Minecraft US Launch Temporarily Knocks PSN Offline story on
TechRaptor.
Sony’s PlayStation Network was down earlier this afternoon following the US release of the popular open-ended building game, Minecraft.
This afternoon, around 1PM CDT, eager PlayStation 4 owners attempting to download Minecraft were met with various errors, including error code NW-31201-7. A Google search was able to reveal that the error code appears as the result of servers down or currently unavailable. Sony’s own PlayStation Knowledge Center error code search returned no results, however.
By 2PM CDT, PS4 users trying to log onto the PlayStation Network received a notification that PSN was down for maintenance, before service was finally restored roughly an hour later. Throughout the ordeal Sony’s PSN Status page reported that the service was operational. Access to PSN on the PlayStation 3 and Vita was unaffected.
Disappointed users took to Twitter to voice their frustration:
#psndown so often these days, playstation better be handing out some free ps plus for this. I feel like I backed the wrong pony again
— gareth cooper (@coopers41)
September 4, 2014
How bad is psn though? Every day its down and no explanation,wonder if they will give us free days for every breakdown?
@AskPlayStation #psn
— ASHLEY AMORE (@DJAshleyAmore)
September 4, 2014
Others questioned whether the PlayStation Network would be able to remain operational during the release of Bungie’s highly-anticipated MMO-shooter, Destiny, on September 9th:
Looks like I'll have to wait a week to download Destiny.
#PSN really need to step it up with their maintenance and security
— Takeo Kahn (@WetSparkK)
September 4, 2014
I'll add my weight to the concerns about
#PSN. If it can't handle Minecraft, I'm pretty concerned about it handling Destiny.
@PlayStation
— ADAMel Falcao (@TheLastOfBudge)
September 4, 2014
To their credit, Sony did acknowledge the situation and communicate their progress in resolving the problem with users on Twitter:
We are aware that there are currently some issues with accessing PSN. Thanks for your patience as we work to resolve the issues.
— Ask PlayStation (@AskPlayStation)
September 4, 2014
This news today comes on the heels of a series of outages in late August, when an online group calling themselves the Lizard Squad executed a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on PSN servers; Sony later rendered the service inaccessible as scheduled maintenance was performed.