Recently, PlayStation Network (PSN) has suffered a serious downtime and has not resumed normal services for more than 24 hours, resulting in players around the world being unable to access online content, and even single-player digital games have been affected.This incident quickly sparked heated discussion on social media, and physical game retailer GameStop took the opportunity to finish off on X, tweeting and teasing: "I bet you all want physical games now."
This PSN downtime not only affected multiplayer online games, but even stand-alone games that rely on digital versions cannot run, because modern PlayStation gaming consoles need to verify users' game permissions online.Many players receive the error message "Unable to use this content" and "Unable to connect to the server to verify your license" when trying to launch stand-alone games such as "ReFantazio" or "Heaven's Kingdom: Save 2".
What's even more surprising is that some users report that even the fully digital version of the PS5 Slim or PS5 Pro is connected to an external optical drive, it cannot read the physical game disk.This problem has caused many players who rely on digital games to lose almost completely the ability to access their own game library.
This tweet from GameStop quickly sparked widespread discussion, and many players said that the PSN downtime once again highlighted the importance of physical games.One user left a message: "That's why I insist on buying a physical version. After the server goes down, I can still play games." Another player sarcastically said: "If your game library is in the cloud, then they are basicallyIt doesn't belong to you."
In recent years, with the popularity of digital versions of games, the physical game market has gradually shrunk, but this large-scale downtime of PSN undoubtedly made many players re-examine the value of physical media.Industry insiders pointed out that although digital versions of the game provide convenience, if players cannot access purchased content offline, the gaming experience will be seriously affected once they encounter a server downtime.
At present, Sony has not officially responded to the specific reasons and repair progress of PSN downtime.For players who rely on PSN, this incident is undoubtedly a profound lesson, and for GameStop, this unexpected promotional opportunity may allow more players to reconsider purchasing physical versions of the game.
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