As a wise old jedi once said "In my experiance there is no such thing as luck". My opinion on this is that if you cut corners, sooner or later it will come back and bite you on the arse. And in this particular situation, a lot of other people in the arse as well.
I chalk this one up to another in a long line of poor decisions made by SOE over the years. It fairly obvious by reading all the news reports they were rather lax in their security measures.
They were! And Centkin (post above you) pretty much sums it up nicely!
It's absolutely unforgivable, when you are responsible for the security of Personal Information for millions of customers, to run online services on outdated software with "KNOWN" vulnaribilities, and don't bother to upgrade and update it and keep it updated!!
It's pure arrogance and neglegance! They were a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, and 2 weeks ago it finally did! With severe concequences for all those customers affected (like my gf and myself and various friends and colleagues)
Problem is, that these kind of Online companies that store that many sensitive and personal information should fall under the exact same legislation as banks and insurance companies!
I hope after this incident, governments around the world are going to change laws and make sure ALL online services companies that store sensitive and personal information fall under strong regulation which forces them to take MAXIMUM security messures to ensure optimum protection of sensitive and personal information!
But now, for us all affected it's already too late. All our Personal information (and for some even credit card and bank account information) is out on the street!
This debacle should really be the last straw for John Smedley! It is time for him to "FINALLY" take full responsibility for years of mismanagement and step down as CEO and leave the company!
These last years many "very" good and "competent" employees were laid off as victims of his mismanagement, which ultimately lead to this latest incident!
Any CEO of any other company would have been fired long ago! But somehow John Smedley managed to escape the dance time and time again.
I really hope this time it really is over and out for him! As SOE really needs a fresh new wind through the company by installing a new CEO at the helm!
I havnt changed my info on the SOE site for years....therefore the hackers got an old address and an old phone number. My birthdate is the only piece of information they got that was correct.........im not too worried.
Playing: PO, EVE Waiting for: WoD Favourite MMOs: VG, EVE, FE and DDO Any person who expresses rage and loathing for an MMO is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Tough break? Pff, I think they are getting exactly what they've earned. SOE is a joke and I personally hope this little incident will start to open the eyes of gamers at just how bad this company is. Hard to imagine that SOE may be slipping below Cryptic as the shittiest game developer on the market.
The company might be . But games as eq1 and eq2 is still the best on the market. But is see your a wow player so you woundnt know. Eq1 is doing alot to update the game, not many mmo's out there that totally revamp old zones and charactor models( Not just adding some bling bling to weapons), its old code so of cause it will still show age.
This is almost to the scale of what "Toyota" had last year with their vehicle mass recall debacle.
With that stated gamers have a "love / hate" relationship with SOE, perhaps not so much with PSN. Do recall that with SOE market leadership 5 or 6 years ago gave other jump on the band wagon game publishers. The idea to pursue F2P (Free to Player) business model here in the Western market. I'm not speaking about the recent "Everquest 2 Extended" experiment. I'm speaking about "The Station Exchange" auction format servers in EQ2 with real cash. Before that bold move it was the black underground market making nearly a billion of dollars US globally.
Now to 2011 don't forget just 6 weeks ago or so SOE fired 205 employees and closed down 3 MMO game studios in: Austin, Albuquerque, and Seattle. (Killing "The Agency: Covert Ops" MMOFPS that would've debuted later this year) Not to mention that Sony the parent company overall also fell victim to the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami. Having to idle factories, if not losing productivity. Or worse losing lives of its employees or their relatives to some degree or another in that natural disaster.
I'm not condoning nor supporting what Sony is doing on a strategic level or how it may behave publicly. What I am doing is attempting to shed light on other mitigating factors that Sony as a whole is juggling during this recent spat of security data breaches.
Sony didnt encrypt all customer data, they had a shoddy system, they attracted the attention of Anonymous and they make some pretty bad game decisions as mentioned in the article.
They had it coming and I dont feel sorry for them, sure other companies may be changing part of their system so the same cant happen to them. Reality is only Sony are to blame for their past recent and longer term so I find it hard to feel sorry for them at all
At the risk of sounding like I'm defending Sony, which I'm not, I'm fairly sure that most anyone that's been on the internet for more than a month already has all their personal information out there where anyone with a bit of know how can get it.
