8 hours later, PlayStation Network creeps back online after PS4 and PS5 players go without online multiplayer and more

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Players are reporting that PSN is finally coming back online in some countries

Sony PS5 close up
(Image credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Players are reporting that the PlayStation Network is finally starting to come back online after a lengthy eight-hour outage that has prevented users on PS5, PS4, and beyond from playing online multiplayer games.

For the last eight hours, people across the web, PS5, PS4, and even PS3 and Vita have been struggling with service outages across everything from the PlayStation Store to PlayStation Video, account management, and gaming itself. With the network down, online games were out of action, leaving players everywhere twiddling their thumbs. Communication was light on the ground, too – although the issues were acknowledged by the Japanese PlayStation customer support account on Twitter, no indication was given of when we could expect PSN to be back up.

Thankfully, though, it now sounds like the service is starting to be restored. More and more users on Twitter are reporting that things are back in action for them, although at the time of writing, that's not the case for everyone. In the UK, for example, the PSN Service Status site is still displaying the outage. According to Twitter user @geronimo_73_, at the very least, it appears to be back in the United States, Canada, and Japan, and there's no doubt we can expect that list to expand as time goes on.

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It's been a rather rough 24 hours for PlayStation fans, as many PS5 users also recently reported their console home screens being filled with ads for various games, replacing the art you normally see when hovering over one of your owned games. Thankfully though, this was short lived – in a since-deleted tweet, PlayStation senior product manager Daniel Hiatt quickly confirmed it was "just a (new) bug with an existing feature," and now, it's been fixed.

While you're here, be sure to check out our roundup of everything we know about the PS5 Pro launching next month.

Catherine Lewis
Catherine Lewis
Deputy News Editor

I'm GamesRadar+'s Deputy News Editor, working alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield's student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming's news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you're sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.