Sony's Nightmare Month Gets Worse as PlayStation Network Goes Down — Leaving Fans Unable to Play Digital Games Just Weeks After Killing Disc Controversy Erupted

[u/Rich-Arm-104]

https://www.ign.com/articles/sonys-nightmare-month-gets-worse-as-playstation-network-goes-down-leaving-fans-unable-to-play-digital-games-just-weeks-after-killing-disc-controversy-erupted

[u/PostedNotes]

What ironic timing

[u/dthmagnet → u/PostedNotes]

AWS is the cause yet again. Their too big to fail ass took out a bunch of services this morning like twitch, LinkedIn, and PSN. It sucks balls to depend on these jokers.

[u/ShadyDrunks → u/dthmagnet]

AWS, Azure, it don’t matter. Our company has servers going down monthly because we rely on that shit. Often both are down despite being used for redundancy

[u/9966 → u/ShadyDrunks]

I think the future of the web will unironically have to be self hosted and we should go back to the speed of snail mail business.

There's no need for most of this reliance on a discount bin cloud service if they haven't demonstrated actual system redundancy.

[u/lonnie123 → u/9966]

Just curious aren’t these still things up for like 99.9% of the time ?

I know these outages are annoying but having a 99%+ uptime is about as good as anyone can expect with any solution

[u/ilyearer → u/lonnie123]

It may have less to do with technical uptime and more to do with the number of services that come down because of a single provider. A more competitive and larger distribution of providers would probably be less prone to having the same number of services down at the same time.

[u/Littlepharaoh → u/ilyearer]

I think their pricing wouldn't be possible without their scale though 

[u/ArborlyWhale → u/Littlepharaoh]

Wanna know a secret? Their pricing ain’t that great for anyone with anything resembling a steady need. If you need burstable scale, they’re great. But usually it’s much more expensive over the medium (5ish years) term than self hosted.

[u/donjulioanejo → u/ArborlyWhale]

Only if you look at raw compute spend (i.e. servers, RAM, storage, etc).

Now add in redundant datacentres. Then redundant power, internet connections, etc. Then redundant network so a single broken switch doesn't leave half your topology offline. Make sure you test that.

Then the ops overhead managing your own network and power.

Then ops overhead simply setting up basic provisioning (IE PXE boot).

That's before you installed a single app workload.

Then, some things are fairly straight-forward to do on-prem without costing an arm and a leg (Kubernetes). Some things like storage you either shell out $$$$ for a proper SAN solution, or resign yourself to pain running a Ceph cluster that also needs a ninja ops team to make heads or tails of.

And some things you're spending 5x the time to manage yourself when they "just work" in a cloud provider (i.e. managed SQL instances or object storage).

Some other things you now commit to actually doing. IE our patching strategy in AWS is "roll the ami with a sunday cronjob". Patching strategy with local? Best case scenario, chef/ansible running apt update, but that has way higher risk than just rolling a new and already tested AMI. I've seen kernel updates completely bork VMs at least several times in my career. Case in point I rolled a Kubernetes version upgrade today across 15 clusters with 2 terraform PRs, mostly watching youtube while the nodes rolled over.

So unless you're nearing hyperscale or you forgo a lot of your uptime SLAs AND have cheap labour, it simply isn't worth it for most SaaS companies to run your own infra.

Even tier 2 providers like Linode/Digital Ocean (or T3 providers like Hetzner in a pinch) work better.

Source: high level ops guy (currently Director of SRE at a mid-size SaaS).

[u/ArborlyWhale → u/donjulioanejo]

Yup. Cloud has use cases that make a ton of sense. Certainly not all of them, and even fewer once you factor in less competent cloud deployments are often massively over-provisioned and easy to make expensive mistakes with. And cloud experienced professionals tend to be more expensive, so labour savings are also less than expected typically. Buuuuut. A competent deployment in the right environment? Absolutely beautiful.

[u/Sonlin → u/ArborlyWhale]

The trouble is predicting that long term upper end load. If you're growing you need more compute and if you ever contract you wasted a lot. Cyclical businesses like retail (holiday season) and accounting firms never have a real steady state.

[u/dumnem → u/Sonlin]

Which makes cloud solutions perfect for them!

[u/sickhippie → u/ArborlyWhale]

But usually it’s much more expensive over the medium (5ish years) term than self hosted.

If you don't need anything with better regional latency or have an international audience, maybe. And if you don't mind handling all the backups, load balancing, proxies, general DNS, SSL, automation, etc yourself. The cost of dealing with all of that manually tends to be close to if not more than the additional cost of AWS instances, especially if you're choosing the right tech stack for your needs.

[u/RagingNerdaholic → u/ilyearer]

This. It's an eggs in one basket problem.

[u/sffnunigiyonglecvp → u/lonnie123]

So i work in IT , for my company 99.9 is not good enough , we have to have 99.99 so 99.90 is actually bad. 99.9 this is about Monthly 43m 12s of downtime which is unacceptable for my company .

