Sony's PlayStation Network is still down with no word on its return

Update, 2/8 4:22 p.m. ET - Sony has yet to provide an update on the status of the PlayStation Network, but gamers on social media have been posting that servers appear to be back online.

The PlayStation Network suffered a massive outage, and it doesn't appear to be coming fully back up anytime soon.

Some unknown issue caused PSN to go down Friday evening, according to the PSN status website. The outage is affecting all online functions of the network including online play, the PSN Store, and account management.

"You might have difficulty getting PlayStation Video content. We're working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience," reads the message posted on the website.

Sony didn't immediately respond to an email about the outage.

The last official update from Sony came Friday evening on the Ask PlayStation account on X.

"We are aware some users might be currently experiencing issues with PSN," the post said.

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First reports of PSN being down began at 6:14 p.m. ET on Friday, according to reports on DownDetector. The number of reports skyrocketed to more than 70,000 not long after at 6:43 p.m. ET. DownDetector's map of the outage shows it spans the U.S., but there are some PlayStation gamers who have said their service has returned while most are still unable to get online.

The outage is affecting not only online play or buying a game from the PSN Store, but it's also preventing gamers from playing certain digital games on their PlayStation devices. Those games that require a license check via the network will not load up because of the network being down.

PlayStation Portal owners are significantly affected by the outage. With no network to connect to, they are unable to do the two main functions of the device, which are to play their PS5 remotely or stream PlayStation games from the cloud.

This outage also appears to be affecting PC gamers. In recent years, Sony began porting its PS5 flagship games like God of War Ragnarök and Marvel's Spider-Man 2 to PC. These games used to require access to PSN in order to play, but Sony changed its stance on that requirement at the end of January. It does appear, however, that some gamers are unable to play their PC games due to the network being down although the reason why is unknown.

PlayStation gamers are no strangers to PSN outages.

Back in 2011, PSN went down not for a few hours, but for a few weeks. A massive cyberattack took down the network for 24 days, and it took Sony months to fully fix the issues. Sony's servers were breached during the attack, resulting in millions of PSN subscribers' information being stolen. The fallout from the hack was significant for Sony. It settled a class action lawsuit for $15 million and paid for 12 months of identity theft protection services for subscribers.