PSN Hacked

[Skyblade]

So, anyone trying to do anything on PSN lately will have noticed that the system is down. Sony has reported that this is due to an external intrusion, and that they are working to bring things back up.

Small comfort, since it really sucks that the system is down one of the few times I actually decide to use it, but hey, what can you do?

I just find myself wondering who bothered hacking PSN, and what they hoped to accomplish, besides shutting the network down worldwide.

[Hollycat]

they now have control of the system and are probably downloading everything. FREE

[Jiro]

Just to prove you can, probably. Doesn't affect me, I'm not hooked up to PSN yet.

[Jessweeee♪]

FYI, your credit card info isn't encrypted. It's plain text, last time I checked. Dunno if the hacker would have access to all of that, I really don't know how this stuff works.

[Bunny]

Just to prove you can, probably. Doesn't affect me, I'm not hooked up to PSN yet.

This is probably the main reason.

[Dreddz]

Whats with this vendetta against Sony recently?

[Jessweeee♪]

Recently? Gamers have been pretty mad at everybody for a long while now I think xD

[Dreddz]

I swear to god if this all stems from Sony removing the Other OS feature then I hope Sony slams whoever did this.

[Iceglow]

No if it's to do with Anonymous it'll be over the George Hotz case. Since they demanded the details of anyone who even VIEWED the data (in other words, Sony acted like dicks to people who haven't done anything but might have seen the information on how to do it and basically said they were going to sue the :bou::bou::bou::bou: outta them all) Either way, it came down to the whole idea that Sony basically said you don't actually own your PS3, they do. You're kinda renting it (damn thats a hefty "rental" price tag considering the price of the games too) according to their words. However that flies in the face of you brought the console not rented it and therefore the hacker collective Anonymous ended up involved like they have in every other recent "infringement" of their rights and liberties threatening to take it's PSN down with hacking. However Anonymous after much bad press on the situation and Sony saying they were going to "upgrade it (the psn) and it'd be sporadically up and down" decided against punishing every PS3 owner worldwide to punish Sony and that there were other options.

Now there's 3 possible outcomes here:

1) Anonymous changed their minds for the lulz and hacked the PSN after all. Even though they have claimed no responsibility for the hack.

2) Someone is trying to make it look like Anonymous did by hacking it themselves. This could be Sony even

3) Someone else hacked it for other purposes or to prove how easily it could be done.

[NorthernChaosGod]

I love Anon, they so crazy.

But seriously, fuck companies that have those attitudes.

[Iceglow]

Personally I'm just glad I own a 360, XBL is sweet as anything at the moment and well I've not had Microsoft breathing down my neck threatening to sue the :bou::bou::bou::bou: out of me because I watched videos/read websites about how to hack my console even though I haven't actually done anything other than that just because I theoretically could do so armed with that knowledge.

[escobert]

lol consoles.

[Iceglow]

lol Bert, Idk dude Blizzard can be just as bad, remember the mods thing with Starcraft 2?

[Crop]

What a load of bull. I don't care who did it, or if it was for some sort of 'stand' against Sony. All they've done is stop innocent people being able to have fun on their console.
I don't give a :bou::bou::bou::bou: about Sony suing people or whatever, I just want to play Portal 2 online damn it.

[Hollycat]

All psp and some ps3 games have now been signed (aka perma hacked) see psp permahack thread for details

[Iceglow]

Crop, didn't you get the free code to play Portal 2 on the pc that you get in the PS3 copy if so, problem fucking solved mate.

[Crop]

Crop, didn't you get the free code to play Portal 2 on the pc that you get in the PS3 copy if so, problem smurfing solved mate.

I did, but I doubt I could run it on the PC I use. Besides, that's not the point, whoever did this hack needs to get off their high horse and let the millions of innocent people use the console they forked out a lot of money for.
Because tbh, most of us couldn't give a :bou::bou::bou::bou: about the drama between internet nerds and Sony.

[McLovin']

Go Anonymous. Stick it to the man!

[Slothy]

No if it's to do with Anonymous it'll be over the George Hotz case.

That case was settled out of court a week or two ago so if they are hacking the PSN over it now then they'd be complete idiots.


in other words, Sony acted like dicks to people who haven't done anything but might have seen the information on how to do it and basically said they were going to sue the :bou::bou::bou::bou: outta them all

They never said that at all actually. They claimed they wanted the info to determine which state would have jurisdiction over the case. Not that it wasn't still very sketchy and immoral as far as I'm concerned.


Either way, it came down to the whole idea that Sony basically said you don't actually own your PS3, they do. You're kinda renting it

Make no mistake in thinking it's only Sony that feels this way. You may own the hardware, but every console manufacturer pulls the same software licensing crap (hell, for that matter, every software company pulls it. Do you think you own the OS on that computer you're using? Because Microsoft/Apple would disagree with you. Unless you use Linux, in which case rock on) with the actual software running on the console, and all of them pretty much have the attitude of "you have no right to do anything with the software unless we let you." Thing is, most companies never saw a need to take anyone to court over it. When it's a few individuals cracking their system for their own use and not really causing much of a problem it's not so bad. But basically cracking the PS3's security wide open so anyone could do anything they wanted with it (including, but certainly not limited to, hacking any game out there with impunity) kind of changed that, and while suing over it may have caused Sony even more problems, it's a little hard to blame them for trying to do something to control it. Even though putting that genie back in the bottle is likely impossible and only exacerbates the ill will towards them in the hacking community.

[NorthernChaosGod]

Crop, didn't you get the free code to play Portal 2 on the pc that you get in the PS3 copy if so, problem smurfing solved mate.

I did, but I doubt I could run it on the PC I use. Besides, that's not the point, whoever did this hack needs to get off their high horse and let the millions of innocent people use the console they forked out a lot of money for.
Because tbh, most of us couldn't give a :bou::bou::bou::bou: about the drama between internet nerds and Sony.

I didn't realize this hacking of the network bricked the consoles.

[Jiro]

I tried to sign up to PSN this morning in a daze and wondered why it didn't work. Whoops.

[Dignified Pauper]

Anonymous always e-wanks themselves proudly about their accomplishments. This wasn't a work of Anonymous, and I doubt it was the work of anything other than Sony's incompetence.

[nirojan]

Crop, didn't you get the free code to play Portal 2 on the pc that you get in the PS3 copy if so, problem smurfing solved mate.

Yeah but don't you have to link your PSN account with steam first? It's a problem if you got Portal 2 after Wednesday. And I got MK as well :( f**kin hackers!!!!

[DMKA]

Personally I'm just glad I own a 360, XBL is sweet as anything at the moment and well I've not had Microsoft breathing down my neck threatening to sue the :bou::bou::bou::bou: out of me because I watched videos/read websites about how to hack my console even though I haven't actually done anything other than that just because I theoretically could do so armed with that knowledge.

That's because they consider it a wash since your console is built to fail on you.

Push people have been stealing their stuff forever so they're used to it.

[Hollycat]

Yeah.... let's stick with Anonymous did it.

[Jiro]

Anonymous always e-wanks themselves proudly about their accomplishments. This wasn't a work of Anonymous, and I doubt it was the work of anything other than Sony's incompetence.

The fact it is taking so long to fix makes this seem more likely. Some punk pushed a button and can't fucking remember what he's done.

[DMKA]

Anonymous always e-wanks themselves proudly about their accomplishments. This wasn't a work of Anonymous, and I doubt it was the work of anything other than Sony's incompetence.

The fact it is taking so long to fix makes this seem more likely. Some punk pushed a button and can't smurfing remember what he's done.

Hey guys remember the messed up daylight savings time date glitch back in August?

Yeah I'm guessing this is another Sony screwup rather than an attack by hackers.

Luckily I wasn't silly enough to pay for PSN+ or XBL Gold, so this sort of thing doesn't bother me.

[Shoeberto]

I'm mostly annoyed that it's causing some wonkiness with getting to Netflix on my PS3. I don't really play any games on PSN so that's less of an annoyance for me, but it does seem rather dramatic that the service has been down for so long.

[Ceodore]

I haven't done a lot of online gaming in a while and decided to just make a new live account. As far as PSN is concerned, the only money I spent was for Phantasy Star Portable 2. So I'm not really going to lose a whole lot. Though I love the power of the PS3 and the fact I can use it as a blu-ray, I am certainly not pleased with how Sony keeps removing features, nor am I too thrilled that they favor the asian regions over international regions (they get so many more themes, avatars, and downloads in the store.)

I'm just not a fan of the morality (or lack of) involved with the hack itself. Sure, go after Sony. But dragging the entire userbase down with Sony is pretty low.

[GhandiOwnsYou]

I'm chalking this one up to Anonymous. I started having sporadic issues a few weeks and dug around for information. Turns out I started having problems about 8 hours after Anonymous dropped that Anti-Sony video threat. I never really had problems before, with the exception of the daylight savings glitch, but ever since it's been wonky, extremely sketchy connections. The last information i saw that reportedly came from Anon specifically said "Once PSN is back online" they won't direct any attacks towards PSN, but rather Sony itself, so as not to affect the consumer. This was in the last 48 hours. Leads me to believe they're taking credit for THIS outage, but won't continue once they fix it.

In any case, I support Anonymous' cause, but their method is worthless. Aside from taking down the Playstation Store, they haven't done any sizable damage to Sony profits. What they have done is take away usability of Sony products to the consumer. In the name of fighting against Sony's taking away of advertised features from their consumers. To say it's slightly hypocritical is an understatement.

[Rocket Edge]

Still ain't back. This is really pissing me off. It just has to happen when I'm off for holidays.

[McLovin']

I wanted to download the Mortal Combat demo :(

wtf Sony. It's been like 4 days.

EDIT: Apparantly...http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/gx6o4/im_a_moderator_over_at_psxscenecom_the_real/

[Slothy]

Gamasutra - News - PlayStation Network Accounts Compromised, Personal Information Stolen (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/34305/PlayStation_Network_Accounts_Compromised_Personal_Information_Stolen.php)

Awesome.

On the plus side, at least my credit card info wasn't up to date. Wish I could remember what my password was. Pretty sure it was completely different from any other I use. Still, I'd recommend anyone else on here change passwords as needed and watch your credit card statements if you had that info saved.

[ljkkjlcm9]

Gamasutra - News - PlayStation Network Accounts Compromised, Personal Information Stolen (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/34305/PlayStation_Network_Accounts_Compromised_Personal_Information_Stolen.php)

Awesome.

On the plus side, at least my credit card info wasn't up to date. Wish I could remember what my password was. Pretty sure it was completely different from any other I use. Still, I'd recommend anyone else on here change passwords as needed and watch your credit card statements if you had that info saved.

I had deleted my credit card info earlier this month so i locked out on that. I honestly don't remember what my password is a lot of places... but i am pretty sure nothing with that particular password was anything important.

THE JACKEL

[Dignified Pauper]

Well poop. My card was definitely saved. I'll just sue Sony for letting my account get hacked due to their faulty security systems.

[Roogle]

I am surprised that a major corporation like Sony could let something like this happen. I wondered, personally, if something like this has happened before where a major corporation has lost the personal and financial information of millions of customers? Something similar happened recently with Epsilon losing the email addresses and some personal information of millions of customers, but there were no credit card numbers involved. This event shows you that even the largest of companies are not infallible.

[Dignified Pauper]

The Ohio Department of Taxation had someone steal a bit of equipment with sensitive information on it which allowed me to get a year's worth of fraud protection for free. It also put an alert on my credit report, which I still have on there to authenticate my identity because it makes sense to do so.

