Sony has announced that it has fixed a PlayStation 4 messaging issue that resulted in some consoles becoming inoperable.
In a response on Twitter, Sony’s Ask PlayStation UK support account said the company has “since fixed the issue, and it wasn’t bricking consoles, just sending them into a crash loop that can be quickly fixed in under 5 minutes.”
We've since fixed the issue, and it wasn't bricking consoles, just sending them into a crash loop that can be quickly fixed in under 5 minutes. Delete the message on the PS mobile app, go into Safe Mode, use Option 5, console back to normal. ^DB
— PlayStation Support UK (@PS_Support_UK) October 15, 2018
However, given that Sony didn’t publicly address the issue until a couple of days had passed, it’s unlikely that those who were affected were even aware of this quick fix.
The problem first came up in an October 13th Reddit thread, wherein Reddit user Huntstark said his Rainbow Six: Siege team received malicious PlayStation Network messages that rendered their consoles inoperable. Huntstark said he and his team members had to factory reset their consoles in order to restore functionality.
In the Reddit thread, users suggested that PlayStation users set their messaging preferences to ‘Friends Only’ or ‘No One’ to prevent harmful messages from coming in.
Sony originally said that it was planning a system software update to fix the bug, but it appears that one will no longer be needed.
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