In early February 2025, the PlayStation Network experienced a major service interruption that left many players unable to use the online features. Finally, players will receive the compensation that Sony promised.
PlayStation Plus members will likely be happy to know that Sony will automatically add to subscribers’ existing subscriptions without requiring any special action. If you have an account with the service, you should see the days added to your account either today or soon after. You can confirm the five-day extension to your subscription’s expiration date by going to your Subscriptions Management settings on your PlayStation.
Unfortunately, there’s no prize for people who weren’t paying for a PlayStation Plus subscription. PlayStation Plus is a paid service, and Sony compensates those for that service because it could not meet the company’s end of the agreement.
Despite Sony slowly getting rid of the need to sign onto PSN to play Sony’s games on PC, plenty still require it. Those players definitely missed out on gameplay because of Sony. However, as Sony removes this requirement over time, this likely won’t be an issue anymore.
Related
Sony Is Dropping Its PSN Login Requirement for More PC Games
Helldivers 2 was just the first one to drop it.
Honestly, five days is more than needed. The outage lasted for almost a full day and affected users worldwide, so five times the compensation is great.Tthe highest tier of PlayStation Plus is $18, so one day of that in February would be about $1.50. PlayStation is essentially giving users $7.50 back as an apology.
There have been some users asking for a full game as compensation, but $65 in return for a $1.50 loss is not a fair trade. While Sony could have done more to keep users informed during the outage, the company is doing enough to make up for it after the fact. Sony described the problem as an “operational issue” affecting its network services after the outage was done. That could be made better by Sony, and hopefully, the company will be more vocal next time.
I have experienced an outage worthy of a free game. For those who don’t remember, back in April 2011, PSN was down for almost a month. We got minimal updates from Sony then and no real timeline for when it would be back up. That was a situation where a subscriber base was left in the dark about services they paid for, which lasted a long time.
This turned out to be a response to a hack on the PlayStation Network, and Sony didn’t want to worry people. In reality, Sony should have warned users that their information was compromised the moment it happened. There was more to it, including a lawsuit, but it was a bad time.
Related
I Love PlayStation Plus But I Would Still Like to See These 7 Improvements
Sony’s subscription could be better.
Sony reimbursed everyone with a year of PlayStation Plus and a free game. One of my friends bought his first PlayStation a month or so after the hack and was able to get the free rewards that were given out, so Sony was more than apologetic for the experience.
Less than a day where a regular outage happened does not feel comparable to what happened over a decade ago. Sony did a good job by offering so many days in return, but players should be more vocal about Sony lowering the requirements for their PC games so those games won’t be affected next time.
Source: Techradar
