Free PlayStation Plus available now, here's how you claim

After the recent PlayStation network outage, which left users unable to play anything online for over 24 hours, Sony promised to make good on the situation and give out some free PlayStation Plus access.

The freebie equates to five days of access, and it should, in theory, be added to your account automatically. However, there are ways to check that you’ve received this little PlayStation Plus bonus.

Fans were left reeling after PSN was down for a day meaning they couldn't use their consoles online.

The additional five days of access should already be applied to your account, but if you want to check for yourself, you can follow some easy steps, just to make sure.

You will need to know the date that your access was due to end, whether that be at the end of the month - if you pay monthly - or the end of the year.

Once you’ve got that end date from your emails, you can find your new end date.

Head on over to the PlayStation Store website, and once you’re there, click your avatar icon.

Select ‘subscription management’ and find your next payment date. It should now be five days later than what you have noted in your emails.

This means you have been granted the five-day extension and can enjoy the PlayStation online experience for a little longer, courtesy of Sony.

The original downtime occurred on 8 February, and lasted a full day before Sony got the service back up and running.

During that time, players were running into all kinds of error messages, and social media was flooded with users complaining and panicking that they couldn’t access their games.

The outage affected every online game, and even messed with licences, meaning some people couldn’t play any of their games.

Thankfully, the downtime didn’t last much longer than a day, and Sony was quick to apologise and promise the extra five days PlayStation Plus access as an apology.