3 ms·

They got sued in a class action lawsuit for that, which got dragged out for ~7 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherO

They got sued in a class action lawsuit for that, which got dragged out for ~7 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS And in the end users who had used that feature and lost it got... $10.07

brookst 2y ago
Class actions are more about penalizing the company than making customers whole. I’m pretty sure the legal and settlement costs were enough to make Sony create processes to avoid that happening again.
- majewsky 2y ago
  Yes, they made sure that there would never be a refuge from the walled garden to begin with.
  - brookst 2y ago
    Exactly. It's too risky.
- yencabulator 2y ago
  Sony isn't going to change anything for a $3.75M slap on the wrist. The executive in charge of the business unit probably got an extra $4M bonus for managing to make the costs so low.
  - brookst 2y ago
    Disagree. What was the revenue upside of the openness to start with? Probably less than $3.75m. $3.75m is tiny to Sony but probably quite large for the group responsible for the loss. I know I've seen serious trouble at Fortune 10 companies over $3m issues, when the 6-person group's annual budget is $500k.
    - yencabulator 2y ago
      Well for one, they got "free" marketing for PS3 by getting it associated with supercomputer performance. They averaged almost 12.5M units sold per year, which means a lot of game sales (where the money really comes from). They're the largest video game company in the world, and make about $2B earnings before interest and taxes per year these days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/3/20984028/playstation-supercomputer-ps3-umass-dartmouth-astrophysics-25th-anniversary https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/3/20984028/playstation-supe...
      - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
        > Well for one, they got "free" marketing for PS3 by getting it associated with supercomputer performance. At least in Germany's nerd circles Sony's behaviour rather lead to "so nie" jokes (explanation of "so nie": when you pronouce "Sony" with the first syllable like you would pronounce a German word, stress the second syllable, and put a little break between the syllables, it sounds like "so nie" [German for "never this way"]), and lots of people used this "little different" prounciation of "Sony" to express their disgust for Sony's behaviour. This "guerilla pronounciation" of "Sony" helped to spread quite some reputational damage of Sony among hackers and tech enthusiasts in Germany.
tiltowait 2y ago
You also needed onerous levels of proof to get that whopper of a payout. IIRC you needed a photo of you using it or to submit a dump of your MBR showing the OtherOS partition. I did not get my $10.07.

brookst 2y ago

Class actions are more about penalizing the company than making customers whole. I’m pretty sure the legal and settlement costs were enough to make Sony create processes to avoid that happening again.

majewsky 2y ago
Yes, they made sure that there would never be a refuge from the walled garden to begin with.
- brookst 2y ago
  Exactly. It's too risky.
yencabulator 2y ago
Sony isn't going to change anything for a $3.75M slap on the wrist. The executive in charge of the business unit probably got an extra $4M bonus for managing to make the costs so low.
- brookst 2y ago
  Disagree. What was the revenue upside of the openness to start with? Probably less than $3.75m. $3.75m is tiny to Sony but probably quite large for the group responsible for the loss. I know I've seen serious trouble at Fortune 10 companies over $3m issues, when the 6-person group's annual budget is $500k.
  - yencabulator 2y ago
    Well for one, they got "free" marketing for PS3 by getting it associated with supercomputer performance. They averaged almost 12.5M units sold per year, which means a lot of game sales (where the money really comes from). They're the largest video game company in the world, and make about $2B earnings before interest and taxes per year these days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/3/20984028/playstation-supercomputer-ps3-umass-dartmouth-astrophysics-25th-anniversary https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/3/20984028/playstation-supe...
    - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
      > Well for one, they got "free" marketing for PS3 by getting it associated with supercomputer performance. At least in Germany's nerd circles Sony's behaviour rather lead to "so nie" jokes (explanation of "so nie": when you pronouce "Sony" with the first syllable like you would pronounce a German word, stress the second syllable, and put a little break between the syllables, it sounds like "so nie" [German for "never this way"]), and lots of people used this "little different" prounciation of "Sony" to express their disgust for Sony's behaviour. This "guerilla pronounciation" of "Sony" helped to spread quite some reputational damage of Sony among hackers and tech enthusiasts in Germany.

tiltowait 2y ago

You also needed onerous levels of proof to get that whopper of a payout. IIRC you needed a photo of you using it or to submit a dump of your MBR showing the OtherOS partition. I did not get my $10.07.