Only a day after it was discovered,PlayStationhas removed a controversial “tech error” thatforced outdated newsfeedsinto player’s homepages.
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The official AskPlayStation X accountannounced the fix and claimed there was no change in how newsfeeds work.
Before the fix,updated newsfeeds displayed the latest news and even ads for the selected game instead of the usual game art.This wasn’t well received, but what made matters worse was that most games had topics that were months old or tangentially related.
PlayStation users voiced their anger online, annoyed at aseemingly greedy,unrequested, addition.A few on Reddit asked the broader community toprotest the change online.
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AskPlayStation’s postdispelled rumors thatPlayStationimplemented this as a “feature” and called it a “tech error.“However, some havetheorized that PlayStation iscovering its tracks after the horrible reception it received.
Curiously,the post did not comment on the ongoing worldwide PSN blackout.
PSN Blackout For You, You, and You
Just as PlayStation fixed the newsfeed issue,servers went dark, affecting thePS5, PS4, andeven older consoles.
The scope of the blackout is unclear, butthousands of players have reported being affected by it globally. While some players were onlyunable to play online and buy digital games, others couldn’t use their PlayStations at all, even unable to accesssingle-player games.
PlayStationhasn’t publicly acknowledged this blackout, upsetting many players. Their socialmedia accounts have continued to post and repost, but have ignored players complaining about the issue thus far.
To some older gamers,this incident echoes similar ones in 2011 and 2014, raising concern over potential security breaches.
In 2011,hackersbreached PSNand gained access to the personal information—including some credit cards—of nearly 77 million players.To prevent this breach from causing further harm,Sony shut down PSN servers for 23 days.
Three years later,in 2014, the infamousLizard Squad hacker grouplaunched a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against multiple games and gaming platforms, causingmany to shut their servers down temporarily; millions of gamers, on Christmas day no less, were locked out of their games that year.
Lizard Squad’s activity continued well into 2015, althoughnot all attacks were gaming-related.
While there has been no confirmation thathackersare behind this blackout,many who remember these incidents have been anxious over their details being compromised.
As of writing,many players have regained access to the PSN servers, particularly in North America.Still, hundreds, if not thousands, arestill unable to connect.
Sony might have to do some damage control given the double whammy their reputation has received in barely 48 hours— and frankly thepast few months.
