Sony went on to say that it takes a “firm stance” against such behavior, which includes examples like “persistent and repeated, or prolonged, demands, excessive or unreasonable demands for compensation or apologies, and abusive language, threats, slander, and other similar behaviors.”
Other examples included “forcing someone to prostrate themselves” and “visiting our offices or related facilities without permission.” If any such behavior is confirmed, Sony says it may “restrict or suspend customer service” to protect its employees — and, if necessary, contact “police, lawyers, etc.” to take legal action or begin criminal proceedings against them.
My decade+ long boycott of Sony’s garbage is looking more and more prescient every day.
Ah, yes. Desperately falling back on making a tone argument of all things is a sure fire indicator that somebody doesn’t have a single leg left to stand on. Sony’s decades-long pattern of behavior does not put them in a position to be able to enjoy that luxury.
In other words: Get the fuck outta here with that.
So unjapanese.
ITT: People who don’t understand how call centers work.
It is very rare for companies the size of Sony to maintain their own call centers for frontline customer support. They contract with a call center to run a campaign for them.
For these call centers, the huge campaigns are their life blood, and they won’t do anything to upset the client. Your complaints are very likely not being passed on.
Furthermore, the candidate pool for call centers is anyone desperate enough to work in a call center. The amount of homeless agents is high enough that scabies and bed bugs are a common problem on-shore.
So, by calling and being abusive to a CS agent, there’s a decent chance you’re abusing a homeless person for absolutely no benefit.
The only reason Sony cares is because turnover from abuse and tied up agents costs money.
“You fools! You’re not even talking to us, you’re talking to a homeless person! We will never hear what you have to say!”
We made a bad decision and people got upset.
The problem according to Sony: the people.
Get bent Sony, you put your front line workers through this bullshit, you don’t get to cry foul. How fucking stupid.
Fuck Sony and their anti-consumer bullshit
Another reminder to ditch the remaining cloud services Is still have and switch to local and self-hosted alternatives.
Like 95% of this I agree with. Don’t harass support people who have no decision making on this and are just trying to make a living.
But
unreasonable demands for compensation or apologies
Fucking really? Asking for refunds is bad now?
Japanese companies in particular are complete cocks when it comes to refunds. That’s why Nintendo and Sony will just outright ban you forever if you do a chargeback. Nintendo will then give you one final chance, even if you were hacked. Not sure if Sony does. Similarly it’s probably related to Playstation removing Cyberpunk for sale entirely when CD said to just refund it.
Nothing more offensive to a capitalist than trying to get your money back
Or apologizing. Can’t have that anymore either.
Megacorp jerks people around and gets all snowflakey when they jerk back
*looks up from gameboy*
Whut?
Has Sony just dared it’s entire customer base to take part in a forced boycott?
The equivalent of somebody getting themselves barred from a pub/bookies/casino because they know that they can’t do it on their own.
I’m in! As long as I don’t have to get rid of my psx, PSP, ps2, ps3, and ps4. I promise not to give them another dime, or use any of their shitty online services… Though to be honest I started boycotting them about the time the first Destiny expansion was launched.
They say Microsoft and Xbox start to take a tumble and said to themselves “How badly can we fuck ourselves too?”
Cool, the last sony console i played on was the ps2, who wants me to go harass them
Sony is becoming Arasaka
My initial read of the headline was that Sony would now make it a policy to harass its customers that do not agree with the new plans…
Me too. But also isn’t that what they have been doing these past months.
Isn’t that what they announced when deciding future titles won’t be on discs? I thought that was them plainly telling us, “we will be harassing the consumers of our products going forward”.
This is just the follow up where they’re saying “we won’t let you harass us back, because we are a big scary powerful corporation, and you are just a weak small individual.”
Nothing we can do about it, so long as the deathcult idiots support them.
If only we had our own FOSS only planet.
Same! I got to the third paragraph of the article before understanding they were not planning to harass their customers (or at least not in new ways…)
Well, yes, but actually yes.
Poor sony is fucking over its customers and now can’t stand when they push back? I’m sure it will go fine for them. After all, Nintendo’s been doing the same for years and look where they are.
Gamers* are crybabies who will never seriously boycott a company because god forbid they skip the latest release of the game they follow. The gaming hellscape we have right now is 100% on the gamers because if they started boycotting when shit started to happen, we wouldn’t be here now. But alas, I suppose it’s just too complicated to ask these people to vote with their wallet for once.