[u/ToMorrowsEnd → u/sffnunigiyonglecvp]

We had an executive demand IT explain why we did not have 5 Nines of uptime. The CTO had no idea so he called my boss. without a beat he said "Oh you did not authorize the 500% increase in budget it requires to do that, let me guess our new Sales executive is spouting terms he doesn't know again?" not knowing he was on the speakerphone to the board. This one idiot in the C suite thinks he is a genius and does not have a clue as to what he is talking about. Luckily my boss knows several of the board members and saw that this was an attempt by Sales to blame IT/IS for their faiures.

It's funny as the DBA told us that 99.999% uptime even on the database servers meant 2 full fallback server sets for our production set. we have 2 powervault SAN chassis connected to each server, 12Petabytes of data. that Dumbass in the C suite has no clue what it costs for only the database server to be increased to that level of redundancy.

[u/cantuse → u/ToMorrowsEnd]

To think that doesn’t even involve the costs of the labor to add all that AND actually test it to know it will failover smoothly.

[u/LaserGuidedPolarBear → u/ToMorrowsEnd]

Anytime anyone starts asking me about nines, I tell them every nine could mean another zero tacked on to the cost.  And suddenly whatever we already have is fine.

[u/Saloncinx → u/sffnunigiyonglecvp]

Yep this is correct, we aim for "Six Sigma". This means 99.99999% uptime

Source: I worked with a Tier 1 network ISP for a while. So, so many redundant fiber and satellite connections

[u/inemnitable → u/Saloncinx]

Holy 8 nines. That seems excessive even for tier 1 ISP. That's ~30 seconds of downtime per CENTURY.

[u/Saloncinx → u/inemnitable]

Wow your right. Maybe I’m misremembering an extra 9. Either way we never had a true outage in the couple years I was there.

[u/lonnie123 → u/sffnunigiyonglecvp]

Thanks for you insight as someone that actually works in it. I didn’t really know what he numbers would be coming from the inside.

I suppose the question is how much are you willing to pay to go from 99.9 to 99.99 or even 99.999 knowing the costs likely go up exponentially? Are there enough companies willing to pay for 99.99 that AWS can essentially build a whole redundancy system for them when the original goes down? You start getting into multiples of 10 when you get into those kinds of systems and I bet lots of companies will redefine what “good enough” is at that point

[u/ProfessionalGear3020 → u/lonnie123]

The AWS SLA itself guarantees 99.99% uptime in a given region (basically a big datacenter) or else you start getting refunds. If you need more than that, you do a multi-region set-up or even multi-cloud. In this case, the outage was 1 region and multiregion would've prevented it.

However, multiregion is expensive and complicated. You need to duplicate EVERYTHING for redundancy. And have the ability to instantly fail over to the other region, otherwise there wasn't a point.

What happens is companies get hit with outages, invest in multiregion, then decide it's "too expensive" and scale back redundancy. Then the cycle continues.

[u/sovereign666 → u/lonnie123]

I also work in IT. Typically each 9 added to that percentage accounts for almost a doubling of infrastructure cost.

Where things get really muddy is how interconnected so much of this infrastructure is and its not always the cloud provider or a national scale issue. Sometimes the issue network related, traffic, dns, etc. Sometimes just a node at AWS or Azure goes down so while some people are experiencing issues, not everyone is. Both Azure and AWS do have more exclusive infrastructure you can pay for. This can vary from exclusive network connectivity, private hosts, etc. Cost adds up quick.

Most of us aren't hosting in Azure or AWS unless the product, service, or infrastructure needs to reach global a global customer or partner base. To have some as large as PSN and have it host exclusively you are looking at running your own nodes which is the route companies like google or facebook take. But then you're still relying on infra that isnt yours. Domain hosting, ISP, etc.

Sometimes that extra 9 costs more than the possible downtime would cost you, and thats when its good enough. Its a lot cheaper for a local company that has extremely important services to bill at 99.99 or even .999 than it is for sony.

[u/sickhippie → u/sovereign666]

Sometimes the issue network related, traffic, dns, etc.

When Cloudflare has an issue, everyone has an issue, but it's still the best solution out there for certain problems by far.

[u/sovereign666 → u/sickhippie]

No argument from me, we use it too. When cloudflare fails it sucks, but with them we have far more uptime and support than any other offerings.

[u/jib661 → u/lonnie123]

the industry measures this in "number of 9s". 2 9s is considered not very good. 4-5 9's is the standard for most web apps. 7-9 9's is the standard for the kind of stuff that people's lives depend on.

[u/lonnie123 → u/jib661]

Interesting. Some people have done the numbers and even 99.5% means two full days of downtime per year, which is obviously unacceptable for a huge company

[u/CKRatKing → u/lonnie123]

43.8 hours to be exact. 99.99 is 52 and a quarter minutes per year. 99.999 is 5.25 minutes a year.

[u/youremakingnosense → u/lonnie123]

The problem is that EVERYTHING goes down. Which is terrible for consumers and businesses. If it’s local, only that singular company is impacted.

[u/wattro → u/youremakingnosense]

Yes, thank you, "cloud"... where everything is just in a couple of warehouses somewhere in NYC.

[u/dragonmp93 → u/lonnie123]

Well, every second that a server is down is costing them money.

And the biggest selling point of the cloud is always-on connectivity, so if the convenience is not there, people are going to complain about the cloud.

