Home Is Down…Again
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
No one likes to hear the phrase, “Home is down.”
The words bring to mind the hiatus we had back in the spring of 2011 when hackers breached the security of the entire PlayStation Network, forcing Sony to lock everything down. It was a bad time for Home’s denizens: a time of feeling lost and angry, a time we don’t want to have reoccur ever again. But while the SEN is up and running right now, Home itself is down once again.
This time it is about Sony’s security for Home itself. Details are scarce, with very little in the way of any official announcement, but it appears that the development environment was somehow exposed to the consumer base. This is obviously not a good thing for anyone; with Home’s future hanging in the balance already, any kind of breach that causes a loss of revenue — particularly as we enter the height of the Christmas season — is a very bad thing.
How did this happen? I doubt we will ever really know the truth about that. One thing that Sony isn’t good at, quite frankly, is keeping us informed of all of the details. In a way I don’t blame them, though: leaving aside the court of public opinion which frankly will never be satisfied and more often than not will try to twist your own words against you, there is the very real ongoing problem of malicious user behavior. Hacking, exploits, and so forth. At times, Home’s security infrastructure feels about as airtight as Swiss cheese.
How does this outage affect us, personally? Well, for me, I couldn’t have a meeting of the Grey Gamers on Friday because there was no Home. This is a meeting that has been going on for over three years with very few Fridays missed. A lot of people from the club contacted me to ask what was going on, and I only had what I saw in the forums about it to go on (despite what you may think about having three different Home developers on this publication’s staff, you’d have an easier time prying actual gold from a Goldfish cracker than you would trying to get any info out of them) . The official forum announcement from Paul Sullivan didn’t have much to say, as SCEA plays things close to the vest, but there was enough relatively reliable user commentary to indicate a basic high-level idea of what likely precipitated the shutdown. In the absence of hard information, rumors and speculation will run rampant.
Wrong Target
At the writing of this article, Home is still down, and the prognosis for its timely return isn’t good — at least, from some of the rumors going around. I won’t propagate those rumors here, but from the angst in the forums, people are really angry that their beloved Home is once again out of reach. In a way, that anger should show Sony just how important Home is to all of us; even the people who don’t like Sony much are angry about this breach, though many are directing their anger toward the wrong people.
For all of the widespread disparagement Home faces in the gaming community at large, it is an essential part of many peoples’ lives; this is a level of attachment, healthy or not, that is exceptionally rare to achieve in this industry. And this is why consumer anger towards Sony right now is frankly a bit misplaced; frustration is absolutely warranted, yes, but we’re really not in much of a position to be angry, given the overwhelming sense that Home’s ongoing existence is largely predicated on not costing more than its beneficent neglect is worth.
Instead, let’s shift gears and talk about a larger problem — one which, if we’re exceedingly lucky, Sony may actually choose to clamp down upon: user exploits. Hackers.
Hackers are always looking for gaps to breach; it is what they do. It is Sony’s fault for allowing any weaknesses to exist in the system which can be exploited. But it is the ones who take advantage of that gap who are the real people we should be angry at. Just because you see someone drop a fifty-dollar bill on the floor doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give it back to them. Just because that candy is sitting there on the counter, and the clerk isn’t around, doesn’t mean you should steal it, either.
When it comes down to it, we have to place the blame where it deserves to be placed: squarely on the heads of those who choose to exploit weaknesses in Home, be it through something like the current problem or any of the several other hacks used daily in Home.
We can only hope that Sony pursues these people in every way possible and bans them, or even more. This is costing them money, costing developers money, and it is costing all of us at the very least the ability to enjoy Home with friends.
Personally, I’m not really angry; I’m more saddened by this new outage. I feel bad for those who use Home as a haven, and for the developers who count on the revenue from the new things they bring each week to our shores. An outage during the holiday season drives down Home’s metrics during a critical time of year and further encourages its third-party developers to shift resources away from the platform.
Look around. Mass Media’s gone. Heavy Water’s gone. VASG seems to be gone. Juggernaut, nDreams, Game Mechanics and LOOT are all increasing their focus on non-Home games. And Lockwood, for everything they’re still putting into Home, is clearly at the same time trying to build a (very appealing) successor to Home with Avakin. Despite wonderful new feature implementations such as Challenges and the News Reader, does anyone really think this latest outage, and the lost revenue it represents, is in any way good for anyone? Particularly with a new console launch taking up the spotlight and resources?
We can’t control mistakes made by Sony, or the timetable involved in fixing them. But we can get vocal about the larger (and longstanding) issue of user hacks/exploits, and ask for more rigid penalties for this sort of thing. This hurts all of us, and if left unchecked, will only continue to cause even greater problems in the coming year.
Hopefully, it won’t be Home’s last.
(Editor’s note, December 16th: Home is now online again.)
December 15th, 2013 by Burbie52 | 4 comments
Burbie52 is a 62 year-old published author and founder of the Grey Gamers group within Home. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived there her entire life, with the exception of a twelve-year residency on the Big Island of Hawaii. She enjoys reading and writing, as well as video games, especially RPG's. She has one son in his twenties.
Share
| Tweet |
:^/ Without much factual data to go by, and without wanting to spread rumors, I’ll opine only that this is the largest setback PSHome has ever faced, and likely ever will.
Wow. I’ve been busy with work since Friday (when I leave in an hour I’ll have completed 48 hrs, thanks to the snow storm). I’ll def have to catch up. I always take pictures of hackers or those doing/using ISE. I’ve seen people ‘running’ at the speed of light, a giant bicycle in the Bowling Alley, and a super sized avatar at Acorn. On the one hand it’s cool to see and kinda funny, and you wish you could do it, but then you realize they’re hacking the system or basically stealing which isn’t right, and obviously going to ruin it for the rest of us. These people need to be banned from Home after 2-3 strikes. And not just their username which a new one can easily be made, but ban their PS3s.
The outage is causing a fair amount of annoyances for sure. Thankfully two of my best friends and I have moved into another, very social game that I probably don’t have to mention again. lol, I think you all know by now.
That doesn’t mean the complaints aren’t fair though, however this slip-up happened, the ball’s squarely in Sony’s court here. Their silence in most cases can be taken as typical corporate behavior -- what they don’t know don’t hurt. This time though, they need to publicly announce what’s happened and how long they (think) it will take to fix. No biggie, just an estimation. As paying customers and daily users I think the majority at least deserve that.
Who am I kidding though, we all know that we won’t be given that basic courtesy. Which is why Home will lose users throughout this time period. No one likes being kept in the dark.
Unfortunatly the rumor is that there was no hackers it was a Sony error on the update. Outages due to mistakes I can handle, it seems the norm now that everything has teething issues. GTA had more development money spent on it than home could ever dream of and still has issues. It’s the neglect of big parts if home id be worried about. You mentioned several developers that have all but left home. So they spaces have all been left to rot. But also ones like loots sunset yacht which hasn’t had whales or dolphins for a while now. Or the twitter feed not working on the space station. The fishing game in waterfall all personal spaces that have been neglected. Mercia, bootleggers and several other public places thst again have issues and are left to rot. Plus the ones that have coming soon signs that have never been updated. These are all signs of long term failure and a lack of revenue. Which are more disturbing than mistakes.