Gran Turismo Sport was so unexpectedly popular across the Christmas weekend that PSN prevented the game from being played, after incorrectly concluding that its service was being subjected to a DDOS attack.
Since the evening of December 23rd, players were unable to access the Gran Turismo Sport servers after being greeted by the “NE-21194400” error code. Considering that this was the day on which the series was celebrating its 20th anniversary, it was seemingly an unfortunate coincidence, but it became more of a curious issue when developer Kazunori Yamauchi tweeted that the problem was on Sony’s end.
Considering that PSN was up and running, GT Sport‘s players began wondering why they couldn’t access the game. However, on Christmas Day its creators Polyphony Digital posted an update explaining that PSN had blocked login attempts due to an unexpectedly high volume of players.
The update read:
“The startup log in problem that had been inconveniencing our users has just been resolved with the support of the PlayStation™Network Team.
The cause of the issue was that the unexpectedly large numbers of user network traffic had been mistakenly identified as an attack on the PlayStation™Network, and the login attempts were blocked by the system.
Hereon, we will work with the PlayStation Network so that something like this never recurrs.
We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.”
Gran Turismo Sport released to a mediocre critical and consumer reception, though a significant update was introduced to the game on December 22nd, bringing with it a brand new single-player mode and 12 new cars. It seems that this, along with an influx new buyers over the Christmas period, contributed to this abnormally high level of interest in the racer around the Holiday period.
After over 24 hours, PSN eventually rectified the problem and players were once again able to access the game’s servers. It was certainly an unusual problem for GT Sport to face, though considering PSN’s notable issues with cyber attacks in the past, it’s unsurprising that Sony is quick on the draw when it notices something suspicious.
