PSN Home Watch - A Blog Devoted To Exposing Playstation's Home

Suddenly Susan

2010-11-04T15:21:00.000-07:00

Jeesh. Just when this blog closes Sony decides to send the flying monkeys. In a post a while back we posted insider information from a source that claimed that Senior Director of PSN Marketing, Susan Panico allegedly slept with her boss Peter Dille (VP of PSN) and that's how she got her current position. Although this was sourced from insider information, and never at any point claimed to be correct, nor did we make any accusations, Susan Panico cried to the SCEA flying monkeys. The letter seen here was sent to FORMER blog poster Kapow. Probably because he was the only one they could track down. (Bet you wished you weren't so flamboyant about your PSN id now, eh Kapow?) Kapow has requested the post THAT I POSTED be removed, and any mention that Susan Panico allegedly slept with her boss Peter Dille be taken down. So I complied with his wishes, simply because I consider him a friend. I'm in no way intimidated by James G. Gilliland Jr. who can be seen here in his Halloween Costume dressed as Steve Forbes:

So regal. Anywho, hopefully this'll end any thoughts or references to Susan Panico allegedly sleeping with her boss Peter Dille. I hope SCEA's stomping on the 1st amendment ends here, but I'm well aware that Susan Panico allegedly sleeping with her boss Peter Dille isn't the biggest one of their concerns. And even though this blog NEVER AT ANY POINT MADE THIS CLAIM NOR SAID THERE WAS ANY TRUTH BEHIND IT, we will comply with SCEA's wishes to remove the reference to Susan Panico allegedly sleeping with her boss Peter Dille.

Ha, this made me chuckle

2010-11-01T18:41:00.000-07:00

I'm sure everyone got one of these e-mails, Just wanted to mine 'cause it looks funny. Guess it's good they're finally doing Something to the forums. But, you know, "updating" it isn't gunna take care of the shit heads, brown nosers, cock suckers, and bad management away.

Good luck people.

2010-10-31T20:51:00.000-07:00

FAREWELL

It's been a really incredible run, and I've had loads of fun with this blog over the last year, but it's time to move on to bigger and better things. I've enjoyed ripping Sony a new one over the failed Home project, but I don't have the energy or focus to keep dumping on a program I haven't used in nearly a year. I'd like to send a shoutout to all of those who contributed, the Sony insiders who leaked info, the painfully under-qualified Home staff & the flying spaghetti monster. I plan to leave this blog online as a research tool for future bloggers and Sony critics. If there is someone out there who would like to continue this blog, please contact the email on the right. Thank you one and all for making this a fun adventure for me.

[ Complaint ] To @home Admins, What? Where?

2010-10-17T22:47:00.000-07:00

More folks getting screwed out of items they've earned. From the tech support graveyard:

This is the 2nd time I have a complaint. First, The Dolphy room, I won 3 races and I did not get a silver crown.

Okay so lets back a second,

1st. Sony deletes my Dolphy's, and does shit about it, and didn't even respond to me as to what happened.
2nd. I had to completely start over even tho I have the trophies in my personal space too prove it.
3rd. You allow private Hudson servers, well holy hell, this explains why we have super fast Jet dolphy's. Hence you allow this. Are you fucking kidding me? Explains why when I score a 88 in the ring game, and god forbid if I ever get a chance to win. Do I smell hacks?
4th. My main dolphy has a bronze crown, so I win 3 races, well, where is my silver crown?

I understand that it is beta, but this is the kind of shit you want to give us? You don't help the people that need help, I see posts in here about the same stuff, and yet what, you do what? NOTHING? Why do we have support, why do you even bother, beta? Beta is just a blanket to cover up the real issues and make up excuses. I like to think that things will be better, but yet have seen epic fail on Sony.

Start caring, give a shit Sony, don't let this shit to keep going on.

The problem I have with people wanting to run a private hudson server is that sure they can get their crowns, but even makes it easier for people to hack and crack code that they can put on their memory stick and possible hack the file too as well, thus making it not fair for others such as myself.

Do something Sony besides sitting and rotating on the thumb making yourselves feel good.

Cauldron of the Sunless Kingdom Bugs

2010-10-16T20:20:00.000-07:00

From the tech support graveyard:

Bugs:

When more than one user is playing off the same cauldron and somebody wins, it renders the cauldron unplayable afterward. The space needs to be reloaded or the cauldron removed and replaced in the space.

This is what I experienced last night when I invited 2 people over to my apartment. Each time a person would win an item the game would glitch causing all users to be teleported to the cauldron at which point the cauldron would be unplayable by everyone who had joined it. The people kept their rewards so that was not an issue. However, the game was still "active" even though it was unplayable; You still had to hit to exit the game, but the HUD on the left side of the screen was gone, and the ingredient items would not appear on the ground, thus causing the game to be unplayable. Reloading the space, we found, fixed the issue along with removing the old cauldron and placing a new one. Also, when two cauldrons were placed and each player had their own (my 2 guests), then there was no glitch when someone won at one of those cauldrons, and the games functioned properly.

Issues:

Allegedly the reward items are only available to certain persons:

Those marked [Confirmed] have been either confirmed officially or by way of in-world testing. I had people over yesterday to my apartment who were seemingly unable to get the horns or the mushroom chair, therefore it is assumed they may be owner only reward items, but it is not certain. As for the mystery present, I do not remember if the people I had over were able to get it or not, but it is highly possible that they did.

[Confirmed] Skull Crown - Anyone who has purchased the crown from the Lockwood store.
[Confirmed] Skull Tiara - Anyone who has purchased the tiara from the Lockwood store.

[Unknown] Horns Male - Anyone who purchased the cauldron from the Lockwood store (cauldron owner)
[Unknown] Horns Female - Anyone who purchased the cauldron from the Lockwood store (cauldron owner)
[Unknown] Enchanted Toadstool - Anyone who purchased the cauldron from the Lockwood store (cauldron owner)

[Confirmed] Glowing Eyes Male - Anyone
[Confirmed] Glowing Eyes Female - Anyone
[Confirmed*] Mystery Present - Anyone

*Confirmed by other forumers.

More Freezes

2010-10-12T23:38:00.000-07:00

From the tech support graveyard:

A few users had messaged me saying when trying to view the colored "Ruffle Skirts with Belts" female clothing item from Lockwood Publishing (under the 'One Stop Shop' tab in the Kiosk) they would freeze and be forced to reboot their PlayStation 3 system.

I came across the same issue, I don't think it's a specific color version of the items but I tried viewing the Red and also the 'Yellow Ruffle Skirt with Belts' but the (WWW) icon paused before showing on my avatar - freezing my PS3. If anyone else (or your friends) had this issue please post here, thanks!

Missing funds

2010-10-09T10:17:00.000-07:00

I am looking to put together a list of people who have:

Paid for an item and not received it
Paid for an item and received the wrong item
Paid for an item and received a non-functioning item
Paid for a service (such as the midway) and lost money on it

Please email me at psn.home.watch@gmail.com with your details. I need The item or service you failed to receive, your PSN name, how much the item was, and when you purchased it.

Does Home Support Exist even?

2010-10-03T15:43:00.000-07:00

From the tech support graveyard:

I have been one of those very patent but I have lost that. It's been several days sense I bought the Dolphy Room and raised 2 Dolphy's. One day they were gone. After the rewards and stuff I have earned I could not believe it.

I have sent the MOD's messages, I have send the webmaster email like support told me to over the phone. I have got no response from anyone at all.

Do you really care. Personally I think they messed up and deleted my stuff. I know @home is beta, but hell, at least respond to your customers/community. The program is only as good as the support is.

I demand a explanation as to why they are gone? Why can't you answer me? Why do you Ignore us for? Is this the kind of support you want to give too your community which is nothing? We pay for something and your screw us in our bum?

I will not spend another single penny on @home until I get a answer as too why this happened.

It is you that failed / lose, not I.

You wan't my support, then support me.

Just so you know.

2010-09-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

I'm on a year long vacation from the forums courtesy of Lithium. I posted a picture of a girl named Nikki Catsouras who was in a car crash in the ladies fashion thread, and apparently, they have weak stomachs. I'm not going to post it here, but if you want to see it, it can be found here.

The good news? I'll be back in approximately 520,000 minutes, ;)

Does Home support really care? No, they don't, but we already knew that.

2010-09-28T22:54:00.000-07:00

Via the forums:

I have been one of those very patent but I have lost that. It's been several days sense I bought the Dolphy Room and raised 2 Dolphy's. One day they were gone. After the rewards and stuff I have earned I could not believe it.

