taken from another a memeber in brbuninstalling clan i'm in for tf2 and the fact heresjohnny is in it. Old vs chum.
I'm pretty sure this is the biggest gaming disruption of all time. And a huge fuckup.
I mean, it's not on-par with trash-collection not happening for a whole month (which actually threatens public safety), but it is like HBO going off-the-air for a whole month (in terms of the number of people who's daily routines are affected, not sure about revenue impact), and has the added sting of potential identity/credit fraud. Maybe even more revenue impact than one cable network, maybe two.
It's a longshot, but this could be a serious albatross that eventually sinks Sony (or, more likely, whatever strategic business takes fall...PSN i guess...provided they have good legal firewalls between business entities.).
...
more tl:dr stuff for yall...
I'm going to be very very surprised if the AG of Mass doesn't hit Sony like a ton of bricks over the new Mass Data Privacy law (
$5k per violation.)Let's say 100 million Sony accounts compromised. Arbitrarily, 25% are international (wild guess). That leaves 75 mil. Let's assume it is evenly distributed by states (it is not, Mass would have more Sony gaming customers per capita than the US median, but whatever). 75,000,000 divided by 50 = 1,500,000. 1.5 mil customers. With 5 grand per violation that's (pulling pinky finger to mouth) 7.5 beeeelion dollars.
Even if my napkin estimates are wiiiildy inaccurate, let's revise that down from 1,500k to just 300k customers from MA breached. 300k x 5x = 1500,000,000. That's 1.5 BIL in damages for one state. (three times more than GOOG's recent settlement with the DoJ for 500mil).
Annnnd, once you cascade all the bad press that a 1.5 bil suit would generate against sony, indie developers (who are losing out on revenue now) abandoning the platform, customer dissatisfaction, ... it looks grim.
and I didn't even mention Sony's liabilities to the credit card lenders for fffffucking up with PCI, which will likely leave sony on the hook for fraud resultant from stolen credit cards....
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...BRB, uninstalling SOE.
(caff, if this plays out, wouldn't it be funny if they needed to sell off some of their IP franchises for cash....)
((also, for those of you playing at home, you know that Nintendo, who's last two platforms (Wii and DS) basically PRINTED MONEY, is releasing a new console soon. Yes, the 3DS sucks ass but 1) nintendo can afford the flop and 2) who is going to take over the portable market....NOT SONY NOW (but maybe apple...diff story)).
(((Howard Stringer activates GO GO GOLDEN PARACHUTE before old man time ushers in 2012))).