Something that really winds me up is when technology goes wrong and somebody will say they hate technology. People don't hate technology, they hate when it goes wrong. I get the feeling a lot of people will be hating technology right now.
The Playstation Network has been down for a week today. Yesterday the news came that the reason for this extended interlude in service was that Sony had been hacked, and the personal data, which potentially included credit card information, of around 70 million people was now in the hands of said hackers.
At this stage it's still undetermined who actually hacked the PSN. Many are laying the blame at Internet hacktivist group Anonymous' door. The group recently declared an attack on Sony, in response to Sony's during of George Hotz, who provided the key to unlocking the console for unlicensed software.
But Anonymous deny any attacks on the PSN itself, stating that they don't want to stop gamers. It makes sense; they want to make a hit against Sony not the people with their consoles. Thing is, the very nature of Anonymous means that it could of been one of their members acting on what it thought was their common goal. I'm not going to go into my thoughts on Anonymous (I generally support them, for the record) but it's hard for them to defend themselves on this one.
Sony told users yesterday that their personal data might have been leaked, and in my opinion this is pretty unforgivable. Now I don't understand hacking or how you'd go about hacking the PSN but Sony have to have had some idea about what had happened. If you think some outside agent has gained access to personal confidential information of your customers, it is your responsibility and even your duty to tell them as soon as possible. Like last Thursday.
But this is going to have much more of an impact on Sony than just some interrupted service and a few pissed off customers. That trust that consumers place into them has been broken and that's not easily won back. In the week the PSN has been offline, it wouldn't surprise me if some committed Black Ops players have already traded in their PS3s for an XBox. Gamers NEED multiplayer these days.
But I think this entire incident is going to hurt Sony the most seriously in the living room. For quite some time, the marketing for Sony, at least in the UK has been targeted at families, focussing on the console as a blu ray and motion control device over traditional gaming. But now with the news of the security breach hitting newspapers and the BBC websites, almost every household in the country will have some knowledge of the events. Many I imagine will intrinsically, and incorrectly, link the PS3 with credit card fraud. That's the sort of damage that no amount of positive marketing will quickly fix.
As I'm writing this post, news is appearing that Sony is to be hit with a class action lawsuit, as well as potential government fines. This is serious now. This could ruin the PSN forever. At first this was just a case of a multiplayer outage which made Sony look a tad daft. Now it's a media firestorm which could tarnish the image of the PS3's online capabilities forever.
In fact it might not just be Sony who take a PR hit from this. Both Microsoft and Nintendo seemed keen to get people into using their respective online services. Microsoft offers the family Gold account allowing control over content, and Nintendo operate the ambassador policy, rewarding Wii owners for helping friends sign up to the online service. But the "PSNgate" news is on the front page of some newspapers. To the public, the idea of giving your personal info to a game console would be tantamount to handed flyers out with your account number and sort code on them.
I can see Sony giving away something free when they've sorted this problem out and the PSN is back online but will that be enough to persuade the legions of customers who feel betrayed. No, the hack isn't directly Sony's fault. They didn't actively give anyone the data. But they didn't take enough steps to prevent it getting into the wrong hands, and to me, it feels like they screwed up there. Big time.
It's difficult to say how this is going to play out, but it's going to take a hell of a lot more than a Kevin Butler ad to sort this bad press out.
No comments:
Post a Comment