We know that Sony’s planning to run some Bank Holiday tests on the PlayStation Network, but the manufacturer’s servers appear to have come crashing down a day early. While status reports from the Japanese giant claim that its online platform is currently up and running, we can’t log in using any of our consoles in the UK – and it seems like a similar story is taking place around the globe.

There are some reports that a group called Lizard Squad have attempted a DDoS attack on the PSN, with League of Legends and Blizzard’s Battle.net servers also targeted. If that’s the case, it will probably take a few hours for the console maker to get things running properly again. Have you been affected by this unexpected outage? Scream and shout in the comments section below.

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Update #1: John Smedley from Sony Online Entertainment has confirmed that the Japanese giant's servers are being targeted by a "large scale DDoS attack". However, the good news is that the firm already appears to be dealing with the problem, as the PSN is coming back online for some as we write. Let us know if you're still having problems.

Update #2: While the PSN is back online for some across all systems, there are still a lot of people affected around the world. Sony has acknowledged this in a message on its official Twitter account: “Our engineers are aware of the issues and are working to resolve them. We'll keep you posted – sorry for the inconvenience.”

Update #3: There had been signs several hours ago that the PSN was returning to normal, however that hasn’t really materialised. Sony has now published an official statement on the PlayStation Blog, which we’ve replicated in full below:

Like other major networks around the world, the PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network have been impacted by an attempt to overwhelm our network with artificially high traffic.

Although this has impacted your ability to access our network and enjoy our services, no personal information has been accessed. We will continue to work towards fixing this issue and hope to have our services up and running as soon as possible. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.

Update #5: And the PSN is back online. Here's an official statement from Sony:

The PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network are back online and people can now enjoy the services on their PlayStation devices. The networks were taken offline due to a distributed denial of service attack. We have seen no evidence of any intrusion to the network and no evidence of any unauthorised access to users’ personal information. In light of today’s issue, the networks will not undergo the regularly scheduled maintenance, which was planned for Monday, 25th August. We will provide an update shortly for when the maintenance will be rescheduled.