In early February 2025, thePlayStation Network experienced a major service interruptionthat left many players unable to use the online features. Finally, players will receive the compensation that Sony promised.

Unfortunately, there’s no prize for people who weren’t paying for a PlayStation Plus subscription. PlayStation Plus is a paid service, and Sony compensates those for that service because it could not meet the company’s end of the agreement.

Despite Sonyslowly getting rid ofthe need to sign onto PSN to play Sony’s games on PC, plenty still require it. Those players definitely missed out on gameplay because of Sony. However, as Sony removes this requirement over time, this likely won’t be an issue anymore.

Honestly, five days is more than needed. The outage lasted for almost a full day and affected users worldwide, so five times the compensation is great.Tthe highest tier of PlayStation Plus is $18, so one day of that in February would be about $1.50. PlayStation is essentially giving users $7.50 back as an apology.

There have been some users asking for a full game as compensation, but $65 in return for a $1.50 loss is not a fair trade. While Sony could have done more to keep users informed during the outage, the company is doing enough to make up for it after the fact. Sony described the problem asan “operational issue"affecting its network services after the outage was done. That could be made better by Sony, and hopefully, the company will be more vocal next time.

This turned out to be a response to a hack on the PlayStation Network, and Sony didn’t want to worry people. In reality, Sony should have warned users that their information was compromised the moment it happened. There was more to it,including a lawsuit, but it was a bad time.

Sony reimbursed everyone with a year of PlayStation Plus and a free game. One of my friends bought his first PlayStation a month or so after the hack and was able to get the free rewards that were given out, so Sony was more than apologetic for the experience.

Less than a day where a regular outage happened does not feel comparable to what happened over a decade ago. Sony did a good job by offering so many days in return, but players should be more vocal about Sony lowering the requirements for their PC games so those games won’t be affected next time.