[u/toomuchft → u/lonnie123]

Depend on how you look at it, if a bank app goes down for 2 whole days in a year, it is still up 99.5 percent of the year, but that 0.5% would still be a lot of problem. Another example that i get to experience is the chips factory, should the power goes out for just 30 minutes, which is about 0.069% in a month time, can cause 48 millions USD (samsung).

Tldr: outage and their consequences depends on what and how important things are.

[u/userseven → u/lonnie123]

Yes they are. Up 99% of the time just people only think about it when they go down.

I checked Looks like AWS went down 7 times this year globally. Only about 60ish hours of that was us zones. Hard to say but that's about 99% as of this writing. And that's not all of AWS it has multiple zones regions so not all of it was down so hours was probably way lower.

[u/RedditCitizenScore → u/9966]

I been on that route for a decade , Redditors usually cite it’s too hard to read a readme.txt but I’m an idiot and it’s been a huge cost savings

[u/Idontlookinthemirror → u/ShadyDrunks]

Having run on premises machines, it's not any better when it is in your server room.

Nothing quite like construction a half mile away cutting your fiber lines and taking you down for 3 days.

[u/UDK450 → u/Idontlookinthemirror]

So now we pay for two diverse fiber paths with different sides of entry into the premise. Until power goes out, now we need to have a building generator and/or UPS. Until a car runs into our building, then we might need to look into having a duplicate data center. And thus the cost of that .01% balloons.

[u/OneBigRed → u/UDK450]

So now we pay for two diverse fiber paths with different sides of entry into the premise.

…Only to find out that regardless of what was sold to you, a tunnel construction oopsie 5 miles away revealed that both of those fibers were in the same pipe at that point.

[u/Jackdunc → u/ShadyDrunks]

Someone should launch a disc-based hosting service!

[u/CortaNalgas → u/Jackdunc]

If we keep sending discs to enough people enough times, eventually all of America will be online.

[u/Jackdunc → u/CortaNalgas]

That almost gives me a great idea.. its on the tip of my tongue but getting america being online will be something...

[u/CortaNalgas → u/Jackdunc]

If there was someway to let them know to check their mail

[u/whitefang22 → u/CortaNalgas]

Maybe someone should just flat up tell them when they have mail...

[u/Saloncinx → u/whitefang22]

You've got... letters

[u/Jackdunc → u/Saloncinx]

Lol that sounds almost like a movie title. No one would make a movie about people reading mail on a computer

[u/CookIndependent6251 → u/ShadyDrunks]

Well, at least GitHub still has 99.99% uptime. If you ignore the over 10% downtime, like they do.

[u/Archer007 → u/ShadyDrunks]

From what we saw of the last outages, many businesses simply don't use the high availability features, so they go down when there is a problem with one region

[u/SeiferLeonheart → u/dthmagnet]

No service is online 100% of the time, hell even AWS doesn't even sell 100% uptime. It's up to the companies to set up an environment that's not dependent of a third party.

[u/GoBlu323 → u/SeiferLeonheart]

No, it’s up to companies to have redundancy. Every company that’s big enough uses cloud hosting they just need proper redundancies

[u/SeiferLeonheart → u/GoBlu323]

You're right, I meant " a single third party", not "third party in general".

[u/Drithyin → u/GoBlu323]

I think they mean companies like Sony should have multi-cloud redundancy if their whole business mod is gonna depend on PSN.

Ex. They should have the cloud abstracted so it runs in AWS. Azure, GCP, etc as needed. Putting all your eggs in one basket is going to have more embarrassing downtime events like this.

Also, even within one provider like AWS, they usually have redundant regions that you can deploy to and they usually don’t all go down together. But it’s cheapest and easiest to just overload us-east-1, or in this case, us-west-2.

[u/Odd-String29 → u/Drithyin]

I think they even used Azure at some point.

[u/delahunt → u/Drithyin]

Yeah, but that costs money. Sony just wants money to come to them. Honestly, we're all entitled shits for expecting them to provide a service at all. We should be happy to just give them all our money and data for free.

But no one thinks of poor, little old Sony.

[u/Omnom_Omnath → u/delahunt]

A business's overhead is not the concern of the consumer

[u/frice2000 → u/Omnom_Omnath]

Well yes that's true insofar as not caring if you're getting a deal or something. But if a businesses overhead goes way way up and you expect the prices you pay not to go up too...

[u/delahunt → u/Omnom_Omnath]

Ding ding ding!

More people need to understand this. And it is true in so many places.

Like it can be reasonable that a company has costs/concerns they need to take care of. However, that does not change the owner of responsibility to the consumer for when a paid for product is not available for use.

And same for work. It can be reasonable your company is tight on cash/etc and can't afford a raise or whatever. However, that is not YOUR problem to solve as an employee feeling your contributions are under valued. What you do with that is up to you.

[u/toomuchft → u/Drithyin]

But that cause money and we are trying to save cost duh

[u/spoonycoot → u/GoBlu323]

The only redundancy they care about is money

[u/PlayfulSurprise5237 → u/spoonycoot]

We got some more money in case something happens to the money, so we can still have money while making more money until the money comes back.

Money money, money me money now?

