The PlayStation Network has been down since at least 3 p.m. EST on February 7, and some fans are wondering if it's time to hunker down for a longer wait. As the PlayStation community settles in to wait for Sony to restore PSN service, stories have cropped up about the infamous outage of 2011, when PSN was inaccessible for a whopping 23 days.

Sony has not made any statements on the current outage, besides letting fans know they know it's happening. On the Ask PlayStation X , the company states: "We are aware some s might be currently experiencing issues with PSN," before directing fans to the official PlayStation status page. At the time of this writing, all PSN capabilities are still down, and the outage seems to be affecting PSN worldwide.

PlayStation Network Outage Reaching 24 Hours

What PSN Being Down Means For Fans

Lucky for PlayStation s, a PSN is not essential for using PlayStation consoles and fans can still play their offline games without issue. PSN is only required for any features that need online connectivity, including:

• g into the PSN
• Making purchases in the PlayStation store
• Accessing multiplayer features in games

These functions are currently unavailable no matter how players try to access them. Attempting to sign into the PlayStation Store via website, for instance, currently results in a "503 Service Temporarily Unavailable" error.

Although offline games can still be played while PSN is down, fans who earn trophies while offline will need to sync their save data to the cloud from the game's options for the trophy to appear in their once PSN is restored.

As fans wait for PSN service to be restored, some have taken to Reddit to reminisce about the last big outage that Sony had, back in 2011. Many fans have shared their experience with that time on a thread started by Reddit Apprehensive_Cause67. Some seem surprised that the outage was "only" 23 days long, noting that it felt like months at the time.

Redditor worldwide nearly full-day outage is still concerning.

What Fans Can Expect Once PSN Is Back Online

Sony Rewarded Fans In 2011 With Compensation Gifts

When service was finally restored to PSN in 2011, Sony ran a "Welcome Back" campaign. This campaign awarded players compensation gifts, detailed on the PlayStation blog, including a number of games and free PS Plus for a month. Although the ongoing PSN outage won't necessarily be as drastic and long-lasting as the one from 14 years ago, fans may still see some form of compensation from Sony for the time they weren't able to access PSN.

At the moment, Sony is staying quiet about the reason behind the PSN issues and what steps they plan to take next. Fans should keep an eye on the company's X , as well as the official PlayStation status page for the most up-to-date information about the PlayStation Network problems currently being experienced by players across the world.

Source: Ask PlayStation/X, PlayStation status, Apprehensive_Cause67/Reddit, gendegree/Reddit, PlayStation blog