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Better than every year or so no one can play the games they supposedly “bought” due to some technical hiccup for a random yet lengthy amount of time than some percentage of people be able to more easily play our games without paying us. -some Sony/gaming industry stooge probably
In all seriousness, people need to stop being so willing to put up with this sort of easily foreseeable failing with the current way of doing digital goods. If I can’t use it without the blessing of someone else it is not buying, it is borrowing, and that severely impacts the value proposition for me personally.
Technical issues WILL happen. It is the nature of the beast, it is just terrible engineering to build what is essentially dead man switches into your customers products.
Damn reading the impact this has is some combination of hilarious and horrifying to see people bought into a service like this. If it was free or simply a monthly sub like Netflix I could kinda understand. But a sub to use things you also had to buy? Fuck that.
Not sure if this is still the case, but with Steam it used to be that if you didn’t put the client into “offline mode” ahead of time the client wouldn’t open, let alone allow you to launch a game once the connection was lost.
I hope they took care of that by now.
Tbf all platforms have this. Steams not much better. Neither is the Xbox ecosystem. We truly are in the worst timeline.
The difference is if steam goes down I might not be able to play a few games. If xbox (what is their service?) goes down you can’t play any games.
“Did you remember to plug the server back in after vacuuming the server room?”
“Shit.” "Honey, gotta make a quick jump at the office! "
Someone unplugged the Mac mini
DOSE, dept of Sony efficiency
Sony’s uptime delusions crumbling faster than a PSN auth server. Fourteen hours of radio silence while charging for the privilege of digital serfdom? Masterstroke. Remember 2011’s month-long outage? At least we got free games as consolation—now they’ll just send thoughts and prayers via shareholder memos.
”Premium service” my ass. Paywalls for multiplayer, cloud saves held hostage, and a walled garden rotting from neglect. But hey, keep funding Zuck’s yacht repairs while your PS5 gathers dust. The 2011 apology tour is dead—2025’s mantra is ”fuck you, pay more.”
Reboot the servers, Jim. Or just admit the cloud was a screensaver all along.
They sent thoughts and prayers.
5 days of PSN for free.
lol
The cloud is just someone else’s computer.
You just made a Techbro angry somewhere in the world.
Nope, people in IT know that the cloud is just someone else’s computer lol
Nope, people in IT know the cloud is actually countless servers on racks in a giant data center rotfl.
Yep, just like serverless computing that doesn’t use servers, or how games benefit heavily from the blockchain and companies are always hiring blockchain devs despite not knowing what the blockchain is or why they need blockchain devs other than because they heard they need it.
Don’t get me started with IoT.
Boy, it sure is a good thing that Sony charges a subscription fee for any and all network multiplayer traffic.
And 99% of the games I “own”. So much for a relaxing Saturday playing games. Fuck you Sony.
Really? We had a family game night last night with the purchased digital edition of Until Dawn just fine.
We did? I don’t recall this.
Been a minute (this was a nice reminder that I hadn’t even booted up my PS5 in almost a year…), but I want to say it depends on if you have your console set as your primary console or not. Primary doesn’t need to go online to authenticate. Secondary does.
Most people just have a single console so it is auto-primary. But people who bought a ps5 pro or who do super convoluted account sharing shenanigans always have trouble when auth servers are down.
Also, I think the PS+ IGC requires network to make sure you still have PS+?
I only have the one ps5. I did have a ps4 if that matters. Tried to play like 5 games this afternoon. All of them had a lock on the icon and when I tried to play it complained about PSN.
PS4 may still be your primary console.
I’m wondering. I’ll look into that. Thanks for the heads up.
That was the case for me when I got my PS5, I had to manually set the PS5 to being the primary, even though I didn’t even own the PS4 any more.
Looks like PlayStation’s Auth servers are down among everything else. Even if multiplayer was free, I don’t see how modern games would function without that service running. Who am I playing against? What’s their name? How did I get my account progress?
Just about everything multiplayer nowadays relies on account / Auth services. Especially on console.
Sure, but if it were free it’s a “you get what you pay for” situation. People are a lot more forgiving when they aren’t personally losing money.
