Sony Offers Discount Coupons As Apology For PSN Outage

[Somethingfake]

"Sorry for us not doing our work when it was really necessary. In compensation, here's something with which you can give us slightly less money". But I don't want to spend anything on you. More than that, I already spent my gaming budget on Steam. I WOULD HAVE spent it on you if you did your job back then, but now? Sorry. Too late. Too little too.

Your opinion on this is laughable. Wasn't their fault their services went down, they weren't down all that long in the grand scheme of things, and they're nice enough to offer their customers compensation anyway. Takes someone with one hell of a sense of entitlement to think they're in the wrong here.

Yeah, yeah, it is their fault. They may have been under an attack, yeah, but one would think that a huge internation conglomerate could keep their servers safe from a bunch of stupid kids. They didn't temporarily provide the services they are required to provide - the services they ask money for - yeah, that should be compensated, the fact that they provided any compensation at all is not a great feat, it's something to be expected. And this compensation can barely count as one anyway. I prefer to call it self-respect, thank you.

It was a DDOS attack. Gigabyte after gigabyte of junk was thrown at them by thousands on thousands of infected computers. While this *was* an attack, it *wasn't* a hack. They run a multiplayer service/store. They *have* to accept incoming data to work. You can add more servers to lessen the severity of a DDOS, but if they have the computer numbers, that doesn't matter, those servers will fall.

So, please, do tell me what they could have done about that.

 

[Ih8makingUsernames]

Discount coupons?!? Okay, now they've turned full Uncle Scrooge. This is really greedy of them. Giving out discount coupons fixes nothing and people will think they get a good deal and thus buy more games, on average, meaning they want to convince people to buy from them even after they've repeatedly shown they can't protect their network.

You... you do realize they aren't legally required to give you jack, right? The terms of service agreement - ya know, that thing you clicked accept on to use their service, pretty much covers them. They aren't required to have any set quota of uptime for their service, regardless if you actually paid them or not.

So how is sweetening the deal acting like Scrooge? Because they're only bothering to give you a discount on their service and extend the time on their service for something that wasn't their fault? A DDoS attack is not something that a company can prevent. Any server will buckle when it has too much volume thrown at it - especially if said volume is coming from people intentionally spamming huge quantities of data to overload the servers. The best they can do is minimize damage - something that, again, is hard to do when people are dead set at gunning down your servers.

And what do you expect? It was a few days of shortage. I doubt anyone on the service would be willing to absorb the losses of throwing out a free game to customers. And yeah, they're going to give you an incentive to still use their platform after it was thrown into disarray. Short of giving you a free game a discount is about the best they could do - they realistically aren't going to throw money into peoples bank accounts.

 

[BeerTent]

Initially, I was kind of like, "Yeah, that's a little weak." but then again, someone pointed out that they quite easily could have done nothing. On one hand, service was lost during the busiest time of the year, on the other hand, well... Not a whole lot you can do against a DDOS.

In the end, I kind of recognize, not much you can do, but I still feel that if they're trying to "win" people back with benefits, the rewards should be a little bit more than this extremely paltry offering. "Here's a pack of coupons." really? This is what I sort of expect to see after reporting an outage fuckup on Steam. A pack of coupons does not win back customers. This is a "Get them wanting" maneuver. This is not an apology, or a thank you... This is marketing.

[...]Yeah, yeah, it is their fault. They may have been under an attack, yeah, but one would think that a huge internation conglomerate could keep their servers safe from a bunch of stupid kids. They didn't temporarily provide the services they are required to provide - the services they ask money for - yeah, that should be compensated, the fact that they provided any compensation at all is not a great feat, it's something to be expected. And this compensation can barely count as one anyway. I prefer to call it self-respect, thank you.

I don't mean to beat up on you more, but I think you're seriously underestimating the following things...

What one can learn in the information age.
What one is capable of doing with a minuscule amount of specialized knowledge and nothing but time.
The complete and abhorrent predictable stupidity of the average human being.

LS's botnet is pretty massive. On top of that, you already have a weak, yet legitimate 'ddos' from Play-stations come Christmas day. Extreme amount of legitimate users can put a strain on the servers, but as time has proven, the network can handle it.