[Old Manus]

Welcome to another edition of A Sense of Perspective With Old Manus! Today, we'll be discussing the recent closure of PSN by Sony, the culprits, and the winners and losers in this whole sorry affair.

Firstly, this wasn't Anonymous, but at the same time, could well have involved somebody who frequents /b/ and /v/. A group of homebrew crackers made a bit of custom firmware that essentially managed to bypass any credit card authentication process when buying media from PSN (the words getting bandied about are 'like a developer's console'), so these people would just put in a bunch of fake CC numbers, and harvest the movies and games.

Sony realise this, and decide that the best course of action to stop this horrendous misuse of their servers by a few dozen buff bods was to shut down the thing entirely, and block millions of their users. The long wait is due to them sitting around director's offices passing the buck around until Kenny the copy boy is sacked, and thinking of a way to totally rejig the system.

So really, it's Sony's fault for having the main apparatus of their network system relying on local firmware which can be manipulated by anyone with half a brain. Nice of you all to jump to blaming a load of fifteen year old hentai collectors though.

Next week, we'll discuss Swansea's promotion to the Premier League, Carlos Tevez/Anthony Keidis - seperated at birth?, and just why five razorblades cannot possibly give a less irritating shave, no matter what Gilette says.

[Crop]

Nice of you all to jump to blaming a load of fifteen year old hentai collectors though.
It's easy to blame Sony, but if the people hadn't hacked it in the first place then it wouldn't have happened. It's not like they have no blame at all.
Anyway, I don't think my parents credit card details were on there, but even if they were then whoever has them would probably feel so sorry for us that they'd actually put money onto it.


Next week, we'll discuss Swansea's promotion to the Premier League.
A short episode next week then.

[Dignified Pauper]

But Manus, if we don't know who did it, aren't they then, by virtue, anonymous!?

[Slothy]

Manus, not sayin anon is involved (nor have I ever), but you can't really claim with certainty that everyone involved with the group had nothing to do with it considering only an idiot would admit to this and take responsibility. Now it's just as, if not more, likely that the culprit was either smart or lucky enough to time this with anon's various threats to Sony so far. In fact, I'd put my money on that simply because this is a more sophisticated attack than anon are known for.

Either way though, it really doesn't matter at this point to customers who did it as much as it does taking steps to protect themselves.

[Old Manus]

Oh I'm not saying that whoever did it wasn't part of Anon, just that this wasn't some concentrated effort on /b/ or anything. The perpetrators more than likely came from a totally different website.

[DMKA]

The irony is that none of my account info has been used during all this, or any other time the PSN has been screwed up due to Sony's failure, but I found out the other day that Microsoft has been ripping $9.99 a month out of my account that I don't use for the last two years (while my 360 was sitting on a closet shelf collecting dust). I never authorized it, and only provided my card information for the initial free trial back in 2007 I think, and yet, for some reason, they didn't start taking my money until 2009. I only found out because my bank notified me that I only had $3.00 left in the account.

So no matter how much Sony screws up, I still hate Microsoft more; they stole from me intentionally.

[Jiro]

DMKA, that's some bull:bou::bou::bou::bou: right there. Micro$oft the money thieving bastards :argh:

[Old Manus]

Holy mother of God. This is incompetence on a level of local council budgeting. So basically, Sony have admitted that somebody somewhere has your name, address, date of birth, PSN username and password, and, even thought they're being shy about it, your credit card number, security code, and sort code.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13206004)
Intel gives the explanation for this bull:bou::bou::bou::bou: as Sony sends PSN purchases as smurfing GET requests fully visible in the URL, and then stores all this data in PLAIN TEXT. I facepalmed so hard that I gave myself a brain hemorrhage.

[Rocket Edge]

I was lucky enough too cancel my credit card information just the week before this happened. After reading up on this on various websites, I more to the idea that this wasn't Anon. I think some guys just heard of their intended attack and said it was a good a time as any to go in and place the blame on their shoulders. No matter what happens though, I can see PSN users canceling their account when the lights come back up. I won't be one of them, because I'm too addicted to online gaming ;( , but I'm giving false information when I re-do my account when it comes back (granted if ever). This will hurt Sony financially big time unless they can somehow guarantee that something like this will never happen again and your personal details are safe.

[Slothy]

Intel gives the explanation for this bull:bou::bou::bou::bou: as Sony sends PSN purchases as smurfing GET requests fully visible in the URL, and then stores all this data in PLAIN TEXT. I facepalmed so hard that I gave myself a brain hemorrhage.

Yep. To say their security was lacking is something of an understatement. I have to wonder if they'll end up liable for any financial or other losses people end up suffering (if they do) because even someone who doesn't know a lot about security in the tech industry could look at what they did do and see it wasn't sorely lacking. I mean, I can undertand they didn't expect someone to access their network to be able to get at this stuff, but that doesn't mean you just leave it lying around plain as day. You have to plan for the possibility that your network isn't as secure as you think it is too.

[Mo-Nercy]

God damnit. My credit card details =S

[Shauna]

The irony is that none of my account info has been used during all this, or any other time the PSN has been screwed up due to Sony's failure, but I found out the other day that Microsoft has been ripping $9.99 a month out of my account that I don't use for the last two years (while my 360 was sitting on a closet shelf collecting dust). I never authorized it, and only provided my card information for the initial free trial back in 2007 I think, and yet, for some reason, they didn't start taking my money until 2009. I only found out because my bank notified me that I only had $3.00 left in the account.

So no matter how much Sony screws up, I still hate Microsoft more; they stole from me intentionally.

Live has a retarded opt-out auto-renewal system. :{ You have to phone them up and request that the auto-renewal stops. It is an annoyance. They hope it'll just be more bother for people to phone up and cancel, than to pay the subscription fee.

[Loony BoB]

Holy mother of God. This is incompetence on a level of local council budgeting. So basically, Sony have admitted that somebody somewhere has your name, address, date of birth, PSN username and password, and, even thought they're being shy about it, your credit card number, security code, and sort code.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13206004)
Intel gives the explanation for this bull:bou::bou::bou::bou: as Sony sends PSN purchases as smurfing GET requests fully visible in the URL, and then stores all this data in PLAIN TEXT. I facepalmed so hard that I gave myself a brain hemorrhage.
For what it's worth (very little, I imagine), the page you linked to stated "excluding security code".

[Dignified Pauper]

Holy mother of God. This is incompetence on a level of local council budgeting. So basically, Sony have admitted that somebody somewhere has your name, address, date of birth, PSN username and password, and, even thought they're being shy about it, your credit card number, security code, and sort code.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13206004)
Intel gives the explanation for this bull:bou::bou::bou::bou: as Sony sends PSN purchases as smurfing GET requests fully visible in the URL, and then stores all this data in PLAIN TEXT. I facepalmed so hard that I gave myself a brain hemorrhage.
For what it's worth (very little, I imagine), the page you linked to stated "excluding security code".

The fact that PSN stored information in PLAIN TEXT is absolutely bonkers.

[magemasher]

I really hope this is sorted before the damn royal wedding,going to be a street party on my road and I can't be dealing with that noise whilst I'm not playing Fifa online.

I've been reading regular updates and news begins with back on tomorrow till still no news on a date for return. Please b4 Friday.

[Rocket Edge]

Sony haven't given any inclination that they are turning the tide on this issue, nor have they given any time-frame for when the PSN will be working again. I think we will be lucky to see it back up by next week.

EDIT: Just did some searching there, apparently some services will be back up within a week (http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/04/26/update-on-playstation-network-and-qriocity/).

[Jessweeee♪]

Yeah remember the post I made earlier in this thread where I said that they store your personal info in plain text? :|

[NorthernChaosGod]

Holy mother of God. This is incompetence on a level of local council budgeting. So basically, Sony have admitted that somebody somewhere has your name, address, date of birth, PSN username and password, and, even thought they're being shy about it, your credit card number, security code, and sort code.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13206004)
Intel gives the explanation for this bull:bou::bou::bou::bou: as Sony sends PSN purchases as smurfing GET requests fully visible in the URL, and then stores all this data in PLAIN TEXT. I facepalmed so hard that I gave myself a brain hemorrhage.
Fucking Christ. What sort of morons do they have working over there? :|

[Wolf Kanno]

Well hopefully no further damage will come to customers. I have my data saved on there so I've been watching my credit card statements, but part of me thinks this was just people hacking in there for the lulz or to bypass the service to get stuff for free, and they discovered by accident how many holes were in Sony's security and privacy systems.

[Roogle]

Playstation Network stored customer information in plain text? I thought that was illegal.

[Loony BoB]

Where did this plain text thing come from, out of curiosity? Intel, according to Manus, but I can't find any quotes around the 'net which say "plain text" when talking about PSN. I'm not saying Sony haven't done it, but I do like to check my sources before I believe them.

[Old Manus]

I meant intel the shortened form of intelligence, not the company there. I guess I didn't want to use the word 'rumour', because this is very likely the case.

[Jessweeee♪]

Where did this plain text thing come from, out of curiosity? Intel, according to Manus, but I can't find any quotes around the 'net which say "plain text" when talking about PSN. I'm not saying Sony haven't done it, but I do like to check my sources before I believe them.

I can't really remember where I read it, but I remember reading something and thinking "huh maybe since I don't even have money to buy stuff from PSN I should just clear all of my credit card info." It was probably an unreliable source like ED.

[Iceglow]

I found out the other day that Microsoft has been ripping $9.99 a month out of my account that I don't use for the last two years (while my 360 was sitting on a closet shelf collecting dust). I never authorized it, and only provided my card information for the initial free trial back in 2007 I think, and yet, for some reason, they didn't start taking my money until 2009. I only found out because my bank notified me that I only had $3.00 left in the account.

So no matter how much Sony screws up, I still hate Microsoft more; they stole from me intentionally.

Ok first up I'm going to call bull:bou::bou::bou::bou: here for several reasons:

XBL is charged at £39.99 for 12 months, £14.99 for 3 months and at £5.99 per month (obviously this means buying it at 12 months is much better value for the consumer, ironically last time I checked in the USA it was $39.99, $14.99 and $5.99 respectively) therefore your claim of they've taken $9.99 out per month for the last 5 years or so for XBL is bull:bou::bou::bou::bou:. Also of note, XBL has only been purchasable by the individual month since this year prior to this it was purchased only in 3 or 12 month time frames. Automatic renewal is a bitch yes, however your email account registered for your XBL Gamertag will receive numerous warnings that the XBL Gold membership is running out. These emails considering they must be received by a Microsoft email address they are never junked by the filter so you would have noticed this prior to the time when you claim you found out.

Secondly, you have never ever been forced by Microsoft to register your credit/debit card details on the signing up for XBL membership, especially not trial membership. If you wish to purchase something either directly over the xbox.com webpage or xbox dashboard then sure, your credit or debit card details will be asked for and more importantly stored by the console (these are simple to delete in system settings meaning no access would be made possible) or you will be offered the choice of inserting a redemption key allowing you to get the goods be it points or membership without having to give over card details, points and xbl membership can be purchased in many locations throughout the globe such as gamestop or even walmart. As I pointed out, you've never been forced to give over your card details, I've been signed up for XBL for a good few years and for the first 2 or so I never once put any credit/debit card details on the account, namely because for that period of time I didn't own a credit or debit card.

Thirdly, how credit taking from your account works is essentially one of 3 ways:

1) Direct debit, this involves them sending through a contract you sign and send back to them, this allows them to contact your bank and request that they send them the allotted amount each and every month. You would know if you had done this. Once the contract is up the Direct Debit would be suspended a simple phone call asking your bank to cancel the direct debit at any time would prevent any money leaving your account.

