After a nearly 24-hour outage that caused the PlayStation Network to be entirely unusable, Sony has offered a free gift to s, but it comes with a bit of a catch. The outage that caused all online services to go offline still has yet to be explained by Sony, but given the downtime, they felt as though s deserved a gift as an apology. The catch here is that in order to utilize their gift, players must have an active PlayStation Plus hip.

In a recent X post from the official Ask PlayStation , Sony states they will be offering PlayStation Plus an additional five days of service. While some s are happy with this decision, others are wondering why they chose five free days rather than explaining the issue that occurred in the first place.

Sony Gives PS Plus 5 Days Of Service After Outage

s Want An Explanation As To What Happened

While it is generous of Sony to offer any form of compensation for the outage, fans are more concerned about what caused the outage in the first place. The X post garnered a lot of attention, and while some praise Sony for their choice to give PS Plus five extra days, others would rather know why the service was down for nearly a day. Commenter MADkurious Gamer writes, "Sweet, but can you also tell us what happened and how you’ll be working to avoid it in the future?"

This comment does bring up a valid point, as some wonder if outages such as this will be more common or if it was just a one-off issue that has been taken care of. There was speculation that the outage occurred due to a data breach since other services fell victim to a DDoS attack at the end of 2024, but Sony has yet to confirm or deny whether that was the cause.

Sony Is No Stranger To Outages

A Massive Outage In 2011 Lasted Almost A Month

In 2011, the PlayStation Network saw its largest outage in Sony's history, as it lasted nearly a month. The reason behind this attack was a network hack that left over 77 million s vulnerable, including their s and other personal data. During the attack, Sony was vocal and warned s, even via email, about the data breach. Sony's PSN is one of the largest holders of credit cards, and this hack had s concerned about how much of their data was in the hands of the attackers.

Sony hired an outside source to investigate what took place and took several steps to upgrade and revamp their security protocol. Since then, while there have been minor outages, none have come close to the 24-day hack, until the latest outage that lasted nearly a day. Many fans wonder why Sony was so vocal during the previous outages but left fans in the dark this time around, and what could have caused the PSN to go dark for 23 hours.

What Could Have Caused The 23-Hour PlayStation Network Outage?

s Have Their Theories

During the outage, Tom Warran claimed that the outage could have been the result of a DDoS attack, as Xbox had suffered from one in December 2024. While Sony has yet to give an official answer about whether that is the root cause or not, fans believe this could be the case. During the outage, one can assume Sony put all of its resources toward fixing the issue at hand, but now that the issues with the PSN have been resolved, "why the radio silence?", fans wonder.

s wonder if this downtime could have been due to a "copycat" attack like the one that Xbox suffered from at the end of 2024, but without any information from Sony, it is hard to determine if data has been breached or if it was simply internal server issues. One can only hope this was a case of an internal operations issue, but until Sony releases more information, fans are left to speculate and curate theories.

There Is Still No Explanation As To What Caused The PSN Outage

Silence Is Causing Even More Outrage

While any form of compensation for an unforeseen issue is a great thing, fans are worried about the root cause of the outage in the first place. The 24-day outage of PlayStation services caused a lot of chaos, and some players lost their PlayStation 3 profiles due to the attack. This has led some PlayStation fans to lose trust in Sony over time and is one of the many reasons s would like an explanation as to what caused this "operational issue" to occur.

There is no information as to what caused the PlayStation Network outage at this time, but hopefully, Sony will release more details soon.

Source: X