You used to be able to type in an IP address whether or not the official server is running. Sometimes you still can, but seeing as Baldur’s Gate 3 has LAN and direct IP connection on PC but not on PlayStation, it sure seems like Sony is asking them to specifically remove the feature if they wanted it in the first place.
Then beyond that, you’ve got a mismatch behind what your money is actually for. It used to be for paying for their servers, but you often don’t even connect to Sony’s servers anymore. Plenty of games behind that same paywall have their own servers, like Call of Duty for instance, but Call of Duty’s multiplayer is behind the same paywall as Helldivers 2, which is running servers on Sony’s dime. And beyond that…the reason multiplayer is free on PC is because your purchases are funding them. The majority of game sales on consoles are now digital, just like Steam, and that is a trend that’s accelerating. Meanwhile, the subscription fee compared to free online on PC is probably one of a multitude of reasons that people are leaving consoles for PC.
You’re mixing stuff up, the direct connect for multiplayer where you put the IP has nothing to do with authentication that he’s talking about. Whenever you open up a multiplayer game it will authenticate yourself with PSN using the account you have on the playstation, then if your authentication succeeded it will authenticate with the game service-servers which will reply with stuff like your progression in the game, whether someone has sent you a message or a friend request, etc. Modern games are a platform in and of themselves, essentially they have an entire Discord on steroids internally which you’re using before, during and after playing online matches. If the PSN is down you can’t authenticate with those servers… I mean, they could allow you to login using username and password, but that’s: 1 not needed since the PSN is almost never down and 2 probably against some TOS from Sony for you to release games on their platform. So if the PSN is down you would not be able to get into the main screen for multiplayer anyways, so there’s no place where you could input the IP for the game-server you want to connect to.
I’m not defending the system, but it is what it is, games have organically evolved to have all of these social features which people do use and like, it makes sense that Sony won’t allow you to go over them and authenticate directly with the game specific service-servers and it makes sense that if you’re relying on all of that for login you also rely on it for matchmaking (which is where the IP would come in place). Could it be better? Sure, but there’s no incentive for it to be, PSN is rarely down and games (at least large ones) take forever to be sunset, and by that time there are almost no people playing them anyways.
I’m not mixing anything up. If they allowed for things like direct IP connections, you could still play Baldur’s Gate 3, online, regardless of this downtime. It wasn’t organically that we arrived here. It’s objectively worse.
This is the relevant bit of what you’re replying to:
I don’t see how modern games would function without that service running. Who am I playing against? What’s their name? How did I get my account progress?
None of that comes from the game-server but rather from the service-server. Even if social games that have those features allowed you to connect to a server directly, you would still need to connect to their servers for all of that stuff.
Direct IP connection has nothing to do with authentication and social flows (e.g. names and progress like the comment you’re replying to mentioned) and would not help in the slightest with it.
It would help people who wanted to have a functioning video game. Then you could ask your friend (or someone on Discord) what their IP address is and play with them.
You’re again mixing the point, your friends IP doesn’t have authentication, progress, chat, etc, etc, etc. You’re talking about a different kind of server.
Being able to type in an IP address is a late 90s and early 2000s thing within the AAA space, much as I hate to say that. I do know of at least one unpopular, indie PS4 game that had IP address entry so it wasn’t outright banned then.
I’m pretty sure PlayStation requires games with certain types of multiplayer to authenticate with them as part of the agreement to publish on the platform so that’s restrictive.
However, Sony does provide services that cost something to run, both directly for the studio, and indirectly for players who consume that studio’s game. Not the least of which includes account authentication which is one aspect of ensuring piracy isn’t happening on that platform. Friends services and the ability to join friends helps people jump back into your game. I’m sure there’s more.
I’m pretty sure PlayStation requires games with certain types of multiplayer to authenticate with them as part of the agreement to publish on the platform so that’s restrictive.
It sounds like that requirement is just a bad deal for the consumer. And they charge you for it. And they can’t guarantee uptime.
