PlayStation Network has been knocking around now for nearly 20 years, with the service launching alongside the release of the PS3 in November 2006. Originally starting life as a means of hopping online for multiplayer (for free, we might add), PSN grew to offer a wealth of content including digitally downloadable games via the PlayStation Store, communities, tournaments, and much more. However, it’s also been the subject of numerous downtimes that have resulted in console owners being unable to actually play anything, sometimes for prolonged periods of time.
With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of every PSN outage to date that stopped users actually being able to play their games. See below for all the major downtime.
Every PSN Outage To Date Which Stopped You Playing Your Games
- April 20 — May 14, 2011 – This was the big one. Sony’s PlayStation Network was pulled offline for 24 days due to an external intrusion, which compromised data for 77 million PSN accounts and impacted both Sony’s flagship online service and Qriocity. Sony offered a Welcome Back program as a means of apology for the downtime, offering users a selection of free games to download as well as an extension of membership for existing PS Plus members. LittleBigPlanet, inFamous, and Dead Nation were among the titles offered.
- December 25, 2014 – Notorious hacking group Lizard Squad were responsible for this one on Christmas Day, which also hit Xbox Live. The DDoS attack caused about five hours of initial disruption to services, although it would take a couple of days to restore full stability to PSN.
- February 7 – 8, 2025 – This ranks as the second-longest downtime for PSN after the 2011 hack, and saw the outage last for about 24 hours. The downtime impacted account management, gaming, video, and the PlayStation Store, although the cause of the outage was never disclosed.
- Late 2024 – While Sony never explained the cause behind this downtime, it lasted seven hours and took down all online services on a global basis
- March 2026 – Users were unable to log in to their profiles for over four hours to a sever disruption
- June 21, 2026 – PSN was down for about two hours before coming back online, during which time it impacted online gaming, Trophies, challenges and other services. Sony acknowledged the disruption on its service status page, but didn’t divulge the reason behind the downtime.
- July 24, 2026 – PSN services were down for over three hours and affected the ability to play digitally downloaded games, as well as knocking out a number of key features including the PlayStation Store, the PlayStation App, online gaming, and more. The performance would improve overtime but users continued to report issues, and it would take about six hours for everything to get back to normal.