PSN Maintenance Begins

PS3, PS4 and PS Vita owners may have trouble using PlayStation Network today. That's not because of hackers, though. Sony is performing maintenance on PSN so they can implement "a series of back-end improvements to the network."

"Back-end improvements" is code for "you probably won't notice any difference." Still, it's not a bad idea for them to clean up PSN before next month. Destiny will be launching on September 9th and Sony's put a lot of effort into hyping the PS4 and PS3 versions. They obviously want to ensure that the release is as smooth as possible.

I'm still kind of expecting the Destiny servers to be a mess on launch. That's not a specific dig at the game; online-only titles just tend to have bumpy release days. Early projections suggest that the game's going to sell huge amounts of copies this fall, too. All Sony can do, though, is make sure PSN's in good shape beforehand.

The maintenance will run from 9:40 AM to 4:50 PM Pacific Time, or 12:40 PM to 7:50 PM Eastern. The maintenance for Europe runs from 16:00 BST to 5:00 BST on Friday.

If you've logged into PSN any time since August 23rd, the maintenance shouldn't affect you too much. You'll still be able to play online or use apps like Netflix. However, the PlayStation Store, Account Management and PlayStation Home will be unavailable for everyone until the maintenance is incomplete.

PSN's maintenance was originally supposed to happen on Monday. However, Sony rescheduled it due to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that targeted the network this weekend. The attack brought down PSN entirely. Rather than inconveniencing gamers again with maintenance, Sony decided to put off the process.

"Although this has impacted your ability to access our network and enjoy our services, no personal information has been accessed," Sony said this weekend.

The DDoS attack on PSN was one of many perpetrated by a group called Lizard Squad. Other games targeted by the group included Hearthstone, Path of Exile and League of Legends. They also called in a bomb threat on Sony Online Entertainment's president John Smedley - an act which drew the attention of the FBI.

Fortunately, all the games attacked last weekend seem to be back to normal. Lizard Squad suggested on Twitter that they may make additional attacks, though.