What is the biggest PSN outage in history?

Modified Feb 08, 2025 11:11 GMT

Exploring the biggest PSN outage in history (Image via PlayStation)

PSN has been down since 4 pm PT on February 7, 2025, and at the time of writing, it’s been over 11 hours, making this the longest outage PlayStation Network has seen in years. While PlayStation has acknowledged the issue, they have yet to share any details on the reasons behind it. For many newcomers to the platform, this might be the longest they have ever gone without having access to the service.

However, it isn't the biggest outage in the history of the service. The biggest PSN outage in history lasted for 23 days in 2011. In this article, we'll take a look at the events that led to the biggest outage in the PlayStation Network's history.

What happened during the 2011 PSN outage?

The biggest PSN outage took place back on April 20, 2011, and the servers were finally up on May 14, 2011, lasting a total of 23 days.

The outage was due to multiple security breaches of the service. Hackers infiltrated PSN servers and had access to the personal data of over 77 million users at the time. To prevent hackers from accessing, PlayStation had to take their servers offline to prevent further damage.

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The data that hackers had access to included usernames of players, passwords, and credit card details. It was one of the biggest cybersecurity breaches not only for the PlayStation Network but in the history of gaming.

Also read: PlayStation Network hit by global outage, disrupting millions of players

During the outage, all PlayStation 3 and PSP users could not access the PlayStation Network and were stuck playing games offline. Since it was a major hassle for players, Sony not only issued an apology but also offered free games as compensation.

They also made a lot of improvements to their cybersecurity infrastructure and the service hasn't seen an outage of that scale since then.

As for the 2025 PlayStation Network outage, the reasons are currently unknown. We will update this article as soon as Sony delivers an official statement on what might have led to the longest outage in this decade.

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Edited by Adarsh J Kumar