It’s been hard the past week to find any gaming news that hasn’t been dominated by the hacking of the PlayStation Network.
Things have developed over the weekend, but I promise this will be the last blog on the PlayStation Network outage – unless, of course, something else catastrophic happens to it this week.
Sony has come out overnight saying that partial PSN services will resume this week (except for the PlayStation Store, which won’t come back up until the end of the month) and has promised that the new-and-improved PSN will offer much better security and data protection. Well, PS3 users would expect that, right?
Last week, Sony came under fire for the way it’s handled the breach and the length of time it took to notify PS3 account holders that personal details may have been compromised – and rightly so – and yesterday, Kazuo Hirai, executive deputy president of Sony Cor! poration, said: “We have learned lessons along the way about the valued relationship with our consumers, and to that end, we will be launching a customer appreciation programme for registered consumers as a way of expressing our gratitude for their loyalty during this network downtime, as we work even harder to restore and regain their trust in us and our services.”
Sony hasn’t directly said sorry anywhere but the statement from Hirai is the company’s way of apologising for the situation, and it’s initiating something called the “Welcome Back” programme which, among other things, will include each territory offering selected PlayStation content for free download and all existing PlayStation Network customers will be given a 30-day free membership to the PlayStation Plus premium service (existing PlayStation Plus members will get an additional 30-days free membership). No word from Sony – either locally or internationally! – what the free downloadable content will be. If you wa! nt more information head here.
Personally, I think Sony has handled the whole think incredibly poorly and it’s going to have to work extremely hard to repair its reputation among gamers as a result of this debacle. Here’s a question for PlayStation users: how do you think Sony handled the whole PSN hack and would it have received a “Could do better” on its report card?
In non-Sony-related news, tomorrow night I’ve got an interview with British game designer Peter Molyneux pencilled in and as there’s no new game coming from him (apart from the PC version of Fable 3) it seems like it’ll just be a general profile piece about him. I do, however, plan to ask him whether he’d ever like to revisit some of his past games, including Sydnicate. Any questions you’d be keen for me to put to Molyneux?
Game Junkie is on . You can email him
I will be sending Sony the bill every year from now until I die! for the Identity Theft insurance I had to take out because of this. Not happy that they kept personal data unencrypted. Very poor of them.
when is it coming back up
There was footage of the 3 sony execs Huey, Dewy and Rouey all bowing to say sorry. Thats more than enough compensation I feel.
Dont ask us the question.Ask Sony.
Greg, enough with the drama. You can’t steal someone’s identity with just their name, address and email. I can’t believe you took out identity theft insurance, something which would obviously not work if you had your identity stolen. lol Some people are just suckers I guess. Go you moral warrior!
Wow. Free PS+ for a month. Oh wait. PSN wont be up until the end of the month. Way to dodge a bullet, Sony.Unless of course it doesnt start until we log into the Playstation Store. I have to say though that the offer of the Welcome Back programme is a sensible move on their behalf.
Can you thank P! eter Molyneux for the Fable series, it’s the only game my partner! has ever liked and her addiction to that is my greatest defense when she nag nag’s about me playing to much xbox.
Nope, definitely not happy with how Sony handled this. Communication is key in such a crisis, but Sony were too busy keeping their cards close to their chest to fulfill this basic requirement. I also will not be putting much trust in their data protection processes either, and will be removing my credit card details from their database as soon as I can (and hope I’m not shutting the gate after the horse has bolted).
Ask Molyneux – in a tactful way of course – if any of the Kinect R&D Lionhead did (i.e. Project Milo) will actually manifest itself as a whole game in the future.
Honestly people, I don’t understand why people would even think about putting their credit card numbers on such a big network that was definitely going to be hacked. It’s common sense to just go out and buy PSN loaded cards and hav! e a junk e-mail account registered to your account (hm. sounds almost like Xbox, which covered their asses by not allowing credit cards to be imputed to their system by having Microsoft points – I only own a PS3 by the way). Sure it was a big upset to me as well, but I wasn’t stupid enough to put my credit card number up in the air. Sure my address was in there too, but that’s not what these guys were looking for. Sony should have learned from Microsoft, although I still love Sony very much.
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