The PlayStation Network is experiencing extended outages for the second time this month. In a post on the PlayStation Blog, the company acknowledged "certain functions of PlayStation Network are down," and that they might not be restored for a while.
In a case of unfortunate timing, online-enabled PS3 games like Portal 2, Mortal Kombat, and SOCOM 4 launched this week.
"While we are investigating the cause of the Network outage, we wanted to alert you that it may be a full day or two before we're able to get the service completely back up and running," according to Sony. "Thank you very much for your patience while we work to resolve this matter."
As for which features are down, GameSpot editors were unable to log in to the service, effectively making all of the features inaccessible.
Earlier this month, the "hacktivist" group Anonymous launched distributed denial of service attacks on the PlayStation Network, intermittently bringing down the PlayStation 3's online functions. The attacks were directed at Sony in response to the company's since-settled legal fight with George Hotz, a hacker who distributed the PS3 master key online. However, on a website used as a mouthpiece for the loose-knit group of hackers, the attacks were called off because of the negative impact they were having on Sony's customers rather than the company itself.