2) A standing order, these are similar to a direct debit except to set one up you've gotta do so yourself there is no contract per-se except that you've told your bank that this money needs to go to this account on this day, most people if renting accommodation use a standing order for this. To cancel the standing order you would probably have to visit a branch to do so since 90% of the time you need to provide a signature to do so or cancel it through online banking. However, you could find out that there was one of these on any accounts you hold easily, either calling the bank, logging in to online banking or reading your bank statement would definitely show the money going out. You'd definitely remember setting this up.

3) Repeat ordering, whereby you give permission to the company to repeatedly purchase an item for you based the same way you do any other online transaction. I would probably avoid letting any company do this even if you trust them. However a simple setting the option to allow automatic renewal to no will be fine, also this would have happened from 2007 not 2009. You'd have noticed it, checking a bank statement or an online banking report would have shown this up.

If you are this ignorant of your finances that you cannot be bothered to check your bank report/statement then frankly you cannot claim a company willfully stole from you because you're lying, you were just too damn ignorant to actually check what you were spending cash on. It's not like Microsoft decided to say "hmm this customer hasn't logged in for over 2 years, lets see how much cash we can make before he notices mwhahahahaha" No, sorry but stupid claim to make. Microsoft makes more cash in an hour than I care to figure out, they're not going to miss you paying $9.99 a month or based on an average of 30 days a month $0.013875 an hour. Your ignorance and stupidity not to see something coming out of your account over the course of the last 24 months doesn't make it theft, thats one of the most retarded claims I have ever heard.

So yeah sorry DMKA I'm calling bull:bou::bou::bou::bou: on you for multiple reasons, Microsoft definitely didn't steal from you but if you're stupid or ignorant enough to leave a renewal order leaving your account for 2 years and claim you have had now knowledge of the debit from your account then frankly I'm not going to lie, you probably deserve it. On the plus side for you; whilst you continuously forgive Sony for yet more fuck ups and for losing your personal details and putting you at risk of serious identity fraud (which, even without the credit card details is enough) at least if the story you've spun in the above quote isn't a complete fabrication you can bring your 360 out of the closet and play online games on it.

For the benefit of Loony BoB, I have also seen reports and such which claim Sony stored details in plain text unencrypted on their servers. Of course this is all rumour there may be no truth to this in the slightest. I will say however that this is definitely a result of incompetence on the behalf of Sony, the trade of between security and usability does have to be made but I feel that if Sony had spent more money on developing the PSN rather than making as much money from it to recoup losses of building their consoles they wouldn't be in such a mess. This is why I don't complain about the payment for XBL, Microsoft rightfully imho channel the majority of the proceeds of XBL membership payments back in to the development, update and maintenance and security of XBL. They mostly make profit on XBL through the sale of points used to purchase films, avatar items and DLC. If Sony had been bold enough to follow suit maybe the PSN wouldn't now be such a weak link in Sony's marketing (even a fool must see the loss of 77million users data is going to look bad and hurt Sony) I feel especially sorry for anyone who owns the PSP Go console, they cannot get any new titles for their console during this fiasco.

[Slothy]

You realize that mistakes do happen with companies all of the time and customers can end up billed unusual amounts without actually doing anything right Iceglow? I've seen it happen with cell phone customers all the time. I'm not going to say you're wrong about any of the info you gave about XBL (since I don't have a 360 and can't be bothered to look any of it up), but I'm not inclined to believe that DMKA is simply making it up. Could be an error on Microsoft's part, or perhaps DMKA mixed up some of the details, but calling him a liar and basically acting like a douche is pretty uncalled for, especially before he's had the chance to respond to what you said.

[Iceglow]

The amount doesn't fit, the time frame doesn't fit, the fact that it was a 2 year delay and a 2 year period. Frankly, if you earn so little your bank balance can hit a mere $3.00 then you'd notice $9.99 every month for 24 months. 1 or 2 months I could understand, I could also see that being a mistake such as is sometimes made with cell phone companies but to say 1) he didn't notice such a mistake and 2) didn't notice anything at all was amiss for 2 whole years, nearly 2.5 years...

I'm sure I'm not the only one who can't see that happening. That being said, if this was a mistake on Microsoft's part, a simple call to their american customer support team would see a full refund on the whole thing, again Microsoft would not have intentionally stolen from DMKA so my points stand. I'm not really acting like a douche, I'm merely pointing out the massive flaw in his story.

Still the topic of the thread is the PSN getting hacked, and yeah basically as said, this is a massively incompetent show by Sony their handling of this situation has in effect been worse than the fact that they reckon the details of their 77million members got stolen. They should have come clean and told their members and their fans what the situation was as soon as they knew and I don't believe for one second it took them over a week to discover the level of risk their customers was under.

[Skyblade]

Currently I'm wondering which will come first, PSN coming back up or the DLC codes I have for Dissidia Duodecim expiring. The codes only last until the end of 2012, after all.

Plus, I want to pick up Xenogears and Parasite Eve. Stupid Sony. :(

[Dignified Pauper]

I meant intel the shortened form of intelligence, not the company there. I guess I didn't want to use the word 'rumour', because this is very likely the case.

I read that the information was SENT as plain text, but was stored through encryption, over at Penny Arcade. I can't find the original link they had posted though. Their threads grow so fast.

[Rostum]

Looks like some dude got screwed over. (http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/04/adelaide-psn-user-has-2000-of-unauthorised-charges-on-his-credit-card/)

[Wolf Kanno]

Though the report does say they are not sure if the credit fraud was related to the PSN breach. Its pretty scary how easy it is to get nailed with identity theft, so this could simply be coincidence.

[Freya]

I didn't even know all this was happening until a bunch of customers were asking if we knew when it was coming back up at work today. Heh, i'm a bad salesperson cause I had no idea wtf they were talking about.

[Dreddz]

I can't help but feel this is all being blown out of proportion. Stuff like this happens all the time. Sites like Kotaku are just using scare tactics for hits. Heck, some sites are saying this is the end of Playstation. Sony are a professional company and if there was a real concern over credit card details being leaked then they would absolutely warn us, simply to cover their own asses.

I do feel kind of disconnected from all of this seeing as I haven't had a working PS3 for months. I would take my credit card details off PSN but I can't be assed. What a fearless bastard I am.

[Loony BoB]

For what it's worth, if you think that Microsoft are incapable of having emails sent to spam folders, you're wrong there. I've had it happen before when I applied for a preview of their latest Outlook software when I was testing it out. The Microsoft email went straight to my spam folder. It's happened with Virgin Media, Scottish Power and British Gas, too. I don't know how Yahoo!'s spam filter works, but once every six or so months I notice something in my spam folder that shouldn't be there. I'm sure no MS emails will be diverted on Hotmail, though :p

DMKA's situation does seem extremely odd, though. I agree that if you are paying something monthly that you don't want then you should stop it within a month or two, not a year or two. If it's an account you never use and you honestly feel they stole from you intentionally, you should take it up with them or a consumer rights specialist.

In all honesty, despite what's gone on I would still happily use PSN ahead of XBL any day. If Danielle and I had been paying for XBL since the day I got a 360, we'd be about £400-£720 worse off. That's a massive amount of money guaranteed to be gone as opposed to the possibility of my credit card being used by a fraudster, something which I would be compensated for, leaving me at £0 worse off regardless. Yes, my information has probably been compromised, but the financial effects are likely to be nil as opposed to XBL which is guaranteed to make me lose money. Basically, while it's annoying, it's worrying and I have to be careful with my finances (I always am anyway) and the like, I've still 'saved' hundreds of pounds by cancelling my Xbox Live subscriptions. If people regularly use XBL and pay for it, power to them, it's obviously their choice to say it's worth it. I prefer using that money for Sky Sports. =x

[Old Manus]

Okay, apparently CC details were stored encrypted, but everything else was plaintext.

[Loony BoB]

The annoying thing is that I honestly can't remember which password I used or the security question, so I don't know which passwords I should change online. But then, I can't imagine they will get that much of a thrill out of hacking into my AIM account. My Y!Mail and EoFF account have unique passwords anyway, so I should be safe...

[Depression Moon]

Oh man I didn't know this hack was something serious. What precautions should I take?

[Loony BoB]

While it's unlikely that it will be you that they will target, you may as well take precautions. You should probably keep a close eye on your bank accounts (but then, all people should always do this) and if you use the same password for PSN as you do for other vital things such as your bank account or your email account, I would suggest changing the password for these things, too.

Also, move house.

[Psychotic]

To the PS3 users who :bou::bou::bou::bou: up every 360 thread on Eyes on with their irrelevant chest-thumping MY CONSOLE IS BETTAR crap (you know who you are): heh maybe you shouldve bought a 360 :smug:

To the PS3 users who don't: That is awful, and it just goes to show how vulnerable our personal information really is. I hope it all works out okay for you guys and nothing untoward happens with your details. :-/

[GhandiOwnsYou]

*shrug* It is what is is I suppose. My wife is incredibly prone to losing/getting her purse stolen, to the point where I literally have our credit/debit card help lines in my phones address book. It's a surprisingly small deal for me to get a new one shipped out. I am pretty miffed about the timing though. They had to pull this a couple days after Portal? Really?

As far as the press release issue goes, I find I'm a lot less heated than I thought i would be with their answers. While I was pretty cheesed over not hearing anything for days, looking back on it I have to give credit to Sony. It seems like they were doing what any responsible company would do. They made sure their information was accurate, honest, and clear before they announced anything. That is a welcome relief from the backpedaling, rumors, and outright deceit that you get in a lot of situations like this. They waited until they had enough information to clearly state what was going on and how it was going to be remedied, and I can respect that.

[Rocket Edge]

PSN apparently coming back for May the 3rd, if all goes too plan. (http://www.gamekudos.com/news/4019-psn-coming-back-online-but-fallout-continues)

[Skyblade]

PSN apparently coming back for May the 3rd, if all goes too plan. (http://www.gamekudos.com/news/4019-psn-coming-back-online-but-fallout-continues)

A week later and still not up. I think that things didn't "all go to plan".

[Depression Moon]

Damn Skyblade, you got my hopes up.

[Hollycat]

may 31 for store at soonest, online the 21st

[Wolf Kanno]

Yeah, May 31st seems to be the new target date. (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/05/billion-dollar-psn-outage-may-not-be-fully-remedied-until-may-31.ars?comments=1#comments-bar)

Though some new information hasn't been helping Sony.

Rebug PSN exploit "known for years" News - - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-05-05-psn-content-exploit-known-for-years)

PSN outage costing Capcom 'hundreds of thousands, if not millions,' exec says | Joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com/2011/05/09/psn-outage-costing-capcom-hundreds-of-thousands-if-not-million/)

[Loony BoB]

I get two free PS3 games and two free PSP games. Easily pleased? Yes, I am.

[Iceglow]

Sorry but 2 free games from a choice of 4 is not a good deal. the 4 games will likely be crap titles I say this on the basis that in every offer which seems TGTBT in gaming it is always crap games.

I will however say I'm actually beyond the laughing at the PS3 users and now in the zone of deep pity whilst laughing my arse off at you all you poor, poor bastards. xD

Sony's dropped the ball so hard it bounced twice and smacked them in the face, ass and dick on this. Pity the ball was made of lead.

[Loony BoB]

Yes, but I'm easily pleased. :aimsun: As for the rest of it, I've not been able to access PSN for a month or two, no biggy. The theft was unfortunate and I obviously think they should have had better security but what's done is done, and the security will undoubtedly be tightened to significant levels. Any fraud done against me can be compensated for - as is the case with all fraud - and I'm okay with that. I've always kept a very close eye on my finances.