Now, say, we have 50K machines hitting your network at the absolute hardest possible time of the year. Yes, I'm pulling numbers from my ass, deal. Let's also say that the network is capable of handling 75K before we start having network issues and connection drops. Okay, now let's throw 50K computers constantly sending garbage. Hell, maybe that botnet's bigger than that? Look up Experienced Point's recent article. I can verify that man knows what he's talking about. And he's here. On this site. That should give you some insight as to what happened.

 

[RealRT]

Initially, I was kind of like, "Yeah, that's a little weak." but then again, someone pointed out that they quite easily could have done nothing. On one hand, service was lost during the busiest time of the year, on the other hand, well... Not a whole lot you can do against a DDOS.

In the end, I kind of recognize, not much you can do, but I still feel that if they're trying to "win" people back with benefits, the rewards should be a little bit more than this extremely paltry offering. "Here's a pack of coupons." really? This is what I sort of expect to see after reporting an outage fuckup on Steam. A pack of coupons does not win back customers. This is a "Get them wanting" maneuver. This is not an apology, or a thank you... This is marketing.

[...]Yeah, yeah, it is their fault. They may have been under an attack, yeah, but one would think that a huge internation conglomerate could keep their servers safe from a bunch of stupid kids. They didn't temporarily provide the services they are required to provide - the services they ask money for - yeah, that should be compensated, the fact that they provided any compensation at all is not a great feat, it's something to be expected. And this compensation can barely count as one anyway. I prefer to call it self-respect, thank you.

I don't mean to beat up on you more, but I think you're seriously underestimating the following things...

What one can learn in the information age.
What one is capable of doing with a minuscule amount of specialized knowledge and nothing but time.
The complete and abhorrent predictable stupidity of the average human being.

LS's botnet is pretty massive. On top of that, you already have a weak, yet legitimate 'ddos' from Play-stations come Christmas day. Extreme amount of legitimate users can put a strain on the servers, but as time has proven, the network can handle it.

Now, say, we have 50K machines hitting your network at the absolute hardest possible time of the year. Yes, I'm pulling numbers from my ass, deal. Let's also say that the network is capable of handling 75K before we start having network issues and connection drops. Okay, now let's throw 50K computers constantly sending garbage. Hell, maybe that botnet's bigger than that? Look up Experienced Point's recent article. I can verify that man knows what he's talking about. And he's here. On this site. That should give you some insight as to what happened.

I actually read it. Good insight. Doesn't justify what happened though. I don't have the answer to the question of "What could they have done in that situation?", but that's only because I'm not the one who should be asked this question. It's their job to deal with this kind of shit and I see no reason for me to care how they are going to do it. 'sides, this and the hack suggest Sony's IT department doesn't do a good job.

 

[JayRPG]

Saw some comments about assurance it won't happen again and how it's unacceptable because we pay for PSplus now etc etc

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Xbox live also went down, correct? and Microsoft offered.. what.. exactly? oh that's right, nothing.

If Microsoft's gaming servers can be taken down by a DDoS attack, why on earth would anyone think that Sony has the money/infrastructure to make themselves DDoS-proof? and/or to expect Sony to be DDoS proof?

A couple of days of the PSN being down didn't really affect me at all, and now I get some free psplus time and a discount coupon, the MS server outage affected just as much (or as little, rather) as the Sony outage but I am not getting anything on that front; Lucky I also have a Wii U for such times, Mario Kart online was running great on Christmas day.

 

[FoolKiller]

I wonder.... will I be able to apply the coupon to renewing my PS+, because that is almost the only thing I purchase digitally.

 

[kasperbbs]

Well thats nice of them. As a consumer if i pay for a service then i expect to be able to use that service, but usually if it goes down then it's 'touch luck', no apologies, no compensations. It's nice to see that someone is taking responsibility, even if i don't use PSN.

 

[KenAri]

I remember when this happened back in 20...11? And they gave everybody 2 free games and everybody got some PS+ time, even without having a sub. That was a cool act. Even with a 10% discount, PS Store games cost more than Amazon charge.

Not sure if they're trying at this point, but at least they've done something. Wonder if M$ were waiting to see Sony's move so they could top it, or if they just don't care.