From the consumer’s perspective, at its cheapest, it’s $10/month to play with your friends on PlayStation, be able to claim new games monthly which are good for as long as you are paying the subscription, and have cloud saves (among a few other minor benefits).
No service can guarantee uptime, that’s just the reality of it. This is the largest PSN outage in 14 years. Most outages have not been this long or widespread.
Napkin math shows their uptime to be ~99.5% in the 18 years it’s been operational. Not that good nowadays, but not something you can’t sell to people.
Cloud saves that are free on PC, and they don’t block your access to transfer saves without it like consoles do. Playing online on PC is free, and we know exactly how to make it free on consoles, but they’re not interested in doing so. No one can guarantee 100% uptime, which is why it’s a bad deal to make the subscription for that stuff mandatory instead of allowing things like direct IP connections.
You apparently can transfer saves on PS4/5 offline. For PS4 they can be copied to a USB drive, but more to your point here, the only way to copy PS5 saves around (besides PS+) are to do console backup and restore processes and then during that process say you want to take save games wholesale (and then restore them wholesale). That’s definitely greedy bullshit.
I don’t know what more to say, consoles are walled gardens that consumers pay to be in. Within those walled gardens, the company dictates the rules. There’s plenty of good arguments for using a more open platform like PC. Not the least of which is that PlayStation has had an abysmal console cycle for trying to prove their console is worth purchasing - what with it having basically no exclusives that won’t eventually come to PC, first-party or otherwise.
Nobody’s gonna dispute the necessity of some sort of server somewhere in the mix. But does it need to be something like PSN? A central 3rd party service that most games only use because they’re forced to?
Walled gardens and all. That’s the cost of doing business on PlayStation. Perhaps we’ll see some pushback from developers to PlayStation that might carve a path for sidestepping PSN services if the developer wants to.
It’s important to note, though, that PSN (and Xbox Live, and Steam) does provide useful services to developers in exchange for that cost of doing business.
Free your mind! There is another way. Video game servers should be open-source, and the games should permit you to choose a custom server. This way, games can survive the bankruptcy of their creators’ companies.
I don’t disagree completely, but it’s not as easy as you think. We’re not talking about server in the sense of a headless game client that will coordinate a match, we’re talking about a whole infrastructure of micro services and a web of communications and APIs just to get a basic authentication working. Not to mention possibly encrypted hard coded addresses to contact. That being said I 100% agree that before a game is abandoned a plan should be put in place to allow people to keep playing it, even if it’s complicated and cumbersome to setup, or even if it’s as crude as removing authentication entirely.
This would basically be my reply as well. Companies are in the game to make money, and setting up all this infrastructure, not to mention maintaining it, is NOT cheap.
Unless the game has its own subscription, like Final Fantasy XIV.
Unless that has changed over the years. I’m not sure.
Boy, it sure is a good thing that Sony backed off charging a subscription fee for single player PC games
Or should I say, BOY
To be clear, that was not a thing. Just the PSN account doesn’t require payment. The subscription is for playing in MP and (I think) access to online media like yt.
The account is step one to lock you into their ecosystem to then force payment plans.
It worked the other way for me, seeing it locked me out because I am not agreeing to that
Probably, but it hasn’t been on the table yet. Saying that it was is just going to hurt valid criticism.
Why trust a company that already charges people to play online after buying the console, and the game…
Subscription fee? Is this true? Do they have a PC Game Pass service now?
Musk is currently reviewing it for DEI terms. Also Trump just fired the Sony board and declared himself president of Sony.
Not my president! 😡
Tap for spoiler
(I live in Germany)
Inbefore magats: DEFUND DEFUND DEFUND
What?
That’s your body suffering from whiplash as we’re once again back in the era where you never know whether someone is telling the truth or not when they make a wild claim about the president like that.
a play on Trump purging the Kennedy Center and installing himself as chief
Ah okay, never heard about the Kennedy Center.
It’s like a kennel but with kenneds.
As of about an hour ago, it is back up
This doesn’t bode well.
The last time this happened was when Anonymous hacked PSN and took them down for a month after they went after Geohotz(cant remember the spelling) for jailbreaking/reverse engineering the ps3.