That said, there's a special level in hell for the management at Sony.
Sony has all ready linked people to the big 3 major credit agencies with step by step instructions on how to flag your credit for intrusions.
I just want to point out the stupidity of Sony in doing this.
Sony stated to their customers that they would never email them asking for vital information. Account name, social security, name, address, etc, because it would be to easy for a hacker to spoof the email and trick people in giving that information up.
So what did Sony just do in response to getting hacked? They sent out an email with links to credit bureaus where their customers will expect to put in their name, social security number, address and all manners of sensitive information. As expected, what have the hackers done? They spoofed the email the same day into a very nice phishing attack.
Great job Sony.
If there are any more questions about how not serious this company is about security that should end it.
That is just an amatuer mistake, but what can you expect from a company that is running outdating web software with known vulnerabilities. Stores their customers information in unencrpyted clear text format and stores credit and banking information that they are not even using on their servers. Again in clear text.
For SOE I agree, they are a horrible sub-company, but Sony Playstation 3 is still the undisputed technical king of consoles and have sold quite alot of units to be considered a success.
So Sony as a company is still in a good place, SOE on the other hand should be scrapped. They have not produced anything on remotely the same level of EQ 1 and their latest debacle, DCU, is sinking faster than a rock in water.
Sadly many of those consoles were sold below the cost of making them. Not the wisest business decision in my book.
As to SOE it really seems like their management team when it needs to make a decision, makes up a list of the worst possible ones they could make, and then runs with the number one spot. I think the only good thing that might come out of the hacking incident is it will be a wake up call for the entire industry. Though I have my doubts SOE themselves will learn much from this event.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
The argument that this could happen to any other company is just poor deflection. Sony/$OE did little to nothing for account security and got caught. Whether it was sheer incompetence or cutting financial cormers, they have only themselves to blame for this debacle. Finger pointing at the hackers does not absolve Sony/$OE of its blatant negligence.
Calling this account hacking a "tough break" implies that this is something that could randomly happen anytime to any company and there is nothing any company can do anoutt it. It CAN be prevented and Sony/$OE failed to do what was needed to safeguard customer information which just about gaurenteed that this catastrophe was going to happen eventually. If anything, I am surprised the data wasn't compromised much earlier given how unsecure the data was.
The hardships and failures $OE has had over the past few years has been of its own making from poor management, business blunders, and its cocntemptuous disregard for it costimers. There is no "tough break" about it. $OE gets no pity from me.
The spiteful pre-NGE SWG vets, whom were spiteful long before the NGE, will never let anyone forget SOE's involvement in that little fiasco even though SOE themselves have said it was a bad idea. Most console gamers laugh at Sony's PS3 due to its originally high price point and the fact that so many multiplatform titles continue to release shoddy ports on the console, but with their multi-thousand dollar rigs, twenty-four inch gaming monitors, ligh up keyboards, and surround sound speakers, PC gamers are a privaleged lot, and if you mess up one time ,you earn their enmity for life.
I generally like and I trust SOE, as within the span of about six months in WoW, my account was hacked four times. Mythic charged me about 47 subscription fees in a single month while back, and my Rift account was hacked into less than two months after the game was launched. Coincidently, my account was never hacked into nor did I ever experience any billing issues with SOE, and I was a station access subscriber for years.
The years of terrible management decisions made in the name of squeezing out every last drop of profit, such cutting corners on IT security to reduce costs, has yet again caught up with them.
They'll never been the same anymore. I don't see how anyone could trust them now after what has happened. As a customer would you give them your creit card number again knowing what just happened ? I know I wouldn't. Sorry but I'm not a glutton for punishment.
Sure they will.
The day these services come back online, people will clamor to the PSN/SOE networks and gleefully plug in their new 16 digit number so they can collect their Batman mask.
However...litigation might sink em. But that's years away.
those who have invested in a PS3 and its games, and cannot afford another platform at this point, will do exactly as you say.
but SOE might lose loads of potential customers who will decide for the XBox instead or, if they have the money, switch.
The argument that this could happen to any other company is just poor deflection. Sony/$OE did little to nothing for account security and got caught. Whether it was sheer incompetence or cutting financial cormers, they have only themselves to blame for this debacle. Finger pointing at the hackers does not absolve Sony/$OE of its blatant negligence.