 

[The Eupho Guy_v1legacy]

I remember when this happened back in 20...11? And they gave everybody 2 free games and everybody got some PS+ time, even without having a sub. That was a cool act. Even with a 10% discount, PS Store games cost more than Amazon charge.

Not sure if they're trying at this point, but at least they've done something. Wonder if M$ were waiting to see Sony's move so they could top it, or if they just don't care.

If memory serves, that was a far more severe breach. User data was taken and PSN was taken offline for the better part of a month. Seeing as this attack was a DDoS that lasted less than a week, it seems like a fairly proportional response to me.

 

[GAunderrated]

I remember when this happened back in 20...11? And they gave everybody 2 free games and everybody got some PS+ time, even without having a sub. That was a cool act. Even with a 10% discount, PS Store games cost more than Amazon charge.

Not sure if they're trying at this point, but at least they've done something. Wonder if M$ were waiting to see Sony's move so they could top it, or if they just don't care.

If memory serves, that was a far more severe breach. User data was taken and PSN was taken offline for the better part of a month. Seeing as this attack was a DDoS that lasted less than a week, it seems like a fairly proportional response to me.

Yes funny how people easily forget Sony's first response of that attack. First off people data and CC info was taken and Sony took a week to even acknowledge it. Then they offered 2 games that were 2+years old and both valued less than $9.99 at the time and 30 free days of PS+ which was more or less an upsale. Only after the internet exploded Sony was pressured to make a statement and provide some actual customer service.

I can never understand why people take any criticism of a corporation who's job it is to take care of those situations as a personal attack on them.

When Origin messes up I give them shit, when Steam messes up I give them shit, when Microsoft messes up I give them shit, when Nintendo messes up I give them shit, and when Sony messes up I give them shit. However, no matter which publisher or company you criticize, people always take it as a personal attack on them and not an objective criticism of the company.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Initially, I was kind of like, "Yeah, that's a little weak." but then again, someone pointed out that they quite easily could have done nothing. On one hand, service was lost during the busiest time of the year, on the other hand, well... Not a whole lot you can do against a DDOS.

In the end, I kind of recognize, not much you can do, but I still feel that if they're trying to "win" people back with benefits, the rewards should be a little bit more than this extremely paltry offering. "Here's a pack of coupons." really? This is what I sort of expect to see after reporting an outage fuckup on Steam. A pack of coupons does not win back customers. This is a "Get them wanting" maneuver. This is not an apology, or a thank you... This is marketing.

[...]Yeah, yeah, it is their fault. They may have been under an attack, yeah, but one would think that a huge internation conglomerate could keep their servers safe from a bunch of stupid kids. They didn't temporarily provide the services they are required to provide - the services they ask money for - yeah, that should be compensated, the fact that they provided any compensation at all is not a great feat, it's something to be expected. And this compensation can barely count as one anyway. I prefer to call it self-respect, thank you.

I don't mean to beat up on you more, but I think you're seriously underestimating the following things...

What one can learn in the information age.
What one is capable of doing with a minuscule amount of specialized knowledge and nothing but time.
The complete and abhorrent predictable stupidity of the average human being.

LS's botnet is pretty massive. On top of that, you already have a weak, yet legitimate 'ddos' from Play-stations come Christmas day. Extreme amount of legitimate users can put a strain on the servers, but as time has proven, the network can handle it.

Now, say, we have 50K machines hitting your network at the absolute hardest possible time of the year. Yes, I'm pulling numbers from my ass, deal. Let's also say that the network is capable of handling 75K before we start having network issues and connection drops. Okay, now let's throw 50K computers constantly sending garbage. Hell, maybe that botnet's bigger than that? Look up Experienced Point's recent article. I can verify that man knows what he's talking about. And he's here. On this site. That should give you some insight as to what happened.

I actually read it. Good insight. Doesn't justify what happened though. I don't have the answer to the question of "What could they have done in that situation?", but that's only because I'm not the one who should be asked this question. It's their job to deal with this kind of shit and I see no reason for me to care how they are going to do it. 'sides, this and the hack suggest Sony's IT department doesn't do a good job.

