PlayStation gamers were pleasantly surprised this past Saturday after Sony restored functionality to the PlayStation Network (PSN) about one week earlier than expected. For PlayStation 3 users, online gaming has been on pause since April 20, when Sony shut down the network in response to a large-scale data theft that occurred on April 19.
The network hack caused a media frenzy over the last month, as it was reported that names, addresses and possibly credit card numbers were stolen from Sony's servers, but for two Seattle University gamers the panic portrayed by the media was virtually nonexistent.
"It's really just been downtime [from online game play]. All the implications are on the company level," Jacob Lowry, senior and president of Video Gamers' Alliance (VGA).
"It's mainly been a joke between me and my friends," said Nick Oen, junior and secretary of VGA.
Joking aside, Oen did concede that, "The fact that this whole Sony network thing made such a big splash in media … shows that there's a large audience that games and [gaming] is a bigger thing than people tend to think it is."
Sony even delayed the restoration of the PlayStation Network for almost one month in order to investigate the situation and reform security measures. The hack could serve as a warning to other companies that handle customer information online.
"I wonder if any other company is gonna say ‘Oh, this could happen to something big like Sony, should we beef up our security?' and I hope they do," Lowry said. "I kept thinking about ‘Live Free or Die Hard,'" he said, laughing at the comparison.
In "Live Free or Die Hard," an organized internet terrorist organization threatens to hack federal government systems. In the real world, a loosely gathered Internet activist group called "Anonymous" is popularly held responsible for hacking the PlayStation Network.
The core administrators of "Anonymous" posted a press release on their website titled "For Once We Didn't Do It," disowning responsibility for the hack but also suggested that "it could be the case that other Anons have acted by themselves."
"Half of them are like, ‘It wasn't us!' and the other half are like, ‘No! It totally was!'" Lowry commented.
There have been no actual reports of identity theft or suspicious credit card activity since the hack, but Lowry and Oen explained that the "hacktivists" are more about making a statement rather than making money. Earlier this month, Anonymous hacked PlayStation.com in protest of a lawsuit Sony filed against two PlayStation 3 owners that released and distributed code allowing users to install non-Sony software on their PS3s.
"People are making a really big deal out of it when not a whole lot has happened to the common gamer," Oen said.
In fact, the whole PlayStation debacle didn't stop these gamers from doing what they love – gaming.
"Time to pull out Starcraft 2," Lowry said and shrugged.
"I switched to my Xbox," Oen said.
Rosalie may be reached at rcabison@su-spectator.com
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