The hacking and theft is bad and I'm glad that there has been a massive uproar over the whole thing. If there wasn't, nothing would have been done and things would never improve. But because the uproar has happened and because I haven't missed anything (the only thing I wanted to do was buy FFIV for PSP), I'm not overly bothered in the end. It probably helps that I'm not that big on online gaming on consoles. =x

[Crop]

So I'll only get about 1 week of Portal online and then I go away for 5 months? That's not enough time to get the Platinum Trophy!

If anyone in the US has Portal 2, I'm gunning for you.

[Hollycat]

Sorry but 2 free games from a choice of 4 is not a good deal. the 4 games will likely be crap titles I say this on the basis that in every offer which seems TGTBT in gaming it is always crap games.

I will however say I'm actually beyond the laughing at the PS3 users and now in the zone of deep pity whilst laughing my arse off at you all you poor, poor bastards. xD

Sony's dropped the ball so hard it bounced twice and smacked them in the face, ass and dick on this. Pity the ball was made of lead.

heres my prediction

Dear sony customer, in amends to the recent downage of the PSN store and system, we are providing all customers 30 days of free PSN plus service, which includes some free and discount games, as well as all psp customers may choose any 2 of the following 4 games to download for free:

Daxter (price $2.99 at gamestop, length 2 hours)
Buzz (price $1.99 at gamestop, length 4 hours)
Rengoku tower of purgatory (price $.99 at gamestop, length 12 hours, playability zero)
angry birds

What if I already own all the games available?

[Loony BoB]

I could be wrong, but I imagine they would all need to be Sony-owned games. Chances are Angry Birds won't be there. Dunno about the others.

[I Don't Need A Name]

Has what the free stuff is been announced yet?

[Shoeberto]

Sony's dropped the ball so hard it bounced twice and smacked them in the face, ass and dick on this. Pity the ball was made of lead.
I don't think the laws of physics would allow for something like that.

[Hollycat]

Has what the free stuff is been announced yet?

nah

[Jessweeee♪]

Well hey, two free PSP games. I only ever use PSN to buy them in the first place, so whoopee!

[I Don't Need A Name]

Sorry but 2 free games from a choice of 4 is not a good deal. the 4 games will likely be crap titles I say this on the basis that in every offer which seems TGTBT in gaming it is always crap games.

I will however say I'm actually beyond the laughing at the PS3 users and now in the zone of deep pity whilst laughing my arse off at you all you poor, poor bastards. xD

Sony's dropped the ball so hard it bounced twice and smacked them in the face, ass and dick on this. Pity the ball was made of lead.

This is what I find most amusing. The non-PS3 users seem far more pissed off and piteous than the PS3 users themselves. The lack of PSN hasn't seemed to hit any PS3 users that I know (including myself) very hard at all. Like BoB said, it's bad, but it's far from the end of the world. And free games? Why not!

[Hollycat]

Sorry but 2 free games from a choice of 4 is not a good deal. the 4 games will likely be crap titles I say this on the basis that in every offer which seems TGTBT in gaming it is always crap games.

I will however say I'm actually beyond the laughing at the PS3 users and now in the zone of deep pity whilst laughing my arse off at you all you poor, poor bastards. xD

Sony's dropped the ball so hard it bounced twice and smacked them in the face, ass and dick on this. Pity the ball was made of lead.
This is what I find most amusing. The non-PS3 users seem far more pissed off and piteous than the PS3 users themselves. The lack of PSN hasn't seemed to hit any PS3 users that I know (including myself) very hard at all. Like BoB said, it's bad, but it's far from the end of the world. And free games? Why not!
you are kidding right? I have hate mail about not being able to play COD filling my email twice a day. (I wrote an article about how we should give Sony a chance, and some people took it as if I worked there.. I had to delete the article before more people saw it)

[I Don't Need A Name]

Probably because all of my friends have lives and realise that CoD is a terrible game :')

[sharkythesharkdogg]

I miss the PSN for my Netlflix account. I don't buy anything from the store, and barely play online (GT5 and Tekken 6). It's annoying, but I'll live.

Free games is nice to know.

[Wolf Kanno]

The major issue I have with PSN being down is that I've downloaded some PS1 games to put on my PSP but I need to log on PSN to verify my PSP is registered under me, so I can't transfer them. I can still play the games just not on my PSP. Otherwise, Demon's Souls, MvC2 and SFIV are the only games I own that are really affected by online being down.

[Shoeberto]

I miss the PSN for my Netlflix account. I don't buy anything from the store, and barely play online (GT5 and Tekken 6). It's annoying, but I'll live.

Free games is nice to know.
Netflix still works. You just have to attempt to sign in to PSN until it stops bugging you, and for me I think it just asks twice.

I got Portal 2 today and I'm sad I can't tie my Steam account to it.

[Jessweeee♪]

The major issue I have with PSN being down is that I've downloaded some PS1 games to put on my PSP but I need to log on PSN to verify my PSP is registered under me, so I can't transfer them. I can still play the games just not on my PSP. Otherwise, Demon's Souls, MvC2 and SFIV are the only games I own that are really affected by online being down.

I don't know how it works transferring from a PS3 to a PSP, but if you transfer between a PC and a PSP you can avoid having to verify it over and over and over by just copying the .rif in the license folder :p

[Iceglow]

I miss the PSN for my Netlflix account. I don't buy anything from the store, and barely play online (GT5 and Tekken 6). It's annoying, but I'll live.

Free games is nice to know.
Netflix still works. You just have to attempt to sign in to PSN until it stops bugging you, and for me I think it just asks twice.

I got Portal 2 today and I'm sad I can't tie my Steam account to it.

Netflix glitch apparently stopped working for most users last thursday according to the comments I have seen on the net.

In response to other comments in this thread:

Articles about the Sony fiasco are filled with comments by PS3 owners about how :bou::bou::bou::bou:ty Sony are at this for the moment and bitching that they can't play online. A cursory glance over my Facebook feed shows the ps3 owners there bitching at it too. A search for PS3 related pages turns up a lot of bitching at Sony pages on Facebook. Generally speaking you know a small number, less than 0.5% of the 77million reported members of PSN. The fact that you might know say 30 - 40 people with ps3 consoles and they all have "lives" as you put it means nothing. whats 30 - 40 out of 77 million? 1% is 770000 members. You're talking bout a drop in the ocean and need to look on the bigger picture.

Another thing is that the Xbox 360 owners are generally laughing this one up at the moment because in the eternal console war that goes on every place gamers talk one consistent "benefit" Sony users throw in the faces of Microsoft users is the free online gaming vs xbox live gold accounts at £39.99 a year. Whilst the standard reply has always been about mentioning that PSN stability is not very good and it will generally crash more often than XBL and you get what you pay for, a better online service with XBL over PSN. PSN users have always just tried to contest it. This fiasco however is pretty much irrefutable that MS have at least done something right and that Sony managed to break the laws of physics (see my earlier post on this) by dropping the ball so hard. It's a case of these smug little PS3 fanboys who constantly go on about it (theres some on here too, they know who they are) actually cannot defend this, this is pretty indefensible. The PSN will be offline for over 1 month. Being offline for over a month in the current top generation gaming market is a big deal. Its been estimated to have cost Sony $1.25 billion. That number alone points out just how much a big deal a stable, secure gaming network is in todays world and of course the value of not pissing off every fringe group out there. MS don't get hacked, not because it isn't worth doing there are millions of users credit card details on it. It isn't hacked because MS haven't tried to stomp around like Godzilla and also because MS invested in the development of their network using money found exclusively through the registration fees for it. Sony was running outdated software, no firewalls...the list of flaws goes on. If Sony had been charging for the PSN from day one as would have been sensible when your £450 console cost over £600 each to make (original UK figures on the ps3) and the newer version of the console costs around £270 to make and sells for £300 thereabouts then Sony 1) wouldn't still be operating at a loss on the PS3. 2) would have had money to invest in to the psn, whats more they would have been expected by their loyal customers to invest more in it, security and stability would have been vastly improved. So the free online gaming is mainly a gimmick rather than a logical business plan.

Long term for Sony, a loss of $1.25bn is a major blow, this is not counting recouped losses from developers like Capcom who estimate the outage has cost them hundreds of thousands if not millions so far and would be seeking some kind of compensation/reimbursement. The console was finally seeing a gain towards breaking even after being sold for a loss for many years. Though admittedly Sony could have kept costs down by keeping hardware the same over the years rather than pay developers and designers to re-do the console in a style which physically looks worse. Not to mention the fact that there has been around 10 different HDD sizes available over the years. If you consider it takes more than just plugging in a different HDD for a games console. It takes the buying, sourcing or producing of the HDD and other components then making the consoles and changing the computer controlled assembly lines programming to cope with changes in components it quickly becomes an expensive endeavour. This recent fiasco is not helping the company with their customers, many of whom frustrated with the lack of information, customer care or ability of the Sony technicians to get the PSN up and running again are turning to "the dark side" and trading in their PS3 consoles and getting cheap blu-ray players for their films and 360's for their gaming (Ironically, this option can work out cheaper with sales and special purchase price points in stores to buying a ps3 to begin with) and joining XBL. Combined the losses made on the ps3 I do not believe will be the death-knell for Sony as a games company like many other bloggers and game journalists are saying. It will however send important messages to Sony and the games industry about how to handle customers, networking and so forth. I would be very surprised if the PSN stayed free, especially once the PS3s successor console comes on to the market and the NGP later this year. Sony has made huge losses and the only real way to recoup these losses is to take away the privilege of free online multi-player gaming. If Sony ignores and absorbs yet more losses from their gaming side then I would be surprised if in years to come we see a Playstation 3 successor because losses like the ones already sustained by Sony on the PS3 is enough to have taken some of their rivals from the time of the PS2 out of the market, yes we're talking Sega and we're talking about the Dreamcast vs the PS1 and PS2. Either way the real losers here are not going to be Sony, it will be the customers of Sony. Customers who will see games developers either force Sony's hand on charging for the access to the PSN to recover losses and to cover the hefty loss of income lawsuits that will follow or an increase in the price of hardware. (or likely as the ps3 is still "overpriced" compared to it's rivals hardware a lack in price drops) That or they will see less PS related exclusives as games developers upset with the lack of compensation for loss of income turn their back on Sony and focus more on Microsoft and Nintendo.

I can guarantee almost that the games Sony offer as compensation in Europe will be Sony in-house titles. I can also almost certainly guarantee that they will be Platinum titles on the PS3 and either Platinum or "best seller" series on the PSP. A choice of 5 (ps3) and 4 (psp) is not exactly a huge choice when it comes to Sony games in that market. LBP will probably be one along with Uncharted/Uncharted 2 but thats me being optimistic about Sony putting good stuff in there. I doubt sincerely that any out of house publisher is going to let Sony give their game away free as compensation for Sony's fuck up when it's costing them money. If Sony therefore offers out of house titles that is further losses to the company (since they will then have to pay the full retail price to the publisher) which it can ill afford at this time.

Further hurting Sony is that retailers are finding it hard to recommend purchasing the PSP Go! system or the PS3 at this time. Online gaming is a must for the PSP Go! and a big part of gaming for the PS3. I work in games retail and every time a customer asks me about the PSP Go! I have to say "So yeah the console costs you this much but it must connect to the PSN. The main issue there with that is that the PSN is down and isn't expected to be back online until around May the 31st. Which means sure, you can buy the console now but you won't be able to do anything at all with it until the 31st at the earliest." At which point customers either give up since there is no point in buying it or customers ask me about the Nintendo 3DS instead. When it comes to the PS3, people come in expecting to buy the console and CoD Black Ops or Crysis 2 and I'm asked about online, I have to tell them the same thing that the console cannot go online until then. Something which could affect the obtaining of Trophies or even the playability of the game (update patches which are especially common on the PS3 right after launch of a title since the games tend to be less finished than their 360 counterparts due to difficulty of coding for the console) So customers end up buying 360s instead since they save almost £100 and can still get Black Ops and Crysis 2 but can play them online straight away provided they buy XBL gold membership out of that near £100 saving or sign up for a new windows live account to get a 1 month free trial of XBL gold.