Seems kinda silly to tell Sony to "deal with kind of shit" when its been explained multiple times how difficult stopping a DDoS is multiple times in the thread. Sony dealt with it the best they could. Needless jabs at Sony for not handling something you probably don't know the operational mechanics of quickly enough seems pointless.

I think people should be thankful Sony is even offering what they are as compensation considering they don't legally have to. Microsoft hasn't done the same for their customers. Not bashing MS for not giving out freebies, just pointing out that it's nice to see Sony at least saying "our bad". Especially since they didn't ask to be attacked.


At the end of the day it's just video games that couldn't be played on for a few days on consoles. No need to get actually mad when they don't work temporarily.
But hey, luxury entertainment item problems are real problems right?

 

[WeepingAngels]

I think people are entitled to the online time they pay for. So if PSN was down for 5 days, then the bare minimum Sony should be offering is a 5 day extension.

A 10% coupon is a marketing tool, like all coupons are. People do know that the purpose of coupons is to get consumers to buy something they ordinarily would not have with the consumer paying the lions share of the cost, right? In this case, the consumer pays 90% of the cost.

Sony has proven that their network is about as secure as an unlocked door, I hope that when people pay their 90% share, they don't put their credit card on file with Sony.

 

[RealRT]

Seems kinda silly to tell Sony to "deal with kind of shit" when its been explained multiple times how difficult stopping a DDoS is multiple times in the thread. Sony dealt with it the best they could. Needless jabs at Sony for not handling something you probably don't know the operational mechanics of quickly enough seems pointless.

I think people should be thankful Sony is even offering what they are as compensation considering they don't legally have to. Microsoft hasn't done the same for their customers. Not bashing MS for not giving out freebies, just pointing out that it's nice to see Sony at least saying "our bad". Especially since they didn't ask to be attacked.


At the end of the day it's just video games that couldn't be played on for a few days on consoles. No need to get actually mad when they don't work temporarily.
But hey, luxury entertainment item problems are real problems right?

I read how it's done in a recent article (as I pointed out in the post you responded to). I still don't care. Dealing with it is not my problem.

I'm not going to be thankful for the offer of spending slightly less money on them, because now I'm not spending any money on them any time soon, all my game budget was spent on Steam because when I wanted to buy something on PSN, the servers didn't respond. And while I'm not bashing MS, I don't think high enough of them to buy any of their consoles in the first place, since MS is one big fuck up after another.

Mad? I'm not mad. I stated my opinion and went away. You people are the ones who keep dragging me back in with responses.

 

[SadisticFire]

For the people defending Sony, didn't Lizardsquad also target steam but it only effected one of their servers for an hour or two before maintenance fixed it right up? If Sony for some reason does all their server validation/checking/ect to one server instead of a lot of mirrors... it's kind of their own fault.

That being said, that's a pretty mediocre coupon. Games go on sell REGULARLY on steam, for 25% off or more. You save what? Six dollars? Kind of disappointing to all those people.

 

[MeTalHeD]

Seems kinda silly to tell Sony to "deal with kind of shit" when its been explained multiple times how difficult stopping a DDoS is multiple times in the thread. Sony dealt with it the best they could. Needless jabs at Sony for not handling something you probably don't know the operational mechanics of quickly enough seems pointless.

I think people should be thankful Sony is even offering what they are as compensation considering they don't legally have to. Microsoft hasn't done the same for their customers. Not bashing MS for not giving out freebies, just pointing out that it's nice to see Sony at least saying "our bad". Especially since they didn't ask to be attacked.


At the end of the day it's just video games that couldn't be played on for a few days on consoles. No need to get actually mad when they don't work temporarily.
But hey, luxury entertainment item problems are real problems right?

I read how it's done in a recent article (as I pointed out in the post you responded to). I still don't care. Dealing with it is not my problem.

I'm not going to be thankful for the offer of spending slightly less money on them, because now I'm not spending any money on them any time soon, all my game budget was spent on Steam because when I wanted to buy something on PSN, the servers didn't respond. And while I'm not bashing MS, I don't think high enough of them to buy any of their consoles in the first place, since MS is one big fuck up after another.

Mad? I'm not mad. I stated my opinion and went away. You people are the ones who keep dragging me back in with responses.