Calling this account hacking a "tough break" implies that this is something that could randomly happen anytime to any company and there is nothing any company can do anoutt it. It CAN be prevented and Sony/$OE failed to do what was needed to safeguard customer information which just about gaurenteed that this catastrophe was going to happen eventually. If anything, I am surprised the data wasn't compromised much earlier given how unsecure the data was.
The hardships and failures $OE has had over the past few years has been of its own making from poor management, business blunders, and its cocntemptuous disregard for it costimers. There is no "tough break" about it. $OE gets no pity from me.
I feel no empathy toward any big corporation especially one that stores information in such a way. The info obtained could have been safeguarded better there's no argument there.
However to say it's a deflection to remind people this can happen to other companies, is in no way a factual statement.
It's a no brainer when it comes to the question is SOE at fault for their manner of holding information. It's also a no brainer to assume this can happen to other companies. Some people need to stop allowing their grudges to do their thinking for them, it always ends up leading to a dig at those who have a different opinion of circumstances.
When someone is saying this can happen to other companies they're referring to the act of hacking, they're not defending SOE.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The spiteful pre-NGE SWG vets, whom were spiteful long before the NGE, will never let anyone forget SOE's involvement in that little fiasco even though SOE themselves have said it was a bad idea. Most console gamers laugh at Sony's PS3 due to its originally high price point and the fact that so many multiplatform titles continue to release shoddy ports on the console, but with their multi-thousand dollar rigs, twenty-four inch gaming monitors, ligh up keyboards, and surround sound speakers, PC gamers are a privaleged lot, and if you mess up one time ,you earn their enmity for life.
I generally like and I trust SOE, as within the span of about six months in WoW, my account was hacked four times. Mythic charged me about 47 subscription fees in a single month while back, and my Rift account was hacked into less than two months after the game was launched. Coincidently, my account was never hacked into nor did I ever experience any billing issues with SOE, and I was a station access subscriber for years.
indeed.
we can all forget now that the NGE was patched with almost no warning, that it was practicaly unplayable, that many of us had long-term non-refundable subscriptions, that SOE had just sold an expansion which we all believed was for the CU, that it took YEARS for the NGE to remove half of its bugs and issues, that we got scammed, lied to, and ignored when we pleaded for a roll-back, that professions that took years to achieve were removed overnight....
we can forget all that because they said it was A BAD IDEA. 2 years after the NGE was patched in and in face of clear evidence of mass exodous smedley goes on record and admits it was a BAD IDEA.
I can now rest easy and join you in distrusting Blizzard for failing to explain to you how to protect your data and trust SOE for a "minor" incident where 24.000.000 accounts were stolen from under their noses.
SOE is an acronym that hardcore MMO gamers scoff at and nail with derision regularly due to their treatment of a certain beloved IP.
<<snip>>
Couldn’t we just as well be talking about Xbox Live, Blizzard’s Battle.Net, or even your iTunes account? It hasn’t happened to any of them, but it could.
These are the two arguments that make the least sense in these discussion, but they always seem to be brought up by those trying to downplay the results of SOE.
In your article here you just said that "Chances are people will forget about this in a few weeks or months." about this massive data theft. If that is the case with something this large then the issue with the one beloved IP should already be forgotten as well.
It and other issues keep getting brought up about SOE, because this company is constantly surrounded by controversy, scandal, deception and failure.
The reason people say "It figures" in response to these topics is because SOE keeps appearing in them over and over and over again. Their mistakes are not just limited to a one time blunder in one IP. It is worth repeating that SOE is constantly surrounded by controversy, scandal, deception and flat out failure.
So while we once again could be talking about blizzard, itunes or xbox we aren't. It is again about SOE and that is why people are not in the least bit surprised.
SOE is an acronym that hardcore MMO gamers scoff at and nail with derision regularly due to their treatment of a certain beloved IP.
<>
Couldn’t we just as well be talking about Xbox Live, Blizzard’s Battle.Net, or even your iTunes account? It hasn’t happened to any of them, but it could.
These are the two arguments that make the least sense in these discussion, but they always seem to be brought up by those trying to downplay the results of SOE.