I have sent the MOD's messages, I have send the webmaster email like support told me to over the phone. I have got no response from anyone at all.

Do you really care. Personally I think they messed up and deleted my stuff. I know @home is beta, but hell, at least respond to your customers/community. The program is only as good as the support is.

I demand a explanation as to why they are gone? Why can't you answer me? Why do you Ignore us for? Is this the kind of support you want to give too your community which is nothing? We pay for something and your screw us in our bum?

I will not spend another single penny on @home until I get a answer as too why this happened.

It is you that failed / lose, not I.

You wan't my support, then support me.

I have to admit, while the man does make a point.. please, would you make an effort to spell properly next time? Thank you. So that's one more unsatisfied customer.. how many until Sony actually gives a damn? To be completely honest, I don't think they ever will. I think that as long as the same group of people continue support them, they will thrive. Two or three unsatisfied customers matter little when you have hundreds (yeah, not thousands, nice try though guys), of sheep who will purchase anything.

You know it's a slow day when..

2010-09-28T22:25:00.000-07:00

So I don't know if you guys have heard, but Michael Jackson, yes, the singer who is also known as the king of pop is getting his own MMO.. no, I'm not fucking with you, he really is. You're probably checking your calendar right now and thinking to yourself, "what the fuck? It isn't April!", and I'm as startled as you are.

Either way though, I actually looked into it a bit, and it sounds decent. I'm not a huge fan of Michael Jackson, and I would have never thought he would have his own MMO, but hey, weirder things have happened. It's developed by a company called SEE Virtual Worlds, and is scheduled for release as a part of MindArk's Entropia Universe in 2011.

I don't know about you guys, but I plan on checking it out,because I love virtual worlds.. but I tried out a couple of the other planets in the Entropia Universe, and I really enjoyed them. They are fairly graphics intensive though, so you may want to check out the required specs before you check it out, but if you meet them, and this is your sort of thing.. perhaps you may enjoy it.

You can register for their site and check out the two worlds they have in the universe here. Obviously Entropia Universe isn't really competition for Home given the fact it's on the PC as oppposed to the PS3, but there's always room to try new things. If you check it out, why not let us know what you thought in the comments? Oh, and be honest, I don't really care whether you thought it was an abomination or the greatest thing in the world.

Also, I'm just waiting for the sex offenders to get caught in Planet Michael, oh boy.

How much money has Sony fucked you out of?

2010-09-27T21:48:00.000-07:00

So any of you that are on my friends list (or were, again, cry me a fuckin' river), probably noticed that I haven't been using Home lately. I'm sure you all know my reasons for it, the staff sucks, the people suck, everything about it is just god awful. What innovation was promised has yet to be seen, we haven't got televisions or stereos yet, but we've got cat costumes.. that's almost as good, right? No? Yeah, I didn't think so.

So anyways, I'm going to tally up the cash I've funneled into this heap (spanning multiple accounts), and give you the number. Why? Because I don't give a fuck anymore. To be completely honest, it's money that I never had in the first place, purely purchased on credit, that's right, I'm a real fuckin' American.

Nowadays I haven't got so much, and I'm wishing I hadn't put money into the corporate machine that is Sony, because it's money that I'm never going to get back, and to be completely honest.. I am sure they will try to come after me now with every opportunity they get. I'm not going to stop writing for this blog again, I'm not going to sit back and let Sony take my money and do whatever the fuck it is they do with it.

I'm sure GlassWalls is over there laughing at us all building a tower of gold bars right now, shit, I would be too, if I didn't have the self-consciousness to know I was being an asshole.

So yeah, I'll let you know how much I've spent, and if you want to let us know, please do.. because I am seriously interested.

On second thought, fuck that, I'm a lazy bastard, but you're more than welcome to.

Fuck the topic at hand - let's talk about television repair men!

2010-09-27T21:35:00.000-07:00

You know them, you love them, they're probably after your wife.. television repair men. Alright, let's get down to business, eh?

We all know what a shit system Lithium has, and the bias employees they have working there with their favoritism and attempted censorship, but this has got to be a new low. I'm sure none of you give a fuck, and if you don't, hey - guess what, I don't give a fuck what you think.. and no, I'm not attempting to censor you. If you want to run your mouth about how I'm a psychotic douche, feel free to in the comments, but please, do it with a sense of intelligence or you'll only make yourself look like a fucking moron.

A while ago Home Watch abandoned its goal to make Home a better place, and do you know why? It's futile, it really fucking is, and I should know. I've been a Home enthusiast for a long time. I've put up with their bullshit, I've bought their product, and I've been a sheep.. but I won't anymore.

Home will never be a better place, it will never be a family friendly community and it will never be what it strives to, or at least claims to strive to be. After all, we are but cows on the farm, all we're doing is providing Sony with revenue that we aren't seeing returned.. and why would we want that? This year we've seen a ton of content.. but at what cost? We've seen prices increase, we've seen bugs, we've seen people being blatantly fucked over with false advertisement.. the list goes on.

Anyways, I'm rambling.. back to the topic at hand.. err.. television repair men..? Yeah, I'm about as confused as you are right now. So as you all know, there is a thread for fashion, ladies fashion.. it's a thread where Joanna Dork takes pictures of herself and clogs up the kudos leaderboard (which actually shows when you search top kudoed users for the entire forums, not just Home General), and flexes her massive ego.

So anyways - I go into the thread, I often read it, and I was at one point in time a patron, and I'm looking for outfits and I see this bullshit... they're talking about their fantasies with television repair men.. really? I'll admit, a few of the people who are regulars at that thread are friends of mine and I don't mind them.. but I go in, and I make a post saying that I'm going to report their bullshit spam, and of course I do..

Five minutes later, my post is deleted, and I'm not surprised, any time you go against the usual group of "elitists", you get shot down.. but it works both ways. As of posting this, moderation has made an effort to remove their bullshit spam, as they should, but before they got to that.. they had to make sure they deleted my post.

So that's it for this rant, but a word of advice.. if anyone comes across a post that should be viewed as spam, make an effort to click the button at the bottom of the post labeled "report inappropriate content". Just make sure you don't abuse it, because Lithium will not tolerate your bullshit (unless you're Joanna).

GlassWalls is not a man.

2010-09-27T20:58:00.000-07:00

So as I'm sure many of you remember, quite some time ago I had an altercation with the staff at Home, particularly moderation, GlassWalls of which was the top dog at the time. Needless to say, I wasn't happy with the way I was treated.. and I know, it's obvious, and we're going back in the past a bit here.. but it's very important that we do.

I admit, he and I had our differences, we fought and exchanged insults on numerous occasions, which got me banned a couple of times.. but you have to understand the situation I was in, and I know that most of you do.. he on the other hand, did not. I told him about the problem, that was the first thing that I did, I know how things work, at least on the outside.. he told me internal changes were made, but what internal changes?

For all we know, and probably in all likelihood, moderators are multiple people behind the same desk.. I've heard rumors that the original (and fucking cool, might I add) eefinem was replaced by some douche.. and you know where I heard those rumors? I didn't hear them from this blog - I heard them from our favorite patron, Mr. Lochwood (on a Skype call, in fact).

Now.. I don't know about you, but two things come to mind when I heard this from them, first of all.. how the hell would they know? There's been speculation for quite some time that they've been dealing with Sony, but this just makes it obvious (as if the moderators at every fucking party didn't). He told me that the original eefinem transferred out of Home, and you know what.. I don't fucking blame him, the place is a shithole.

So anyways.. in line with the positive thing I had going, I saw GlassWalls at a game launching party at the Gamer's Lounge. He had blocked me on the forums (how is that for listening to the community?), and refused to speak to me in Home.. but I guess he felt a little bit different that day, and I admit, I had been somewhat nice to the guy, it's not like he doesn't deserve it (aside from the fact he's a dick), but I apologized to him. I told him that I was sorry for what I had done, and believe me, I wasn't too nice to the guy, to put it simply..

He offered his forgiveness, and I was grateful. The Home gods had given me a second chance, or so I thought.. despite the fact that he accepted my apology and unblocked me on the forums (allegedly), he was still the same bias asshole that he'd always been.. and if he's not, well, he sure doesn't give the right impression.

Let me give you the most example:

On twitter, he had some God of War: Ghost of Sparta codes to give away, to the first people to retweet his post. You know what? I was one of the first few people to do so, and I'm fairly certain the time-line was evidence of that... but despite that, I wasn't given a code, and keep in mind, I'm not blocked on his twitter..

