27 Apr, 2011
As most are aware, the PSN has been a bit out of sorts the last week, and now we are starting to get more details about the outage. First it was a mysterious outage, which migrated into an external attack on the PSN, and now has become a full scale breach of the system which has exposed user data to an unknown hacker group. I for one have been really upset about this outage, mostly because it has killed my Hulu watching, but more importantly, information about me and my family has been exposed. Funny thing is that most seem to be taking this outage with a grain of salt, and with no ill will towards Sony up to this point. As a matter of fact, heading over to the Official PlayStation Blog, it is funny to read the comments and the politeness that PSN users have put towards Sony during this outage. So where is the anger and outrage towards this outage?
Jumping in the Peabody Wayback Machine, I remember Christmas 2008, when Microsoft had a two week outage with the Xbox Live Network. Remembering back to the commentary from that outage, people responded with such vitriol and anger towards Microsoft and Xbox Live, threatening employees, demanding credits and free items and so much more. There were near riots in online forums and on Microsoft’s main Xbox.com site over the outage. It was amusing to see people so angry about the service outage and how they were losing out on the ability to kill players and talk all kinds of madness at their fellow gamers for a couple of weeks. Yes, I understand being upset with Xbox Live being out of order, as you pay for the service, but the anger and language that was being used was downright offensive towards employees of Microsoft.
Moving forward to the present, I look at the responses to each post by Mr. Seybold over at the PlayStation blog and instead of seeing virtual pitchforks, I read about people saying things like, “thanks for taking the time to fix this right”, “Damn hackers ruining my fun” and “No reason to be upset, as long as we know you are fixing it”. I started to feel like a group rendition of “Kumbaya” was going to break out at any moment while reading these comment responses.
Where was the anger? Where were the threats to the families of Sony employees for the lack of service? There seems to have been none of that up to this point. Could it be the friendly nature of the service, as it never seems to get the bad rap that Xbox Live does in terms of the player base attitude? Maybe it has to do with the free nature of the base service, but even PlayStation Plus members have been kind, and they are paying for a service they are losing out on.
Now I do expect that the comments will get a little angrier with the news item about personal data being exposed, as no one likes to know that their personal and possible financial data is in the hands of someone that has a complete lack of character like a data thief.
I do have to wonder what the long term damage will be with the fan base of PSN as this outage persists with no end in sight. It does not help that US Congressmen want to get involved with the now weeklong outage and data exposure issues, and as more releases hit the console and no way to use the online components, I expect there will be more outrage from the fans. But for now, maybe I should just sit back and enjoy the civility of an online service that is normally lacking in today’s gaming culture.
There is a big difference between the two incidents though. PSN has been deliberately targeted from the outside, whereas Xbox LIVE went down in 2008 because… well, it was shit. It went down because it wasn’t built well enough to withstand such a large number of users in the first place.
Also, people seem to be forgetting who’s really to blame for the PSN outage. Not Sony – sad, pathetic, little boys, sat in their bedrooms with an axe to grind and something to prove. George Hotz’s intentions may have been pure in comparison, but the people that now have hold of his malicious software aren’t so… ‘nice’.
Plus users aren’t missing out on anything. Their bonus items will still be there when the network reactivates. I’ve really not been impressed with other publications coverage of the outage. I feel it’s all scaremongering and hit-grabbing, particularly in light of the Big Data Protection Fail of ’11, which now seems to be nowhere near as bad as anyone suggested. I would like to think the gaming press is a world apart from tabloid hacks but in situations like this that good faith ebbs away very quickly.
So all in all, I don’t think any kind of outrage is really necessary. Free service vs. one major outage in 5 years? Don’t think any of us can pretend to be especially hard done by.
I just find it amazing at the difference in attitude between the two audiences. I own both platforms, and I do enjoy the strengths of both. I just expected the usual anger and outrage, asking for free shit and so forth, but most of the comments have been rather positive.
I do have two friends have have been affected by this, as they have been contacted by credit card companies that they have had erroneous charges attempted to be made. Could be coincidence, but I do have to wonder with the timing of this, and both cards were tied to their PSN accounts. If it affected base is small, it will wash away, but if a hugh number of users start to have credit card issues, then it could become a bigger issue.
Well, in terms of the ages ago XBL outage, I think that was mostly people overreact and are generally over dramatic and ridiculous about these things. And, as previously stated, the amount of people utilizing Xbox Live was not previously expected to be such a high amount. The reactions of people towards that was clearly ridiculous and uncalled for, though I’m sure that being reimbursed the amount of missed Gold time would’ve been in order.
Going to present now, I feel like, with the amount of hacks of individual online games on the PSN and now this, Sony really needs to figure out a way to step up their security to be honest. Now, I’m not familiar with the details of this because I don’t own a PS3 and therefore haven’t really been present with news. But, I have definitely noticed a LOT of hacking incidents over the PSN, and the fact that personal information has been leaked, to me at least, is outrageous. As we all know, personal information is very dangerous to have floating around these days, and I feel that it should have been Sony’s responsibility to vigilantly protect the information of their consumers as best as possible. Now, I’m not saying that this is Sony’s fault, nor am I saying that hacking won’t occur. But I think its quite incredible, and mildly concerning, that a group of hackers could not only take down the entire PSN but also get a hold of user’s information. All in all I don’t think rage is necessary considering Sony is working on fixing it, and it IS a free service, but I think that this sort of thing really should have been prevented in the first place. Especially in the area of the leaking personal data.