Sony PlayStation’s online services came back online on Saturday, the Japanese group said, after a 24-hour outage frustrated gamers around the world. PlayStation Network “has been restored. You should be able to access online features without any problems now,” said a statement on X around midnight GMT Sunday, 24 hours after a message acknowledged users were experiencing “difficulty launching games, apps or network features.”

“Sorry for the inconvenience!” the post added, without providing further details on the reasons for the outage. The network’s failure prevented many owners of Sony consoles including the PS4 and the PS5 from playing multiplayer games such as the hugely popular “Fortnite” and “Call of Duty.” The specialized site DownDetector.com had reported that users’ difficulties peaked sharply around 7:00 pm US Eastern time on Friday (midnight GMT Saturday), before falling steadily, but not quite returning to normal levels.

Players expressed impatience and anger on social media during the outage. One user said on X that it was “criminal” to have a PlayStation outage on a Friday evening, but another quipped more equably that it was time for him to reintroduce himself to the woman he married five years ago.—AFP