SOE games down until Friday at the earliest, class action suit launched, Anonymous denies involvement [Updated]

@Snichy
Considering the breach could affect as many as 70 million+ people, that would equal roughly $15 per person. If $15 makes you rich I want to live where you live.

@Snichy

Yeah man...Sony shouldn't be held accountable for criminal negligence. That would be madness!

@(Unverified) That presumes that all 77 Million people would join in on the suit....which is patently stupid.

@Quarlo

I would like to believe not, but for $1.05 bil, they must have done that and more lol.

@Quarlo

It's a class action law suit which means all affected people can opt into it once the suit is settled; this is why the damages are so high. For example when my wifes company layed every one of with out warning when they abruptly shut down they violated a law which stated that a company was required to give their employees some advance warning which they didn't. My point is only one former employee filed a multimillion dollar class action lawsuit against the former company with the result being all the former employees are getting checks in the mail this mail averaging about $1,200 each. This guy from Ontario won't be getting all the money, any one that was affected by this breach will be given the opportunity to have a piece of that settlement.

@(Unverified)
And that piece will most likely amount to about $2, each. Meanwhile, the lawyers involved will make millions.

And none of that will make Sony any more secure than they are already working on making themselves. It will add to the hundreds of millions that this incident is already costing them. We know that SoE has been struggling or they wouldn't have laid off a bunch of employees and shuttered projects that they'd already invested years in. So this will certainly affect the budgets going forward for ongoing development in the existing EverQuest games, the next PlanetSide, EverQuest Next, etc. It also wouldn't surprise me if games that have been on life support (like Vanguard) now get closed because the money that had been budgeted for said support has now vanished.

All without any proof yet put forth that Sony was negligent. Even if it turns out that Sony wasn't at all negligent and there was no foreseeable way to protect against this attack, the damage has been done. There's a massive loss of confidence in the company, which will affect their bottom line. On top of that they have the loss of revenue from the month of free time that they're giving everyone. And now they also have the additional costs involved with trying to fight off (and ultimately settle) these law suits.

This is going to hurt the MMO industry as a whole. Not just Sony.

@aurickle

That's exactly what I'm thinking. People apparently don't care about how this can impact the genre as a whole, which is fairly small when you compare it to FPS' or Stratrgy games. This could prevent people from investing in games, prevent companies from considering developing game. No matter if you are suing or hacking a database you are hurting the customers just as much as the company you are apparently targeting.

@aurickle

yes... poor sony. they are the victims in this.

i think we should throw a live TV celebrity sing a long fundraiser for sony because they obviously have no idea how to make money themselves.

This article doesn't state that it was a class action lawsuit, although that would be the most logical type of suit to be filed.

forget my previous statement. I guess I skimmed over the worlds Class Action.

Reading is FUNdamental.

@PrimeSynergy That's over 9000.

@warpax
Cry me a river

@Agozyen GeoHotz knew hacking was illegal so he took his chances and got caught. Personaly he got off easy as he should be in prison.

@starbuck1771

What law did he break? Hacking in and of itself isn't illegal. People hack things all the time. I can hack my car to go faster and I can hack my toaster to toast faster. I use hacked ROMS in my phones. None of which are illegal. I hacked the registry on my computer to enable certain functions. Am I breaking the law? What if I download a script that lets enables autoaim in Counter Strike? Is that illegal too?

You are severely misinformed. He broke ZERO laws. If he did break the law as you claim, why isn't he in jail? Where is the FBI in all of this? Private corporations and individuals DO NOT have the ability to say who goes to jail. No prosecutors went after GeoHotz. Do you know why? I'll tell you...they stayed out of it because as consumers and private citizens, we have the right to modify our personal property as we see fit. Period. No EULA can ever trump Constitutional rights. Piracy existed on the PS3 long before GeoHotz came into the scene.

Lastly, I'll leave you with this gem. If Sony was in the right...why did they settle? Again, they knew that if this made it to court they would lose. GeoHotz had a legal fund all set up so they knew they couldn't intimidate him.

Get your facts straight.

@Agozyen
http://definitions.uslegal.com/c/computer-hacking/
http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/index.html

Yup, totally legal to do whatever you say...