Studio expects a 5-10 per cent drop in business even after service comes back online
The ongoing global shutdown of the PlayStation Network has left a UK studio with “absolutely no revenues” for a week.
The head of the studio, who wishes to remain anonymous, predicts further woes when the network comes back online.
“What we’re concerned about is how many people are going to come back after the PlayStation Network comes back online,” the person said.
“There may be a lot of people who won’t want to spend their money through PlayStation Network now. We’re expecting a 5-10 per cent drop in business.”
The leading British studio wants Sony to cut its royalties for a short period to make up for the lost money.
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Speaking of wider sentiment within the games development scene, the insider said “people will be a bit more wary about using their credit card on PSN, so obviously we’re nervous about sales”.
Sony has shut down the PlayStation Network for seven consecutive days after a “malicious” attack on the online system.
Credit card details, user information and passwords have been compromised. The issue may affect every single PSN user, Sony said. More information can be found here. [An FAQ can be found here]
Develop’s source expects the network to be down for another week, meaning that studios which rely solely on digital downloads will suffer.
“For the last week we’ve lost a lot of money from the PlayStation Network being down,” the developer said.
“This will likely be a two-week period where we literally have no money coming in. Zero revenues over a two-week period is definitely an issue for us. We’ve lost [£] thousands.
“Hopefully Sony will try to ensure this never happens again. We’re certainly hoping we’ll get something back from Sony. Perhaps they’ll cut their royalties a little bit for a short period, to make up for the losses.”
I will never have my Playstation connected to the internet ever again.
It seems Japanese companies are slow to release information.Sony,Toyota,Tepco,etc.have the same mindset.
All I have to say is...f*ck. :-D
I will use PSN but i will not use my cards again, i think il go to gamestation and buy a £20 store card in future! Sony you havnt lost me but i am Pi**ed off that it has taken this long. All my friends traded theirs for xbox360's. Dont go crazy fixing this as i guarantee it will happen again in the future. As a customer of sony since 1992 i expect a free £50 store card for (loyalty) and for the lack of info given to us the community! If it werent for us no one would play your console. Just get it working again FFS, If its too hard then give me a job!
Stating that "Credit card detail ... have been compromised" is misleading. Sony's statement reads "While there is no evidence that credit card data was taken at this time, we cannot rule out the possibility". At worst they "may have been compromised"
After this attack PSN will prolly be one of the safest places to save your personal details. Still, if you continue to be concerned just buy a PSN gift card from elsewhere and recharge your account with that.
I take Sony's statements with a grain of salt.April 20th they stated it was routine maintenance.
I wonder what else they are hiding?
I am done with Sony.
put yourself in sony's perspective, as a head of a billion dollar company do you want to tell your consumers straight away, yes so um ur credit cards are stolen and psn has been hacked, yes yes.
seriosly, sony is trying their best.
Sony should go round putting your privates in hornet’s nests should they....? ;o)
you get what you pay for
people are kicking up a stink and you know what its pointless, these attacks were not sonys fault. they could have had the best systems in the world and give a hacker some time and they can get past it. look at the ps3 itself, hotz got into it after 4 years of piracy free.
also still unknown is just how the hackers breeched the network. did they reverse engineer a PS3 and use its systems to decrypt any encrypted information. lots of question. but you bet yourass that microsoft are glad it didnt happen to xbox live, because that would have killed the subscription model outright.
i for one will continue to use my PSN, xbox live and steam services as i have always used them and will not be fear mongered into anything. if people wanna be worried "oh no my address my postcode" grow up info like that for the most part gets deliverd in phonebook form. even the card companies have said there is no need to cancel just be observant which i dont know about you guys i alway am when it comes to my statements anyway.
@6: So you're saying that as a billion dollar company, they have the right to deceive their PAYING customers about the integrity of THEIR personal data? Wow, based on that, I'm amazed they told anyone at all, as I am sure you believe they would have been in their right to keep absolutely silent about it.
That's called a moral obligation. No matter how big your company is, when YOUR system, has been infiltrated, the first thing you should do is shut it down, and disclose the full (and truthful) extent of the attack, at the earliest opportunity, TO EVERYONE CONCERNED. If you don't, then your negligence has the potential to cost other people, unacceptable amounts of lost money.
Sony is negligent and inconsiderate when it comes to their customers. I am surprised it took this long for people to realise it. The console downgrade should have told people that much. Yet they have you over a barrel, give them your details, or get off the PSN with your soon to be useless console. Some choice eh?
I'm guessing there will be a sales drop of 40-50% rather than his predicted 5-10% ... I game with a group of around 20 guys and we buy most of the DLC for games we play and also buy *lots* of downloadable games. None of us are putting our CC#s back in PSN and we'll only buy content on Live for now on.
I think what most people don't realize is that CC theft is only the small thing, with all the data that was stolen + the CC we're bound to see a massive increase in identity theft / credit fraud as the info will likely be sold and make the rounds.
With great power (they have the ability to charge millions of users) come great responsibilities (they must protect personal data)! Their network solution can not be very good because they were unable to detect the attack sooner and require two weeks to resolve the breach. There will always be hackers, so do your homework and do not develop your payment solution in the same way you do your games (our industry is good at making fast rather than good). Why have they attacked Sony rather than Microsoft or Apple? Because their network is probably the most vulnerable, especially with respect to this scale: Reaching all accounts ... innaceptable!
How can some of you continue to kiss sony's arse. They ARE at fault to an extent…
If you give me your car to hold, I'll lock it and put the keys in a safe place inside my house.
If you give Sony your car to hold, they leave it in the drive with the keys in the ignition but thank god they locked the doors.
