Tongues are, as you’d expect, wagging. Every social network on the internet is asking what’s up with the PlayStation Network, and the silence from camp Sony is, figuratively, deafening.
Nobody outside of the adamantine walls (lined as they are with the glistening carcasses of PSPgo consoles) is saying very much, and people are getting annoyed, anxious, worried – some have even switched allegiance and splashed out on a 360. Or so they say.
So, what’s going on? Well, naturally, we don’t know either, but we’ve been watching the web over the last day or so and have collated what seem to be the three most popular ideas and thoughts.
The network has been DDoS’d – this, a concentrated traffic assault, doesn’t seem likely. The PSN immediately tells you the thing is off ‘for maintenance’ and so suggests that, from a layman’s perceptive sure, that the actual network is bobbing along nicely. It is, apparently, just the actual sign-in authentication process that’s currently offline, something echoed by the fact that pre-started downloads continue to zip by in the background.
Besides, Anon have already said this isn’t anything to do with them.
The PSN has been hacked – this seems more likely, but hopefully not what’s going on. If customer details were compromised Sony would surely have said by now, it has been a few days – at least that’s our hope. Other thoughts related include Trophies being reset and download counts being wiped – massively unlikely – we’re pretty sure Sony knows what they’re doing in terms of backups.
Hackers found a way to get free games on the Store – this holds a bit of weight as the most likely. Despite having access to a debug PS3, this one’s new to us, but we’ve heard on Twitter and a few forums that you can grant PSN credit so that testers and so on can grab games without handing over real money, on the development version of the network.
The PSN on debug machines doesn’t require any sort of fund transaction, fake or otherwise, but according to a post on NeoGAF, it might be something to do with authenticating licences for full game packages (which can be downloaded). This authentication system may have been compromised over the last week or so, and Sony have locked off the PSN to get this fixed, especially if the methods have become public.
Some people on Twitter are asking whether payment card details have been compromised, without answer.
The truth is we don’t know what’s going on, and only a very select few do. Whilst Sony are battling to get it fixed (they are, of course, despite the moans: anyone that thinks otherwise has no idea about shares, shareholders and revenue, not to mention public opinion) public updates are few and far between, causing tension and a sense of the unknown.
It’s annoying, yes, but what can we do?
Muted
i think this is seriously hypocritical of people i mdan ive been telling everyone that i almost garuntee that the problem was this i even posted in the forums saying im a silent member and logged in because you guys should know and i got source of gtfo and as soon as you guys put it in the news article wveryone shifts to oh my god it must be right
tatoemonkey
What?
Muted
go and check the forums for psn down i stated this to people and thats the response i got no one came back to me when i said i could find link of someone offering a service to make your psn on the dev server but oh well nevermind
tatoemonkey
Sorry but so……………..
fattyuk
LOL.
Are you serious.
Daywalker
I’d take you seriously if you used proper punctuation.
Muted
haha sorry i have no idea about that sort of thing maybe ill start looking o make myself better
TURRICAN-808
Its been way more than two days, I’d say 3 days and 8 hours, or was it 7 hours….
KeRaSh
It’s the Easter weekend. Surely you don’t expect the IT guys at the PSN data center to work during these festivities? I’m sure it will be fixed on Tuesday when someone bothers to flip the “On” switch again. :D
AfricanTech
Which is exactly when most people need PSN to be available. Grr – the one long break and you can’t play with / against your friends.
3 days and counting – in light of the poor feedback from Sony, that, is simply unacceptable.
When will big corporates learn that their customers want more information rather than less…
iamtdogg
they’ll have a 24/365 IT service so that doesn’t matter, what might though is getting a hold of new server hardware at very short notice at this time of the year?
fattyuk
it’s worldwide so Not everyone is on holidays!
KeRaSh
In a data center of that magnitude you usually have spare hardware standing by for such cases.
iamtdogg
fair point about the holidays and spare hardware… maybe depends on how much spare hardware they have and what they need
djsunna
AS far as i know the problem is in japan and whatever has happened there, be it a cable a rat’s chewed through or a hack of somekind or whatever, has had a knock on effect that has turned into a MINOR inconvenience for us. if it’s a hack that has peoples credit card detail’s at risk then keeping the network offline will surely keep the details safe until a solution is found. Sony should release a statement about it if credit card details maybe at risk and if the details are safe just to put peoples minds at ease. This situation could be handled better by Sony who have dropped the baton a few times in the past regarding PR and hiding behind the ‘maintainence’ message muddies the water a bit more but all we can do is let them get on with restoring the PSN and the people that want hourly updates from Sony about the situation need to be a bit more understanding and patient, its better the system is fixed properly rather then risk the millions of credit cards being accessed by the hackers (if this is even is the problem).
Foxhound_Solid
Lets be patient. It will all be sorted out soon.
Mason_Mk
I think someone at Sony thought it was OK to switch off the PSN service for PSP Go once they heard it was discontinued, only to find out they’ve brought down everything.
Hope is come back soon though, makes my PSP Go partly pointless as I can’t get new games, and i probably won’t be able to rent my movie tonight off the store, as well as missing out on some RDR online
bladesew
Did Sony realise when they decided to take down the service that there are thousands of people paying subscriptions to services such as Lovefilm, Mubi, Qriocity, MLB.tv and Netflix who can now not access them?
http://razoredmedia.blogspot.com
TURRICAN-808
We must be reimbursed , probably not though…..
djhsecondnature
Well considering Netflix is still working and UBI is not subscription, it’s not quite as bad,
bladesew
MUBI is a subscription service – it costs £9.99 per month in the UK.
I read a few people can get into Netflix by cancelling the login – does this mean that anyone – subscriber or not – can access the service from PS3 at the moment?
djhsecondnature
@bladesew – Really? Read this from there site:
“How much does an account on MUBI cost?
While most of the films themselves cost money—more on that below—an account on MUBI is absolutely free!”
And as for Netflix I can’t personally check, but I’ve heard people can few it fine.
SpikeyMikey23
You can pay so much to access a certain amount of content per month
moshi
Well they need to get there online ranting fix somehow.
TURRICAN-808
Three little pigs (SONY) build a house of paper (PSN). But the Big Bad Wolf (Anonymous Hackers) comes along, huffs, puffs and blows the house of paper down!
The Three Little pigs aren’t happy, they must now rebuild their house much stronger. This time its gonna be a stone house!
And thats where we are at the moment folks, three little piggies are building a stronger house!!
MadJunkBoy
haha… funny and yeahh why not?
love the three little piggies!!!
but if they are going to build a house in stone… wouldn’t that make them cavepigs? :P
InternationalGamer
When Sony in the distant future became the all powerful and started rulling the world, a small group developed a robot with high capabilities in software offense to travel back to 2011 and send multiple attacks on Sony Servers to stop the ultimate conquer of the world by Sony.