While punters have been left in the dark about when the PS3's PSN will go live again, it seems that Sony has been dashing off letters to its partners to reassure them that everything will be ok.
In a letter to partners obtained by IndustryGamers, Rob Dyer, Sony's senior vice president of publisher relations, described in detail what had happened during the hack that brought the network to its knees and handed all its user's details to spammers and cyber criminals.
Dyer also said that it would do everything it could to support its partners. However, it stops short of telling its partners exactly how or if it was going to compensate its partners for the PSN downtime.
There are elements of trying to get the partner on-side by saying it deeply regrets that this incident occurred, and it's working closely with the FBI to get the culprits who committed this crime against "our consumers, our partners and our company".
It mis-judges things a bit by saying that partners "would understand the problem of cybercrime is in society today". Many of its partners would understand the problem. This is one of the reasons that they update their internet facing servers with the right patches. They certainly do not let client details sit around unprotected.
The letter assured them that although no company was immune, Sony was confident that the consumer data will be protected by the security around.
Then comes a liberal helping of grease, where the partner is described as being "valued". It says Sony was doing its best to bring the services back online as soon as possible.
Not surprisingly the partners were pretty miffed at the letter and promptly leaked it.
One partner, Capcom, has said the PlayStation Network's lengthy outage has cost the firm "hundreds of thousands, if not millions".
The PlayStation Network is back online for developers in some regions, with a select group said to be testing the service before it's made publicly available again.
However, the last thing we heard was that the network would not be up and running until the end of May.
Surely thats the job of us consumers , you guys should be a bit more professional about it.
If you would like to contact me I would be more than happy to show you how to do it well.
dam masons biat chess
But lets be patient and continue our gaming on the PS3 when it comes back
People trading in for xbox on simple knee-jerk reaction are probably leaving us a more mature enviroment anyway in the long run - and Sony does deserve some form of lost business.
Has anyone been frauded due to the "hack"?
Has anyone had any more spam than usual?
Has Sony said that the Psn will only be up at the end of May? (Or have they just said it FULL services will be resumed BEFORE then?)
Did the Sony Server security not have the latest patch or is this another rumour?
I'd also like to know how Capcom has lost millions and Ubisoft say the outage has cost them "minimal."
Please, if you're going to insult the intelligence of your readers at least make up your own rumours rather than borrow others'.
I strongly agree. Fear mongering needs to stop. People aren't going to take hundreds of dollars and throw it out the window to buy a 360 just so they can fulfill the month of may with online gaming. To date, no one's credit card has been compromised. Sony was hacked. It is down. It will be back. GET OVER IT. Have a little faith too. I'm sick people bitching at Sony for being down. You aren't paying for the service, so if it's down for a little bit, easily forgivable considering it's awesome and FREE.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEAGn4UtlIE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEAGn4UtlIE
I don't think the article is bias, more sarcastic, but then if you want bias just read the fanboi comments, don't know if its SDF or just astroturfing going on.
Sony screwed up big time & performed appallingly with their communication. They lost personal information and kept quite (after all they say they were alerted to the breach by the volume of data being transferred through the database servers, so knew very quickly that data had been compromised). Hopefully the network will come back much more secure as a subsequent breach would be a disaster. I'm quite looking forwards to playing online again, hopefully there will be less idiots on line.
On the subject of credit card fraud, there are several PSN users saying unauthorised transactions have been going on (including me). The banks would be best to determine if there is a peak in relation (but then SOE exposed unencrypted cards in a break in the similar time frame).
Witan_Stu, yep you don't pay for the network, but as its advertised as part of the PS3 feature list, its part of the original contract of sale to provide this, which also includes Other OS which has now sadly gone.
Actually I did pay for the service with every online game I purchased. So Sony like any other company should be thinking how they are going to make it up to people. I did not agree to purchase games off of Sony that I would not be able to play online the sole reason for purchase was the online gaming.
Being someone whom has had an identity theft. It is NOT fear mongering it is reality of 2011.
Once it happens to a person it takes forever and alot of hard work and headaches to clear your name.
side note: it is funny that we are hearing how much it is costing sony partners in the news. Never a work of what sony is willing to do to keep there customers they sold online game machines and games too that are useless as of today.
Sony are working hard with developers, I guess because they struggled to get acceptance in first place from many due to the original poor tool set and some design features that made development overly complex. If they loose developer organisations now that would be a disaster for Sony and something they would struggle to recover from in the future.
As tammy says, online if factored into the price of all the consoles & products. Due to it being advertised as a feature it is apportioned to the console cost. Look at the successful court cases against Sony due to the removal of Other OS and rebates that are available.
I'm still keeping my PS3, but its now near relegated to a Blu Ray player and Flo.