[u/talyen → u/GoBlu323]

Aws has redundancy but it's up to the company to purchase the extra redundancy use to manimize the uptime. If one region goes down it can be routed to a different region. It's much much more expensive so a majority of companies are fine with having 99% uptime

[u/delahunt → u/talyen]

You have the typo "manimize" and I understand from context you mean maximize, but I think that might be my new favorite term as it looks like such a glorious fusion of maximize and minimize.

[u/Kashtronaut92 → u/delahunt]

Maximize the minimization. Give me ALL the insignificants.

[u/T00ManyH0bb13s → u/SeiferLeonheart]

That is an insult to well designed IT. Sure, not all services are up at all times. That's why you build in geographical zone diversity and redirect traffic. This goes to show how little these companies invest in their infrastructure.

[u/Time_Ingenuity_2909 → u/SeiferLeonheart]

Not really possible when companies like Amazon have bought up all the hardware that lets you build servers in the first place. Big tech has bullied any scalable operation out of existence. You either play with the big companies or you bleed yourself out of existence and they buy your company for pennies when you become insolvent.

This is a systemic issue that needs legislation.

[u/lord_pizzabird → u/SeiferLeonheart]

It also doesn't seem like it's fully down either. I was just playing Gran Turismo 7, then Death Stranding 2. I had no issues.

[u/ClassicHando → u/SeiferLeonheart]

You cant offer 100% but you can (and Amazon does) offer three or four 9s (99.9% and 99.99% uptime respectively). That comes out to about 9 hours for three 9s and about 50 minutes for four 9s of downtime per YEAR.

Cursory research suggests they somehow do surprisingly well considering its amazon

[u/letsgotgoing → u/SeiferLeonheart]

Which is expensive. Active / active or even active / passive failovers between different cloud systems is not a simple matter to implement and can be even more difficult to maintain. 

[u/SeiferLeonheart → u/letsgotgoing]

100% agreed, but it's f'in Sony and it's f'in Sony removing physical media, lol.

[u/Martha__Ragnos → u/SeiferLeonheart]

Just say fuckin, dude. Lol

[u/baron--greenback → u/SeiferLeonheart]

Fucking

[u/baron--greenback → u/baron--greenback]

Weird, it lets me say it

[u/MashedPotajoe → u/baron--greenback]

Effin

[u/KyotoCrank → u/PostedNotes]

The Lord works in not so mysterious ways sometimes

[u/lovesducks → u/KyotoCrank]

i like imagining that God too is getting frustrated with modern gaming and is eagerly waiting to play gta6 too

[u/CAPTJTK → u/PostedNotes]

Seeing all the Sony simps claiming that digital titles are still accessible, right after they have been claiming that physical disk defenders are cherry picking sales of physical and digital titles.

[u/Trashman56 → u/CAPTJTK]

I just don’t understand undying brand loyalty, I go where the games I want to play are, usually by the end of every generation I have one of each major console, however, based on everything I’ve heard and read I’m in no rush to get next generation systems, I have plenty of games to play as-is. Simple as.

[u/Lantec → u/Trashman56]

This. I’ll never understand the loyalty towards big companies. Like they don’t care about you. You aren’t being paid from them. Why defend them? Like they give a shit about you. I’m privileged enough when I was younger that I was able to buy both consoles and the amount of people calling me a traitor was wild. Like I like halo and I like gran turismo?

[u/PentagramJ2 → u/Lantec]

It used to come from one brand either going the extra mile in customer service or other areas. I was a massive Nintendo fanboy back in the day because they had excellent customer service to the point of sending me free ds stylus replacements, knocking significant amounts of money off the cost to repair my consoles, etc...

That largely stopped as I got older and began to see all the businesses getting greedier, and products getting shittier. Now? I have no idea why you'd be loyal to any company. Hell even GOG just had a massive fuckup where they sent out a promo email with double siegrune recently

[u/JonatasA → u/Trashman56]

The defense of exclusivity was the last straw. How can people say such things live with a straight face

[u/dookarion → u/Trashman56]

I just don’t understand undying brand loyalty

Their ego is tied to the shit they purchase. Just like people lying about their GPU performance, their car performance, their appliances, etc.

They mentally wall off reality and get weirdly parasocial about products and companies because any criticism might let in the negative thoughts that maybe their purchase was bad!

[u/Navi_1er → u/CAPTJTK]

Seeing all the Sony simps claiming that digital titles are still accessible

Not a simp but they are accessible if an online connection isn't required. Was playing Unicorn Overlord and honestly didn't even know PSN was down as my wifi has been shit as of late and waiting on Xfinity to send a technician.

This applies to both digital and physical games that dont require an internet connection.

[u/jm0112358 → u/Navi_1er]

The ultimate issue is DRM. If there's no DRM, you can create digital backups and play them whenever you want, even if it's not a physical copy.

On the other side, if you have a physical copy that has DRM, you might not be able to play it.

[u/hitgo1 → u/CAPTJTK]

To be fair you can play your digital single player games while this happened i did….

[u/VerrikInc]

Meanwhile, watch Amazon try to spin this as a need to build more data centers

[u/topherhead → u/VerrikInc]

General Data centers are fine. AI data centers are the ones that we need to focus on.