In your article here you just said that "Chances are people will forget about this in a few weeks or months." about this massive data theft. If that is the case with something this large then the issue with the one beloved IP should already be forgotten as well.
It and other issues keep getting brought up about SOE, because this company is constantly surrounded by controversy, scandal, deception and failure.
The reason people say "It figures" in response to these topics is because SOE keeps appearing in them over and over and over again. Their mistakes are not just limited to a one time blunder in one IP. It is worth repeating that SOE is constantly surrounded by controversy, scandal, deception and flat out failure.
So while we once again could be talking about blizzard, itunes or xbox we aren't. It is again about SOE and that is why people are not in the least bit surprised.
Being "Kings of the console world" led Sony to treat their third party developers like beggars holding out a bowl, Oliver Twist style "Please Sir, may I have some more"
Along come Microsoft, the get out of jail card for developers the world over to give Sony the finger, and so they did, in their droves... and they enjoyed it.
Sony had grown complacent, arrogant even and paid for it.
Similar scenarios can be seen throughout the entire range of Sony products from Walkman to TV's. They haven't learned to curbe their ability to lord it over their peers and their partners, 20 year accumulation of mistakes, none of which they have been willing to learn from.
Sony can't get a break because they don't deserve one. Big business is the ultimate test of natural selection, Sony got fat, they got complacent and they're about to be devoured and no-one should mourn their loss.
...The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
SOE is an acronym that hardcore MMO gamers scoff at and nail with derision regularly due to their treatment of a certain beloved IP.
<>
Couldn’t we just as well be talking about Xbox Live, Blizzard’s Battle.Net, or even your iTunes account? It hasn’t happened to any of them, but it could.
These are the two arguments that make the least sense in these discussion, but they always seem to be brought up by those trying to downplay the results of SOE.
In your article here you just said that "Chances are people will forget about this in a few weeks or months." about this massive data theft. If that is the case with something this large then the issue with the one beloved IP should already be forgotten as well.
It and other issues keep getting brought up about SOE, because this company is constantly surrounded by controversy, scandal, deception and failure.
The reason people say "It figures" in response to these topics is because SOE keeps appearing in them over and over and over again. Their mistakes are not just limited to a one time blunder in one IP. It is worth repeating that SOE is constantly surrounded by controversy, scandal, deception and flat out failure.
So while we once again could be talking about blizzard, itunes or xbox we aren't. It is again about SOE and that is why people are not in the least bit surprised.
people have short memories. especially those who were not victimised by the NGE scandal.
But you are right.
SOE keeps popping up and for all the wrong reasons. to list a few:
TCG lottery cards in SWG.
RMT in EQ and EQ2 despite their assurances that RMT would NOT be introduced in those games.
A shameful release of DCUO which is bleeding subs left and right.
Nerfing Vanguard:SOH
Failure to merge servers in SWG and billing people to migrate to other servers (only recently did they change this policy).
...
and countless more blunders which are perhaps not as high-profile as these but they exist. such as saying that DCUO players "deserve proper regular updates" because they pay $15 a month in essence taking the piss out of those who pay $15 for SWG and all they get is a bunch of pink flying ewoks every year for the valentine season and those who play VG who get no additional content at all.
There are a lot of good people working on the EQ1 dev team, so I hope this won't affect them too much. The recently released timelocked progression servers have been very fun, it's really too bad this has to happen now. But with a free month subscription, I'm willing to bet there will actually be more people logging back into the game than there were people playing before.
We're talking about a month+ worth of free subscription to the paid games like EQ, EQ2, Vanguard, SWG, etc.. Since gamers love FREE stuff, I'm willing to bet people that weren' t even playing before will flood into the games once services are back up. So for doom & gloom folks, I'm not sure if things will turn out the way you guys have imagined. With a free month+ worth of subscriptions, you'll be surprised how many gamers will forget about the downtime and login to play as soon as the servers come back up.
So as far as I can see, the bad is that obviously their servers got hacked and customer information got leaked. But the good is once the services go back up, their infrustructure will be a lot more secure, they will be spending more money and resources at securing their network with all eyes on them. This is a net plus to everybody who will be playing their games and using their services in the future. And hopefully this incident will scare enough companies out there that more gaming companies will do a security audit for their infrustructure soon.
