A messaging bug is reportedly bricking PS4s.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Some Sony PlayStation 4 players are reporting they're getting messages that are bricking their consoles, forcing them to factory reset.
Gamers set up several threads on the PS4 subreddit over the weekend outlining the glitch, which was linked to a specific string of characters — like the text that once crashed people's iPhones.
Some reported that the messages caused their consoles to crash when opened, while others said the message notification popping up on the screen was enough to cause the problem.
Sony didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. There also wasn't any solution offered on its @AskPlayStation Twitter help account.
One person said their team got the malicious message while playing Rainbow Six: Siege.
"A player from the other team used a dummy account to send the message and crashed my entire team," they wrote in a reddit post on Saturday. "We all have had to factory reset."
People who've been hit by the glitch say that the message remains on the console and resets it each time they try to turn it on, so they've used a factory reset to wipe it. However, this also deletes all the games and saves on the console.
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A less drastic solution is to use the PS Messages app, which is available on iOS and Android, or the My PlayStation site to access and delete the message. They can also try booting the console in safe mode and rebuilding the database.
As a precaution, PS4 gamers can set their messages to private by going to the console's Account Management menu, then Privacy Settings and Personal Info, where they can change their message settings to Friends Only or No One.
