(18 now actually)
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As of about an hour ago, it is back up
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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!?
B…but 2011 was like 6years ago?? No?
Your math needs some work…
2025 - 2011 = 14
2011 + 6 = 2017
😔😔
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.
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.
Musk is currently reviewing it for DEI terms. Also Trump just fired the Sony board and declared himself president of Sony.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