So GlassWalls, I'm speaking to you.. you are not a man. Men do not accept an apology only to bear a grudge. You know how valuable I was to the god damn community, ask any person who I have ever helped, any person I have ever come in contact with.. I may be a dick, I won't deny that, but I am also extremely helpful, and extremely knowledgeable.. hell, you know that, I had to correct you several times when you fed the community misinformation regarding Sodium.

So I ask you GlassWalls - will you be a man and settle this dispute?

DIRECTOR_ON_DUTY is a dick.

2010-09-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

I feel like writing something today, and so I shall... but don't expect it to be constructive, this is Home Watch, isn't it? Your feelings aside (cry me a fucking river), I've got a story for ya.

A few months ago I signed up for a site called PS Talent.. seems fair enough, cool site, cool people, right? If you said yes, you'd be dead fucking wrong. I admit, I've got some friends from there, though.. nowadays things aren't as friendly as they used to be, but this isn't about them.. it's about the site, and in this case, the man who runs it, DIRECTOR_ON_DUTY.

For those of you who aren't familiar with his work, he is an extremely arrogant prick who makes machinimas for Sony using Home, yes, you heard me right, for Sony. We'll get to that in a bit, but first the story. For a while, I thought.. maybe Home wasn't so bad after all, I mean.. sure, they constantly abused me, fucked you over, and continue to do so, but it's a nice place, right? I won't even answer that, because let's face it - you and I both know.

So anyways.. I decided I'd bite, play nice, hang around for a little while and see if things really change.. as such, I decided why not be positive, because nobody likes ~~negativity~~ the reality. I started up a site, it didn't last very long.. it's still up as of right now, but ultimately I decided long ago that it is a waste of time and money... and we defended Home, we thought positive.. I tried to the best of my ability to make Home a better place (and believe me, I tried really fuckin' hard), but was unable to due to bias and other bullshit.

I decided I would join and interact with other communities, you know, really be positive, and that was how I got to PS Talent.. through PS Talent, I met and befriended DIRECTOR_ON_DUTY, who is a swell guy.. until you get to know him. He helped me out and I helped him out, and then came PlayStation Radio and Phone Home.

DIRECTOR_ON_DUTY told me about this project he had planned but never got around to doing, he said that I would be perfect for it, so I agreed, thinking it would be a fun experience, and nothing could go wrong.. but boy was I fuckin' wrong. We spent a couple months going over it, planning it, talking about how it would be done, until we finally decided we would start a new venture (if you can even call it that) called PlayStation Radio.

I was appointed manager and we got to work, and for a while.. it went pretty swell.. but as I'm sure many of you remember, we had a deadline that we had to meet. Now, deadlines are something you have to deal with in any industry, and any job.. but I have to admit.. I'm a bit of a procrastinator, I say I'm going to do something and then never do, or don't for a very long time.. and so, we were cutting it very close to the deadline.

The deadline was set for September 9th, it was September 8th.. we hadn't got a damn thing recorded, and yes, I may be partially to blame for that, but at the same time, I was constantly under pressure from DIRECTOR_ON_DUTY. I explained to him I've got school, which, by the way I do.. and that I didn't think I would be able to do it by the deadline. He got angry and asked what school has to do with anything and said let's call the whole thing off. I said alright, of course he was angry, but then a week later he came back.

He said they got someone else to replace me, you see, I was Phone Home's Home Guru, but he just didn't have what I had.. and I'm not trying to be arrogant here, that's legitimately what he said. He thought that I was the only one who could play the part, and perhaps he was right.. but I accepted again. So it was during the weekend, and I wasn't expecting it at all.. he says to me:

"Adam, do you think we can have this done by Monday? I've already arranged to present this to Sony", and actually, prior to that he had mentioned to me that he was under a non-disclosure agreement, as are the rest of the "media partners". Of course, that's probably not a surprise to most of you - NDAs are a standard business practice.. but here we have Sony, and its various users claiming that they show no favoritism. This, to me, showed for a fact that they do.

So anyways.. you know, I love Home (at least I did), and agreed to do it again, knowing that there was a very good chance of it ending up in the community theater.. now, probably not so much, but there was. We started recording, I was exhausted, I had not had any sleep and DIRECTOR_ON_DUTY was angry with me. I told him I couldn't do it and to be honest, I didn't want to anyways, the guy is extremely rude, condescending, and hard to work with. I have even had others tell me the same.

So what does he do? Instead of being a man and accepting the fact that my life does not revolve around his mediocre project, he says:

[9/12/2010 1:51:51 PM] DOD (DIRECTOR_ON_DUTY): well.. I'm sorry Adam.. you either commint to this.. or i'm done with you. You're fucking me and everyone around you... tell me know.. i'm tired of fucking with you
[9/12/2010 1:52:32 PM] Adam: I can't.
[9/12/2010 1:52:48 PM] DOD (DIRECTOR_ON_DUTY): later dude. thanks for the fuck. I'm done with you.

So he deleted me, but he didn't stop there.. he deleted my account from both of his websites and my banner. He is not a friend, he was not my friend and chances are he isn't your friend either.. so no matter what, even if you think he's a nice guy, just wait until you work with him.

PS: If you fucks want, I'll post all of the Skype logs with him.

Angry User

2010-09-23T13:17:00.000-07:00

Another really detailed and predictably ignored rant has been posted, with yet another user exclaiming their dissatisfaction with Home's terrible customer service:

I have had it up to here with SCEA's lousy service. I purchased a number of items on Playstation Home and SEVERAL of them were NOT as show in the description. I've contacted SCEA via their support line three times and each time I was put on hold for well over twenty minutes before being transferred to person after person who all said the same basic thing. Contact SCEA about SCEA purchases doesn't work. There is nothing they can do, even though I KNOW this to be incorrect as the Terms of Service Clearly state " All content is provided by SCEA, including content created or published by third parties." as well as each purchasing being "Solely between you and SCEA" with lovely words like "Although SCEA will try to ENSURE that all product descriptions and it's associates terms and conditions are accurate, errors may occur." as well as "You will have the option of either reconfirming your order at the correct price or canceling it." SO if they get the PRICE wrong they can cancel it but if they get the DESCRIPTION or the preview image is different than the PURCHASED ITEM they can't cancel it? Unacceptable.

I've spoken to three different people, Katrina, James and Mike the Senior Supervisor at the SCEA support line and ALL of them have given me incorrect information. I was told I would need to contact "HOME moderators" for purchase problems and issues and that "There was no phone number to reach them." I was also told there was a complaint form under contact information. So I go to check contact information and low and behold there is a number to contact them and NO COMPLAINT FORM. So where do I turn to now? How do I get my money's worth? How do I make sure I am not unfairly treated? I've half a mind to simply turn this over to the better business Bureau, maybe THEN SCEA would stop abusing my financial situation and sending me in circles I am extremely dissatisfied with the services I've gotten and trying to find resolution for this problem has only cost me MORE money.

WHERE is the complaint form? WHO do I contact? I'm at my wit's end and SONY is about to loose one of it's most loyal customers and all of his friends and families business. I'm about to tear my hair out here over a FEW virtual items simply because I can't get ANYONE to actually listen to me without telling me FALSE information. Please help me!

Well said. However, per usual no answer has been given, and no refunds in sight. The user posts later on:

Well finally a response with information. Thank you. And I did indeed send an email to the Consumer Services department, they sent an automated email a day later saying they would response within 24 to 48 hours. So, this is the third day, and I'm still waiting. I'll post the exact e-mail I sent them. Though how else I'm suppose to contact anybody else or when or where or why is becoming rather tiresome since it always seems to be somebody else problem which no one I'm ACTUALLY talking to can do anything about, whereas those who supposedly CAN do something about it- Haven't talked back to me yet-. I still have yet to see anything regarding a complaint form as was told to me by the official SCEA tech support people. ...

I purchased a number of items on Playstation Home and several of them were not as show in the description. I've contacted SCEA via their support line three times and I was put on hold for well over twenty minutes before being transferred to person after person who all said the same basic thing. Contacting SCEA about SCEA purchases doesn't work, there is nothing they can do; even though I know this to be incorrect as the Terms of Service Clearly state “All content is provided by SCEA, including content created or published by third parties.” as well as each purchasing being “Solely between you and SCEA”. I've spoken to three different people, Katrina, James and Mike the Senior Supervisor at the SCEA support line and all of them have given me incorrect information. I was told I would need to contact “HOME moderators” for purchase problems and issues and that “There was no phone number to reach them.”

Yet the ToS also says “Although SCEA will try to ENSURE that all product descriptions and its associates terms and conditions are accurate, errors may occur.” And not two lines later states, “You will have the option of either reconfirming your order at the correct price or canceling it.” So if the price is incorrect it is possible to cancel it but if the description or the preview image is incorrect it can not be canceled? Unacceptable.

