Sony Fuck Up Network

News from Matt - Monday, 01 March 2010 @ 3:26pm

There's no better way to say it than that. Sony have put out an update to their network that is crippling it across the US, Australia, and other countries I don't care about. One of the symptoms of this issue is that the console's date gets set to 1999, which isn't really ideal, but as I said, that's a symptom and fixing it doesn't make a bit of difference. The real downside to this is that not only can you not access the network itself, but a raft of new games cannot access the network, and without being able to start up their trophy system crash back to XMB. Among these is recent exclusive Heavy Rain.

Yes, that's right, you can not play Heavy Rain at the moment, as Sony have broken the network. The issue appears to affect the older non-slim version of the PS3 more than the newer models.

There are two major issues here.

1. Nice work, Sony, you fuckwits. You broke your own network. Great QA work on that release.
2. Why the FUCK does Heavy Rain require the internet to work? Can you play it without? Requiring online support for the trophy system is nuts. Also, stupid.

More updates on this issue as Sony attempt to fix it. Also reminds me to finish my article about exactly how and why Sony are incompetent morons who wouldn't know good software development practices if they came up and said "Hi, I'm a good software development practice" and then punched them in the face.

UPDATE: The PS3 bug has been fixed now, by the impressive effort of not actually doing anything. It turns out the bug was not a network update as initially suspected, but actually a firmware bug that affected the clock on older PS3s. While the error was not as severe as initially believed, it's still a nice solid fuckup on Sony's part, albeit one that was pretty easily fixed.