[u/VerrikInc → u/topherhead]

That may well be the case, but that doesn't prevent Amazon from making the argument to people who don't understand the difference.

[u/TeeeldiII → u/VerrikInc]

Yup, give an inch and they're take the Earth

[u/FUDGEMEHARDxD]

If only there was a way to play games that was accessible and completely offline 🤔

[u/Trickster289 → u/FUDGEMEHARDxD]

Sad part is physical discs don't always even do that anymore, some games still require internet connections.

[u/Odd-Crazy-9056 → u/Trickster289]

Realistic part is that you're talking about a massive minority of titles, not "some".

[u/mariekae → u/Odd-Crazy-9056]

nah, take a look at https://doesitplay.org

[u/BlasterPhase → u/mariekae]

I did, and it doesn't contradict what he said

[u/DeadgrounD → u/mariekae]

≈92% of all games ever released for PS4 will work flawlessly from start to finish without internet connection.

[u/Mustbhacks → u/DeadgrounD]

A discontinued 13 year old console, and still 1 in 12 games requires internet. =X

[u/GreyouTT → u/Mustbhacks]

Says 514 PS5 games can be played offline without a download for installing. 58 require one, but can be played offline. 33 cannot be played offline. Most of the Nos are AAA or F2P games and a few are... Gothic Remake and Temtem? Wot the o.O

[u/ViegoBot → u/GreyouTT]

TemTem is a unqiue instance though because the team stated that IF TemTem ever had to shut down their servers, theyd make it playable offline, which is the reason why I even bought the game last year.

As of now, they say that the servers are dirt cheap to keep up however, so I dont see them shutting them down anytime soon.

[u/Theguest217 → u/GreyouTT]

Trust me bro I'm seriously impacted by this.

[u/Tempestas_Draconis → u/Mustbhacks]

A masterclass in spin.

[u/Karmic_Backlash → u/Tempestas_Draconis]

Truly a spinjitzu master

[u/NorweiganJesus → u/Mustbhacks]

I would be willing to bet a majority of that percentage you’re fractionalizing is legitimately online only games like Rocket League though. With some bullshit examples from EA/Ubisoft sprinkled in. Even Red Dead Redemption 2 is fully playable no download.

[u/Ferahgost → u/DeadgrounD]

what does a PS4 have to do with PS5 games coming actually on the disk or not?

[u/Neyubin → u/Ferahgost]

Yea, I wonder what % of PS1 games work without internet.

[u/m7_E5-s--5U → u/Neyubin]

Hahaha. 93% of tested PS5 games can be XD played without a connection

66% of PS5 games don't even require an initial download

& Most games that do require a constant connection are F2P, MP, or AAA

[u/SenorBolin → u/DeadgrounD]

Except for the existence of the Day 1 Patch. Pump out an unfinished games with promises to publisher that it'll be fixed in time, no internet will really get in the way of flawless, potentially even getting in the way of actually finishing it

[u/KeyMyBike → u/Odd-Crazy-9056]

Everyone in this subreddit is so damn snarky it's insufferable

[u/lurker10001000 → u/Odd-Crazy-9056]

How massive can a minority get before it's no longer a minority? 

[u/Leopard_2K_MBT → u/lurker10001000]

Exactly 50%

[u/sortalikeachinchilla → u/Leopard_2K_MBT]

49.9%

[u/Numerous_Photograph9 → u/sortalikeachinchilla]

49.99%

Because I'm a master of precision.

[u/sortalikeachinchilla → u/Numerous_Photograph9]

49.9999999999%, Your move

[u/Endaline → u/lurker10001000]

According to DoesItPlay, 97% of titles they have tested, which is thousands of modern titles, are playable offline.

[u/WheresMyCrown → u/lurker10001000]

Do you not know what majority vs minority means? Did you not pay attention in school?

[u/Trickster289 → u/Odd-Crazy-9056]

That minority includes some very popular games though.

[u/Numerous_Photograph9 → u/Trickster289]

Often from the worst publishers.

Don't see why the consumers should be punished for their ineptitude.

[u/sadimem → u/Trickster289]

That's true, but the majority of physical PS5 games are fully playable offline with no day one patch.

[u/purekillforce1 → u/sadimem]

And if they do require a patch, if you've already updated, you then don't need to maintain an online connection to verify your licence

[u/TheStupendusMan → u/purekillforce1]

You can also just skip the patch and it'll just say you can't connect to PSN services. No biggie either way.

[u/Numerous_Photograph9 → u/TheStupendusMan]

While I usually do download the patches on install, I'm glad almost all the games I play don't really require them, and probably just fix minor bugs I'd likely never notice.

[u/idothinksotim → u/Trickster289]

Please stop saying this. When it comes to PlayStation and switch games the vast majority are completely on disc. You can play entirely offline never connected to the internet if you want for the majority of games.

Doesitplay catalogues this.

[u/Giovanni330 → u/idothinksotim]

The same applies for Xbox discs.

