Playstation Network Still Down

If you’re at all into gaming, you must be aware by now of the fact that Playstation Network (PSN) has been down since 19 April.  It was taken down by Sony after PSN’s security was compromised and breached by unknown, unscrupulous hacker(s) who stole the personal details of 77-million PSN users, including credit card details of millions of users.  Sony has been rebuilding the network since it was taken down, including moving the physical structure.   Sunday, last week, Sony said it was planning to bring PSN up again by the end of the week, at least in part.  The week has passed and PSN is still down.  It appears as though the reason why PSN is still down is that Sony had an unrelated attack on Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), the company’s MMO gaming service. A Sony spokesman wrote on the official Playstation Blog "We were unaware of the extent of the attack on Sony Online Entertainment servers, and we are taking this opportunity to conduct further testing of the incredibly complex system".

This security breach has put Sony into hot water, with a $1-billion class action lawsuit, which has initiated by a PSN customer, Natasha Maksimovic, who said "It appears to me that Sony focuses more on protecting its games than its Playstation users".  There has been talk that the reason why PSN was so easily hacked is because the security measures in PSN were severely flawed.  Some have suggested that the gaping holes in security were the result of negligence; the result of the attitude of Sony that PSN cannot and will not be hacked … a bit like the unsinkable Titanic. To make matter worse, PSN users were not notified of the security breach until several days after the fact … which has drawn the attention of the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade.

The fact that PSN is down does not affect me at all … I don’t have a Playstation 3, I’m on Xbox LIVE.  I’m not an xbot or fanboy … instead I do feel for PS3 gamers.  I can imagine that it can’t be nice not being able to play any online games.  More importantly, there is the concern of identity theft and credit card fraud. But the thing that has me completely baffled is the fact the through all of this, the majority of comments from PSN users seems to be that they’re fine with it … this whole debacle doesn’t seem to bother them.  Actually, in a lot of cases, PSN users actually seem to be defending the downtime.  “During this time of PSN downtime, I have come across countless articles on the net saying how the downtime is the best thing to ever happen to Sony, and how the Playstation 3 is so great on its own that real fans wouldn’t even really care if PSN never came back”.  To be honest, I don’t buy it. I am an online gamer, and I can tell you that I would be seriously miffed if Xbox LIVE was down for almost 3 weeks, preventing me from playing online games … and more importantly, I would be seriously upset if my personal details and credit card information was stolen.

Are PSN users that unaffected by PSN being down?  Are PSN users not concerned about identity theft or credit card fraud? Or is defending PSN only part of defending Playstation 3?

Do you have a Playstation 3?  How do you feel about this debacle?