PS5 players say Sony’s new Terms of Service prompt force-kicked them out mid-game [Updated]

Update 24/04/26 – 11:26 am (IST): Some players have found workarounds for the stuck Terms of Service prompt. One suggests scrolling to the bottom of the ToS page before accepting, though results are mixed.

Alternatively, several users report success by accepting the updated Terms through the PlayStation mobile app and then restarting their console.

Original article published on April 23, 2026, follows:

Hundreds of PS5 users are reporting that Sony force-signed them out of their accounts mid-session on April 22-23 to accept a freshly updated Terms of Service agreement, with some losing ranked match progress and in-game items as a result.

Complaints about the issue have popped up on some subreddits, and X. One user said they were mid-ranked in an Overwatch 2 match when they and their friend both got booted simultaneously.

Another lost a six-hour Final Fantasy XIV run. Someone in a Rocket League tournament finals got kicked mid-series. A Call of Duty player was hit with a ranked suspension and SR penalty on top of the disconnect.

A few people genuinely thought they’d been hacked, and at least one person blocked their bank cards before figuring out what was going on.

Sony’s update page confirms a real legal-document refresh is rolling out. The changes include updated arbitration language, a revised Code of Conduct, a new reference to a game software EULA, and notably, any reference to “PlayStation Network” or “PSN” as a branded name has reportedly been removed from the Terms. Sony says users need to accept the new documents before accessing PlayStation Online Services, which explains why the sign-out happened at the account level rather than just on app launch.

But the problem here isn’t the updated Terms. Most people accepted them without much fuss. What frustrated everyone was that Sony apparently had no mechanism to delay the prompt until a user was out of an active session. The sign-out hit people in the middle of live multiplayer games, co-op runs, and even while watching content through streaming apps.

That said, I’ve seen some folks in the threads are mixing this incident up with Sony’s age-verification rollout in the UK, where players must verify their age via facial scan, government ID, or carrier data or lose access to voice chat and certain social features by June 2026. That’s a different policy, and whether it ties back to these sign-outs specifically isn’t something Sony has addressed yet.

For now, players just have to accept the terms and restart the console if the UI gets stuck. But the fact that Sony pushed this without any in-session grace period is pretty hard to defend.

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