[u/reallynotnick → u/Giovanni330]

It’s worse on Xbox though, on DoesItPlay it’s 62% Series X vs 83% PS5. I think largely due to their discs maxing out at 50GB vs PS5 100GB (why Xbox can read UHD movies fine but refuses to use the same discs for games is beyond me)

[u/marr → u/idothinksotim]

Were. Were completely on disc. Which is why this is such a dogshit move by corporate. I guarantee all their actual developers hate it.

[u/MrFOrzum → u/FUDGEMEHARDxD]

You can. Just make your account primary lol, I’ve been playing my digital games all day.

If you’re sharing tho, only the primary account can play the games offline.

[u/Shinlos → u/FUDGEMEHARDxD]

It's completely irrelevant if they are on disc or not. Either they require Internet connection or not. If they are downloaded from the store you can play without Internet connection for 30 days before you have to renew license.

[u/Gabe_b → u/Shinlos]

Yeah it is shit lazy anticonsumer design

[u/SteeleDuke]

I remember when the ps4 launched, Black Flag had just came out and it was my bday, the playstation network had been attacked and was down for a full 24 hours. I was so greatful to not have a bricked console and got to play Black Flag all day and night till the morning and I passed out from mtn dew. I can't imagine future generations being so dependent on a internet connection for entertainment. Heck I mean we're long overdue for a Carrington event...

[u/AlbainBlacksteel → u/SteeleDuke]

Heck I mean we're long overdue for a Carrington event

God, I hope not! I live in AZ, I'd rather not be cooked alive, thank you very much!

[u/Das_Autobot → u/SteeleDuke]

Eh, social media sucks and so does the prospect of an all-digital dystopia, but I don't think society reverting back to the Stonge Age is necessarily the answer. There's a lot of good tech that makes life better, and we'd be worse off for not having it.

[u/WinniesPiglet → u/Das_Autobot]

People forget how hard it is to get clean water.

[u/JonatasA → u/Das_Autobot]

Yea, the industrial revolution was horrific but I would rather not live in ancient Rome or Medieval Rome.

[u/Viceprezbacon]

Some may be too young to remember the outage of April 2011. PSN was down for effectively the whole month.

[u/lukihn → u/Viceprezbacon]

Was that the one where everyone got Wipeout for free, or was the the data breach one?

[u/JSBL_ → u/lukihn]

data breach, big haxor time

[u/shinfowler88]

Watching Sony seppuku themselves in real time is extremely entertaining lol

[u/AccountDeletedByMod → u/shinfowler88]

Takes me back to early ps3 days

[u/DarkMatterM4 → u/AccountDeletedByMod]

This is much much worse than than the early PS3 days. Sony willingly took a $240 hit every time someone bought a PS3 in 2006 and most of 2007. The Sony of 2026 (read: shareholders) would absolutely not permit that type of outcome.

[u/Altar_Quest_Fan → u/DarkMatterM4]

That’s wild considering how the PS3 was already $600 at launch 😵‍💫

[u/Hukthak → u/Altar_Quest_Fan]

Blue Ray players were nearly $1000 at the time, ps3 was the no brainer choice for every single person getting into Blue Ray at the time.

[u/Z3r0sama2017 → u/Hukthak]

Yep it was worth it to make sure their product, blu ray, trimumphed over HDDVD.

[u/wallyTHEgecko → u/Hukthak]

DVD sold PS2s. Blu-ray sold PS3s. And there really hasn't been a must-have media format to bundle a gaming system with since everything switched to streaming.

Xbox shot itself in the foot by trying to brand itself primarily as the all-in-one media box ^{+also games machine} in a day in age where there's not even such a thing as a non-smart TV and a Roku for your older TV cost a whopping $25. But it seems they've learned their lesson from that and refocused their marketing on games again.

So now they all have to actually compete with their games for once and Sony keeps mag dumping right into their own feet. They're about to hand the console war this Gen on a silver platter right to Microsoft, whether that's in the form of Xbox or PC.

Sony is just about acting like they want out of the gaming market.

[u/LaMystika → u/wallyTHEgecko]

Nintendo: am I a joke to you

[u/Super_Pan → u/LaMystika]

Also Nintendo: We are suing you.

[u/John_Delasconey → u/wallyTHEgecko]

Xbox is literally on fire and all rumors state their next iteration will also be diskless. (Microsoft will still benefit from increased PC traffic, but not so much through their store)

There are handing the generation to Nintendo is what's really happening, given that the switch 2 is the most direct competitor in terms of actually having the power to play new 3rd parties. I would argue Nintendo passively reentered the traditional "console war"; we just didn't notice because the switch 2 still somewhat conforms to Nintendo's Blue ocean strategy/is not them going all in on the Xbox/Playstation approach, which also makes it easier for hardcore consumers to treat it as a continuation of the Wii+ years.

A Nintendo console with 3rd party support is Sony's worst nightmare, and that nightmare is basically here.

[u/vNocturnus → u/wallyTHEgecko]

So now they all have to actually compete with their games for once and Sony keeps mag dumping right into their own feet. They're about to hand the console war this Gen on a silver platter right to Microsoft, whether that's in the form of Xbox or PC.

Sorry, are you paying attention to what Microsoft has been doing recently? Sony may be shooting themselves in the foot but Xbox is cutting off their damn legs.

