Sony’s PlayStation Network has been suffering an outage worldwide since Friday night, preventing users from gaming online, streaming videos or buying new games or consoles.

Just before 6 p.m. Friday, there were a scant 160 issue reports on the outage monitoring site Downdetector. In just 15 minutes, that number spiked to 16,253 reports from people experiencing issues using the PlayStation Network, peaking at 6:44 p.m. with over 71,000 reports coming in.

As of Saturday, people were still experiencing problems, with thousands of reports continuing to come in after the peak; there were 5,623 reports at 9:14 a.m., for example. Of the reports sent into Downdetector, 78% focused on server issues, 15% on problems logging in and 5% on using the PlayStation store.

Sony’s PlayStation Network status page does not specify what could be causing the issues. It lists the start of the outage for all of the PlayStation Network’s services at 7 p.m..

“We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience,” Sony wrote.

A previous outage on Oct. 1 left gamers unable to use the PlayStation Network for about eight hours according to technology news website The Verge. Sony has not publicized the cause of that outage.

The ongoing outage has already lasted for more than 14 hours.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.