I think I've pointed out why 360 owners get to laugh and point out the massive failings of Sony here and also why the only losers really in all of this will be Sony fans.

[Pheesh]

@Iceglow, obviously you don't have a PS3, and you quite clearly don't like Sony and their consoles so what could anyone in this thread possibly gain from reading that big wall of fanboy text? I mean, aren't their special XBox circle jerk forums for that kind of thing?

I'm as pissed that I can't play some battlefield: BC2 as everybody else, I was moderately worried about the identity theft possibilities even though I only have a debit card tied to my PSN, and I'm pretty meh about the whole PS3 vs XBox thing (my first major console was a ps1, so there's obvious nostalgia I guess, but when I bought a PS3 I figured KH3, Tekken 6 and the new God of War would all be on it, and I'd just grabbed KotOR 1 and 2 for PC so I figured it was the purchase better suited for me), but it really irks me when fanboys use the bad situations of others to jump around in their little jester hats and limited addition XBox/PS3/Wii logo tighty wighties and yell "I told you so". It's especially annoying when there's a full business strategy posted on how you could do things better and why we're all suckers for buying a gaming console. Go play your preferred console, have fun, and stop acting like an uppity fanboy every time something that affects you in no way, shape, or form goes wrong with a company you have no reason to hate.

[Wolf Kanno]

Iceglow, two words red ring if you're just going to sit here and use this as a propaganda machine for Microsoft, I'd rather you just refrain from doing so cause this is something with bigger issues attached to it and listening to you tun it into another Microsoft vs Sony fanboy debate is both insensitive and just plain sad. So if you don't have anything nice to say, then I ask you to just remain silent and leave the fanboy remarks for another day.

[Iceglow]

@Iceglow, obviously you don't have a PS3, and you quite clearly don't like Sony and their consoles so what could anyone in this thread possibly gain from reading that big wall of fanboy text? I mean, aren't their special XBox circle jerk forums for that kind of thing?

I'm as pissed that I can't play some battlefield: BC2 as everybody else, I was moderately worried about the identity theft possibilities even though I only have a debit card tied to my PSN, and I'm pretty meh about the whole PS3 vs XBox thing (my first major console was a ps1, so there's obvious nostalgia I guess, but when I bought a PS3 I figured KH3, Tekken 6 and the new God of War would all be on it, and I'd just grabbed KotOR 1 and 2 for PC so I figured it was the purchase better suited for me), but it really irks me when fanboys use the bad situations of others to jump around in their little jester hats and limited addition XBox/PS3/Wii logo tighty wighties and yell "I told you so". It's especially annoying when there's a full business strategy posted on how you could do things better and why we're all suckers for buying a gaming console. Go play your preferred console, have fun, and stop acting like an uppity fanboy every time something that affects you in no way, shape, or form goes wrong with a company you have no reason to hate.

I don't own a ps3 you're right. However I never said I disliked Sony's products (sitting here on a Sony Vaio laptop writing this so lol) or the ps3. I wouldn't consider myself to be a microsoft fanboy, theres plenty MS got wrong about the 360, for a start the HD-DVD format was a complete failure, supporting it in the face of Blu-ray was a costly mistake. The Red Ring of Death, ok so Sony has it's failure in the Yellow Light of Death which is just as potent but MS definitely could have handled the RROD better. In-house development games, MS is particulary bad at getting good ones on to it's console. Halo was exclusive but not MS developed. Same goes for Mass Effect 1.

In short I am a fan of gaming in general. There are a handful of games I cannot get on my 360 out on the PS3 I would consider buying the console for. However I cannot quite justify the cost just yet. I work in gaming retail, I can have a preference but it's easier not to because when I'm at work I can't be biased, I have to sell all formats with equal passion and zest. I haven't considered myself a particularly big fan of Nintendo's hardware or handhelds for the past 2 generations since the demise of the N-64 and the Game Boy Advance. The Cube was simply awful, the Wii a gimmick and Touchscreen controls on the DS rarely work well imho. And yet at work I am expected to understand, know and exhibit a passion for Nintendo products, in fact my "section" of the department is the 3DS format and I make it successful because I'm able to look past the failings of the touchscreen controls and see it as a fun handheld console with a promising future. My above post disassembling the failings of Sony to prevent, contain and control the hack of the PSN and the restoration the PSN to their own deadlines. Pointing out the cost to Sony (estimated) and what damaging lasting effects this could have on Sony is nothing less than that. I'm laughing with the rest of the 360 owners sure, our consoles work fine online. However I am laughing in the sense of pitying PS3 owners. It's a terrible joke really and genuinely I feel sorry for the millions of customers who've never done anything wrong and are now suffering because of this.

The figures and "business plan" as you put it in my above post are not mine, they are the summations of many different articles combined and cruel, cold, hard logic. It is irrefutable that the hack is costing Sony in the ball park of $1.25bn, it is irrefutable that the PS3 has been sold at a loss for many, many years, it is irrefutable that the changing of the hardware in a console of any manufacture costs money and that Sony has done this far more often than any other console manufacturer. It is irrefutable that the losses Sony has made and the failings of Sony to update and protect it's customer data and PSN servers could have been avoided or at least offset in some way by the charging of membership for the access of the PSN to play games online. Playing games online is a privilege not a right, bout time gamers realized that. It is irrefutable that Capcom at the very least has already dropped hints that it is considering the suing of Sony for hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars for lost revenue. If the lawsuit is not settled or if Sony wins it is logical that development companies might focus more on other formats which have not through incompetence left them out of pocket on large sums of money which was budgeted for and can affect the development of new titles, if a developer is not developing games then they are out of work and that means job losses as well as fewer if any games ever from that studio again. It is logical if Sony is to continue as a games console manufacturer that eventually they will (or should) remove the privilege of free online gaming in favour of charging for it, something Microsoft has proven works. This would allow Sony to recover some of it's massive losses on this matter and from the perspective of the consumer would be better since as you are paying for a service you expect and demand a far better service than you accept when it is free, again this is not me saying how I could do this better, it is me logically extrapolating and analyzing the figures.

As to which console is better and fanboyism? Well straight up here's the one question which makes everyone shut the smurf up when it's asked. What console do your friends have? If you answered that with the Xbox 360 then go buy a 360, regardless of which one has better graphics or hardware. If you answered PS3 go buy a PS3 because it doesn't matter who has the better online network. If you answered Wii, think about what games you would rather play, what kind of gamer you are and what features you'd like from a console because there is little sense in buying a Wii if you are a "hardcore" (god I hate that term) gamer. I own a 360 because my closest friends own 360s there was little to decide there. Todays gaming world is as much about socializing as it is gaming. The main reason for buying any console is always to enjoy playing games with friends, therefore regardless of features or hardware if your friends all have 360 consoles there is little to no point in buying a PS3 because then when they're laughing bout the ridiculous game they had last night online you won't be able to join in with them because even if you were playing the same game last night, you weren't there. Same goes if your friends all have PS3s. I do not consider myself a fanboy of any particular gaming format. Everyone has the right to choose what console they buy but the core reason should be the one which provides the most fun. As I said Gaming is as much about the social aspect of online gaming these days as it is the actual gaming. So 360 owners won't get to play Killzone and PS3 owners don't get to play Halo what can you do eh? Nothing really thats not to say that PS3 owners won't have fun because Halo Reach was better than Killzone 3 and it's not to say that 360 owners won't have fun because they don't have a game like Heavy Rain either. In the best possible situation, people would own both consoles but doing so is expensive and even those of us who work with games all day, every day can understand that you can't always get both more than most because if anything we are the ones who are most likely to want both. Therefore we all decide. I decided based on cold hard logic of what I want from gaming, that doesn't mean I hate the PS3, it doesn't mean I hate PS3 owners either or that I'm jealous of PS3 owners, if I wanted I could buy a second hand 60GB model or a 40GB model for under £100 today. Fact is I won't because at this time the 10 or so games what I want on the PS3 what are not on the 360 already don't quite justify the purchase of a new console, it'd also make me spend more money on gaming that frankly I cannot afford to spend if I intend to pay my bills, live independently of my family and put some aside for holidays etc.

The fanboy argument is hilariously funny in my eyes. I tend to join in the fanboy arguments for the laughs in it and because I own a 360 the PS3 fanboys decide that I fall on the 360 side of the line not I. However if actually asked my opinion on gaming away from the "fanboy wars" you'd get a very similar response to the above paragraph. I don't own a jester hat, though that sounds like a cool idea there, thanks! I happen to own a handful of gaming related T-shirts (no underwear though, if you see some around, feel free to mail me a size medium in them) they are more for individual titles however though the only ones for the 360 are my Gears of War one and my Halo ODST one. I own a Black Ops one which has the Xbox 360 logo but thats because MS paid for them to be made for promotional purposes at my work on launch day of Black Ops. The rest of my gaming shirts are an ancient PS2 launch TS and Nintendo 3DS ones I got from work (I also have a 3DS white coat from the launch event) I don't make a habit of buying gaming related clothing often, mostly I get them as promotional stuff from work where I'm expected to wear them for a couple of days/weeks and then get to keep them.

So to you Eternal Essence, get off your fanboy high horse there, chill out some. My previous post you commented on was not intended to get you all riled up but to point out that Sony has dropped a major ball here and that there are a lot of issues from this some of which affect not just Sony or Sony customers but the entire gaming market to a degree.

It's not the end of the world that the PSN is down but it is a major issue for Sony and the worst punchline in the world is that Sony are not going to be the ones to suffer for all of this, it's the people already suffering because of the lack of service, poor communication releases from Sony and general lack of competence being displayed by a company who infamously decided that they wanted gamers to feel like they had "worked for their console" when deciding it's launch price and said so publicly. If they want you to feel like you've worked for your console then the least you as a PS3 owner could expect or demand in return is the manufacturers to show a degree of competence when dealing with issues like this. As for if Sony brought the recent troubles with the PSN on itself? Yes, yes it did. Through many things, 1) trying to stomp around like Godzilla to protect it's hardware, there were many subtle things they could have done to protect the PS3 rather than the massive mess of a legal battle they have made. 2) through not updating it's webserver programs or utilizing basic network security such as firewalls. 3) and probably the biggest mistake of it all, assuming that no one would dare to hack the PSN to such a scale. Thats not the Sony consumers fault none of it is, it was all down to Sony. Have Sony consumers got the right to be mad at Sony for this? To stop using Sony products? To switch to their main rivals MS for their gaming needs? Definitely yes to all of those, especially since regardless of the package they offer, no compensation is ever going to be truly enough to repair the damage for something which should have been either impossible or never should have happened in the first place. Especially considering it was possible so easily through incompetence. Should heads at Sony's highest level of Playstation head office? I don't personally think they should, they probably will but I'm more of a fan of the idea that people will see situations like this and learn from their mistakes and rectify that regardless of what that takes so it doesn't happen again. However big corporations never work that way and once this is all over I would be unsurprised to hear that several people get moved around or dismissed/resign from the company.

Edit: WK read this post carefully for it seems you've fallen in to a trap here and well, you might learn something bout me from this post.

[Wolf Kanno]

Edit: WK read this post carefully for it seems you've fallen in to a trap here and well, you might learn something bout me from this post.

