Sony claims that the message bug that was capable of crashing PlayStation 4 console has already been addressed, just hours after news of the bug began to spread on Monday. In case you missed it, some PS4 players on Reddit this weekend discovered that receiving a specific text string through the messaging feature on the PS4 would cause their consoles to enter a crash loop that forced them to either factory reset or enter into safe mode.
Sony never officially acknowledged the existence of the bug, nor did it say anything on its blog or on Twitter about a potential fix, but the official PlayStation support account for the UK did tell one user on Monday that the company has “since fixed the issue,” while clarifying that the bug wasn’t capable of “bricking” PS4 consoles.
Here’s the tweet from the Ask PlayStation Twitter account, which appears to be the only place that the company has said anything about the bug as of Tuesday morning, perhaps so that more people don’t try to use it:
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
— Ask PlayStation UK (@AskPS_UK) October 15, 2018
If you are affected by the bug, try the method above to restore your console before you settle for a factory reset. Once your PS4 is back up and running (or even if you haven’t been affected yet), it’s probably smart to follow these steps to set your messages to private: Go to Settings > Account Management > Privacy Settings > Personal Info > Messaging, and set Messages to either Friends or No One. This should keep you safe in case the bug returns.
If this bug sounds familiar to you, it might be because it operates in the same way that the iOS Telugu bug from earlier this year, which was capable of crashing iPhones and iPads with a text string sent via Messages.