I was also directed to the forums and contact information for a complaint form; arriving there online I not only did not find the complaint form, but a second number to contact for support. This has lead me to believe I was directly misled simply to get off the line and or/given false information to frustrate me into no longer following the issue. But I will not. As stated below are the purchased items and a short reason for my extreme dissatisfaction with these purchases. I would like these orders to be canceled, the virtual items removed from my account, and the purchase amount of Five Dollars and Forty Five cents ($5.45) at the very least re-accredited to my Playstation Network Wallet.
If this is not possible, though I have been told “it is not impossible”, I would like to cancel all previous purchases, have them removed and the cash amount of twenty dollars ($20.00) returned to me via mail for this unacceptable and inexcusable breach of service etiquette.

I'd also like the hundreds I spent on Home back. Hell, that's the entire reason this blog exists!

More People Losing Money

2010-09-23T13:00:00.000-07:00

Another report of people buying items in home and not receiving them:

to whole it may concern i just purchase punk chick bundle from you guys and i only receive hair top and spike on my wrist i never receive the skirt or boots if i pay 1.49 for it i suppose to get every thing right please sony fix it i dont want to lose any money on this thank you come in peace oh also something wrong with my neptune suite apartment it wont let me switch funiture at all why can your fix that thank you again sony have a nice day please asap

(Original poster, please learn to use periods and commas too.)

Bugs, Bugs, and More Bugs...

2010-09-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

I just read one of the most compelling tech support pleas ever:

I loved Home, I really did, but now I only like it a little bit. The reason I say this, is because...

1. We shouldn't have to have a bigger cache size, just so Home will work better, otherwise there is no point in being able to choose the size of the cache. As I recall, that was the intended purpose of being able to change cache size. Some people swear it makes a big improvement, as far as loading, while others disagree about that. I happen to be one of them, who disagrees, because I have tried every cache size, and I still get the same annoying problems in Home. It doesn't become faster, when logging in, loading spaces, loading avatars, and more. It always stays at the same speed for me.

2. Wardrobe is like a total nightmare. Anymore, I am lucky if I can do so much as change one piece of clothing, without a major freeze up. It's ridiculous how every little item ALWAYS has to load. Isn't there a better method for this? Anyway, it's not just about the loading, when it comes to wardrobe. The few times I am able to change, without freezing up, I can't seem to keep the clothing that I picked out for my avatar, on my avatar. If I change her shirt or pants, the shirt or pants she was wearing previously, will come back. This has happened with jewelry, hand items, head items, shirts, pants, shoes, and accessories. Other times, it will wait to change my avatar's clothes, after I've signed back into Home or after I have entered a different space. The avatars that I have saved, will ALWAYS end up having something on them that I didn't put on them. They will not keep the same clothing or other items on, that I saved them with. If it is not freeze ups happening, or clothes changing on their own, F13 is plaguing my wardrobe. This has been going on for more than 3 months and it is VERY annoying.

3. Delete and reinstall should not constantly be the answer to solve every problem that occurs with Home. I have done delete and reinstall, too many times, every single month, sometimes I have to do it a few times a week. Still, that never solves the problems. Monday, I deleted Home, after another fun wardrobe freeze, and I ended up with corrupt data under the Home icon, yet again. The only way to fix this, that I know of, is to restore the file system. After that was over and fixed, I didn't reinstall Home right away, like I normally would. I am so fed up with the constant bugs, I am hardy in the mood to keep reinstalling Home, let alone sign into Home, only to find the same problems are still there waiting for me.

4. Decorating one of my apartments, has also become a nightmare, as well. Placing an object I have chosen, should only need to be done once. Instead, I've found myself waiting 15 minutes, to see if the object I placed, the first time, will show up. If it doesn't, I have to go back into the add furniture menu and get that same object out again. Sometimes it will work on the second try, other times it takes a third try. It's insanity, I tell you.

5. I don't know what it is about Central Plaza that has it out for my console, but the space still freezes up. However, I will give the space credit, because instead of freezing on me right away, it gives me some time to get into a good conversation that I don't want to miss. If I am lucky enough to stumble upon an empty Central Plaza, I have 0 problems. Whatever it is about that space, it's being passed to the Sodium space. That space is hell, while just waiting for everything to load and nothing more.

When it comes to trying to make things load faster, I have tried everything. I have upgraded my internet, a couple of times this year and that didn't seem to improve speed for Home, it remains at the same pace as always. My modem has been reset a few times, to see if things will work faster and that doesn't seem to improve anything, either. I even had a filter changed, as it is required within a certain span of time. The only thing I have not done, is tear up my PS3 and scatter all of the pieces all over the place. The only time my connection gives me a problem, is if I'm playing one of my games online and my connection doesn't play well with another player's connection. Also, a few people on my friends list, get a lot of the same problems I do. So I really think that it is just Home being the problem.

Whatever the deal is, Home really needs some major improvements, functionality wise and bug wise, and I hope that this is being worked on, because a lot of people are going to end up saying "To hell with Home, there's better things to do.", if the program remains this way for another year. Some people on my list, have already left Home for good, because they're tired of the things that do not function properly and the bugs. I'm getting closer to wanting to say to hell with the program myself, even though I've invested a lot of money into it.

I liked Home, I really did, I still like it a little, and it has loads of potential. Still, it is in dire need of more attention and improvements being made to it at a faster pace than now. Programs like this crash and burn, without more dedication and work going into them as they grow. I'm not saying I want it to crash and burn, I'm just saying it needs more focus on it.

Awards in crappiness.

2010-09-15T23:47:00.000-07:00

So it seems more and more topics keep appearing in the tech support graveyard involving the apparent & constantly missing items. In this most recent post:

For the last year, I've NEVER had a problem with Home. Except for a occassional disconnect, HOME has never screwed me over the way it did this morning. Woke up, logged on, and found out:

Every reward from every promotion since E3 - GONE
Every reward from most of the spaces, such as Motorstorm, Siren, the HOME theatre, IREM Square, ETC... - GONE
Only stuff I have left is ones I bought from the PSN store for FREE
I had atleast 100 rewards from different spaces and promotions now completely erased from HOME for no reason.
Moderators, do something about this bug. PLEASE.

When using Home we usually warn people not to invest money into it, because it is the easiest thing on the Playstation Network to lose money on. However we often forget to make mention that investing time into getting reward items is just as futile because they are constantly lost. Easiest solution: don't use Home.

Locust_Star fired? No!

2010-09-15T23:35:00.000-07:00

Last post a user made some observations that made it look suspiciously like Locust_Star got fired. Locust_Star has since made a post which confirms he's still alive & employed.

Locust_Star fired?

2010-09-12T05:26:00.000-07:00

Posted in a comment field in a previous post:

...This is REALLY old news, sad to say. Like, beginning of august old. Try looking at other things.... like the fact that Locust has not been on the forum at all in September, and Glass did the most recent PS Blog entry....

First off, it's true. Second, you're a dick poster, I posted about it back then too. Ass.

Bioshock's "Active Furniture" problem

2010-09-11T21:25:00.000-07:00

From the tech support graveyard:

I have the Bioshock apartment it's really nice. I then bought all the bioshock furniture. There are ten pieces total. Six (6) of them I repeat Six (6) are "active furniture". Then when you purchase the Bioshock space you get one more "active furniture" the incinerate poster. For a total of seven (7) "active furniture" pieces. To add insult to injury you can only use two (2) "active furniture" in any space including Bioshock.

How are two sofa's, two chair's and three poster's all that do nothing. "Active Furniture". Now what do I do I was trying to have a Bioshock only space now I can't.I can see why there is "active furniture" namely the active 8 UFO kinda fun. Even the star wars statue it's head moves at least. What does this furniture do that makes these active.

When I called support asking them why? They knew nothing I ask them why is there no warning that this item is "active furniture". I got a no comment and they said no refunds. Playstation I think your system is great. But you have to fix this....

Translation for those unaware, a Home space is an area you can purchase and decorate. An "active item" is an item that has some type of active element. However it is limited to two items, which you're only told after you purchase them and try to decorate with them. Home has no official FAQ or "How to" documentation. So this poor person bought the biosock apartment then 7 more pieces. Now the user is stuck with the bill for things they cannot use.

Bowling alley bandwidth

2010-09-11T21:05:00.000-07:00

According to this topic:

My PS3 transfers 2-4mbps all the while I'm in the bowling alley, which is pretty much maxing out my internet connection. So far I've only seen it happen in the bowling alley, in other spaces bandwidth use is normal.