Comments
As a wise old jedi once said "In my experiance there is no such thing as luck". My opinion on this is that if you cut corners, sooner or later it will come back and bite you on the arse. And in this particular situation, a lot of other people in the arse as well.
They were! And Centkin (post above you) pretty much sums it up nicely!
It's absolutely unforgivable, when you are responsible for the security of Personal Information for millions of customers, to run online services on outdated software with "KNOWN" vulnaribilities, and don't bother to upgrade and update it and keep it updated!!
It's pure arrogance and neglegance! They were a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, and 2 weeks ago it finally did! With severe concequences for all those customers affected (like my gf and myself and various friends and colleagues)
Problem is, that these kind of Online companies that store that many sensitive and personal information should fall under the exact same legislation as banks and insurance companies!
I hope after this incident, governments around the world are going to change laws and make sure ALL online services companies that store sensitive and personal information fall under strong regulation which forces them to take MAXIMUM security messures to ensure optimum protection of sensitive and personal information!
But now, for us all affected it's already too late. All our Personal information (and for some even credit card and bank account information) is out on the street!
This debacle should really be the last straw for John Smedley! It is time for him to "FINALLY" take full responsibility for years of mismanagement and step down as CEO and leave the company!
These last years many "very" good and "competent" employees were laid off as victims of his mismanagement, which ultimately lead to this latest incident!
Any CEO of any other company would have been fired long ago! But somehow John Smedley managed to escape the dance time and time again.
I really hope this time it really is over and out for him! As SOE really needs a fresh new wind through the company by installing a new CEO at the helm!
I havnt changed my info on the SOE site for years....therefore the hackers got an old address and an old phone number. My birthdate is the only piece of information they got that was correct.........im not too worried.
Playing: PO, EVE
Waiting for: WoD
Favourite MMOs: VG, EVE, FE and DDO
Any person who expresses rage and loathing for an MMO is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Tough break? Pff, I think they are getting exactly what they've earned. SOE is a joke and I personally hope this little incident will start to open the eyes of gamers at just how bad this company is. Hard to imagine that SOE may be slipping below Cryptic as the shittiest game developer on the market.
The company might be . But games as eq1 and eq2 is still the best on the market. But is see your a wow player so you woundnt know. Eq1 is doing alot to update the game, not many mmo's out there that totally revamp old zones and charactor models( Not just adding some bling bling to weapons), its old code so of cause it will still show age.
Zoos the Slacker
Hello There,
This is almost to the scale of what "Toyota" had last year with their vehicle mass recall debacle.
With that stated gamers have a "love / hate" relationship with SOE, perhaps not so much with PSN. Do recall that with SOE market leadership 5 or 6 years ago gave other jump on the band wagon game publishers. The idea to pursue F2P (Free to Player) business model here in the Western market. I'm not speaking about the recent "Everquest 2 Extended" experiment. I'm speaking about "The Station Exchange" auction format servers in EQ2 with real cash. Before that bold move it was the black underground market making nearly a billion of dollars US globally.
Now to 2011 don't forget just 6 weeks ago or so SOE fired 205 employees and closed down 3 MMO game studios in: Austin, Albuquerque, and Seattle. (Killing "The Agency: Covert Ops" MMOFPS that would've debuted later this year) Not to mention that Sony the parent company overall also fell victim to the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami. Having to idle factories, if not losing productivity. Or worse losing lives of its employees or their relatives to some degree or another in that natural disaster.
I'm not condoning nor supporting what Sony is doing on a strategic level or how it may behave publicly. What I am doing is attempting to shed light on other mitigating factors that Sony as a whole is juggling during this recent spat of security data breaches.
----------------------
The Older Gamers
Sony didnt encrypt all customer data, they had a shoddy system, they attracted the attention of Anonymous and they make some pretty bad game decisions as mentioned in the article.
They had it coming and I dont feel sorry for them, sure other companies may be changing part of their system so the same cant happen to them. Reality is only Sony are to blame for their past recent and longer term so I find it hard to feel sorry for them at all
At the risk of sounding like I'm defending Sony, which I'm not, I'm fairly sure that most anyone that's been on the internet for more than a month already has all their personal information out there where anyone with a bit of know how can get it.