Security and data is unencrypted in plain text?!? They deserve to fail.
I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned with companies incompetence when it comes to my security. First it was Play.com last month and now Sony.
I for one sadly won't be purchasing any future PSN titles from their website, short of some kind of incentive and an apology.
@ 13 (gamer), if they want it they get it....I'll kick your front door down and walk out with the keys, thanks for a shiny new car. Happens all the time mate.
It shows that Sony need to improve there systems, but it probably shows that because of Microsoft's hard to get out clauses that there are fewer creditcards thus sales with XBoxLive, therefore is a smaller chance of them being targeted, such as viruses on macs.
One more thing! Calm down people Its credit card info! It's the banks problem! ;) Peace.
i dunno why ppl r blamin sony any good hacker can hack anything, just because ppl pay for xbox doesnt mean there more secure, the guy tht hacked psn could easily hack microsoft if he wanted, HACKERS CAN HACK ANYTHING but this guy whos hackd obviously duznt like sony in any way which i reckon it was the guy sony sued for modifying his ps3 n selling it on
some people still think sony held off info, totally ignoring the updated statements as they came in!
the 'intrusion' wasnt noticed till after the fact, they hired some security company to investigate, which uncovered even more info
SONY ,,JUST GIVE PEOPLE A DEFINATE DATE WHEN PSN WILL BE BACK ON LINE AND STOP BEATING AROUND THE BUSH.
ok, enough is enough, they really need to cut the crap and give us a date so i (we) can get back to merc'n fool's. seriously, this should've taken this long, and when r we(the usa/uk)going to be on( alway some wacked out date that never delivers. i have a 360( it's collecting dust, but) and i might use it, i mean their sitting back playing black ops, dc online, red faction all online, and we discovered the outdoors, overtime at work, ( dare i say it) child care, i guess i'll do like everybody else: sit and wait(but).
ok, enough is enough, they really need to cut the crap and give us a date so i (we) can get back to merc'n fool's. seriously, this should've taken this long, and when r we(the usa/uk)going to be on( alway some wacked out date that never delivers. i have a 360( it's collecting dust, but) and i might use it, i mean their sitting back playing black ops, dc online, red faction all online, and we discovered the outdoors, overtime at work, ( dare i say it) child care, i guess i'll do like everybody else: sit and wait(but).
"That's called a moral obligation. No matter how big your company is, when YOUR system, has been infiltrated, the first thing you should do is shut it down, and disclose the full (and truthful) extent of the attack, at the earliest opportunity, TO EVERYONE CONCERNED"
Just like any large organization, Governments included, they don't just come out and tell the masses what is going on, it creates panic.
If you read game industry news, there were reports of a hacker group (who are saying they were not responsible) saying they were going to attack Sony (not customers), and the security company being brought in. Who knows if it was them or another group taking advantage of the publicized threat to.
There was absolutely no surprise for me when the news was released that PSN went down because of an attack.
For those of you kicking up a stink about not using CC's again on PSN, and believing that Live or any other online facility is more secure is quite naive. The one thing you can do is make sure you have CC fraud protection.
I for one am not worried and am just waiting patiently for PSN to come back on line.
''For those of you kicking up a stink about not using CC's again on PSN, and believing that Live or any other online facility is more secure is quite naive. The one thing you can do is make sure you have CC fraud protection.''
It's you who are naive to think Microsoft and others are going to sit back and let their security be as lax as Sonys was found out to be by independent outside companies brought in to help them because of this fiasco.
Microsoft and Apple and others will have maxed their security to the highest levels and will be writing up new disaster plans after seeing how this has badly cost Sony.
At the end of the day Sony shouldn't have started a war with hackers without having the proper security resources and disaster plans in place.
this is odd,i mean people are weird when xbox first released the white one quickly before PS3 it had no HDMI output and then the Red Ring OF death appeared more that 30% X360 consoles died and when PS3 released microsoft saw the PS3 rememebered that they lack of HDMI output and then they made the ELITE one and start to copy for what PS3 have,phyreengine,blue-ray,7.1 surround system,HDMI output rate beats X360,the numbers of exclusive PS3 games the FREE online,bluetooth,gadgets like PSP,Xperia play,or AINO,PSP2 soon...and more to say why sony is the best,the wierd thing is people who own X360 they got punchs on there faces but still they accept to own it again i got my PS3 sins 2007 none single problem appeared,i got 3 burned Xbox to hell because of RDD i wont even care about there technology because its nothing to me,at least PS move makes sins when u hold the remotes or installing the remotes over the machinegun adjust able arm with feeling that your holding somthing wich is called a weapon there is nothing called my finger will be the trigget like on xbox like a coward waving throu the air with Knect,i wont say X360 is bad i liked fable,halo,gears of war but sorry i didnt feel the quality of the blue-ray and the cell processor and the one who owns it is PS3,the latest PS3 hacking wont affect the sony it will only gona make them stronger and even upgrade there systems into new generations for best gaming console ever,i always laugh when i touch the PS phat or slim i can sens the quality built,for those who are worried if there data been stolen simple as it is just change your bank passwords directly and for now always buy the PSN $20cards or $50 untile things will calm down,im lucky i think i never add any bankcard details before on PSN,but even if they got it whats the point let them check my A** on the mastercard lol.
i didnt mean to hirt other console owners other than sony's but u guys must try before saying stuffs about sony in the end sony is make. beleave.
every console system is hacked even Wii and Xbox aswell but no one mentioning about it or they dont even feel it thats whats make sony special because they sens there enemys and even stop the whole network to prevent them from stealing u think about it.
happy gaming everyone.