And you're right not to care. I don't understand why people are saying it's not Sony's fault. It is. They're making their customers suffer for their incompetence. They agreed to provide the service. I don't think they'd advertise that the service is unsafe and that your credit card details could be at risk.

I don't understand why people would want to sympathise with Sony. They're there to do a job and if they can't do it, the consumer has every right to complain. It is not the consumer's fault the attacks happened and expecting them to have sympathy is like a waiter asking for sympathy when the chef's house was burgled the night before, hence the meals are late. Yes, it's not nice, but you're paying the company money for a service. The customer had nothing to do with that, and if the company can't provide a service, they shouldn't advertise that they can. If the chef is in trouble, get someone else in. If your security is being compromised, improve it.

If you want to be in the business, be ready for attacks. If a customer feels the service is bad, that won't clear up with a few small freebies. Yes, what happened to Sony was bad. But a customer has every right to tell the company they suck at what they're doing, especially if they are not doing their jobs. Having to hand out some small refunds is really patching the leaks. Sony lost some trust when they were hacked before. Getting attacked now does their reputation no good and it's not the customer's fault it happened. The customer has every right to feel aggrieved because it could happen again and they're powerless to stop it.

Think about it this way: If it happened again, would more freebies really solve the problem? I doubt when your credit card details are stolen you'd feel justice has been served because you scored a few free games and a discount on your subscription.

Whatever Sony hands out to customers is nice, but that doesn't mean its customers are compelled to sit quietly and accept the situation. They still have every right to tell Sony they suck. It is not about entitlement. The "secure network" they should have been getting as part of the service is not happening. They didn't pay for a few free days or 10% off. They paid and trusted Sony to make sure they could play their games whenever they wanted and that their details would not be stolen.

Now, if people weren't paying for PSN and it went down and they scored some coupons THEN proceeded to complain, we could call it entitlement.

 

[Strazdas]

"We were so incompetent that a few kids took down our servers for 5 days. We also leaked all your data, TWICE, because we refuse to invest into any kind of security. We noticed you dont like us, so why dont you pay us MORE, heres some incentive to pay us more for being incompetent"

You know that lizard squad attacked Steam as well, right? the result in comparison? single region server was down for 55 minutes. versus worldwide down for 5 days. and steam is smaller than Sony.

If Microsoft's gaming servers can be taken down by a DDoS attack, why on earth would anyone think that Sony has the money/infrastructure to make themselves DDoS-proof? and/or to expect Sony to be DDoS proof?

because people expect, gasp, that sony does not run their servers from some nerds basement? apperently people are wrong and sony is running their servers poorly. no wonder people are angry. DDoSing NEVER works in the longrun because it takes less than 24 hours for it to be tracked well enough so police can arrest them. they were DDoSed for 5 days, proving how incompetent they are.

Seems kinda silly to tell Sony to "deal with kind of shit" when its been explained multiple times how difficult stopping a DDoS is multiple times in the thread. Sony dealt with it the best they could. Needless jabs at Sony for not handling something you probably don't know the operational mechanics of quickly enough seems pointless.

I think people should be thankful Sony is even offering what they are as compensation considering they don't legally have to. Microsoft hasn't done the same for their customers. Not bashing MS for not giving out freebies, just pointing out that it's nice to see Sony at least saying "our bad". Especially since they didn't ask to be attacked.


At the end of the day it's just video games that couldn't be played on for a few days on consoles. No need to get actually mad when they don't work temporarily.
But hey, luxury entertainment item problems are real problems right?

No, its not silly. After all if Sony execs used their brain even few minutes a day they would realize that a company this size should have measures in place to not allow this to happen in the first place.

DDoSing is difficult if your a small company. when your the size of Sony you should have infrastructure to just outmuster the DDoSer to begin with. Its not like lizards coopted half the globe to DDoS them. even when millions of people DDoSed during anonymous reign they did less. Sony is just incompetent and thats that. they have been proving it for years now.

If thats the best sony can, i never want them to have a single cent from me, ill take my business to place that actually knows what the hell they are doing.