That said, there's a special level in hell for the management at Sony.
In their defense, they did send a letter answering all the questions Congress asked.
I just want to point out the stupidity of Sony in doing this.
Sony stated to their customers that they would never email them asking for vital information. Account name, social security, name, address, etc, because it would be to easy for a hacker to spoof the email and trick people in giving that information up.
So what did Sony just do in response to getting hacked? They sent out an email with links to credit bureaus where their customers will expect to put in their name, social security number, address and all manners of sensitive information. As expected, what have the hackers done? They spoofed the email the same day into a very nice phishing attack.
Great job Sony.
If there are any more questions about how not serious this company is about security that should end it.
That is just an amatuer mistake, but what can you expect from a company that is running outdating web software with known vulnerabilities. Stores their customers information in unencrpyted clear text format and stores credit and banking information that they are not even using on their servers. Again in clear text.
Sadly many of those consoles were sold below the cost of making them. Not the wisest business decision in my book.
As to SOE it really seems like their management team when it needs to make a decision, makes up a list of the worst possible ones they could make, and then runs with the number one spot. I think the only good thing that might come out of the hacking incident is it will be a wake up call for the entire industry. Though I have my doubts SOE themselves will learn much from this event.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
The argument that this could happen to any other company is just poor deflection. Sony/$OE did little to nothing for account security and got caught. Whether it was sheer incompetence or cutting financial cormers, they have only themselves to blame for this debacle. Finger pointing at the hackers does not absolve Sony/$OE of its blatant negligence.
Calling this account hacking a "tough break" implies that this is something that could randomly happen anytime to any company and there is nothing any company can do anoutt it. It CAN be prevented and Sony/$OE failed to do what was needed to safeguard customer information which just about gaurenteed that this catastrophe was going to happen eventually. If anything, I am surprised the data wasn't compromised much earlier given how unsecure the data was.
The hardships and failures $OE has had over the past few years has been of its own making from poor management, business blunders, and its cocntemptuous disregard for it costimers. There is no "tough break" about it. $OE gets no pity from me.
The spiteful pre-NGE SWG vets, whom were spiteful long before the NGE, will never let anyone forget SOE's involvement in that little fiasco even though SOE themselves have said it was a bad idea. Most console gamers laugh at Sony's PS3 due to its originally high price point and the fact that so many multiplatform titles continue to release shoddy ports on the console, but with their multi-thousand dollar rigs, twenty-four inch gaming monitors, ligh up keyboards, and surround sound speakers, PC gamers are a privaleged lot, and if you mess up one time ,you earn their enmity for life.
I generally like and I trust SOE, as within the span of about six months in WoW, my account was hacked four times. Mythic charged me about 47 subscription fees in a single month while back, and my Rift account was hacked into less than two months after the game was launched. Coincidently, my account was never hacked into nor did I ever experience any billing issues with SOE, and I was a station access subscriber for years.
One word: Karma.
The years of terrible management decisions made in the name of squeezing out every last drop of profit, such cutting corners on IT security to reduce costs, has yet again caught up with them.
well deserved.
i have 0 sympathy for SOE after they have bullied, lied and treated their customers like crap throughout all these years.
from SWG to EQ to VG and every game in between.
they have no one else to blame for their downfall but themselves.
those who have invested in a PS3 and its games, and cannot afford another platform at this point, will do exactly as you say.
but SOE might lose loads of potential customers who will decide for the XBox instead or, if they have the money, switch.
I feel no empathy toward any big corporation especially one that stores information in such a way. The info obtained could have been safeguarded better there's no argument there.
However to say it's a deflection to remind people this can happen to other companies, is in no way a factual statement.
It's a no brainer when it comes to the question is SOE at fault for their manner of holding information. It's also a no brainer to assume this can happen to other companies. Some people need to stop allowing their grudges to do their thinking for them, it always ends up leading to a dig at those who have a different opinion of circumstances.
When someone is saying this can happen to other companies they're referring to the act of hacking, they're not defending SOE.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
just got an e-mail from $OE about the hack and that my old account info could have been jeopordised.
the ironic part is that they are lecturing ME in the email on how to secure my data.
