PS5 owners get compensation for PSN problem but not the one you think

Sony has finally got round to compensating PlayStation owners for recent network problems, but not the one that made headlines earlier this month. Three weeks ago, the PlayStation Network went down right before the weekend, preventing people from playing games online and, in many cases, accessing their digital libraries.

Although the situation only lasted for a day, it was long enough for Sony to promise compensation to those who had been affected. Other publishers, like Capcom, also offered to extend the special events they were running that weekend, to make up for the time lost.

PlayStation owners have recently begun receiving compensation. Not for the network outage though, but instead for a largely forgotten incident that happened over Christmas. On December 24, PlayStation owners were unable to redeem voucher codes through the PlayStation Store. It was Christmas Eve, but even so, the issue wasn’t widely reported and certainly wasn’t as big of a deal as the network outage.

Despite this incident happening two months ago, Sony has only now begun contacting account holders who were affected and gifting them $10 (£8) in store credit. One such customer shared the email they were sent to PlayStation Lifestyle, which confirmed it is authentic and that the email has been sent out to other players worldwide.

‘We are aware that on December 24, 2024, a systems error resulted in users being unable to redeem voucher codes on the PlayStation Store, and we have identified your account as one impacted by this error,’ reads the email. It adds that the customer’s voucher should now be redeemable if it hasn’t been used already, which the customer confirmed is the case. So, Sony is compensating people even if they didn’t lose their voucher to the error.

While this is obviously good news, it’s curious that Sony is only now offering this compensation. Perhaps it took Sony this much time to figure out which accounts were affected but it does suggest those waiting to be compensated for the network outage will need to wait even longer.

As a reminder, Sony’s way of apologising for the outage is to give five free days of PlayStation Plus to anyone who had a subscription at the time the network went down. This already annoyed all the people who were similarly impacted by the outage and didn’t have PlayStation Plus (meaning they’re getting no compensation at all), but it seems PlayStation Plus subscribers haven’t received their extra days yet anyway.

A quick glance through X shows several people commenting on their lack of extra days over the past two weeks, directly tagging official PlayStation accounts for an explanation. If the aforementioned Christmas Eve compensation is anything to go by, then Sony may not send out those extra PlayStation Plus days for another couple of months.

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.

Arrow MORE: PS5 Pro sales fall behind PS4 Pro in the US as console sales plummet. Arrow MORE: PS5 sales catch up to PS4 despite lack of exclusives over Christmas. Arrow MORE: Shock news: PS5 State of Play was good as Returnal follow-up revealed. Sign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content.