The PlayStation Outage Highlighted My Limited Game Library

This past weekend, Sony’s PlayStation Network experienced a significant outage, lasting over 24 hours—one of the most extensive unscheduled interruptions for a major gaming network in quite some time. With PlayStation’s online services down on Friday and Saturday, countless gamers found their weekend plans disrupted, raising serious concerns about the future of digital game ownership.

This unexpected downtime paints a rather grim picture of what’s to come for game ownership, highlighting the industry’s growing dependency on internet connections and digital formats. Worryingly, people were even hindered from playing some of their physical games. Let me share my personal encounter with this inconvenience.

I’ve had a hankering for sports games lately, a build-up to the Super Bowl fervor. This led me to indulge in Tape to Tape, a hockey roguelite on my PC, which inspired me to explore sports simulation titles on my PS5. Excited to dive into TopSpin 2K25, the newest installment in 2K’s tennis series, I was eager for a solo sports adventure—one focused on captivating narratives without the hassle of tracking multiple players.

However, I quickly discovered the PlayStation Network was out of commission. This meant nearly all game modes in TopSpin 2K25 were inaccessible. Shockingly, even the single-player modes were locked out. What’s baffling is that my long-played career mode, a mode that involves just me, was grayed out. Without online access to PSN, the game became essentially unusable, leaving only the tutorials and exhibition modes available.

Frustrated, I pivoted to trying NBA 2K25 for the first time. Fortunately, I managed to install a game patch despite the network issues, and to my relief, the single-player modes were up and running. I embarked on my usual challenge—starting a franchise mode with an expansion team and seeing how far I could push a team of the league’s outsiders. But without network connection, I skipped the initial tutorial. Unbeknownst to me, 2K25 had revamped the shooting mechanics, and consequently, I missed every shot in my debut game. Frustrated, I simulated the rest of the match and decided to restart the next day.

To wrap up a challenging day with the PSN outage, I opted for Dishonored—an older title languishing in my backlog, which my brother and I both decided to try this month. Dishonored lacks significant online features, making it seemingly immune to the outage. However, I usually play my PS5 through the PS Remote Play app on my PC, allowing my partner to use the TV as needed. Initially, Remote Play worked fine, but after my first session on Saturday, the app logged me out of my Sony account. Due to the outage, logging back in was impossible, cutting off my ability to play PS5 on my PC.

By this point, I’d had enough, choosing to set aside my PS5 gaming endeavors for the day—an experience surely mirrored by many others. Although I didn’t face the larger complications, like issues with physical games or disrupted multiplayer plans, the whole situation highlighted how reliant my gaming had become on an internet connection. It’s a troubling glimpse into what might become a challenging future for the preservation and ownership of games.