Excessive bandwidth = poor coding

More Child Harassment

2010-09-10T01:21:00.000-07:00

Another kid attacked on home:

Someone was just dancing so my bro thought hed say hello and then we had a conversation with them, in the mid of the talk. Another user started insulting my bro. ex( ur stupid) (ur a baby) more but to explicit so i cant say and so on so i reported them and we went on our way but my bro got really hurt so im just trying to help my bro out please mercuryvalintine read my pm and maybe help me n this matter

Still Waiting!

2010-09-07T23:32:00.000-07:00

Remember this post? Still waiting nearly a month later. We first reported this bug back on August 12th.

More Stolen Money

2010-09-06T19:51:00.000-07:00

According to this post:

i bought some animated t shirts and after i bought i went to try them on but there not there HELP!!!!!

And this person lost some money as well.

I bought the Guybrush pirate bundle and didn't get the blond ponytail that is supposed to go with it, I checked under the avatar hair catagory, under the hats catagory, headphones, outfits... it doesn't appear anywhere.

And this horrid grammar disaster says:

i was tryin to buy the pool table bundle from the coffee table store and it nvr downloaded, but the loss in funds was there. wat the heck home, if yer gonna start robbing me im gonna stop buying! if anyone has an answer to this issue plz help me. as for the trolls with their snarky comments this post is not for you

Poker Table Not Appearing In Inventory

2010-09-02T22:27:00.000-07:00

According to this topic:

I purchased the Poker Table earlier today. During the purchase process, I was required to refill my e-wallet. I entered my password and did so. It then processed my transaction and asked me if I wish to publish my purchase on Facebook. I selected for it to publish, and received an error message saying it could not do so.

With no option left, I exited the menus and went to a the London Pub to put my table in. I could not find it in my inventory. To troubleshoot, I revisited the store in the mall to purchase it again, and the red symbol by the item did not appear. I selected the Poker Table again as if to purchase it and received a message that said the item is not available at this time?

Has this happened to anyone?

Chainsaw shirt warning:

2010-08-31T21:57:00.000-07:00

Many users are reporting the following about Male Shirt with Chainsaw:

Friend and I just purchased this shirt, got charged but nothing in inventory and no red cart icon so it's not crediting correctly.

Same thing happened to me as well! :\ I hope it's fixed soon i was excited about that shirt... It was gonna be one of my fav shirts...

I can confirm that this happened to me as well. The shirt is not in my inventory, but I got an email receipt confirming my purchase.

Yeah, I couldn't find it either...oh well.....I'm sure there will be a fix soon!

Naked Avatar?

2010-08-31T21:48:00.000-07:00

According to this post:

MY AVARTAR IS INVISIBLE NO MATTER WHERE I GO BOWLING SHOPPING EVERYWHERE I APPEAR NAKED

More False Advertising & Sexual Harassment

2010-08-30T16:14:00.000-07:00

Via the tech support graveyard:

On August 23rd, the Sodium Starter Pack for Home became available in the PSN store for $6.99. From the advertising posters seen in Home and in the PSN Store itself, I was pleased to see that it included the black version of the bartending outfits and specifically the Black and Grey Waitress Uniform (bundle)

Unfortunately, when purchasing the S1 Starter Pack this is NOT what you get -- instead I found these two incorrect clothing items added to my wardrobe collection, the "Sodium Scorpio's Pink Waitress Uniform Pack - female" (shirt with black arm tattoo, and skirt with pink leg warmers):

Since the ads clearly promised that we would get the "Sodium Scorpio's Black and Grey Waitress Uniform Pack," I would NEVER have bought this Starter bundle had I known that it actually contained the Pink version of the clothing. It would have been cheaper to simply buy the game together with the black uniform separately!

Well this Starter Pack is intended for new users to the Sodium games, which til now I hadn't really explored . So I tried on the pink outfit anyway, and let me say, while wearing it I wouldn't wish the instant bombardment of "How old are you" and "Where are you from" that I received, on ANY new user. The episode confirms my experience that Home users typically expend unwanted attention to the clothing worn by female users. Wearing a hot pink pre-teen outfit makes it twenty times worse.

Obviously the purpose of the bartending clothing is to enable playing the mini-game -- the point is not to invite additional harassment upon the player! -- so I'm sure that this isn't what Marketing intended when they put together this starter package for Sodium.

Please fix the Starter Pack download to give us the black-and-grey version that we paid for. Thanks.

Delete & Reinstall

2010-08-29T14:10:00.000-07:00

I think most people with issues with Home (I.E. Everyone) are sick of hearing the classic bug fix "delete and reinstall." For those unaware, in the tech support graveyard whenever someone has a problem the userbase will tell them the best way to fix it is to delete Home off the PS3 and reinstall it. So I decided to show how often it happens.

example
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That's just 30 examples. If I wasn't so lazy I could have easily gotten 100 or more.

Problems buffering trailers in "games.com 2010 event" area

2010-08-28T23:39:00.000-07:00

From the tech support graveyard:

So I've gotten all but 2 of the rewards from the "games.com 2010 reel of fortune" game (the dead nation and socom ones), but I'm having trouble getting them. If I enter the game and the trailer is of a game other than the 2 forementioned, it owrks fine. But if the trailer is for one of those 2 games, the screen flashes the "buffering" sequence for a split second before remaining black. It does nothing but just remain black and not load the trailer. I've waited for a very long time (10 minutes or more) numerous times in hopes that it will change and I can earn my rewards, but nothing changes. When the screen remains black, the other players are stuck looking at the "waiting for other player" screen and usually get too frustrated and just leave. I have no idea what's causing this. Please help me out!

More People Losing Money

2010-08-28T17:58:00.000-07:00

More money lost to the "black hole beta" that is home. From the Tech Support Graveyard:

Ok, once, haha, Home's network sucks, screw you. Funny never. Twice? This is obsurd. AND I paid for it this time!

Last night I bought a 50ticket after getting the majority of my items back from the first time I got screwed out of a week's worth of items. BEAT MIDWAY, and still have my golden jacket, but what's this? The SAME items I won back are gone, including ALL Gamecon and Subway prizes, the shirts for each of which are no longer available. Also this time the AlphabeTees that were free are gone. I still have the prizes I won using the tickets, minus the clown wig, and I still haven't gone to see if Darla is still at my Den(assuming these prizes going AWOL again means I lost Midway points again)

So let's sum this up... TWICE now I've lost ALL Gamecon & Subway items & a handful of Midway prizes, and now the AlphabeTees and some MORE Midway prizes are included in the disappearing act this time. I bought tickets to win them back too, and those Gamecon/Subway prizes can't be retrieved a third time because the shirts are no longer available. A MOD better intervene on this, because this is complete nonsense.
TO BE SPECIFIC: ALL prizes between 7/31 and today are gone.

I do not hack, I don't region-hop items, I don't cheat. I win and pay for my prizes and items fair and square, I want them back, and I want some confirmation this will stop happening. An honest paying customer shouldn't have such insane problems.

I used to have that same complaint when I was a Home user. I've yet to see the $600+ I spent on it.

Falling Through Floor

2010-08-28T17:46:00.000-07:00

Seems the Chamber Apartment is still having issues, all these years later:

Whenever I try to place anything in the flooring section in my Chamber, it just falls through the ground, and I can move it through the whole place like the old Harbour Studio glitch.
Same thing happens with small and flat objects, such as the PSP Go or the food objects from IREM.

Hell Freezes Over

2010-08-27T11:02:00.000-07:00

It seems Conrad_Max, the 40+ year old with underage girls on his friends list, has actually taken a moment away from sucking on Home staff's teet to make.... A suggestion? Complaint? I'm not totally sure. From the tech support graveyard:

With the introduction of the Aphabetees I feel that a second look at how we store our clothing is in order. I feel that separate folders should be given to these shirts, along with sets of clothing, just as we have the Outfit folder, which I believe is not being fully properly used at this time. The Alphabetees should have their own folder and so should clothing sets. And this includes a way to manage our clothes alphabetcally or by type.

Up until now I felt that this subject was more fit for the monthly suggestion thread. But with the introduction of the Alphabetees, I think we have a tech issue that needs to be addressed. As such, I have posted this topic here in order to increase it's chances of being seen. Being able to manage our clothes has now become a necessity that should be fixed.

I want to give thanks to cuterena whose topic "My issue with Alphabet shirts" brought this issue to my attention.

You heard it straight from the horse's ass. Er, mouth. When Conrad makes a complaint you know it's bad. So please Home, if you have any money left that Katherine de Leon and Jack Buser haven't wasted on stupid shit, please help Conrad. Your buggy virtual dollhouse is the only social outlet he has to speak to young, innocent girls.