That you don't listen when someone asks you politely not to rub salt in people wounds cause you feel you made a better arbitrary choice on what mechanical device you decided to choose to waste time on that could be better served actually doing something relevant for the human race (and don't think the irony of me making this statement has escaped me). ;)

But seriously, you need to stop being insensitive about people possibly now having to worry about credit and identity theft. This whole "Sony sucks, fanboys are stupid for for not blowing this out of proportion and demanding Sony be dismantled and the liquidation of the company be used as compensation, and me and the other 360 owner are just laughing" doesn't really strike me as being fair and non-bias at this point. Attacking other members with your long gibberish posts for not agreeing with you is not exactly making me cozy up to your position on this matter as well. So once again, I will simply ask you to please stop posting in this thread if its just going to be more "360 owners are laughing at how pathetic this all is" or "who wishes they were paying for protected online service now?". So please just stop talking.

[Dreddz]

I think a fat wall of text from Iceglow is exactly what this thread needs personally. Polite discussion on video game related stuff gets boring after a while.

As for the discussion itself, well I have nothing to contribute as I haven't realy cared about this hack for a while now. Although I thought it was quite funny watching Kaz Hirai and other Sony execs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SDCV00ErEs&NR=1) bowing for forgiveness at their conference.. As if anybody is really that mad at them. Honestly they are the victims in all this and I don't think they need to hand out free stuff. Just work on getting the PSN back up and finding the hackers. Thats good enough for me.

[Loony BoB]

Although I thought it was quite funny watching Kaz Hirai and other Sony execs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SDCV00ErEs&NR=1) bowing for forgiveness at their conference.. As if anybody is really that mad at them. Honestly they are the victims in all this
Wait, what? That's weird, I thought the users with their information stolen were the victims. Yes, they were the victims of the crime, but that was down to their own poor security as much as it was down to the hackers. I do agree that the hackers are the criminals, but c'mon... if you had a million dollars in cash, would you leave it on the floor of your house and forget to lock the door? That's kind of what they did. Poor security was a fault of theirs, and they did need to apologise (be it a bow, free games or whatever) because they did make a mistake by not putting up a strong security system, and we are the victims for their mistake.

[Dreddz]

It was an accident and a rational person should be able to forgive a company for making a mistake. We are of course the victims but so are Sony in a way. I tend not to get so bitter about this stuff.

[Shattered Dreamer]

I'm not angry with Sony but I wouldn't mind kicking those hackers in the nuts!

[Loony BoB]

It was an accident and a rational person should be able to forgive a company for making a mistake. We are of course the victims but so are Sony in a way. I tend not to get so bitter about this stuff.
Yes, we can forgive if we want (and I do), but I still think that they did need to apologise because if you make mistakes this costly, apologising is generally the first thing you do. People need to say sorry before they ask for forgiveness. People also need to compensate for losses. Luckily, Sony have done / are doing both.

They are victims of the hacking (Hackers should apologise).
We are victims of the poor security (Sony should apologise) and the hacking (Hackers should apologise).

Hackers, of course, should also be arrested and whatnot. Obviously. Seriously, can you imagine if they do catch the guys behind this? What kind of sentence do you think they would get?

[Slothy]

MS don't get hacked, not because it isn't worth doing there are millions of users credit card details on it. It isn't hacked because MS haven't tried to stomp around like Godzilla and also because MS invested in the development of their network using money found exclusively through the registration fees for it.

Not sure why I'm bothering, and this wasn't even the only case of bad information in this post, but Xbox Live has been hacked hacked before: Xbox Live hacked, accounts stolen | ZDNet (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/xbox-live-hacked-accounts-stolen/131)

And at the end of the day, we're talking about Microsoft here. Maker of Windows. Japanese companies may not be known for their programming prowess or excellent network security, but how much faith can you really put in Microsoft's ability to build a stable and secure system? They seem to only get it to an ok level with operating systems every 2 or 3 iterations.


The Red Ring of Death, ok so Sony has it's failure in the Yellow Light of Death which is just as potent

Just noticed this in your second post and stopped reading there because, frankly, I don't want to spend half my day reading that to refute you. The hardware failure rates for the PS3 and the RROD aren't comparable. Even the much vaunted yellow light affects a small fraction of PS3 consoles. Not even close to the much reported RROD which was shown to affect anywhere from 25-35% of 360's by numerous sources. I won't bother linking since a quick search of Wikipedia could have shown you this.

Let's be clear, I have no problem with someone who wants to point out problems with any console. I encourage it even. I also have no problem with someone saying the PSN outage is a huge deal and a major issue; I've said as much already in this very thread. But for Thor's sake, if you're going to start throwing around bold statements of fact for or against any console, at least take the time to research it first to make sure you aren't wrong.

[Loony BoB]

I don't believe Xbox Live was actually hacked - from what I've read, it was mostly pretexting that allowed users to get access to other people's accounts. From what I understand, pretexting is just finding information about a user and using it to access their accounts. Poor security on the user end, if you like.

Having said all that, yes, Microsoft is a common target for hacking but they probably do have better security than PSN had recently because they are a common target. Sony, if anything, had too little experience with being a target and thus didn't have a very good idea on what hackers were capable of and what they would try to do.

The Xbox 360 has been hacked just like the PS3 was so that altnerative OS's could be used on the console. MS banned these consoles from accessing Xbox Live. The problem with Sony is that the PS3's hacked into could somehow act as if they were developer consoles, and this bypassed a lot of security. Could be wrong, mind you, I'm just going by memory here on what I've read.

[Slothy]

Having said all that, yes, Microsoft is a common target for hacking but they probably do have better security than PSN had recently because they are a common target.

For clarification sake, I wasn't trying to imply that Microsoft doesn't have better security than Sony, when you're completely correct that they likely due simply from experience. But it's still Microsoft, and they do have a pretty poor history at times of finding and fixing security holes in their programs. Not to belittle the task of keeping such complex programs and systems secure at all, but given how tempting a target Live must be I wouldn't be quick to have complete faith in Microsoft to make it the most secure system in the world and keep it that way, whether you pay for it or not.

[sharkythesharkdogg]

I miss the PSN for my Netlflix account. I don't buy anything from the store, and barely play online (GT5 and Tekken 6). It's annoying, but I'll live.

Free games is nice to know.
Netflix still works. You just have to attempt to sign in to PSN until it stops bugging you, and for me I think it just asks twice.

That trick worked over the first weekend after the PSN went down, then no more. It's hasn't worked for me in a good while. I still try it every evening for grins and giggles. After about the 10th try I move one. Maybe it'd work if I kept trying, but I don't think so.

[Hollycat]

I'm not angry with Sony but I wouldn't mind kicking those hackers in the nuts!

You and I should be friends.

[Shattered Dreamer]

I'm not angry with Sony but I wouldn't mind kicking those hackers in the nuts!

You and I should be friends.

Agreed :bigsmile:

[Peegee]

Toyota reported problems with a lot of their cars earlier, and now GM is overtaking them as #1 car company (maybe in the usa; I didn't bother reading the article itself).

xbawksy 360 fanbois would herald this as possibly the silly move that removes sony as a legitimate competitor. Personally I like ps3 to xbawksies and I never put my CC information in the PSN (thank God; I downloaded a god of war demo that never did copy to my PSP, so I didn't buy the game), so i don't personally care

The thread is too long but I think some Toronto schmuck is planning to start a class action lawsuit. 1 million people. 1 thousand dollars each. lol brilliance.

[Shattered Dreamer]

Is it just me or was it pretty dumb to have your credit card information on PSN anyway? I mean common sense says anything computer related nowadays is likely to be hacked by some deuce bag so why leave yourself open to that? I mean sure in a perfect world we should be able to save our information online for easy access but identity fraud is a major problem nowadays. Hackers of course shouldn't hack your information but the consumer should take their own protection steps, whether or not the website claims it protects your information.


Anytime I purchased something from the PSN store I bought the PSN vouchers because it just seemed easier than messing about with credit card info. Any other online purchases I make I use a 3V card (not that I make that many to be honest) because even if they get the info once I use the voucher it's useless to them.

[Shoeberto]

TIL Iceglow cares way too much about console wars

[Skyblade]

Not really wanting to step in on the console wars here, since I don't care much for online gaming, especially on consoles, but I was under the impression that XBL has had several large service interruptions as well, including one just a few months ago (from what I've heard, not what I've experienced, I rarely use PSN, and have never used XBL). Granted, this is the longest time that I know of that a service has been down, but both services have had their downtime in the past, so how can this effectively be used as an argument for or against a console?

Not that it matters, the console fanboy wars will continue forever. I highly doubt this is gonig to do anything to ruin Sony as a competitor for Microsoft in the console department.

[Shaibana]

what i find the saddest about the psn-hack..
is how desperate people seem to have become now that they cant play COD-multyplayer -.-
Saw some reactions on other sites and it just to sad for words.. it almost amazes me that there hasnt been news about some1 going suicide over it.

All the sudden they say: Psn suck etc etc etc.. while before that they had the greatest joy with it. and saying they wil switch to xbox becaus PSN is a view weeks down..

Seriously.. GET A LIFE... its beautiful weather (here) so wtf are u waiting for psn anyway????????

ive got PS3 to, but i truly cant be bothered that psn is down.

[Shattered Dreamer]

Yeah I'm not much of an online gamer myself & as much as I do want to game sometimes I don't get pissed off if something comes up & I can't.

[Bolivar]

I think the reason it's taking so long to get back up (after all, they're the ones who took it down) is because of all the oversight they're facing from watchdog groups and the US Federal government. They probably could at least restore multiplayer or something with no problem, but they don't want to make any moves until they know 100% sure that government(s) won't accuse them of being negligent.

Also, the hackers wouldn't just be facing criminal charges, they'd be facing civil suits for tortious interference with property. And that's a lot of money in those cases. Sony and third parties are losing tremendous dollars from a pretty stable revenue stream - I think Capcom said hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. I can't imagine how bad this is hurting the smaller indie devs PlayStation supports with their pub fund in exchange for exclusivity. I really hope whoever did this gets taken for every penny.

It sucks because I was all set to start Xenogears, now I can't buy it on the Store. I guarantee you there will be crazy connection errors and slowed service b/c everyone will be buying the games they wish they had before the blackout.

[Roogle]

I think the reason it's taking so long to get back up (after all, they're the ones who took it down) is because of all the oversight they're facing from watchdog groups and the US Federal government. They probably could at least restore multiplayer or something with no problem, but they don't want to make any moves until they know 100% sure that government(s) won't accuse them of being negligent.

My understanding is that it is taking a long time for Playstation Network because it will be completely overhauled and, I speculate, rebranded in the future similar to the Comcast and Xfinity rebranding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast#Xfinity_rebranding).

I find it surprising that it took something of this magnitude to force them rehaul the entire program. I wonder what precautions they are going to take going forward, and what implications this will have for the video game industry in the future?

[Loony BoB]

I hope not, rebrandings are annoying and (in my perspective) stupid. It would feel like an overreaction for me.

Implications on the video game industry: Be more secure, don't trust people to do what you tell them. Especially hackers who have hacked your system. "Don't do that" will not stop them doing that. :p

[sharkythesharkdogg]

My debit card got locked out at the ATM this evening, and I started getting worried. Also confused since I've never once bought a thing off of the PSN network. So I don't know if they even have any card information for me.

Anyway, it was an annoying ATM glitch and nothing more.

Now I'm hungry, with no food in the house, and no available monies for 24 hrs. I had five for lunch today, but was counting on the ATM. :mad2: Thanks Bank of America.