Radio silence like before as well. I hope they weren’t breached again.
Oh yeah, I remember that now!
I hope they weren’t breached again.
That’s awfully nice of you, certainly not a hope I share.
Why would you want them to be breached? The only people that are going to be negatively affected by that are the users who was involved in the breach.
Understand hating a company but I find it to be pretty selfish if you’re okay with third party being affected just to fit your personal agenda.
It’s what separates the corporate tiers with the consumer level. The ability to care.
Why would you want them to be breached? The only people that are going to be negatively affected by that are the users who was involved in the breach.
Yes and no. Sony would face repercussions for lax security, and while it would indeed affect the consumers, Sony would be at the epicenter. Forgive me for not giving a shit to what happens to Sony, and if they did in fact get breached I’ll be there with some popcorn enjoying some Shadenfreude.
…You want their security to be bad enough that they get hacked, so that they’d have to face repercussions for having bad security? What?
How about they just don’t have bad security and people don’t risk having their private data stolen?
Nice to know you’d sit there with popcorn watching people who just want to play video games suffer, a small price to pay for you to hurt Sony it seems, who I guess you hate for some reason.
What I’m saying is that you have to look at the bigger picture. Not only Sony would be affected by that, back in 2011 when they were breached consumers were charged in the estimated tens of millions of dollars range. A figure that Sony only ended up having to repay about 15 million in settlement fees for after a solid year and a half.
Additionally, Sony still managed to go up in profit that year, despite the PR nightmare out of it. Going up from 1.2 billion after operating costs in 2010 to 1.4 billion after operational costs in 2011 and still made 1.1 billion in 2012 ( after the 172 million in damages was done)
I understand hating big business and their practices as much as the next guy, but I have a hard time getting a sense of satisfaction knowing that at the end of the day the company itself isn’t going to be impacted by the hack more than a small itch, while fucking over the everyday consumer significantly more
It’s 2011 all over again
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_PlayStation_Network_outage
Last night I thought “this happened a few years ago, too, and we got free games as an apology” and now you tell me it was 14 YEARS ago!?
It has happened more often than that. The one in 2011 was the biggest outage, but PSN also got DDOSed by lizard squad a couple years after the 2011 outage
Yes, and I’m also telling you we’ll get no free games this time. Business is more of a “fuck you” attitude in 2025.
Yeah, if they’re down for over three weeks then I imagine they’ll be forced to refund at least some of the PS+ price.
B…but 2011 was like 6years ago?? No?
Your math needs some work…
2025 - 2011 = 14
2011 + 6 = 2017
😔😔
How did time pass so quickly? 😞
Your making me feel old… I remember when it happened. I was so pissed I couldn’t play call of duty.
There was also a big outage on 2014 when Sony got DDOSed by Lizardsquad. So maybe you are remembering that one and don’t need to feel quite so old
Ouch. I’m only sorta old, instead full on old lol.
You’re making ME feel old. I remember having to go over my friend’s house to play multiplayer.
Right??? Grab your NES cartridge, and make sure to grab the one that you borrowed from your friend last week. Throw them in your bookbag, and pedal your bike while your mom has no real way of knowing where you are. Sure you SAY you’re going to Jimmys house, but it’s not like you have a GPS tracker. And even if you did, how would your mom follow that that tracker? Go to the FBI and use their super computers??? Maybe you’d like her to ask for the nuke launch codes while she’s there. Just be back home before the street lights come on, or dad’s beating your ass!
Ah, the 80s. What a magical time. A magical time of AIDS epidemics, wars on drugs causes by and fought by the government, toxic toys not being recalled, and everybody being too dumb to care.
Nowadays, kids don’t even HAVE bikes! You throw your kids into a strangers car, call it uber, and use technology the 1980s government would have dreamed of having to make sure your kid goes to that little shit Jimmys house.
Everytime I remember the world I grew up in, and then look around at the world I’m in, I feel like I’m missing a big piece of what happened. These two worlds don’t line up. Like when I see old photos of my dad, from the 60s, I say “Yep, that sure looks like what my dad would look like if he were young”. But when I look at the 80s, I think “that sure seems like a totally unrelated society. One in which absolutely did NOT age into this world…”
I don’t understand life.