Thankful for what? 5 days of incompetence and a marketing tactic to make people buy more? To call what sony is giving as "Freebie" is like calling airline company giving discount for next flight for flying you to the wrong airport freebie.

VIdeo games is seriuos business. so serious its one of the largest business in the world. and there is no reason to use relative privy fallacies. a problem is still a problem even if there are bigger ones.

 

[JayRPG]

snip

I think you are grossly over-estimating how big of a company Sony is...

Microsoft's servers were up and down the same as Sony's were for at least 3 days.

Microsoft is a $343 billion dollar company, Sony is a $20 billion dollar company.

We have seen governments bested by DDoS attacks for christ sake, it is not easy to defend against, it wasn't just a regular DDoS attack either, because it fell on what is considered the busiest day of the year for the servers already, which were likely edging capacity without a DDoS attack.

You also act as if the PSN was down for a solid 5 days, which it wasn't, I was able to access the PSN on my Vita for most of those 5 days, and the servers did go up and down several times.

Again, why do you expect Sony to be DDoS proof when Microsoft isn't, despite being more than 17 times larger?

 

[Lightknight]

It's rather telling of my cynical view of gamers in general that the first Facebook comment on this was against Sony for such a "weak" offering of compensation. It's also rather telling that the replies to that comment were of the general opinion that Sony never had to offer anything in the first place, and that it wasn't actually their fault they were down on Christmas Day in the first place.

As for me, I'm pretty pleased with this anyway (as a PS3 owner), but I also applaud Sony for the fact that they're prepared to make a gesture, of any kind, for something that they hold no blame or responsibility for in the first place. Sony have no blame, they built PSN and Playstation Plus expecting to deal with a certain amount of traffic, and (regardless of how prepared these companies should really be nowadays for such cyber attacks) yet a DDOS attack wiped them out. Now, they've made an offer that goes some way to making up for that inconvenience - something they had no control over in the first place. It may not be much, but it's something...

If you paid for a hotdog and then someone ran up and shit in your hotdog before the vendor could hand it to you, does it really matter that it isn't the vendor's fault? You still paid for a shit-less hotdog (presumably, I mean, there are all kinds of toppings nowadays) and did not get one. Whether or not it was Sony's fault is irrelevant. They failed to provide a service that we were paying for. It then was still their responsibility to make it right.

Sony did not "have" to make amends. But it was the right thing to do. Someone running up and shitting on a hotdog, that's between the owner and the shitter, not the consumer as we had no hand in it happening. If at all possible, Sony should try to gain compensation from the hackers.

But let's be clear. No one is really DDoS proof. That's not why Sony is responsible for compensation here. It is purely that we paid for a product that they failed to deliver during the most important time to deliver it. The "why" of why they failed is irrelevant.

 

[CaitSeith]

Well, that's nice from Sony. 5 free days and 10% discount coupons. Discount... coupons... Pretty much Sony is saying "If you want our full apology, you must give us money first." Nice way to get profit from your fails, Sony!

 

[Strazdas]

snip

I think you are grossly over-estimating how big of a company Sony is...

Microsoft's servers were up and down the same as Sony's were for at least 3 days.

Microsoft is a $343 billion dollar company, Sony is a $20 billion dollar company.

We have seen governments bested by DDoS attacks for christ sake, it is not easy to defend against, it wasn't just a regular DDoS attack either, because it fell on what is considered the busiest day of the year for the servers already, which were likely edging capacity without a DDoS attack.

You also act as if the PSN was down for a solid 5 days, which it wasn't, I was able to access the PSN on my Vita for most of those 5 days, and the servers did go up and down several times.

Again, why do you expect Sony to be DDoS proof when Microsoft isn't, despite being more than 17 times larger?

No, i am not. As i said - its much bigger than Steam, who is estimated to be around 3 billion dollars. and Steam did not go down by attack of same people. And yeah, Microsoft has also did the awful thing of centralizing all its online components making it easy to DDoS them.

Ech, governments are far easier to DDoS. most people making regulation dont know shit about IT and ITs working for government for most part are simply legally not able to have decent security. Also when it comes to online service capacity givernments for the most part are far far smaller than digital distribution networks.

I expect both to be DDoS proof when Steam - 7 times smaller - is.