[Wolf Kanno]

I find it surprising that it took something of this magnitude to force them rehaul the entire program. I wonder what precautions they are going to take going forward, and what implications this will have for the video game industry in the future?

I wouldn't be surprised if they pulled a Wii Ware and have your credit/personal info reset every time you buy something. That would be annoying but its not like some people will probably take this route anyway, regardless of what new security programs PSN will have when it goes back up.

[Loony BoB]

I don't mind that. I have to enter it in each time for Pizza Hut, so yeah. And I eat pizza more often than I buy things on PSN. :p

[Jiro]

PSN has been down a while, big deal. No need for knee-jerk omg let's buy an xbox :bou::bou::bou::bou:. Do these people not remember what life was like before online gaming? No, of course not, they're probably 13 kids bitching because their parents are angry at them losing their credit card info.

[Shattered Dreamer]

Agreed Jiro! When did gamers stop getting their multiplayer fix from you know hanging out with their friends? One of my favorite things to do sometimes is get in a few beers, sit down & have a good social gaming sessions with friends.I remember back in college, me & my house mates used to play Fifa against each other most evenings! One day we even had 12 people in our apartment at one point passing around 2 controllers playing Tekken 4!

Wait, I almost forgot! Most online gamers don't have offline friends :lol::p

[Loony BoB]

Wait, I almost forgot! Most online gamers don't have offline friends :lol::p
I know you're just taking the piss, but I must say that most of the online gamers I know are offline friends that all have a PS3. There are about ten at my department at work alone, about a third of the department's total headcount. Likewise when I played Wolfenstein online with Dan, Psy and co, a group that we often played seemed to all be from a few famillies in Manchester (I think it was there, anyway) that knew each other offline.

[Shattered Dreamer]

Yeah I'm just taking piss :p Anytime I play games online it's generally against people I know personally with the exception of when I played Red Dead Redemption online for a while. But you have to say when you have people whining for their fix about how the PSN network is down it isn't helping the stereotype of the gamer who's this skinny kid who barely ever sees the light of day & spurns all social interaction not made through typed word on a computer screen. These people give us gamers a bad name :lol:

[sharkythesharkdogg]

Agreed Jiro! When did gamers stop getting their multiplayer fix from you know hanging out with their friends? One of my favorite things to do sometimes is get in a few beers, sit down & have a good social gaming sessions with friends.I remember back in college, me & my house mates used to play Fifa against each other most evenings! One day we even had 12 people in our apartment at one point passing around 2 controllers playing Tekken 4!

Wait, I almost forgot! Most online gamers don't have offline friends :lol::p


I can't even remember how many hours straight I'd stay up with friends for multi-player Golden Eye marathons.

The way I met one of my friends was when he was my apartment neighbor. He saw me playing GT3 (the A/C was broken, so the door was open.) He knocked on the door, introduced himself, and then he spent the next 12 HOURS playing GT3 with me trying to beat some ridiculous lap record.

[Jiro]

The good old days!

[ljkkjlcm9]

PSN is back up in north America, minus the store.


I love playing locally and typically care little for online. I have friends over every week and we play the likes of blur, little big planet, smash bros, Mario, conduit2.... Etc.
Nothing will ever be better than local multiplayer.

THE JACKEL

[Depression Moon]

I had popped in my copy of Threads of Fate the other day because I couldn't take it anymore and memories came rushing in when the title screen came on. AHHHHHHHHH! PSN STORE! COME ONLINE!

[Rocket Edge]

I just downloaded the 3.61 update, though still can't get online. I presume it's just taking a bit longer to reach this part of Europe. Hopefully I'll be playing COD by tonight. :spin:

[I Don't Need A Name]

Yeah, this is exactly my point to all of the X-Box fanboys that have tried to take this piss out of me. I bought a PS3 because I knew it had a lot of good single player games. I bought it because I like to sit down and immerse myself in a story and characters and play a game start to finish. What happened to the good old days when that's all you did to enjoy a game. Fuck all this online :bou::bou::bou::bou:. Since when did gaming only consist of playing Halo online all day and night?

Personally, if I wanna play multiplayer, I pull out a PS2 and play Split-screen Timesplitters 2.

[DMKA]

Nothing will ever be better than local multiplayer.

Sadly, developers are less interested in what's better and more interested in what's more profitable; that would be online multiplayer capabilities.

I can get back on PSN now but yeah, no PSN Store yet.


Yeah, this is exactly my point to all of the X-Box fanboys that have tried to take this piss out of me. I bought a PS3 because I knew it had a lot of good single player games. I bought it because I like to sit down and immerse myself in a story and characters and play a game start to finish. What happened to the good old days when that's all you did to enjoy a game. Fuck all this online :bou::bou::bou::bou:. Since when did gaming only consist of playing Halo online all day and night?

It's funny that you mentioned Halo of all things because Halo is probably the only game I've found seriously fun to play online; dare I say, the only way I find Halo fun is via online multiplayer.

Online gaming has been around a long time. Since the 16-bit era, on both PC and consoles, but I get your point. I hardly play anything online, but it's like an industry standard now, and if you don't include online multiplayer of some sort you get marks against you in reviews and such. I find it silly and I see games time and time again that could have been so awesome but all the time was put into the multiplayer and the campaign was just five hours of bull:bou::bou::bou::bou: thrown together to tack on. Gears of War felt like that to me.

[I Don't Need A Name]

I agree too that the only way to make Halo fun is with online gaming. The levels in the story mode are pretty terrible, for the most part.

My level of annoyance with the need for online gaming was summed up when one of my housemates was discussing the release of a new game. I can't remember what it was, but he stated that the game 'Has a story mode to play through, then there is the multiplayer so the game isn't a complete waste of money.'

Just goes to show the standard of games these days when people refer to a game as a waste of money if there is no multiplayer to tide them over after playing through the story mode once..

[Shaibana]

i thoughts exactly alike I Dont Need A Name,
i too bought the ps3 for the singeplayer games. so it doesnt bother me at all that psn is down...
I find it sad that people are "now saying: "screw ps3, im gonna get xbox!!"
Just becuas they cant get online for a while theyre hands start to tremble like some drug addicts in rehab.

[Shattered Dreamer]

Got the 3.61 update & I look forward to getting the free month of Playstation Plus Sony mentioned. There's a couple of nice freebies to be got with that :bigsmile:

[Loony BoB]

I was going to point out that I actually really liked the story missions, but then I remembered that I played the story missions with Danielle, and later with Danielle, Jess and Psy. :smash: Fun times!

[Rocket Edge]

PSN back online!

[Suikojowy]

Welcome Back
Hackers sent your console to the clink
Welcome Back
I hope the whole thing has made you stop and think
The next time you set up security
choose a system with a little less maturity
Please don't leak my information
Or I'll abandon the playstation
You say it won't happen again
And I say PSN
Welcome Back
Welcome Back
Welcome Back
Welcome Back

[Hollycat]

its not back up for the store

[NorthernChaosGod]

Yeah, this is exactly my point to all of the X-Box fanboys that have tried to take this piss out of me. I bought a PS3 because I knew it had a lot of good single player games. I bought it because I like to sit down and immerse myself in a story and characters and play a game start to finish. What happened to the good old days when that's all you did to enjoy a game. Fuck all this online :bou::bou::bou::bou:. Since when did gaming only consist of playing Halo online all day and night?

Personally, if I wanna play multiplayer, I pull out a PS2 and play Split-screen Timesplitters 2.

Um, replay value?

[I Don't Need A Name]

I don't get your point? Replay value of what? If you're saying multiplayer has more replay value then I completely disagree. I get bored of running around the same maps, shooting the same sprites with the same guns and getting killed in the same ways.

[Loony BoB]

I imagine it's the idea of every match being different. I can appreciate that. Definitely even more fun if you have mates to play along with, and even better if they don't throw you in a cage ;)

[sharkythesharkdogg]

I like multi-player fighting games because I think it's more of a chess match, and my friend likes multi-player FPSs. He thinks the fighting games are the same dumb moves over and over, and I think FPSs are the same kills, running around the same map over and over. The point is it's all opinion.

What I DO think would be cool is if they finally made a Bushido Blade 3 that had a big online environment. The old ones had the big open expanses, (somewhat) interactive environments, instant kill moves, and it was still a fighting game. I think you'd wind up with a FPS style multiplayer game, but with some elements and perspective of fighting game and WOW/MMOs. I'd like to see 'em try something like it.

[LunarWeaver]

I had some urges here or there to play Uncharted 2 or Resident Evil 5 again while it was gone, and now I don't want to anymore. "I didn't want that toy until I couldn't have it." I'm such a kid!

But I am glad it's returning to functionality and all, though really my life was hardly ruined. I don't know if this is because I just couldn't really commit to caring, other people were angry on my behalf for some reason, or I never had a life to ruin. I'll blender them. I was more concerned with the fact my credit card information is stored on there. After reports left and right and everybody sensationalizing or downplaying what was going on, I hardly knew what to believe anymore, so I quit worrying about it. I have no money to steal anyway :jess:

As for console war talk, LONG LIVE MY DREAMCAST.

[Shauna]

As for console war talk, LONG LIVE MY DREAMCAST.

What are you talking about, the PS2 was clearly the best console ever. :3


But in all seriousness, I am glad that things are starting to get back to normal around this issue. Just hope the other hacks stop too, there have been a lot of them recently.

[NorthernChaosGod]

I imagine it's the idea of every match being different. I can appreciate that. Definitely even more fun if you have mates to play along with, and even better if they don't throw you in a cage ;)

Lol, this.

The same thing can be said for a normal game. "I get tired of playing the same levels/chapters/story over and over"

[DMKA]

Welcome Back
Hackers sent your console to the clink
Welcome Back
I hope the whole thing has made you stop and think
The next time you set up security
choose a system with a little less maturity
Please don't leak my information
Or I'll abandon the playstation
You say it won't happen again
And I say PSN
Welcome Back
Welcome Back
Welcome Back
Welcome Back

lol console fanboyz

[VeloZer0]

Ask anyone who plays sports if not changing up the maps constantly makes all of their games the same every time.

In all honesty, I don't see the need to include single and multiplayer in every game. You are in essence asking for them to make you two games for the price of one. I would rather they just focus on doing one exceedingly well.

[I Don't Need A Name]

I imagine it's the idea of every match being different. I can appreciate that. Definitely even more fun if you have mates to play along with, and even better if they don't throw you in a cage ;)

Lol, this.

The same thing can be said for a normal game. "I get tired of playing the same levels/chapters/story over and over"

Yeah, when you have friends with you it's not so bad. But sitting and playing it on your own would drive me up the wall. In a normal game it takes ages to get back to the same levels etc. In multiplayer (especially Halo Reach) you play 3 maps over and over and over. I just find there is no variety

[Loony BoB]

If you're playing three maps over and over and over, you're doing it wrong. I never paid for more maps, but I'm sure there were at least a dozen. It certainly felt like it.

I think in Uncharted 2 there were only about five maps but having said that, they were so awesome. The only online multiplayer I've really enjoyed without having to play with friends, because there are so many ways to kill people. :D

[Jiro]

There are a fair few maps in Reach but the dicks keep picking the same ones.

[I Don't Need A Name]

What he said. There are a lot of maps, granted, but everyone always selects the same small few so it drives you up the wall

[NorthernChaosGod]

Pick a different playlist then.

[Iceglow]

or play with a group of friends in a party where if you all vote for the same map it'll out vote the remaining players.

[I Don't Need A Name]

In other news they've said what the free stuff is (http://blog.eu.playstation.com/).

Not bad games overall. Better than expected, but not the best selection of games. US don't get Rachet & Clank on their list.

