obviously anti-Sony, Pro Microsoft, all the rest just follow their lead.

        Needless to say, BBC didn’t dedicate a full page news article to the 14 day Xbox Live Xmas outage, it didn’t even get a mention, due to the biased and pro-American, pro-Corporate world we now live in.

    • Even if Sony told everyone what was happening, it won’t bring it back online any faster. If it was a world banking system that had gone down then yes, customer want updates on what’s going on, it’s real life, it’s real money, but a game? Seriously?

      • I mean I know games have different values to different people, but not so long ago online gaming to this level was unheard of. I think a lot of people find themselves wanting to play online just because they can’t. Myself included, I’ve wanted to play online a little more just because it isn’t there, if I could I probably wouldn’t be so bothered. Just chill people. It will be back up when it’s back up.

      • But I paid for PS+. So mine isn’t free.

      • You could argue that was an optional extra though, PS+ just gave you exclusive/discounted content that you can still use without access to PSN. The PSN you use is still free and is the same as non + members, you just paid for the additional content.

Comments are now closed for this post.