Annamay Alexander Pleads Guilty

2010-08-26T10:25:00.000-07:00

Arrested months back for sexually molesting and raping a young boy she met on Playstation Home, Annamay Alexander plead guilty earlier this month. From the Daytona Beach News-Journal:

A Deltona woman has pleaded guilty to federal charges she traveled to Oklahoma to have sex with a 14-year-old boy.
Annamay Alexander, 44, also known as Annamay Cherry, entered her guilty plea Wednesday in federal court in Oklahoma City, according to Bob Troester, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Sanford Coats.
Troester said Alexander admitted during her plea hearing that she drove to the Oklahoma City area Jan. 9 to have sex with the boy, whom she met through an online Sony PlayStation 3 virtual-reality game. The game allows users to create electronic versions of themselves and interact with others.
Alexander, a mother of three, was arrested in Texas in April, several weeks after authorities issued a warrant for her arrest.
Police found suggestive text and photo messages from Alexander on the boy's phone, according to an affidavit, in addition to a photo stored in the boy's PlayStation console of her in her underwear. In her messages, police said she referred to herself as the boy's wife and used his last name.
Troester said Thursday she faces up to 30 years in prison but a sentencing date has not been set.

This is another perfect example of how Playstation Home is not safe for children & young teens.

The Blue Room

2010-08-26T10:10:00.000-07:00

Another ugly bug has made it hard for users to use the already limited games Home has to offer. From the tech support graveyard:

I recently downloaded the bowling alley and now I have a problem. The whole room is blue. Everything, that is, that doesn't move. I deleted Home in the XMB and re-downloaded it again hoping this would then prompt a redownload of the bowling alley with no luck. My buddy has this same problem in another room as well. This made for some fun photos but any suggestions that can get me bowling again out there?

Anime Picture Frames

2010-08-26T09:52:00.000-07:00

Here's a good example of why you shouldn't purchase anything in Home. In a topic posted originally on April 1st, 2010, the author states:

I just bought both picture frames from the anime section in the furniture store and I can't put pics in either one.

The little frame has a matrix time deal going on it and I am using the wall picture frame as a wall mounted flat screen right now.

I remember seeing this topic back then. Almost made a post about it. However, it appears 5 months later it's STILL NOT FIXED. I repeat, 5 months. No fix.

Posted the 23rd of August:

EFFFF!!! i just bought these without researching.... and im extremely pissed at sony for not fixing this... it clearly says

"PERFECT FOR THOUSANDS OF YOUR DIGITAL PHOTOS"

and yet you cant do put a single picture on them.... GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK SONY.... THIS IS FALSE ADVERTISING AND IS ILLEGAL!!!!!!!!!!

im gonna call them today and harass them untill i get my money back... or at least they can give me a working frame.

We have told users this many times, paying for anything on Home is a gamble with your money. And with the eternal BETA tag, it gives them a free pass to steal your money.

Cole McGrath Costume Pieces Vanishing

2010-08-25T21:37:00.000-07:00

From the Tech Support Graveyard:

I went into home, and saw my avatar's hands were bare, I normally wear Cole's gloves, I went into gloves and saw Cole's gloves with gone, I looked into the other sections and saw the top, pants and shoes were missing as well.

Per usual, no answers.

Tech Support?

2010-08-23T18:28:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder why tech support is so bad for Home? Well, another insider has given us some information. This person worked in the tech support area for Sony, and has since stopped. From the sounds of it, they didn't part on good terms. With that in mind, here's some great info via email:

Well, for starters, are you aware that very little of SCEA's tech support / customer service is actually done in Foster City? There are 3 levels of Tech Support, they are referred to as Tier 1 (front line agents), Tier 2 (supervisor level agents), and Tier 3 (special teams). Foster City is where you find the Tier 3 and the "in-house" Tier 2 agents who have the most authority. But most of the actual Tech Support is contracted to a 3rd-party company called Sitel, [Home-Watch note: I looked up this company, and they do exactly what this person says they do. Check their website here] and the call center is located in Las Vegas, Nevada. One of the reasons the Tech Support and Customer Service for PlayStation Home is as bad as it is, is due to the clowns who run this call center, and the misfits they hire to staff it. The so-called "elites" that you refer to on the PS forums generally speaking have more knowledge of PS Home and the PS3 than the Tier 1 (and Tier 2) agents who staff this call center. I'm sure that doesn't surprise you. For the most part they are poorly trained, are not given adequate support to do their jobs (in terms of material resources or knowledge), and the turnover rate is high, so there are few agents with much experience. Another factor has to do with actual Sony policies, which are not very consumer friendly. Example: Consumer buys Midway tickets for PS Home, but never receives tickets. The vast majority of Tier 1 agents don't even understand this issue and will probably try to brush off the consumer. Those few who do understand the issue aren't given adequate information as to what might be causing it, or how to resolve it. All they can do is kick it up to the Tier 3 level, but if a solution is found, it likely won't be communicated back down to the Tier 1 level. Same applies to consumers who buy Home items like clothing or furniture but don't receive them. Or those who have missing items from their inventory, both free and purchased items, which one day just aren't there.

DrGadget: The other Home-Watch

2010-08-22T23:04:00.000-07:00

Seems things are getting a little bit tense over at the Playstation Home forums. It was proven long ago that you can't naysay anything Sony related on the Playstation Forums. However, the moderator DrGadget has taken it a step further. The original poster states:

If you were to rate PSH and the devs what would be the rating. From 1-10. 1 Being unsatisfied and 10 being, I LOVE HOME AND EVERYTHING OMI GWAD!!! FREAK OUT!!!! and why.

Im curious, because from what im hearing from my home buddies and what not...home just went PFFFT and so did its devs.
Trust me im not ranting or anything, or bashing.

So yea i would give it like a 5.0 out of 10. Why? Well.....Home has does what its been created to do, play and socialize with other PSN Members.
Play - A mini game comes out (like Gamescom or FIFA ARENA) people rush to it (im fine with that) and get it with the matter of several days or minutes...or a minute. The games that are at PSH are entetaining for a while, so far the only games worth playing is Pool, Chess and Bowling. Sorry but the Carnival din't cut it for me - pay to play (well i got all prizes anyway), the games are fairly easy to figure out (as in it speeds up or there is a pattern). I dont know, the games in home just are eh...i stick to bowling and pool.
Socialize - Im not gonna get into that because no one can stop males being females, along with the harresment torwards other users.

The devs just dissapointed me, delays, promises that were not full filled of "soon". You guys do a great job try to do a great job, and i bet you do...but as of now it seems like everything is being slapped together just to keep us happy and well...so we keep spending our money. I do like the items, you guys do great with that. The spaces...well i rather have a space announced with pictures or major details 2 weeks before release so people maybe can help out or something. Spaces should take a little more time with the help of the community. With the delays im fine because when you guys say "delay" im thinking major bugs or issues with companies. The promises...well....if you promise something dont say "soon" say in "near future", or keep us updated on the promises.

So what you guys think?

Other than the bloody disaster of grammar & spelling, the poster makes a great point, and was very good in conveying it. However DrGadget goosestepped on it with a Sony-heil and conveyed the biggest over-reaction ever:

This thread looks like a cross between a poll, a popularity contest, and a petition. None of those are allowed here.

What you're doing is looking for other people to address the devs you personally dislike and give them low ratings. This in turn would justify your anger with them. And then presumably you would go back to confront them and say "Everyone at the PSN forums gave you a 2." [Good job jumping to conclusions and pointing fingers DrGayget.]

These forums are primarily designed for discussion, in terms of relaying information about Playstation-based gaming and other features.

Creating a poll to give you more ammunition to launch a hate attack against one or more of the Home devs is not a discussion.

Please refrain from making similar threads in the future. Thanks.

Wow, talk about having your panties in a wad. Much like the idiot zealots that populate Home, any criticism is immediately disregarded as "hate." Perhaps if assclowns like DrGadget and other PSN flunkies would listen to criticism once in a while, the whole PSN wouldn't be the massive joke it has become.

Mortal Kombat 5, er II

2010-08-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

Dear PSN: I'm unsure if it's due to none of you ever working in the game industry prior to being hired, or the fact that a five second wikia search is too much time out of your day, but any chance if you're going to advertise Mortal Kombat II you could use art from I dunno, MORTAL KOMBAT II? The art you're selling it with is the art from Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance. That's the 5th game in the series. Perhaps you're recovering from the butthurt when Xbox 360 got Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3? Perhaps I should start PSN Watch?

