Sony offers PlayStation gamers compensation for 24-hour PSN outage

Sony's PlayStation Network went offline for a considerable period this past weekend, with players unable to access their games and other online services for almost 24 hours. It's the second-longest PSN outage to date, falling behind the monumental 2011 outage that lasted weeks - sparking many to wonder if it was due to a breach or attack.

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With Sony's PlayStation Network and PSN services restored, the company announced on social media that it had "fully recovered from an operational issue." This vague explanation has done little to satisfy fans wanting a detailed explanation or reasoning for the outage, which occurred right as the weekend began. On the plus side, Sony is compensating players with a free reward.

Sony's social media post reads, "We apologize for the inconvenience and thank the community for their patience. All PlayStation Plus members will automatically receive an additional 5 days of service."

Compensation for downtime is always fantastic. However, without an explanation as to why the PlayStation Network went down, many are wondering what happened, especially when every PSN service was affected - from the PlayStation Store to account management to the ability to launch and play games, including those without any multiplayer or prominent online components. The downtime started on Friday, February 7 at 7 PM EST - which is peak 'gaming time' for many. Online services for both Xbox and Nintendo were unaffected during this time.

This made it a significant PlayStation and gaming event this past weekend. Without an official explanation from Sony, the vague "operational issue" note adds weight to the popular rumor or theory that it was a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.