Archive for August, 2010

As many people know, you can activate up to 5 PS3′s with your PSN account. I’ve recently hit a situation where I needed Sony to reset my account to zero PS3′s so that I could activate my newest console and what a horrible time I had doing this.

Now my current situation wasn’t one of game sharing, but just that I liked to play my PSN games on multiple PS3′s. Those of family, friends as well as owning 3 PS3′s in my lifetime, raised my activated PS3 numbers. The problem came about when 4 of these PS3′s received the YLOD. I was unable to deactivate any of the 4 PS3′s that had my current information on them.

I called Sony with the utmost confidence that I would be greeted with assistance in deactivated all 5 PS3′s but I was dead wrong. Instead of helpful, cheery, friendly reps, I was busted with copious amounts of “why are you stealing?” type of questions and perma-ban threats. They made me feel as if I committed a crime and I was being interrogated.

In the end, as a “one time courtesy”, they finally reset my PS3′s so that my newest PS3 wouldn’t be a $300 paper weight. It was quite frustrating to have threats of banning etc coming from a company that you continually dish out hundreds if not thousands of dollars for.

I was even told by one rep to “create a new account”.

In the end, I was left with multiple questions.

1. Why did Sony boast “share games with up to 5 people” in the beginning to offset the price of their $600 console?

2. Why are we not allowed to play PSN games we own on other consoles?

3. Who are these reps to interrogate us? They are simple call center reps with god complexes now.

4. Why make some games unshareable, while leaving the rest?

So what do you all think about this? It is very clear in the EULA that game sharing is illegal. No doubts about that. Is this type of treatment to customers fair whether they are legit or not?

***If you do gameshare, do not mention it here please. We do not condone piracy or theft of any sort. Nor would we want to see you get perma-banned***

Edit: I forgot the most interesting part of this experience. I was told by two of the three reps that I spoke with that if I were to purchase the Sony Protection Plan, it would give me more leniency should this to happen again. This is borderline extortion. So I’m a thief without the protection plan, but they are glad to help me without it? It just struck me as odd the reps actually told me this flat out.