More bad development

2010-08-20T16:03:00.000-07:00

From footballdrool:

If you put out the Gamescon picture frame rewards in the Chamber Apartment, you see a reflection of the Harbour Studio from 2007.

More proof that absolutely little to no QA goes into testing Home before putting out items.

Playstation 3 security possibly defeated

2010-08-19T18:43:00.000-07:00

Posted on Hackaday, is a video of someone claiming to have defeated the PS3 security. If this is true or not it opens the door to modify the system, or open the door to piracy. I'm not the hugest fan of piracy myself, but I am in love with the concept of modifying my console. Especially with custom firmware. Please, let them release so that we can finally customize the XMB, without the fucking Home icon.

Jack Buser and the Bullshit Factory

2010-08-16T16:34:00.000-07:00

Recently I decided to go over some articles looking for funny Jack Moments. Let's see what ol' Electrobrain has said about Home, and decipher what the reality is.

From an IGN article:

We've got two announcements, the first of which is our relationship with Codename. It's a new company founded by some of the same folks who started IndieCade, which is the Sundance of the games industry, if you will.

Translated: "We started a partnership with a cheap developer who is trying to get out there, and we're using them as a last ditch effort to save Home since my poor business decisions have destroyed what Home could have been."

One of the core tenets of Home is that we're looking for good teams

Hey Jack, you might want to start by replacing yourself.

We have 14 million users worldwide.

No, you don't.

They can also make games for the Midway. Have you been to the Midway yet?

For those who aren't aware, the midway is plagued with bugs. These include bugs that literally steal your money.

Calendar first quarter revenues are up 3 times from the same period last year, so revenue growth is fantastic.

Oh Jack, you adorable liar.

IGN: How much money does that actually account for?
Jack Buser: We don't say estimates.

Translation: "We make exactly dick off of this program"

The PlayStation Home user is the most engaged, most hardcore PlayStation 3 user.

Yes, because when you ask hardcore gamers about home they giggle while furiously clapping their hands and jumping up and down.

Sometimes we'll see an article that has an inaccuracy in it and then you see the comments section. You'll see the users really rush to defend it, they're really passionate about it.

And as we all know, Home zealots are the epitome of intelligence. Just to be fair, there are still people defending the Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon which was canceled 16 years ago!

We really have two pillar strategies with Home this year, the first is this idea that Home is a social games platform.

This is one of the dodgiest answers ever given. That's like someone asking "What is going to be new with peanut butter this year?" and someone answering "Well, this year our plan is to concentrate our strategy on peanuts." Lemme see, as I'm aware you can only play a handful of the most basic games (Such as chess) "socially" with other players. Does this mean they're going to actually invest in Home? Jack, did you trade in that trust fund to support Home, since you pissed away it's budget on stupid revamps you didn't use?

IGN: Is there an official stance about maybe one day taking some of the simpler games to Facebook?

Jack Buser: Can you imagine?

IGN: Yeah, I just did.

That just made me cry laughing. Owned by IGN, the McDonalds of gaming news.

Our philosophy is to get the best and brightest developers who are passionate about these platforms.

I'm sorry Jack, I'm sure they misquoted you when you said that. Let me correct that: "Our philosophy is to get the obscurest and cheapest developers who are passionate about these platforms."

I don't think we'll ever be a hundred

understatement of the century.

Something as fundamental to Home as a shared social space is unknown on other platforms. That is allowing us as a company to really get steps, if not miles, ahead of the competition.

Which is why the PS3 is the lowest selling current generation console:

Oh Jack, Jack, Jack. There's no life I know, to compare with pure imagination.

No Playstation Move Area, and Villian's Lair Sucks (Still)

2010-08-12T11:58:00.000-07:00

Locust_Star posted the following today:

Hey everyone,
I've just received word that the PlayStation Move event space, as previously announced in today's blog post, will not be releasing in SCEA tomorrow morning (Thursday, August 12th). I will update you with more details as I receive them.
Please accept our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience this may cause you. We are sure that you'll enjoy the rest of the content that we are releasing tomorrow (the "Sneak Attack" items are personal faves of mine - check 'em out!)

Which translated from Home PR speak vaguely means: Shit, our bad. This area is fucking broken like everything else we produce. But this time we were kind enough to notice it and address it. Give us some credit?

Ok, I'll give you this one Home. You managed to resist releasing a broken area for once. But that doesn't help the following person who bought a broken area:

Following GlassWalls "BEST PRACTICES for reporting issues", I will relay my problem and course of action to date:

Purchased Villain's Lair early June, 2010. Neither mini-game works properly.
Village Griefer: Any high scores, approximately 800 and above, at the end of the game 1) I get kicked out, left standing next to the chair, unable to get back in the game, and no leaderboard scores are visible, or 2) the game totally locks up and the only way to exit is to manually turn off my PS3 (huge pain).
World Domination: In the second round of the hard levels, after I have set up my board, I get kicked out of the game, left standing next to the board, able to see it how I just set it up, but unable to get back in.

That is what normally happens, but under different circumstances, other things have happened too, which I will relay later.

Course of action taken:

1. Checked the Knowledge Center: Nothing related to this problem.
2. Searched the forums for a similar problem: Found one, it had zero replies.
3. Deleted Home, reinstalled: No difference.
4. Called Sony: Was told by "John" they are tech. support only, and I should contact a Mod.
5. Sent Locust_Star a PM 6/23/10 thoroughly describing my problems: No reply.
6. Deleted Villain's Lair Saved Data Utility (PS3): Removed my decorations, same problems persisted.

On 7/01/10 my 80G PS3 experienced the Red Light of Death. On 7/02/10 I set up a new 120G slim under the same account.
On 7/02/10 I went into Villain's Lair and played Village Griefer, which performed flawlessly, for hours, recording scores ranging from 819 to 1071. Checking World Domination the same day, I discovered it was gone. Completely. No table, no globe, nothing.
On 7/03/10 I returned to play Village Griefer, to discover IT was gone. No chair, no leaderboard (not no scores, but no board itself) and the viewing window was pitch black. Checking World Domination shortly after, I found it was fully intact, and was able to complete my original game with no problems.
On 7/04/10 I found the space to be the same as it was on the 3rd. I invited a friend over the same day, who owns Villain's Lair. She saw HER leaderboard scores in my space, was able to sit in the Village Griefer chair only she could see, and actually play and complete a game. I saw a black window, no chair & no leaderboard.

Later that day I deleted Home and reinstalled. The original problems returned. I had my friend over again, who was now unable to see any scores on the leaderboard, and unable to play the game. I saw scores and was able to play, but if my score was higher than my lowest high score, same problem, kicked out or locked up. I then visited her Villain's Lair where I was unable to see any scores on the leaderboard and was unable to play. She had no difficulties.

On 7/05/10 I had a friend in who did not own Villain's Lair, who was able to see the scores on the leaderboard and played the game several times. I was able to see the scores and view her games till about the 4th game, when I froze up and had to manually shut down my PS3.

There is no consistent pattern to my problems except that any score over 819 results in a kick or freeze up. This is extremely frustrating. I want to play my games.

Recommendations:
1. Completely delete Villain's Lair, which I am unable to do myself, and reinstall.
2. Have 2 Mods over, one who has the game, and one who does not, to experience this for themselves and take the proper course of action to correct it.

Expectations:

1. I will receive no helpful replies.
2. Nothing will be done in the hopes it will just go away. Believe me, it will not.

I hope this has been thorough enough to get something done about it. Thank-you.

Remember OtherOS? Niether does anyone else. Oh and it sucks to be Europe

2010-08-09T14:45:00.001-07:00

Seems I missed this. Looks like Sony's shit management is finally getting sued for that OtherOS shit. Class action status. Also, there's a HUGE topic over in the European forums over the price differences between the United States and Euroland. I thought it sucked using Home in the USA. Imagine having all the failures of Home, plus having to pay more for them. Sucks

Grasping for Straws

2010-08-08T01:33:00.000-07:00

Sony Surveying People To Improve PlayStation HOME:

One of our community members has contacted me to let me know about an email he has recently received from Sony titled “Have Your Say on The Future of PlayStation Home”. The email, which can be viewed by clicking here, says that Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has hired an independent market research agency to survey users in London that use PlayStation Home.
Sony apparently sent this email only to people that use the PlayStation Home service and live in and around London, Sony is giving £50 to people that are willing to be in the survey which may take place at Sony’s London offices or somewhere related. The survey is due to take place on August 11th and our community user My-Kal said he may attend the survey and if he does he will give us the heads-up on what was asked during the survey.