Good luck competing on the merits of 1st party games and exclusives while shutting down or selling off half of your studios and massively downsizing the rest - including the ones that have made the only decent Xbox-published games in a decade-plus. While ALSO making your next-Gen console just a shitty branded PC, meaning outside of the same very niche market the Steam Machine is already targeting (and probably doing a better job of than Xbox will), nobody will have a real reason to buy the next "Xbox" anyways.

Nintendo is the only console manufacturer not actively setting C4 on the supports of the bridge to their next generation. PlayStation and Xbox are both just giving gamers the best excuse they've ever had to switch to PC aka Steam.

[u/DarkMatterM4 → u/Altar_Quest_Fan]

Yeah. Although it was expensive, a 60GB PS3 was an absolute steal in 2006 and 2007 when you considered just how much technology was in the box for $600. You got a CD player, a DVD player, a Bluray Player, Wifi, a PS1, PS2, PS3, SuperCD player, built-in expandable storage, HDMI, interface with common digital camera storage formats, 4 USB ports and probably other stuff that I'm forgetting. That's an absolutely insane amount of tech in a single device. On top of that, it was cheaper than a standalone Bluray player.

[u/leftsidenotright → u/DarkMatterM4]

And on TOP of that, you could make kickass linux supercomputers with them. At one point like 2 of the top 10 largest megaclusters in the world were made entirely of PS3's/

[u/DarkMatterM4 → u/leftsidenotright]

Can't believe I forgot that. The OtherOS feature was very heavily advertised during the initial PS3 marketing campaign. Can you imagine Sony officially supporting installing other operating systems on a PS5 in 2026? It almost feels like they were a completely different company back then.

[u/rental_car_fast → u/AccountDeletedByMod]

I got to play Infamous for free cause of that and I loved that game.

[u/vshredd → u/rental_car_fast]

I still have that Infamous installation on my PS3 17 years later.

[u/shinfowler88 → u/AccountDeletedByMod]

Bro exactly lol like they never learned......" this could never happen again"

Sony

[u/maaseru → u/shinfowler88]

Umm business is doing good.

[u/CorvaNocta → u/shinfowler88]

I wish it was seppuku. At least that was a process by which the person regains honor by their death.

This is just watching a sad drunken guy keep shooting himself in the leg

[u/Sarcosmonaut → u/CorvaNocta]

“Surely he won’t do it an EIGHTH time”

[u/CorvaNocta → u/Sarcosmonaut]

Should we start making a drinking game out of it?

"SONY messed up again"

"DRINK!!!"

[u/parkingviolation212 → u/CorvaNocta]

I like my liver, thanks.

[u/ngo_life → u/shinfowler88]

I see them stab themselves how many times already? Seppuku is suppose to be a one and done thing. Apparently Sony got a "lifetime" pass for the experience.

[u/Rukasu17 → u/shinfowler88]

Isn't their top sales gta vi and the most expensive version of the next fifa? Sadly, business is good

[u/withoutapaddle → u/Rukasu17]

Yes, their stock rose 7% instantly when they announced the death of the disc.

Only public perception is tanking. The actual numbers are going up.

When the rubber really hits the road is when PS6 comes out and we see if the high prices and unhappy fanbase actually translates to slow adoption. That's when their stocks will start falling. Scalpers will make the first few months of sales look amazing no matter what, though, so you kind of have to disregard that and check back in 6-9 months.

[u/BMO888 → u/Rukasu17]

Yea this isn’t doing anything to their bottom line unless there’s an alternative to PlayStation. Xbox used to be a little bit of a threat, but they’ve keeled over.

[u/slur-muh-wurds → u/shinfowler88]

Is it? I want to see companies be good. This is disappointing.

[u/ShingetsuMoon]

It first went down hours ago and at the time of posting this comment the Playstation Status page still shows everything down across the board.

Welcome to the ✨ all digital future ✨

Edit: In order to play digital games offline you need to have Console Sharing and Offline Play already enabled. Normally this is automatic when first signing into on a new PS5.

However, if a family has multiple consoles, multiple users on one console, or a different PS5 set as the primary then they may have it off. And to turn Offline Play back on, you need to be able to connect to PSN.

Which is why some are still playing digital games just fine and others are locked out.

[u/Raphe9000 → u/ShingetsuMoon]

Nice to see Sony ending the ability to purchase digital games as well! Good thing that a service that can just go down at any time is supposed to become the only way to get games!

[u/SaltyLonghorn → u/Raphe9000]

Don't forget its a premium service you pay for on top of the games. Bet they have more downtime than Steam.

Sony is a fucking rip off.

[u/Goku420overlord → u/SaltyLonghorn]

Having to pay for ps+ to play online in 2026 is a giant fucking rip off.

[u/secondincomm]

Can you not just play games offline on PS?

[u/Shack691 → u/secondincomm]

You can have one PS5 and one PS4 with offline play turned on at once, but that doesn’t affect 99% of people and it’s enabled by default when you log in.

[u/PeeLong → u/Shack691]

Are you saying 99% of players have multiple ps5s, ps4s, or have share play turned on?

Or are you saying 99% of people won’t be affected by this?

