Over the weekend, the IT infrastructure of the PlayStation Network gaming platform experienced a global outage that lasted almost a day. According to the service's status page, the problems occurred on February 8 and affected access to accounts, gaming and social features, PlayStation Video, PlayStation Store, and the PlayStation Direct website.
Sony's announcement also noted that users may have difficulty launching games, apps, or network features.
The problem was finally resolved on February 9, however Sony did not specify the cause. The company offered all users an additional five days of free use of their online accounts as an apology.
The outage was one of the longest the platform has ever experienced. In April 2011, hackers gained unauthorized access to Sony's servers, resulting in the exposure of 77 million users' personal information. The company was forced to shut down PSN to investigate the incident and strengthen security. The servers were down for 23 days, during which time users were unable to play online games, purchase content or use other PlayStation services.
