The PSN outage has become a major problem for PS5 players utilizing a very popular setting on the console. For nearly 24 hours, PSN has been down on PS4 and PS5, the longest period of time for the service in over a decade. Given how much of the gaming world is connected to online services, this has been a huge issue. Ignoring just the video game aspect of it all, so many people own or use consoles like the PS5 for things like Netflix, YouTube, and Twitch. It’s a vital piece of their entertainment beyond gaming. For gaming, PSN allows you to buy digital games, connect with friends, and of course, actually play the games themselves.
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It’s the foundation of the PS5. Needless to say, PlayStation fans are outraged over the PSN outage and have grown increasingly frustrated as the situation progresses. Since the outage happened yesterday evening, PlayStation has only released one message which simply let players know they were aware that PSN was down. Since them, silence. Obviously, this has upset players who want to know what the cause of the downtime is, when they can expect to be up and running again, and if there’s anything else to worry about. However, we are all flying blind and a lot of people are just playing their games offline until things come back.
PS5 Users Who Game Share Unable to Play Games Due to PSN Outage
Sadly, there’s a group of players that can’t play anything at all on PS5 due to the PSN outage. Beyond the PS5 digital owners who can only play what’s currently installed, there’s another group struggling even more. Those who game share are completely locked out of their games if the game wasn’t bought on their primary system. Essentially, the way game sharing works is two players sign into each others accounts and enable console sharing. This allows you to get access to any game the other person buys, but it also means you don’t own the license to any of the games you buy which means the PS5 can’t verify ownership if things go offline. So, if you are the one buying most of the games, you’re out of luck.
PS5 players who game share are claiming they can’t play their games. Twitter user MVG claimed they were unable to play the newly-released, critically acclaimed RPG Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 because they game share on PS5 and the PSN servers couldn’t verify the license. Given gaming is so expensive, there are a lot of people who game share and take turns buying games for each other. With that said, there is a way around this but it will only be doable once the servers return. However, only one of the two people game sharing will be able to do it. You can see the steps on how to play game shared games offline on PS5 below. For any questions, visit this PlayStation FAQ.
How to Play PS5 Games via Game Share Offline
Settingsย >ย Users and Accountsย >ย Otherย >ย Console Sharing and Offline Play
Selectย Enableย orย Disable.
As for the outage itself, the longer things go on for, the more people have begun to draw comparisons to the 2011 PSN hack. Back in April 2011, PSN was hacked and went down for nearly a full month. PS3 users couldn’t buy games, play online, and were unable to access online features for major new releases at the time. Ideally, this isn’t a hack and there’s nothing to worry about, but it is drumming up a lot of bad memories for longtime PSN users. To pour more salt in the wound, PS Portal users aren’t able to use the device since its a cloud streaming device and requires a constant connection to PSN.
