Down and out

We've just got time between courses of our Christmas Dinner to tell you about the latest PlayStation Network issues. A whole host of errors are being reported around the web, from sign-in issues through to maintenance messages. As was the case overnight, this appears to be a result of heavy traffic, rather than anything especially nefarious. [Update: Some sources now claim that this may be a DDoS attack instead.]

Sony's said that it's investigating the issues as we type, so it's going to be a fun holiday for those unfortunate engineers tasked with keeping things online. Are you having problems connecting to the PSN? What issues are you experiencing? Keep us in the loop in the comments section below. We're off to scoff some Xmas Pud.

Update (18:00PM GMT): Still no sign of these network issues clearing up. Some people have been able to login over the course of the afternoon, but it seems like access is up and down at the moment. We're currently getting error message CE-34861-2 here in the UK. Sony's said on Twitter that it's still investigating, and that it appreciates your patience.

Update (20:00PM GMT): There's still no word from the Japanese giant on when normal PSN service will resume. On its support site, the company wrote that it has "no ETA available" but that its "team is working to fix it as soon as possible". A company representative concluded: "Thanks for your patience."

Update (21:00PM GMT): A short but not-so sweet statement from Sony on Twitter: "We are still looking into the PSN issues reported earlier. Thanks again for your continued patience today."

Update (23:30PM GMT): While this outage initially seemed like heavy holiday traffic, it's starting to sound more and more like a DDoS attack. BBC is reporting that Lizard Squad is claiming responsibility for the outage, with Xbox Live also going down today. While you may see some sources describe this as a "hack", though, it's important to remember that it's unlikely that any data has been compromised; instead, the group has overloaded both services' servers with false traffic, causing them to collapse.

Update (01:00AM GMT): Sony is continuing to work on the outage, but there's still no time frame for when service will be resumed. It's promising to provide further information on the PlayStation Knowledge Center.

Update (11:00AM GMT): The latest on this from Sony is that it's still investigating. However, while not everyone seems to be able to get on right now, we just tested our PS4 (in the UK) and logged on straight away. Presumably that means that the service is coming back on slowly, but we may have been lucky. We'll keep you updated.

Update (20:00PM GMT): We've posted a new article on the ongoing outage: PSN Offline for Second Day as Attackers Bring Servers Down. Refer to that for further updates.

[source twitter.com]