Opinion: Our video guy gets his rant on about the PlayStation hack, Sony's lack of transparency, and the hit to online consumer confidence.
I’m sure we’re all very aware of the security breach Sony’s Playstation network encountered last week. If you’re not aware then I salute you on living under a rock/having an amazingly intoxicated Easter break.
The beginning I doubt that I was the only one who sat down on Thursday and was surprised that I wasn’t logged onto PSN immediately after booting up the console. I’d bought a new game a few hours earlier that was designed for co op from the ground up and was interested in taking it for a spin over the break. Much to my dismay I continually encountered the “you’ve been disconnected” error. I had been disconnected. Not ‘holy shit we got breached and it’s game over, man, GAME OVER!’ – just that my internet wasn’t connecting to PSN. Which was a lie.
So I reset my router, my modem. My playstation. Did the network connection test to no avail.
Then, being the amazingly savvy interwebber that I am, I decided to check the network status online, only to find out that it was down – for no reason at all. And Playstation wasn’t saying anything.
Eventually they admitted the network was down and the error changed to ‘undergoing maintenance’. Also a lie of sorts; I’m sure they were maintaining the hell out of the god awful shitty mess they’d gotten themselves into by not securing their network.
The following five days had Sony staying tight-lipped until this morning (Aussie time), when they admitted that they had been breached and potentially 77 million users had had their details compromised.
Seventy seven million.
That is insane. It is so far beyond incompetent it’s hilarious. I say this as a user whose credit card details may also have been breached. And my name, address and other personal details as well.
Bad PR I doubt many people have total trust in services they hand over their credit card details to, but as long as they’re kept in a vault somewhere and only given to the CIA I think we all just deal with it. But when our details are breached at this level, it’s brand-breaking.
Sony is in a very serious predicament here. They’ve built up a user base of around 80 million people and now they’ve pissed them off. Creating a brand is hard, but shaking off an incident like this is even harder.
It is going to be very interesting to see what Sony does this week to combat the five horsemen that are bad publicity – but it has to be said they hav made matters worse for themselves.
As anyone knows, when shit hits the fan communication is key. When it comes to brand integrity this is the corner stone of public relations: communication. If you’re not relating to your public then you’re not doing a bad job, you’re not doing any job.
And that’s what Sony has done over the past six days: stay quiet. They’ve hidden in a bunker and watched and waiting through a tiny periscope, hoping the horrible zombie hordes called customers would go away.
But we won’t go away, because we gave you everything. Literally. As gamers we spend our time earning money at work so we can spend it on your products to use in our spare time. Yes, yes, we also buy beer and occasionally leave the house.
And its not just gamers, it’s the casual audience too. I know some people who had no idea PSN was being ‘maintained’ until four days into down time. There would be people out there who didn’t know until SMH mentioned it this morning on the front page of their website.
Not everyone knows about it because Sony – despite having all our personal details – failed to notify a single user via phone, e-mail or PSN notification. There was nothing. You actually had to look to find out what was going on with your financial credentials.
Sony should have come out straight away saying ‘awwwww shyit, ya’ll we done gun lost yer details!’, but they didn’t. And wouldn’t you be scared of how seventy seven million people would respond to you telling them ‘yeah, so… you know your phone number, home address, e-mail, network password and credit card details? I like… lost them. Yeah. I know, right?’
But admitting fault is a great way of gaining trust. It’s just how human beings are. We love honesty. If Sony came out SCREAMING at the top of their lungs “WE FUCKED UP!” and told us how, they’d actually have customers thanking them for letting them know.
Instead someone has had a hold of our details for six days and we haven’t officially known. We’ve suspected, but we haven’t known. Not to mention the people who still don’t know.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012