[Hollycat]

no fair, ps3's get a RC game

[Pheesh]

I never played any of the games on the list, so that's a pretty good selection for me. I'm just happy I can play Bad Company 2 again.

[Loony BoB]

I already have Wipeout HD along with Killzone: Liberation (I think that's the one I have, anyway). So that narrows my choices slightly. I'm thinking I'll get Dead Nation as it has offline co-op which is great for Danielle and myself. Any suggestions on the other choices from you lot? *does a bit more research*

EDIT: It's between Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty and Little Big Planet for my second PS3 choice, and I have no idea which two of Little Big Planet PSP, ModNation PSP and Pursuit Force I'll go for. :S

EDIT: Gonna go for LittleBigPlanet & Dead Nation for PS3, both have offline co-op and that works well for me and Danielle. And uhm. I assume this is per PS3, not per account. :shifty:

[Shaibana]

whipeout and dead nation dont look like nice games to me..
already played LBP..
and ratched... hmm.. i dont know
Though im not that charmed over Infamous, im gonna get that one :)

[Jiro]

EDIT: Gonna go for LittleBigPlanet & Dead Nation for PS3, both have offline co-op and that works well for me and Danielle. And uhm. I assume this is per PS3, not per account. :shifty:

Fuck it, exploit them all the way BoB m'boy

[Depression Moon]

I noticed that was a Europe website. Is there any of that info for US users?

[I Don't Need A Name]

Yes, just change the eu part of the url to us. As far as I noticed, the only difference was that the US can't get Rachet & Clank.

[Depression Moon]

times like these make me wish that I made a Europe account.

[Depression Moon]

Is the store back up today? Please say it is?

[Hollycat]

no

[Shattered Dreamer]

Apparently the store is due back up tomorrow May 31st.

[Depression Moon]

Thank goodness. I was going to have a temper tantrum.

[Shattered Dreamer]

Well it's been the 31st for nearly 12 hours here & still no store! Come on Sony get the finger out!

[Loony BoB]

Sony: Store Back This Week | Gaming News and Opinion at TheSixthAxis.com (http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2011/05/31/sony-store-back-this-week/comment-page-2/)

Sometime in the next seven days.

[I Don't Need A Name]

The people who post on those blogs amaze me with their sad lives and stupidity. Loads of comments complaining that they're still waiting for the store, and then I read one from a guy complaining that they should have activated code redemption before everything so he could redeem his codes. How was he expecting to get the stuff his code was for without the Store..?

[Shaibana]

yes people are to impatient.
its almost sad :S

[Shattered Dreamer]

I'm just complaining for the sake of it :P I finished LA Noire & want my free stuff because I ain't shelling out for another game so soon. I don't even use PSN really :lol:

[Shaibana]

i couldnt care less :P
though i missed the conversation with someone on psn :) besides that i dnt really go online anyway :o
atleast not that much..

[Hollycat]

The people who post on those blogs amaze me with their sad lives and stupidity. Loads of comments complaining that they're still waiting for the store, and then I read one from a guy complaining that they should have activated code redemption before everything so he could redeem his codes. How was he expecting to get the stuff his code was for without the Store..?
Im laughing my head off about all of this because I use UMD's and will wait for the store to open even if its not till christmas. you can play your COD singleplayer

[Madonna]

Why is everyone ripping on people who are upset at a lack of services and features which normally would be available? I am a little miffed I cannot redeem a few codes for LA Noire and am thus getting less than I would had I purchased the game on the 360. It sucks getting shafted, and Sony should be embarrassed it is taking this long to get its :bou::bou::bou::bou: together.

[Loony BoB]

I dunno, I'm happy that they are taking their time to get the security right to avoid something like this happening again rather than putting out a deadline and then forcing themselves to meet it despite not being ready (a la Square Enix with their games).

[NorthernChaosGod]

I dunno, I'm happy that they are taking their time to get the security right to avoid something like this happening again rather than putting out a deadline and then forcing themselves to meet it despite not being ready (a la Square Enix with their games).
I haven't been keeping up much anymore, but haven't there been a number of delays already? Why give out dates if you're not going to follow them, I say.

[Pheesh]

The only delay was that they said functionality would return by the 31st of May. On the 31st they released a statement saying it'd be done by the end of the week. Now people are reporting it'll be up by Friday. I don't really mind, I can play online again which is all I really cared about.

[Skyblade]

The store is finally up.

And it was down long enough for me to forget everything I wanted to buy off of it. Oh well, I guess I should have made a list. Money saved, I guess.

[Shattered Dreamer]

Store is up here in Ireland now too but, still no sign of the Welcome Back content which apparently will take a few more days to sort out. On the plus side the Playstation Plus free membership is being increased to 70 days instead of 60 due to the delay.

[I Don't Need A Name]

Yup. It's up in UK and Europe. As Dreamer said, no welcome back content just yet, but PS+ is up and running. All codes are redeemable and downloads available.

[Shaibana]

Lol, ya psn etc is back
but just an hour ago i heard on the radio 'rumors' that PSN wil be hacked again xD

[Loony BoB]

They'll have to do a hell of a lot more than they did previously if the security changes are worth their salt.

Also, if they do manage it, governments surely will start getting involved? If someone has the ability to hack Sony's new security system which is supposedly one of the best (of the similar networks) out there now, governments will not want that kind of person wandering around hacking into whatever they feel like without leaving a trace. They'll certainly be taking much more notice, anyway.

[Depression Moon]

Store's back up?

Make sure to buy Threads of Fate please and try to make sure to buy more than one copy if you can.

[Shaibana]

Make sure to buy Threads of Fate please and try to make sure to buy more than one copy if you can.
what is this all about?

[Hollycat]

america back online, I hate ps store now. I was told my psn plus finally started, so I downloaded oddworld because it was supposed to be free, they charged me without asking even once. And they wont refund.

[Slothy]

Oddworld was free months ago, but I don't think it is anymore. They put one PS Classic game out for free each month and then I believe they go back to being charged. You need to be careful and make sure what you go to buy is labelled as free. Safest bet is to stick with the stuff listed under the PSN+ category if you want to be sure it's free or discounted since everything being offered to subscribers will show up there.

[Hollycat]

Im on psp, but anyways, it did say free

[Slothy]

Hmm, that's definitely strange then. Mind you, I'd expect that there'd be glitches right after the store went back up. Have you emailed them or anything to see if they'll refund the money? It'd suck if they won't rectify the situation at all.

[Roogle]

Oh, I saw some recent posts in this thread and I thought they would be talking about the latest data breach from Sony.

Yes, a hacker group released a dump of usernames, passwords, and full information from those that used SonyPictures.com. You can read more about it here: LulzSec hackers leak personal data from Sony servers, mock the FBI (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/06/lulzsec-hacker-group-leaks-personal-data-from-sony-servers-mocks-the-fbi.html)

[Hollycat]

I called them and the guy said no

[Depression Moon]

Make sure to buy Threads of Fate please and try to make sure to buy more than one copy if you can.
what is this all about?

Threads of Fate is a good game and more people should play it. Plus, me and Sweee want a sequel.

Is the free stuff available now?

[crono_logical]

Free stuff available in europe at least :D Though I'm going to wait a few days, since the servers seem overloaded and the store keeps randomly throwing an error every other page or so :p

Didn't know they rereleased Threads of Fate / Dew Prism for PS3, though since I've already played the PSX version and although good, don't consider it worth buying to play again on this console, I won't be getting it :monster:

[Pheesh]

I keep sporadically getting this highly annoying 'an error has occurred' message when I'm using the PS store, I assume it's just a bug that'll get ironed out, but it is irking me. Anyone else had this problem?

[Madonna]

I suffered similar throughout the day, but kept trying and it worked. Their servers are being brutally overloaded since everyone is trying to get on. Be patient.

[Loony BoB]

I called them and the guy said no
What did the guy say when you said it should be free? Did he say it was free, or chargeable? I don't suppose anyone in America can check the Oddworld thing and see if it says if it's free or not.

[I Don't Need A Name]

Got my free PS3 content. Gonna have to wait a while for PSP I think, seeing as the 'Welcome Back' page doesn't seem to exist right now

[Shaibana]

welcome back pack is ready for you to be picked up. but naturaly its getting overloaded!!
if u lost the link to the free games becaus of an error (like i had), u can get there through an other way:
i dont know the english translation for this.. so here its in dutch:

In dutch: Account beheer -> transactiebeheer -> lijst van services -> Playstation network promoties

if someone could properly translate that, that would be nice (a)

[Rostum]

Got my stuffs - Little Big Planet and InFamous. Also via Playstation Plus I got Burnout Paradise for free too.

[Shaibana]

too bad Burnout paradise is only for those 30 days :o

[Pheesh]

I grabbed InFamous and I've been playing that for a few hours, it's pretty good. Dunno what I'll grab as my second game, it's between LBP and Ratchet and Clank. They've also got FFVI at a reduced price this month, maybe I'll grab that and finally play it xD

[Depression Moon]

Just installed Infamous. Had to delete a good amount of demos for it too. You say that VI is up there. What about V?

[Shaibana]

Just installed Infamous. Had to delete a good amount of demos for it too.
omg yes, me 2 :O
-.- didnt think my ps3 was full already D:

[GhandiOwnsYou]

Yeah, the server overload is pretty ridiculous, but with several re-clicks, I did get everything I wanted. Everything is glitch-tastic, but I can only assume that it'll either get ironed out in the next few updates, or once everyone chills out

side note: upgrading a PS3's hard drive is stupid easy, really quick, and pretty cheap. Just from the number of people I'm seeing mentioning deleting stuff... Figured i'd throw that out there. Best thing you can do to a PS3 IMO.

[Rostum]

too bad Burnout paradise is only for those 30 days :o

Better than nothing. :D

[Loony BoB]

Got all the PS3 games since I already had Wipeout and Danielle and I both had accounts. Also got LBG for PSP (I figure the endless levels will keep me occupied on the bus) and will probably get Pursuit Force later.

[Wolf Kanno]

Infamous is the only one of the PS3 titles I'm interested in, I already own LBP and I don't care for Wipeout and can't even tell what the other title is. I have no desire to grab any of the PSP titles cause I don't for the selection. So, PS Plus is the only semi-decent thing I'm probably going to get. :(

[Loony BoB]

Wipeout is awesome, and I don't like racer games. =] Have you played the older versions, WK?

Have played Dead Nation and LBP today for the first time, in both cases co-op with Danielle. Really loving Dead Nation, much more fun than the other one. :D Will play the other games another day, probably when Danielle is off doing something else.

[Hollycat]

cant figure out how to turn on ps plus///

[Loony BoB]

You have to 'buy' the free 30 day membership from the Welcome Back package area on the PS Store.

[Depression Moon]

Who's downloaded all of the games? I'm loving inFamous so far. It looks a little funny and the climbing controls can be a bit annoying every so often, but it's a great game.

[Shattered Dreamer]

Just finished downloading Wipeout there, gonna get all the DLC before I start playing it. I've wanted a racing game for a while & this will keep me busy until Gran Turismo 5 finally drops below the 40euro mark!

Loving InFamous so far, I have Prototype & it reminds me alot of that & I love sandbox games :D

[Shaibana]

i have Infamous and Ratchet :)
started with Infamous. though i didnt like the demo verry much im really starting to love this game.
there is just 1 veerrry anoying issue...

the voices are... dutch D:

and trust me.. its sounds Horrible!!
dutch cant (voice)act... just like the germans.. who voice-over ev-ery-thing (a)
Sorry if i offended anyone :o

but besides that: ive got used to it, so it doesnt bother me That much anymore. and the game is great!! im sure to het Infamous 2 when im done with this one!!