This past week, a number of PlayStation 4 owners started to discover that their consoles were stuck in a crash loop. These crashes were apparently caused by a malicious message sent by other users that contained text or characters that the PS4 operating system just did not like. Those who were unaware of the quick fix resorted to factory resetting their consoles.

These users believed their consoles to be bricked by the offending message. Thankfully, this is not the case and you did not need to factory reset your console if you had fallen victim.

It seems as though Sony was quickly made aware of the issue and quickly issued a fix. The news comes from the PlayStation UK Twitter support account.

If you find it concerning that a simple text message could crash your console, it's actually a bit more common than you would think. Apple had a similar issue earlier this year with the iPhone. It also hit Android devices. An explanation of the issue as it applied to these devices back in May is best explained by Tom Scott.


At any rate, it's all fixed now. If your system is still crashing with something about an error in your system software, delete the message via the mobile app and follow the instructions outlined in the tweet above. You'll be right as rain in no time.