PlayStation Network is back after hours of partial outage

Your PS5, PS4, PS3, and Vita might have looked normal — but if you had issues, it’s because Sony’s PlayStation Network was not completely healthy. Sony’s Network Service Status page was red for hours, after a partial outage began at roughly 12PM ET. By 4:30PM ET, service had reportedly been restored, and it’s all green now.

At the time, we could still see our friends online, play games that require network authentication, download updates, and access the PlayStation Store, but there were a lot of “Can’t load data” error messages under player profiles, and the web version of the PlayStation Store didn’t load.

And when I tried to fire up multiplayer in Hot Wheels Unleashed, I got this communication error:

My colleague Joanna says she was able to play a little Fall Guys, though.

Sony said the following things might not have worked:

“Game streaming” was also potentially down.

Joanna Nelius contributed to this story.

Update, 8:37PM ET: Added that service has been restored.