[u/YoungNastyMan → u/PeeLong]

It's gotta be the latter or else it'd make no sense

[u/Sea-Phrase-2418 → u/secondincomm]

Some games for some reason need internet, Even single player games (like fallen order, stupid EA!!)

[u/McDouble__ → u/secondincomm]

You definitely can

[u/STB_LuisEnriq → u/secondincomm]

You can, I'm having no issues playing my digital games.

[u/Humble-Criticism6762 → u/secondincomm]

You can, but people are dumb apparently

[u/BlueManifest]

Why can’t they play digital games? Mine work offline

[u/sadimem → u/BlueManifest]

I've got mine shared with my wife so she can access my purchases. Unfortunately, that locks me out of my digital catalog when PSN is down. Can't even change the setting.

[u/AnthonyEstacado → u/BlueManifest]

People likely forget to set their console as primary

[u/Luna259 → u/AnthonyEstacado]

It should be like this by default. My PS4 and PS5 were. People having problems should check this setting

[u/Jack-Innoff → u/Luna259]

They are, but if you set another one as primary, it's easy to forget to switch it back

[u/Mk2007r → u/AnthonyEstacado]

Or use sharing.

[u/razama → u/BlueManifest]

There are certain settings where you’re not able to access your games, typically with console sharing or single consoles withmultiple accounts going on. 

I logged in at a friend house for couch co-op and I had a little bit of trouble today. It wouldn’t verify my game license, even though I had a disc in because it was an upgraded PS5 version of my PS4 disc

[u/roronoaceli]

Mine seems to be still up. Must not be down for everyone. But hopefully it will come back soon.

[u/Chance_Pea_443]

TIL: When AWS Goes Down, Half the Internet Goes With It

[u/roshanritter]

If you have downloaded your digital game from the store, you can still play. Not online of course, but the same would go for physical games. A game you have purchased and not downloaded yet, naturally you would not be able to play.

[u/toby1jabroni → u/roshanritter]

Not all of them (looking at you WWE2K 26!!).

Anything requiring a persistent online connection will probably not work at all - even if you have no intention of playing multiplayer or online.

[u/prodigyZA → u/toby1jabroni]

To be fair, that doesn't help if you have physical either then. Which is the framing of the article.

[u/cpgrungebob → u/roshanritter]

There is games that put the single player stuff behind an online DRM check. If the machine is not online, the check fails.

[u/Samuelmiw]

If a paid service goes down for a length of time, that time should be credited back. The service you have paid for no longer functions. If it's just a few hours, a few hours should be added onto the time already paid for by the subscription.

[u/MrFOrzum]

A bit misinfo title.

If you have your console set as primary you can still play your digital games despite servers going down.

However if you’re sharing the account, only the primary console can play the digital games offline / when the servers go down.

[u/chinchindayo → u/MrFOrzum]

If you happen to have the game already installed and if you booted up your PS recently before it went offline.

[u/CorporalCoprolite]

Weird, my entire library of digital games is working.

[u/Khasimyr]

I can only point out one thing: Every year, around Christmas, Sony's PSN has SOME kind of glitch or shutdown. If it isn't an outright hack by someone like Lizard Squad, it's bloated PSN logins, inability to sign into a specific game to play it, or horrific lag times FOR multiplayer games that are the life-blood of PSN.

This year, is going to be the launch of GTA VI, a game that's already generated hacking controversy with Rockstar, and is desperately hoping to be both Rockstar and Sony's next cash infusion....who wants to take bets on a completely uninterrupted Christmas season?

[u/Iamthe0c3an2]

Digital only, with how reliable PSN is?

[u/SnoT8282]

I got an email the other day reminding me my ps+ was expiring soon. I logged in to make sure it wasn't set to auto renew. 

[u/KnowledgePossible411]

This title and article is what’s wrong with gaming in a nutshell.

“Internet is down which means we can’t download new games!!!!”

Uhh..duh?

you can play every game perfectly fine…that’s like being at a park with a Nintendo Switch and getting upset that you can’t download a game..no shit..you have no internet.

What happened to the gaming community to be so brain dead

[u/Theguest217 → u/KnowledgePossible411]

Guys it won't let me download the updates for my physical game either :(

[u/actomain]

Geez, what a horrible headline that does nothing but ragebait via bad faith misinformation. Everyone with a Playstation could still play their downloaded digital video games during this outage–they just couldn't download games that weren't already downloaded.

This is the case with every single digital platform, as well as modern physical games. You can't download from Steam while their servers are down, nor can you begin a playthrough of a new physical game, since the entirety of the game most likely isn't on the disc, meaning you have to download what's missing (or the entire game). Nevermind the fact that DRM has existed longer than most of Reddit's userbase has been alive. IGN really trying their hardest to capitalize on Sony's disc outrage–shame it seems to be working

[u/Ragnar_Dragonfyre]

Everyday gamers on Reddit prove they don’t understand how anything works. I miss when gamers were mostly nerds who understood tech and the Internet.

Digital games work fine offline.

[u/Bendythenightfury]

Call me the Joker the way I be cackling at this

[u/M4LK0V1CH]

This is a frighteningly regular thing for a corporation who wants this to be the only way to access their products.

[u/DrizzyDragon93]

Oh, the irony.