Oh well, enjoy the future you are creating.
*Disclaimer: I understand that not all the people who play are like this, but I also understand that critical-thinking gamers are a small minority with barely any power even if they boycott. Sony knows this, and that’s the reason why it’s doing this; the userbase loss won’t be that big.
sony is fucking over its customers
not really no. Sorry. At least no different than they ever had.
Push back? Why? Grow up and just don’t buy their stuff. How hard is this?
They’re actively screwing over the existing owners of their products. They have a right to be pissed if they bought hardware that is now less useful and worth less to them. Of course they should not give Sony any more money, but they are justified in being angry and letting Sony know it directly.
How does it affect existing products?
Also, nothing new with Sony by the way.
It affects the existing products by rendering them worthless if the customer were only buying physical games. Since Sony is making themselves a pariah, it also means you’ll likely not be able to sell the existing PS5 for as much money because demand will go down. I am just imagining a scenario where some kid finally is able to get a newer console only to find out that they won’t be able to get games for it moving forward because they don’t have a credit card, are not allowed unrestricted internet access, etc. Their system is now frozen in time as of next year, no more games, they just got fucked.
It affects the existing products by rendering them worthless if the customer were only buying physical games.
They already have the games they bought, so they aren’t worthless. They just don’t get to buy new ones on disc. Sony already has been selling digital for years.
Simply buy no more games. Everything you already have works the same as it did before.
I never understood this “sell a console later” concept, so I guess that is on me. But that also is not Sony’s problem. They are under no obligation to keep a console worth anything, and frankly their business model would suggest its in their best interest to make you buy the next model anyways.
I think everything you are describing is why they never should have bought a console in the first place: you don’t own the hardware. Sony already forces updates for new games and has the ability to kill the old games, whether you have the plastic disc or not. People never seemed to learn that this is normal for Sony. Don’t buy their products.
Right, but people are still buying consoles. “Simply buy no more games” is a kick in the face if you just saved up to buy a console. “you don’t own the hardware” that’s nonsense, it is the only thing in the console gaming equation that you do own. I still own all my consoles going back to the Atari 2600, I most certainly own them. The console maker just has far more ability to screw you over in the modern consoles. I don’t know why you think people cannot be rightfully angry about this bullshit.
You can still buy them online, so no difference really. Just not on disc, so nothing is stopping people from buying new ones.
“you don’t own the hardware” that’s nonsense, it is the only thing in the console gaming equation that you do own
Let me repeat: you do NOT own the hardware. I mean you own a piece of plastic. You can use it as a boat anchor anytime you want I guess. That’s it.
Sony has been forcing console upgrades since the ps3 when you buy a new disc. Sony has also revoked the ability to use discs they sold with the console, also during the ps3 era.
Given that none of this is new, they knew this going in on the ps5. They knew third party publishing on disc was not allowed. They willingly entered this eco system, so I really don’t understand the surprise at all.
By the way: Sony isn’t ending physical disc manufacture on new games until 2028. Older games, released prior to 2028 are allowed reprints even after that. This should give people time to decide if they want to continue down this road now.
It is the level of anger that throws me off. So fucking what? Sony is a shit company with a constant anti consumer history. Quit bitching about it and quit supporting it.
Your arguments are not unsound, but yelling at sony isn’t how they are going to fix it. Stop buying their products will. Most people aren’t going to care, they are used to downloading games and updates already. People who love merch buy the fan box sets. Sony knows people will still buy their products.
Sony wouldn’t even be doing this kind of war of attrition if it didn’t know that eventually, Gamers™ will forget and accept it.
Companies are perfectly capable of making bonehead moves that lose them money. Sony’s made a few themselves already.
Which, again, they wouldn’t double down on said decisions if they didn’t know by heart that Gamers™ will be distracted by the next issue, or the new shiny as the commenter noted.
Gamers didn’t buy Concord or Marathon but Sony’s still doubling down on their liveservice emphasis. Companies don’t behave rationally. They’re run by personalities and cliques like any other organization.
Yelling at an employee is severe psychological abuse and if you do so deliberately you are a bad person.
It’s wild that not abusing grunt workers (that probably aren’t Sony employees) is a bad take.
