Sony's PlayStation Network services restored after global outage

A major outage of Sony's PlayStation Network that left tens of thousands of gamers unable to access online services, stores and multimedia apps for several hours has ended, the company said on Saturday.

Playstation said on its social media platforms that it became aware of the problem Friday night, confirming users' mounting complaints around the globe.

"Network services have fully recovered from an operational issue," it said in an update the following day. "We apologize for the inconvenience and thank the community for their patience. All PlayStation Plus members will automatically receive an additional 5 days of service."

Reports of connectivity issues had spread quickly across social media, with users frustrated by error messages and login failures.

"PSN down on a Friday night is criminal," a London-based user named Ramos wrote on X.

Shortly after, Sony responded to users' concerns, confirming the problems without providing details on the possible cause of the outage.

The Sony website confirmed problems with its PlayStation Network services. The PlayStation support webpage said "some services are experiencing issues," including its account management and gaming and social services, as well as PlayStation Video, PlayStation Store and PlayStation Direct.

Last October, the PlayStation network was down for several hours.