I was born early 90s and always had a bike, so kids not use them anymore, or is it a regional thing?
I remember being so happy that outage happened because they gave away free games. That’s how I got to play LittleBigPlanet for the first time.
They gave out Wipeout and infamous for free out of that, I got a lot of play time out of those two games.
I’ve been playing so much kingdom come deliverance 2 that I didn’t even notice PSN being down.
If you like RPGs try it.
Isn’t it linear story based though? I prefer open ended, been playing a lot of bannerlord recently
I fell off 1. Is 2 an improvement to the charming eurojank?
I never played the first one. I just watched a story recap.
The gameplay isn’t janky just brutally difficult and unforgiving. It goes for realism above all. I’m really liking it but I’m only maybe halfway through the story.
If only there were a way to connect to a network without an intermediary like PSN. Damn shame that it’s impossible.
I think ARPANET will have something like this once they got it working
I’ve never thought about it before, but I wonder if the companies with games containing microtransactions can ask PSN for compensation for lost income due to long outages.
I knew a guy who did this with Comcast for every minute his Internet was out. He’d call them every day for weeks until they cut him an account credit
When I worked at a web host, we had people like that. Being support sucked. Like, yes, it sucks that your e-commerce site that uses horrifically outdated software is offline but, we don’t offer quad nines, especially not on a $35/year shared hosting plan. And, honestly Drew, your site gets single-digit visits per month and sells erotica based upon the premise of Edgar Allen Poe being transported to 1990s Brooklyn and working as an apartment building super. At best, you’re breaking even on that hosting bill.
As bad as the customers I deal with are I am so glad we only work with real companies. The smallest are a few hundred staff. At least 99% of the time they can be professional. The exception so far have been pretty funny though, shame I don’t go on calls with them anymore tbh.
It is basically just a web form these days (just google “xfinity outage” or whatever).
They cut you off after a certain number of outages per quarter. And they decide how much money you get per outage. So if your next door neighbor has never reported an outage and you report every single one, they’ll get more for that one report.
I tried this in the first place I lived at where I paid for my own internet, which was Comcast at the time.
They said (paraphrasing because it was a long time ago) their contract specified they were not responsible for any outages, nor any income lost due to same. I don’t know if that’s true, but I was young and naive and accepted it at face value.
Outages are a thing of the past since I switched to 4G. If you asked me in 2010 if 4G of all things would be better than a wired connection I would never have believed it.
It’s fast enough and never had an outage. Once in the past year I rotated the antenna to point at a different mast because it was being a little slow. I assume cell towers are a higher priority of infrastructure as they serve more people, and as there are multiple I can connect to there is also redundancy.
This was back in 2006 or so. I don’t recall if 4G was around then, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t available as an internet provider. If it was, I wasn’t aware.
I’m pretty happy with my current internet solution, but I’ll keep your suggestion in mind. Thank you!
My first reason for going 4G was general distaste that all the wired providers leave me with. Awful pricing models where they charge less for 4 months then more for 20 and then loads indefinitely kinda thing and I just decided fuck that. I think there is a bit more competition for the 4G side of things too.
Finally picked up kingdom come 2 on my ps5 just to dust it off after not playing for years and this is my weekend. Well played Sony, well played
That’s a single player game. You need to be online to play it?
It’s like the anti pirating software. Drm? Can’t tell if I own it or not.
I was looking at that game. Looks really cool. I’m interested to see a more historically based rpg game without mages and whatnot. I think it’s based on some section of polish history?
It’s the sequel to the first one, and historical accuracy was like, at the center of of that one. Your character starts off the game not knowing how to read, because in medieval Europe, literacy was not widespread and the son of a blacksmith certainly wouldn’t know how to read, so books you pick up in the game are total gibberish until you learn to read.
The first one is regularly on sale for $10 or less. Just try it. It’s really good!
It’s Bohemia so like modern day Czech Republic
Bungie devs who were desperately hoping for a good Heresy dungeon launch: …I’m getting fired aren’t I
