Dear Sony,
I've been a Sony customer, and fan, for the longest of times. I have an 80s walkman, a 90s cd walkman, I bought the original Playstation, as well as the Playstation 2 and Playstation 3.
I've been a believer and enthusiast when it comes to digital content and being able to play immediately without having to leave the comfort of the couch. Less game boxes to take up space on the shelves, less plastic wrap to throw out. DLC has been pretty decent so far as well.
Steam, Impulse, the Playstation Network... all of these are great tools for gamers.
I also know that there is a lot of work, and some difficulty, in creating, maintaining and protecting such services. Notable outages of authentication servers, login servers and game servers have proven that there are downsides to an always on, digital game service.
I'm not mad that the Playstation Network has been down since the 20th of April.
I understand there are occasional outages, someone makes a mistake, a hacker finds a loophole or maybe servers just catch fire. It happens.
I'm not mad that there's a chance that not just my personal information has been stolen, but that potentially my credit card information as well.
Again, this can happen. I've had my debit card "swiped" before, and my account emptied.
The difference is, Sony, between that and what has happened to your network, is worlds apart. My bank informed me immediately. My money was replaced. My debit card was replaced. My account number was changed. My PIN was changed. All done in a short period of time, with as little inconvenience as possible.
I'm absolutely furious, Sony, that you took SIX days to disseminate this information. And you didn't even have the decency to contact us, we have to learn through gaming news media.
Yeah, Kotaku told me what you should have.
That's SIX days someone could have been having their way with my personal information and credit card number.
Well, at least my credit card company would have noticed any odd buying patterns and would have contacted me. They'd have locked out the card, and begun the process to set me up with all new information.
Because they have a moral and legal obligation to do so.
Two things in which you have totally failed me.
Banks take our personal information seriously. You said you do, but your inaction over the past six days proves otherwise.
Were I able to get onto the PSN right now, I'd be demanding my money back for everything I purchased through the network. And then I would be deleting all my information, and then deleting my account. Perhaps between now and whenever you manage to put your network back online, I'll cool down a little.
Certainly, I will not be purchasing anything from you ever again. I was looking forward to the upcoming DLC for Street Fighter IV. And perhaps a few games on Steam, since that's recently become available on the PS3. But no, that will not be happening now.
And I'll be encouraging everyone I can not to purchase anything Sony related.
Signed,
An ex-customer.
Yeah, this entire thing kinda has fail written all over it. The only plus side for me is that I only ever used game cards, and never kept a balance in my wallet, so my banking information isn't at risk.
ReplyDeleteThat is probably safer, but less convenient than using your credit card.
ReplyDeleteIt really wouldn't have been such a big thing for me, and probably others, had Sony fessed up from the start. They could have stated the PSN had been attacked, that they took it down to protect it and fixed it, and that forensics was underway to determine if personal information and credit card information had been stolen. They could have said right at the beginning that people should watch credit card and bank statements for odd activity.
There are people now coming forward and saying they've had their credit cards used fraudulently. Sony is about to reap a whirlwind.