Even corp's have a problem when it comes to practicing what they preach, lol.
Just as a heads up there have been reports a lot of those e-mails are phishing attempts don't click any links.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
indeed.
we can all forget now that the NGE was patched with almost no warning, that it was practicaly unplayable, that many of us had long-term non-refundable subscriptions, that SOE had just sold an expansion which we all believed was for the CU, that it took YEARS for the NGE to remove half of its bugs and issues, that we got scammed, lied to, and ignored when we pleaded for a roll-back, that professions that took years to achieve were removed overnight....
we can forget all that because they said it was A BAD IDEA. 2 years after the NGE was patched in and in face of clear evidence of mass exodous smedley goes on record and admits it was a BAD IDEA.
I can now rest easy and join you in distrusting Blizzard for failing to explain to you how to protect your data and trust SOE for a "minor" incident where 24.000.000 accounts were stolen from under their noses.
These are the two arguments that make the least sense in these discussion, but they always seem to be brought up by those trying to downplay the results of SOE.
In your article here you just said that "Chances are people will forget about this in a few weeks or months." about this massive data theft. If that is the case with something this large then the issue with the one beloved IP should already be forgotten as well.
It and other issues keep getting brought up about SOE, because this company is constantly surrounded by controversy, scandal, deception and failure.
The reason people say "It figures" in response to these topics is because SOE keeps appearing in them over and over and over again. Their mistakes are not just limited to a one time blunder in one IP. It is worth repeating that SOE is constantly surrounded by controversy, scandal, deception and flat out failure.
So while we once again could be talking about blizzard, itunes or xbox we aren't. It is again about SOE and that is why people are not in the least bit surprised.
Well said.
Being "Kings of the console world" led Sony to treat their third party developers like beggars holding out a bowl, Oliver Twist style "Please Sir, may I have some more"
Along come Microsoft, the get out of jail card for developers the world over to give Sony the finger, and so they did, in their droves... and they enjoyed it.
Sony had grown complacent, arrogant even and paid for it.
Similar scenarios can be seen throughout the entire range of Sony products from Walkman to TV's. They haven't learned to curbe their ability to lord it over their peers and their partners, 20 year accumulation of mistakes, none of which they have been willing to learn from.
Sony can't get a break because they don't deserve one. Big business is the ultimate test of natural selection, Sony got fat, they got complacent and they're about to be devoured and no-one should mourn their loss.
...The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
people have short memories. especially those who were not victimised by the NGE scandal.
But you are right.
SOE keeps popping up and for all the wrong reasons. to list a few:
TCG lottery cards in SWG.
RMT in EQ and EQ2 despite their assurances that RMT would NOT be introduced in those games.
A shameful release of DCUO which is bleeding subs left and right.
Nerfing Vanguard:SOH
Failure to merge servers in SWG and billing people to migrate to other servers (only recently did they change this policy).
...
and countless more blunders which are perhaps not as high-profile as these but they exist. such as saying that DCUO players "deserve proper regular updates" because they pay $15 a month in essence taking the piss out of those who pay $15 for SWG and all they get is a bunch of pink flying ewoks every year for the valentine season and those who play VG who get no additional content at all.
There are a lot of good people working on the EQ1 dev team, so I hope this won't affect them too much. The recently released timelocked progression servers have been very fun, it's really too bad this has to happen now. But with a free month subscription, I'm willing to bet there will actually be more people logging back into the game than there were people playing before.
We're talking about a month+ worth of free subscription to the paid games like EQ, EQ2, Vanguard, SWG, etc.. Since gamers love FREE stuff, I'm willing to bet people that weren' t even playing before will flood into the games once services are back up. So for doom & gloom folks, I'm not sure if things will turn out the way you guys have imagined. With a free month+ worth of subscriptions, you'll be surprised how many gamers will forget about the downtime and login to play as soon as the servers come back up.
So as far as I can see, the bad is that obviously their servers got hacked and customer information got leaked. But the good is once the services go back up, their infrustructure will be a lot more secure, they will be spending more money and resources at securing their network with all eyes on them. This is a net plus to everybody who will be playing their games and using their services in the future. And hopefully this incident will scare enough companies out there that more gaming companies will do a security audit for their infrustructure soon.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO