by Kassadee Marie, HSM team writer

Recently, a lot of people have been expressing grief over what they perceive as the imminent closing of Home. Of course, people convey their emotions in many ways. It reminds me of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s 1969 book, “On Death and Dying”.

As established by this Swiss-American Psychiatrist, the five stages of grief when faced with death of a loved one or one’s self are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Although these emotions can take place in any order and other emotions can be felt, this list has been accepted by the general public and psychiatric community as the most likely scenario people will face when confronted with a major loss in their lives. People who have never understood the appeal of Home will be unlikely to understand why people feel such grief when faced with the eventual loss of Home.

This is the not the first time people have come to the conclusion that Home will be closing soon, although it seems to be a more prevalent belief than previously. In recent history, the arrival of the PS4 without Home being included brought many to this supposition, and this year’s lack of E3 in Home sealed the fate of Home in many people’s eyes. Interestingly, you can still read the occasional comment on the Home forum or even a Home article that denies Home will close soon, if ever; these people firmly believe that Home is making a large profit for Sony (even though Sony has never published profitability reports for Home as a separate entity) and they believe it will be moved to the PS4 at some future date. One assumes that they believe all of their purchases will be moved there, too. The loss of their purchases is another thing that these people seem to deny. Although I’m not a computer programmer, I have a strong feeling that this will not be possible, even if Home should be developed for the PS4.

A lot of people are very angry and upset about the possibility of Home closing soon. Some of this has to do with the amount of money they spent on Home purchases, which could amount to thousands of dollars for some people. When Home closes, these purchased items will be unavailable to them and all of us, of course. This is true of any virtual purchases, and whether people noticed the warnings (provided in the Terms of Service and referenced with every purchase) or not, they still feel a sense of ownership of these items. But people are also angry about the loss of something they enjoy so much. There are people who have frequented Home for years (such as myself), and a few of these have been daily visitors, also. These people are likely to feel the greatest sense of loss when Home finally closes its doors, because it will feel like the loss of a real home to them.

Home users have their own unique ways to bargain with Sony about keeping Home open. They either promise huge profits will result from the making and sale of items they personally want (and claim all their friends do too) or threaten to withdraw their future sales from Sony. Often the items they want are impossible to make on the architecture of the PS3, prohibitively expense to design and program, or are so similar to items we already have, large sales would be unlikely.

It’s amazing how often people want and expect exactly what they wish for to be made for them. I’m not sure where this sense of entitlement comes from. As for withdrawing future purchases, would Sony would notice the miniscule drop in their total sales from the loss of one customer? I really don’t think so. But don’t take that the wrong way: I understand the need to feel like one can make some kind of difference to Sony.

Being depressed over a loss or an impending loss may well be a universally understood feeling. What people do when they’re depressed is often very similar also. Withdrawing from most activities, due to a feeling of lassitude, is very common — even those very well-loved activities they were enjoying up that point. Don’t be surprised if you look at your friend’s list and see fewer of your friends than you’re used to on Home or even online. Even though summer school breaks have drawn more people to Home as usual for this time of year, there seem to be more and more empty public spaces to be found there.

These stages of grief don’t have a timeline or a set time length. People grieve in their own way, at their own pace. And yet, at some point in the future, we will all end up at the same place: acceptance. Whether Home closes in the near future or stays around for years, an eventual closing is inevitable. When Home is not profitable and all contracts with developers and other third parties have expired, Sony will probably close Home. Regardless of profitability, Sony will not be providing servers for the PS3 forever, and at some time we will all be faced with that.

There are those people who have come to an acceptance already and they have either moved on from Home or are determined to enjoy every minute possible on Home, until the end. I’m one of those determined to enjoy Home as much as possible for now and I will do my grieving when it’s gone.

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