[UPDATE: 11:05PM EST — PlayStation Network's status page shows all services as up and running after nearly a full day of being offline. The hacker group known as Phantom Squad claim responsibility for the outage. The original story is below.]

Sony confirms PlayStation Network is currently down, with the outage affecting all of the services for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, as well as PS Vita.

According to Sony's official PSN status page, all of the company's gaming platforms are experiencing issues with the network, as every single feature is currently down, including the PlayStation Store, account management, and the service's gaming and social features. The Japan-based tech firm has yet to confirm exactly what has caused the problems, but the PlayStation support team has confirmed that engineers are looking into exactly what has affected the PSN.

After finding out about the issues, Sony posted an official message to make sure fans know that it is taking the necessary steps to bring the network back online, saying, "We are currently under maintenance and you may be experiencing issues. . . . Thanks for your patience as we investigate." Furthermore, regarding the issues fans may encounter, the company released a statement to the UK outlet Express, reading, "You may have some difficulty launching games, applications, or online features. Our engineers are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, and we thank you for your patience."

Over the holidays, hackers threatened to take down both PlayStation Network and Xbox Live on Christmas which thankfully didn't occur. However, with Sony not having found or revealed an official cause of the PSN's outage just yet, it's possible for such a collective to have followed through with their plans later than intended.

As gamers the world over are aware, this is far from the first time Sony's PSN has gone down. One of the most infamous outages occurred when the network's servers experienced a Christmas attack from the hacker group known as the Lizard Squad in 2014 which rendered all services to be inaccessible. Due to it taking much longer than expected to bring PSN back online, Sony offered fans a PlayStation Plus 5-day extension for any member that had their accounts active on December 25, 2014.

Since Sony's PSN outages have become so commonplace, fans decided that being given such paltry gifts as an apology wasn't going to cut it. Last year, many fans created a website petitioning for a better PlayStation Network underneath the banner #BetterPSN, which was eventually addressed by the multinational shortly after the campaign began. Sony assured its fans that the service would be up to snuff in the near-future, but of course, here we are again, and PSN is down once more.

Undoubtedly, tons of gamers received a PlayStation 4 as a gift for Christmas, so PSN being unavailable is not what the company, nor its fans need. In order to ameliorate the situation, Sony will need to fix the problem as fast as it possibly can. Check back with us here at Game Rant for updates on the network's status.

There's no word when PSN will be fixed.

Source: PlayStation Network (via Express, IGN)