One of the big unfortunate themes of the year, besides broken games, is the amount of times PSN or Xbox live has been down this year. Now I know that it isn't always their fault since they have been the target of DDoS attacks but I'm getting really tired of not being able to play online games on PS4. I haven't been able to connect to PSN since christmas day and I think Sony should seriously start to rethink how they handle these kind of things. Now this isn't some form of attack on Sony or Playstation since I'm mostly really happy about my PS4 and it's the platform I play most of my games on these days. But the amount of times PSN has been down throughout the year not only to these DDoS attacks but also because of regular maintenance is unacceptable in my opinion. I still play games more or less every day so I might encounter this more than most people but I fell like I encounter PSN being down atleast once every week for maintenance and these constant DDoS attacks is really getting frustrating. Anyway I just had to get this off my chest.

I know it's not 100% Sonys fault every time they get attacked but I think it's unacceptable that PSN is down for what seems like 3-4 days every time these DDoS attacks has happened and to be fair Microsoft has also been down because of these attacks so it's not only Sonys problem. But I do think Sony should be better at handling this. I do actually pay Sony a yearly subscription to play online games and I'm starting to feel like I'm not getting my moneys worth with the amount of times I have experienced PSN being down and not being able to play online games.

What's your thoughts on all of this?

Wait, is PSN still down? Wow, that is really terrible for the users. XBL has at least been up for, what, around two days now.

It really is a shame that some people think bringing down these services are okay and fun.

I'm pretty sure that both Sony and Microsoft will have to give out some free stuff as a result of all this, even though Xbox Live has been working perfectly for me.

It's suppose to be up and running

PSN been working fine for me the last couple of hours. Also not a lot you can do about a DDOS attack, but it'd be great if I wasn't locked out of all my games because it can't reach a server.

I was just able to login for the first time in 48 hours. I can't access the store though it says it is down for maintenance.

PSN has been working for me since 3 hours ago and I'm in California. Word around the internet is that it's working for a lot of people now. It's slowly coming back up

It is acceptable, it's not an outage because of normal circumstances. They are getting hit hard.

@privodotmenit: if you have a tough month and can't make ends meet to pay for another month of PSN then Somy won't care. Likewise as a paying customer it's not your problem that they are getting "hit hard" - once you start asking people to pay money for your service you're taking on a certain responsibility to provide that service. Also as mentioned above PSN has been down intermittently throughout the year, not just now. For all their chest pounding and mocking of Microsoft on various issues, Sony is still having a hard time getting their act together on a great many aspect of their new console. they are getting dangerously close to making a full loop of becoming too boastful once again.

PSN is up for me, it's just outrageously slow right now. My annoyance with Sony (as well as Microsoft for the XBL issues, although I didn't encounter them myself) is pretty minimal. I'm just not savvy enough in my knowledge about these sorts of technical issues to offer any real criticism. For all I know these companies are doing their absolute best to deal with the risible people behind the DDOS attacks, so I just keep my mouth shut. Don't wanna add my uninformed whinging to what I'm sure is an already deafening amount of noise heading their way.

I'm more annoyed at the mentality and motives of those who participate in the attacks. The only good that could come out of this is if Sony's security and infrastructure tightens up.

No store access for me. I guess I won't be getting that copy of Alien Isolation

You cannot make yourself 100% safe against DDoS attacks, Sony are also not the ones in full charge (software and hardware and on-site) of their server parks because they're with Amazon, who themselves have long had trouble with DDoS attacks, they have even DDoSed themselves a few times, and been DDoSed internally. It would only make sense to extend sales/PS+ subs by each day it has issues though.

Put the children responsible for the attacks to good use. A lot of people who are useful to humanity and the planet need blood, plasma and organ donations.

Here's an image from twitter illustrating how nice it would be to give blood, plasma and organs to people in need:

As you can see it would be very nice and the world would be a better place, with more useful better people than before.

I was able to log in yesterday, but no messages/friends/stores/game authentication.

Which is a shame, because from what I hear the Xbox One was down for about 10 hours, and it seems like the PS4 is now entering day three. And I pay for this?!

And that's because they know PSN is the easier target being on Amazon, instead of Microsoft's Live which is on the far more reliable and wide-spread Azure.

No it hasn't. I know a bunch of people who still can't connect.

Well, it's not like Sony wants PSN to still be having issues. They're working on it, and it's increasingly more rare to find companies that haven't been sniped at by hackers at some point or another. I'm sure they'd have loved to get everything back in working order within a couple of hours of the attack, but that obviously didn't happen. They'll probably make amends for it some way or another, and hopefully have a better response planned the next time something like this happens- because it definitely won't be the last time.

Also who cares all the good games are on the WiiU anyways.

Well, I stand corrected then, hopefully everyone can get online again soon.

