On April 19th Sony’s Playstation Network was hacked. Then on April 20th the PSN was taken down. Gamers all around the world were left in the dark as to what had happened. All the PSN customers wanted to know what had happened and when would they be able to get back on the network. Sony kept everyone in the dark for several days. Finally they broke their silence and let everybody know that they had in fact been hacked.
Speculation arose to who had committed such a heinous act in the eyes of the gamers. Many gamers blamed Anonymous, a group who vowed vengeance on Sony after they had prosecuted George Hotz. George Hotz, aka Geohot, had previously hacked Sony. This intrusion came at a horrible time for Sony. Mortal Kombat, Socom 4 and Portal 2 had just been released. Gamers were eager to play these games and other games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops online.
Sony did not let a lot of information go public. They never released any information as to when exactly the PSN would be back up. Gamers spent most of their time on forums online bashing Sony and arguing amongst themselves. Everybody was really frustrated and growing impatient. All Sony really had to say was that they were working their hardest to get the network back up and that they thank everybody for their patience. They also stated that gamer’s personal data may have been compromised. Eventually Sony announced that they would reward everybody’s patience with a Welcome Back Package. On May 14th, almost a month after the PSN had gone down; Sony finally got the Playstation Network partially online. At least now gamers could play online. Gamers would still have to wait to access the Playstation Store. All gamers had to do was download a system update and change their password.
A few days later the password change site had gone down. So the gamers that did not get back online right away were still left in the dark. On May 24th Sony offered their customers a year of Identity Theft Protection.
On June 1st Sony finally got the Playstation Store back online Then on June 3rd they released the Welcome Back Program. Sony was very generous with what they compensated gamers with. First off gamers received a free thirty day trial to Sony’s Playstation Plus. If they already had Playsation Plus their service was extended. Then PlayStation 3 owners were able to pick two games from a list of five.
These games were Dead Nation, InFAMOUS, Little Big Planet, Super Stardust HD and Wipeout Hd Bundle. PSP owners were able to pick two games from a list of four. These games were Little Big Plant, Mod Nation Racers, Pursuit Force and Killzone Liberation. Gamers were also able to get 100 free virtual items for Playstation Home. It took over a month for the Playstion Network to be completely restored. They did not handle public relations very well throughout the entire ordeal. On the other hand they did compensate all PSN users very well. Hopefully Sony has updated the security of their system so that this will never happen again.
Chris Thompson
