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PlayStation down: Steam and PSN stop working as gamers hit by huge outage

Users are unable to play or purchase games online

Adam Smith
Friday 23 July 2021 10:05 BST
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Sony’s PlayStation Network and Valve’s PC game storefront Steam have both gone down simultaneously.

Numerous users took to Twitter to share their troubles, with many people unable to play online or purchase video games.

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At time of writing, the Steam support account has acknowledged the issue. The PlayStation support account has advised users that “clearing your cache & cookies or trying another browser, device or different internet connection (like mobile data)” might fix the problem.

Users of both the PlayStation 4 and Sony’s new PlayStation 5 console are experiencing issues, with the troubleshooting guide apparently providing little help.

It appears that the problem resides with Akamai, a major content delivery network company that facilitates internet services for other companies.

“We are aware of an emerging issue with the Edge DNS service”, a statement on its website reads.

“We are actively investigating the issue. If you have questions or are experiencing impact due to this issue, please contact Akamai Technical Support. In the interest of time, we are providing you the most current information available, which is subject to changes, corrections, and updates.”

The Independent has reached out to Sony for more information. The Independent was unable to reach Valve at this time, due to a larger internet outage that seems to be taking place concurrently.

According to the website DownDetector, the issues began at approximately 4:22pm GMT, with the vast majority of DownDetector users (82 per cent) unable to log into the PlayStation Network.

Similar issues were seen for Steam, with 59 per cent of DownDetector users reporting that the website was unavailable, and 25 per cent having problems with online gaming.

The website also reports that EA Games, Call of Duty servers, Fortnite, and FIFA servers are also experiencing an outage.

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