I haven't checked today, but late last night I was still unable to get on PSN (the last time I was able to was Christmas Eve). In a way, I am glad it happened as it rekindled my motivation to get back into playing through Dragon Age instead of constantly playing Advanced Warfare multiplayer. The problem is though that it takes so long for the game to realizes the Dragon Age servers are not responding that I get to sit through the main menu theme about two times in a row before it stops trying and actually bring me to the main menu.

When things like this happen, I get even more uneasy about the possibility of always online fully digital consoles in the future.

I still can't log in at the moment, it's not an urgent matter but it is starting to grate a little bit.

How dare they get hacked on Christmas. It's like they were asking for it. They probably shouldn't dress in such skimpy clothing.

I still can't log in and it's been like this for over 2 days now. :(

i was on psn almost all day yesterday with my friends on ps3,so i have no idea whats going on.why havent me or my friends had problems that much?maybe ps3 had less issues then ps4?who knows.

XBL went down? I knew PSN was down for a while, but didn't know XBL was hit too, i was on it yesterday watching The Interview so it might be fixed now.

@castiel: I think it sucks that there are people who get enjoyment doing these kinds of things. I wish the service had been up earlier, but I have no idea what it takes to recover from a DDOS attack so I have no idea if Sony should have had it up earlier or not. Since they want people to pay for their console and service, I believe that they were honestly trying to get it up as quickly as possible. However, it also wouldn't shock me if a little extra time was spent trying put in some things to try and prevent this from happening in the future. Having worked for a huge company, I know that it makes sense to use the downtime you have to put in preventative measures if you can, since scheduling downtime to do it later can be problematic. Overall, 100% of my frustration is directed toward the ones responsible for taking them down in the first place.

I was on PSN all day yesterday no problem. (PS3, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel)

And yeah, not Sony's fault. These attacks are bullshit and there's really no easy defense against them short of finding the people responsible and making an example of them to possibly curb subsequential attacks.

@pezen: If you want to play Dragon Age with no wait then before starting up the game simply go to user settings and log out of PSN. Your profile is still set to you and DA won't even bother trying to check and will dump you straight to menus. It's what I've been doing for the past two days.

Either way, so much for bringing your next gen console to a cabin in the woods without internet to play games.

That all digital future some people are looking forward to is looking better and better huh?

Ugh, anyone have any bets on whether Sony will extend their holiday sale because of this?

Yeah, it's really a bummer.

Seems like it is up a bit tho. The store doesn't work for me but a game I was downloading before the outage is actually still downloading. Same with Xbox for me as of last night. Live is working but I couldn't get on the store.

Is it unacceptable? I dunno. Paying for a service I cannot use is always annoying. But it's not like I'm ever compensated by my cable company when my internet goes out for 2-3 days.

It'd only be disappointing if it was another month long fiasco like last generation.

It's 2 days as a result of a DDoS attack. I don't think Sony owes anyone anything. Shit happens, and almost no service you pay for will have an availability of 100%, it's unrealistic to expect so.

Similar to the classic question: Does a falling tree make noise if there's no one around to hear it? What happens to trophies you earn when not signed into PSN? I can't check them and I'm worried that they're not going to ping.

At least on PS3 they sync up properly, not sure about PS4.

Does anyone think Sony wants their money maker to be out of whack for his long? Of course not, they got fucked. When they get it up they get it up.

I don't think it's Sony's fault and I don't think they need to have a make-good offer, but I would certainly appreciate it. I don't think it's the fact that it's been down for a few days, but that it's been down at the worst possible few days of the year.

The only bummer for me is that I was going to buy Metro Redux for like, $10 on PSN. Then I went to download it and the Internet farted.

Oh well.

The only unacceptable thing about this is that I won't be able to upgrade hawkmoon and gallahorn before Xur leaves the tower.

That makes me feel a bit better. I've been gunning through GTA V with the crazy intention of getting the platinum.

@somejerk: i do like your way of thinking, as unfortunately unfeasable as it may be.

Sony doesn't owe us anything, but hopefully they can build their defenses up as best they can after this.

Well PSN is down again for me, shut down to take little break came back and can't connect and the PSN status page says its offline.

Man, I'm so glad I don't own a new console.

Still down for me as well, can't redeem a game I paid for.

You mean like a PS3?

@ericsmith: Weirdly enough, I'm told PSN on PS3 works(ed?). Cause that makes total sense

The last few months and this latest incident begs the question: When did 'nerds' become the biggest jerks on the planet?

It's really sad that our online connection is constantly being held hostage by lonely virgins with tiny penises.

@ericsmith: all my PS3 games are single player.

@rollingzeppelin: That's not the point...online games still exist on PS3, and they're still affected by stuff like this.

This is like getting angry at Walmart because they were super busy on a holiday. The servers only have so much capacity, and until they enough to handle a connection from every single device on the planet, they won't be immune to DDoS attacks. The people we should be getting angry at are the fuckers who are participating in these attacks, not the companies getting affected by them.

Me: "This would be a great week to get back into FFXIV on PS4!"

Universe: "HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHA"