So you wanted the age of digital delivery...

[Newbian]

Just a thought. His PS4 can't be registered under his current account because a different PS4 is not registered under that account, so how about getting the chargeback from the bank and setting up a brand new account with his PS4. Admittedly, I don't know much about Sony's account management on the back end, so not sure if this is possible.

The problem would be all the games would be removed from his account thus is the issue.

Also did you mean now instead of not as it confused the heck out of me? 😛

To be fair the story said he had very few games that would be removed like that so it would had been worth it too me as that's a $450 difference unless it also makes his PS4 unusable for the psn.

 

[Newbian]

In the end, Sony loses nothing. If the bank goes after Sony to get that money back (and the bank would also tell the card holder to go through Sony first, since it is their store), Sony is still out nothing, save for profit they should never have received. They aren't giving anything extra.

The problem is they loose the money that was paid for the games.

They would have to take the time to get that money back from the game devs that were bought illegally not to mention what percentage would charge back fee's be there as I am not positive what it is now.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

I wouldn't get a lawyer. Just file in small claims court, present everything and I'm betting a sympathetic judge would easily rule in his favor. It will help that Sony would probably not send any representation to the hearing. Then take your verdict and send it to Sony.

I wonder if that would work for an MMORPG? Player spends 4 years building a character, gets banned for something for which the gaming company won't even allow a review of counter-evidence, file small claim? (for example, $50 purchase price plus 48 months of $15 subs totaling a $770 investment in a character that can no longer be accessed)

 

[CPA]

The problem would be all the games would be removed from his account thus is the issue.

Also did you mean now instead of not as it confused the heck out of me? 😛

To be fair the story said he had very few games that would be removed like that so it would had been worth it too me as that's a $450 difference unless it also makes his PS4 unusable for the psn.

Yes, I meant now. sorry.

Okay, so he loses Last of Us. The alternative is losing $450.

 

[smackababy]

Has this story even been proven? I can't see it on Yahoo and someone posted a reddit link, which I won't go to.

And, Sony can say anything they want. I'd file a chargeback and if they banned my account, I'd file a chargeback for everything I legally purchased as well.

 

[videogames101]

It's pretty funny how much shit the paying customers have to go through.

The pirates win again 🙂

On a side note even if I lost my steam account, DotA is free and cs:go is on sale for $5 all the time, so I wouldn't be all that angry.

 

[CountZero]

I can't really put this on Sony. There's no evidence (as far as I saw) that they were responsible for the compromise and them even offering $150 refund is pretty generous when it isn't their problem. And while threatening to ban the account for disputing the charges through other channels isn't a good look you can't really blame them for doing the same thing the user is trying to do - not take a loss.

The loss from the refund of digital sales? By giving a refund and removing the games from his account they only "lose" potential profit. They don't actually lose anything, they are exact where they were. This is very different from physical items where a refund can mean actual loss for someone not just the loss of potential profit.

I say do the chargeback then post the PS4 on ebay, see if you can get some publicity and mention why you are putting up the PS4 and getting a Xbox One. Either Sony eats the bad PR or they step up.

As for suing it is highly likely that Sony, like nearly every other company, has changed their user agreement to use arbitration and remove the possibility of a lawsuit. Read pretty much any recent user agreement and you'll likely find you have very little recourse available to you these days.

 

[TheSlamma]

I take any of Sony's BS with a grain of salt. Surprised people have kept that company alive as long as they have. I never have these problems with Steam, Battle.net, UPlay and even that crappy Origin rag.

 

[magomago]

So I had a write up asking questions, but I found the Reddit thread and that pretty much solved it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comm...got_hacked_this_morning_sony/#ftag=YHF6738a5f

Looks like Sony is handling/taking care of whats going on. My guess? Someone being a dick in customer support, but perhaps because they don't have the tools to check such a change. I doubt customer support can "perform an investigation into bla bla".

Bottom Line: doesn't look like it was intentional at all. A corner case was encountered that the process wasn't ready to handle, the issue got the attention of other employees, and the user was ultimately treated right. Some kind of internal customer service process at Sony will probably be improved over the next few months to catch this corner case. Life moves on.

 

[cmdrdredd]

And people wonder why I still want the disk.

 

[Subyman]

From reading the article, it seems the person didn't move up the CS ladder fast enough. Of course the low level CSR won't be able to refund $600 and handle a hacking case. To really know what went on, we'd need an audio of the call. If the guy straight up started saying he was going to charge back games then the rep would likely say the stuff about banning accounts.

I would have spoken with the bank first. Those are fraudulent charges on a credit card, so the bank gets spoken to first then Sony. IMO, this was a huge misunderstanding and probably someone that has never had to deal with fraudulent activity on their accounts before. It isn't something that is really easy to do. It is a pain in the butt. You can't simply call up Sony and them say its A-OK, here is all your money from the spending spree.

 

[lupi]

I would have spoken with the bank first. Those are fraudulent charges on a credit card, so the bank gets spoken to first then Sony.

And that would have instantly had your account banned by sony.

 

[alcoholbob]

If it was due to the hack, that sounds like time for escalation to AGs and related officials. I don't get the thing about closing the account, though. That makes no sense whatsoever, unless one can create a new account to replace it within a short period of time.

But Sony is just following market conventions regarding hacks and online purchases: If you dispute the charges your account will be banned.

If you can name me a single merchant online, not just game company, any merchant, Amazon, Newegg, Tigerdirect, etc, that doesn't ban you and strip away all the digital purchase you made if you dispute a charge, no matter how small, I'd love to do business with them.

The fact is nobody gives a shit you spent $8000 with them in the last 5 years. If you dispute a $10 charge against a merchant with your bank your account will be banned, whether its a WoW account that got hacked or somebody who bought a Cell Phone case with a stolen credit card account on Newegg.

 

[Cerb]

If you can name me a single merchant online, not just game company, any merchant, Amazon, Newegg, Tigerdirect, etc, that doesn't ban you and strip away all the digital purchase you made if you dispute a charge, no matter how small, I'd love to do business with them.

GoG. Legit charges got caught up amongst fraudulent ones, and were being reversed by the time I could go through and OK them, by my bank. I had no problem promptly turning around and using another payment method to repeat the purchase. That was several years ago. I've had my card(s) compromised twice, and I just let the bank handle it, since they are hyper aggressive about it anyway. GoG has been the only legit one caught in the middle that I actually use.

That said, how is behavior like banning over fraudulent charges reasonable? A couple charges resulting in that could basically destroy a small business, from to a 3rd party's incompetence (Target, Home Depot, etc.).

And people wonder why I still want the disk.

So you can look at it? I have several discs now, because the physical copy was cheaper at the time, but I really bought a key.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Wow, never knew that you would have you account locked because you were disputing a charge for certain games. Obviously, you would not be allowed to play the games that were under dispute, but it seems like you should be able to play the games you have paid for that are not being disputed. Does Steam do this too?

Edit: As for wanting the disk, I dont see that having a physical copy is necessarily better. For instance if your Steam account was locked, you would not be able to play games that require steam activation unless you were lucky enough to be in offline mode when your account was locked. And then of course you still would only be able to use single player mode.

 

[darkewaffle]

The loss from the refund of digital sales? By giving a refund and removing the games from his account they only "lose" potential profit. They don't actually lose anything, they are exact where they were. This is very different from physical items where a refund can mean actual loss for someone not just the loss of potential profit.

Taking a loss does not necessarily mean coming out negative, it means getting the short end of the stick. Short of getting the money back from the criminal (good luck) then someone in the chain of consumer-channel-retailer-supplier has to eat the cost.

Further you say that as though there's no cost to selling a digital good. Bandwidth, hosting, design, programming, interchange fees. In theory, yes, they do have an unlimited supply but that doesn't mean the operation itself runs for free. No, they don't pay per unit of course but in delivering a product to the consumer and then not getting paid for it (even if the consumer doesn't get to retain the good) they still have to pay to run the operation to deliver said good.

Wow, never knew that you would have you account locked because you were disputing a charge for certain games. Obviously, you would not be allowed to play the games that were under dispute, but it seems like you should be able to play the games you have paid for that are not being disputed. Does Steam do this too?

A vast number of, if not all, e-merchants will ban you for it because it's, quite simply, a really powerful tool that is subject to a ton of abuse. If you just google chargeback ban the first two pages are almost all LoL, EQ2, EA, Sony, Minecraft, Steam, and battle.net related.

 

[Subyman]

And that would have instantly had your account banned by sony.

I doubt it. A chargeback and a fraudulent claim are different and are handled differently by the bank. The issue was resolved. No way Sony would actually go through with an account ban when the CC was fraudulently used.

Resolution:

I received a call from an Escalation Analyst at Sony today! He let me know that they had performed an investigation regarding my account, and concluded that my credentials had become compromised. The IP was traced to somewhere in Europe (he didn't specify). He let me know that Sony would make sure that my account was taken care of. He also assured me that the Sony HQ had been made aware of my situation, and that they'll be examining the details to see if there ought to be a change to their policies.
I'm glad to have my situation resolved, but I'm more glad to see the positive outcomes that have come as a result of this blowing up. I've received many messages from Redditors who have become aware of and/or donated to the charities listed below, and many more from users taking extra precautions to protect their accounts. I think all gamers benefit when the game company giants are competing, and while my situation was unfortunate, I don't think Sony is malicious or evil. They're a big company with millions of customers and employees, and sometimes things fall through the cracks.
I've been made aware of a feature request for two-factor authentication in Sony's ideas board. If you have a PSN account, throw it an upvote!

 

[CountZero]

Taking a loss does not necessarily mean coming out negative, it means getting the short end of the stick. Short of getting the money back from the criminal (good luck) then someone in the chain of consumer-channel-retailer-supplier has to eat the cost.

Further you say that as though there's no cost to selling a digital good. Bandwidth, hosting, design, programming, interchange fees. In theory, yes, they do have an unlimited supply but that doesn't mean the operation itself runs for free. No, they don't pay per unit of course but in delivering a product to the consumer and then not getting paid for it (even if the consumer doesn't get to retain the good) they still have to pay to run the operation to deliver said good.



A vast number of, if not all, e-merchants will ban you for it because it's, quite simply, a really powerful tool that is subject to a ton of abuse. If you just google chargeback ban the first two pages are almost all LoL, EQ2, EA, Sony, Minecraft, Steam, and battle.net related.

I can't say I feel terribly sorry for Sony for not implementing better security and getting the short end (though I disagree they really get that much of a short end in the case of offering a full refund). They offer no two step authentication particularly when activating a new console. They have a history of poor security. They have zero fraud detection obviously, activating a new PS4, changing account settings and then purchasing $600 in games on an account that has purchased a single game should throw up red flags. For a good example of this I had my skype account hacked. Immediately after anything was tried I got an email stating they had locked the account due to anomalous behavior (changed account settings followed by a large purchase of credits) and giving instructions on how to allow it to go through or take the account back.

I didn't say there wasn't a cost to host digital games I said there wasn't a loss in refunding fraudulently purchased games. The only cost that they lost in any way by refunding these transactions was maybe bandwidth and that assumes anyone downloaded those games at all.

So 1) I don't agree that Sony giving a refund really represents the short end of the stick, at least not in any meaningful way 2) I don't believe the burden should be on the consumer when we have no idea whose security hole caused it and 3) Fraudulent charges were made, the consumer tried to work with the merchant, they refused then they have every right to charge back without the merchant enforcing punitive measures.

 

[Subyman]

CountZero, I agree with your points. Google straight up blocks log in attempts that come from outside your IP block. Crazy that Sony allowed an IP from Europe to log into the account and buy that much stuff without ever locking it down. Shows how they have zero safeguards in place. I think I need to rotate my password on my PSN account every month.

 

[SunnyD]

charge back everything and join the glorious pc maser race

also those threats from sony are just that, threats.

get a lawyer involved too.

The PC master race has to abide by Terms of Services for most online gaming interactions these days too. Yep, your accounts will get banned for chargebacks in a heartbeat too.

 

[cmdrdredd]

So you can look at it? I have several discs now, because the physical copy was cheaper at the time, but I really bought a key.

I always have a way to play the game if I have the install disk. No ban will stop me playing anything I have a physical copy of.

 

[Cerb]

I always have a way to play the game if I have the install disk. No ban will stop me playing anything I have a physical copy of.

What you'll need to do that will end up the same as with a non-physical copy, though, in most cases (as carefully skirt around the P-word 🙂).

 

[artemicion]

I always have a way to play the game if I have the install disk. No ban will stop me playing anything I have a physical copy of.

On the other hand, if someone breaks into your house and robs you of your physical games (which I'd say is comparable in frequency to getting your account hacked), you lose those games forever. Can't call Sony/Microsoft/Steam/Blizzard/EA and expect any refunds in that situation.

Both digital and physical have pros and cons. I'd say digital is actually superior to physical in terms of being inherently resistant to malicious third party thievery/hacking. I'm way more worried about someone breaking into my house and stealing my consoles and games than I am about someone hacking my Steam/Xbox/PS accounts. Maybe it's just me. I've been robbed before, but I've never been hacked.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

On the other hand, if someone breaks into your house and robs you of your physical games (which I'd say is comparable in frequency to getting your account hacked), you lose those games forever. Can't call Sony/Microsoft/Steam/Blizzard/EA and expect any refunds in that situation.

Both digital and physical have pros and cons. I'd say digital is actually superior to physical in terms of being inherently resistant to malicious third party thievery/hacking. I'm way more worried about someone breaking into my house and stealing my consoles and games than I am about someone hacking my Steam/Xbox/PS accounts. Maybe it's just me. I've been robbed before, but I've never been hacked.

Homeowner's/renter's insurance could pay, though (though deductible might come into play if it's only the games stolen). You can't buy insurance against digital publisher acts; I'm not certain if you can buy insurance against the hacking itself.

 

[Cerb]

I'm not certain if you can buy insurance against the hacking itself.

That's pretty much what Lifelock is.