PSN Offers Compensation for Outage, But There’s a Catch

Over the weekend, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced a form of compensation following a significant disruption of the PlayStation Network (PSN), but there’s a caveat attached. The offer is reserved only for current PlayStation Plus (PS Plus) members, who will receive a five-day membership extension. Those without a membership will have to make do with just an apology.

The recent PSN outage marked a notably long downtime, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the notorious hack of 2011, when services were unavailable for nearly a month. Back then, Sony made things right by giving away free games to everyone affected.

This time around, the compensation target is much narrower. Subscribers of PS Plus are the beneficiaries, while those who missed out on playing favorites like Fortnite or Call of Duty: Warzone due to the downtime right before Super Bowl Sunday will have to rest easy knowing their data wasn’t breached.

In a statement on social media, Sony remained vague about the nature of the network issues, attributing the problem to “operational” troubles. Essentially, it seems they’re assuring users that there wasn’t a hack, and that their personal information remains secure. Still, it’s always good practice to err on the side of caution, so we recommend users update their passwords and double-check any payment methods linked to their accounts.

If new details about the outage arise, we’ll make sure our readers are kept in the loop. For those eligible for the PS Plus extension, rest easy—it’s already in motion and will be automatically added to your account.

On their official Twitter, PlayStation confirmed: “Network services have fully recovered from an operational issue. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank the community for their patience. All PlayStation Plus members will automatically receive an additional 5 days of service.”