We don’t know what questions will be asked but this could greatly affect the future of the service, Iit still beats me why Sony doesn’t just survey or ask the whole PlayStation Home community what they want instead of surveying people in London, but big or small, people mostly want the same things for PlayStation Home.

Who thinks home will still be here this time next year?

2010-08-06T18:41:00.000-07:00

This great debate going on over at the EU forums. The original poster says:

Title says it all really. Discuss

Wow right to the point eh? I went on over and dropped a few nuggets of wisdom on the old world across the sea, along with Conrad and Joanna, who apparently are fucking EVERYWHERE. Those two are like the Home version of herpes. Just when you think they're gone they show up in another area, itchy and raw.

More insider information - HARD NUMBERS ARE HERE!

2010-08-04T18:17:00.000-07:00

Well, it's now known what the virtual item sales are for Home. With all the Kotakus, IGNs, 1ups, and other gaming new sites out there, a tiny blog got them first. And they are SAD. A forewarning, these numbers don't include the income from advertising. This is only the sales from micro-transactions, and only for the USA.

Home rakes in on average $125k a week. That's right Home fanatics, it's not even breaking a million per month. Hence the reason it's quite possibly being canceled in the near future.

So who's to blame for all of this? Well first off there's Katherine De Leon, who is responsible for the virtual spaces in Home. So when the [all] spaces bugged out, she would be the one to blame. We reported prior to this that they had hired someone to "revamp" Home, and it turns out it was Katherine who did the hiring. She hired a woman by the name of Celia Pearce, who claims:

Celia Pearce is a game designer, author, researcher, teacher, curator and artist, specializing in multiplayer gaming and virtual worlds, independent, art, and alternative game genres, as well as games and gender. She began designing interactive attractions and exhibitions in 1983, and has held academic appointments since 1998. Her game designs include the award-winning virtual reality attraction Virtual Adventures (for Iwerks and Evans & Sutherland) and the Purple Moon Friendship Adventure Cards for Girls. She received her Ph.D. in 2006 from SMARTLab Centre, then at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London.

Her website can be found here. Be warned, her website is an eyesore that challenges even the worst Geocities pages of the late 1990s. Higher than Katherine though is Jack Buser. Jack Buser (seen here doing his best impression of Animal from the Muppets) has failed to keep Home's development moving forward. While most successful companies and software projects excel due to the teamwork and combined efforts of everyone involved, Jack Buser had made every attempt possible to do the polar opposite. Every member of the team, if it be Katherine De Leon, Glasswalls, CydoniaX, Locust_Star, Buggie, or [insert name here] has had issues with Buser. According to sources he's a bit bipolar and has an extreme fear of failure. So chances are he's scared shitless at the moment because Home is doing really poorly.

It seems to us Buser's biggest mistake is placing his responsibility as the director for Home on the shoulders of the dingbat Celia Pearce and her idea of what Home could be. She spent months hanging out at malls and theme parks, taking pictures, and put all this together into some sort of grandmaster "redesign for Home." So there you have it...the future of Home is a giant mall/amusement park designed by a clueless, socially inept middle-aged lady who billed so much money to Sony for this "work" she bought a house with it. She then passed off this piece of shit to Katherine who passed it off to Jack, who decided to bank Home's entire strategy for the year on it. Now, normally strategic direction of a platform should come from the DIRECTOR, don't you think? But since Jack is so incompetent he dove on this thing like a fat kid on cake.

Most of the costs for Home development are in London, but there's also a ton of money paid out to 3rd parties who also build a lot of their virtual spaces and items. In fact, this is how most stuff is being created for Home this year, since Katherine De Leon has managed to hog most of the budget for her internal team of about 25 people to only work on the piece of shit Home redesign.
Some other interesting information, we have discovered Home does have its own QA team and they also use Sony's internal QA. Each region also has their own. Katherine, Jack, and the Home business manager talk to game developers to try to convince them to make stuff for Home. Jack answers to the Senior Director of PSN Marketing, Susan Panico.

So we have to ask: Susan Panico, what the fuck is going on? Why are you letting this crap go on? Isn't it time to cut and run?

Carla Who?

2010-08-02T18:27:00.000-07:00

I have no clue who the hell this person is, but via email:

Subject: Fresh dirt

I personally feel that everyone, especially those who frequent the Ladies Fashion Runway should know this information. I figured that since Home Watch has high traffic and deals in this sort of thing you'd be the perfect place to expose it:

Carla Birch is in fact a male. How do I know this? Well there's quite the library of evidence:

http://s668.photobucket.com/home/PSNCorruption/allalbums

Here you'll find pictures and video of a "Carl_Birch", which is.. you guessed it, Mr. Carla himself. But it goes deeper than that - he's in a relationship, with a female.. and he has a facebook to prove it.

http://www.facebook.com/c.birch81

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000118845713&ref=ts

I personally have nothing against Carla_Birch, however what he is doing can only be seen as wrong. From what I understand he has a club for all girl gamers. This would be fine, except for.. well he's male. He has recently infiltrated (dare I say) the female ranks in North America. No one knows that he is not who he claims to be, and it is something everyone should know. As Carl_Birch he was known to cyber with lesbian females under the pretense that he is one, as is evidenced by the album CarlCyber, in which he can clearly be seen doing so.

He also runs a fansite for Lisa Scott Lee, where he kept his Home photos for some time - though I don't believe they're still there. He also used to be listed in the whois database as "Carl Birch". Can there be a Carl and Carla Birch? I find that highly unlikely.

Oh and, here's something else:

http://community.eu.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-Home/Why-lose-your-head-about-Home/m-p/7589117/highlight/true#M163470

Note where the image came from that "Carla" posted:

http://www.yourlsl.com/home1/300.jpg

..your LSL? Oh, and.. in case he tries to take it down.. these photos are in no way edited (aside from the obvious removal of some potentially identifying icons):

http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/2964/vynt3p.jpg

Sony's Magic PR

2010-08-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

I was doing some research when I found an old article: Sony Blackballs Kotaku (UPDATED) This article is pretty dated, but shows first hand how piss poor people at SCEA are at their jobs. When grasping wind of Home's creation, Kotaku posted a story about it. In classic Sony fashion, they attempted to blackmail the website in order to prevent the article. Give it a read if you haven't before.

Ten Signs Home is About to be Shitcanned

2010-07-31T15:11:00.000-07:00

Jack Buser and the rest of the Home team stubbornly refuse to release any profit numbers. Since it's release ing 2008 there hasn't been one single mention of Home's value. This is very likely due to incredibly poor sales. Companies that produce video games do not do so silently when successful. They let the public know exact figures in an effort to draw users and developers.
Less and less public interest. The only time you see Home mentioned on gaming sites is when a child is molested or raped because of it, or because they ran out of other topics and needed filler. And that filler is usually a constant stream of negative opinions. Also, you don't see gaming sites make mention of Home's updates.
CydoniaX has been fired.... and no one has replaced her. If her position was needed or necessary, chances are it would be filled fairly quickly. The fact that they have decided to not fill that spot suggests they haven't the budget for her former position to remain.
Insider information provided to this blog has pointed out that Home's production cost far outweighs it's income. Home's development teams, it's community teams, and other costs make Home very, very cost ineffective. If there is a profit, that profit is an incredibly small sliver.
Advertisers and game developers have started to pull out. You'll see that ads running in Home run a very long time. That's due to the fact that ad space in Home is cheap. Much cheaper then you'd expect. Also the cost to have your game be marked in home with a public or private space is slight. Home is desperately attempting to bring in new content from developers, but cannot do so without the funding needed. Which is made up of micro-transactions. Hence the reason Home has been dumping new clothing on users more and more.
Two years AFTER closed beta is closing in with no sign of the beta tag going away. This has become less a sign of development, and more a sign of eternal developmental purgatory. Home has had very little to no advancement in it's time on the PS3. Whereas games like little big planet have gotten entirely new features, new content, and constant support. Home has just now started to produce buggy and poorly made "active items" which aren't very exciting or noteworthy.
Home takes extreme measures to hide it's quality. I recall a video a few months back talking about Home's massive advancement (i.e. bullshit) and how it had hundreds of games. I actually signed in recently and tried to tally it up and I still don't see a hundred games. Unless you include the fact that most everything you operate in Home states "play game," including activating the disco in Rachet & Clank's area. If clicking something to operate a game is a reality, I suggest you try Microsoft Window's built in game called "start menu."
The PlayStation Portable was expected to receive it's own type of miniature Home, called "RooM." It was cancelled due to overwhelming negative opinion during beta testing. Which was very similar to Home's closed beta where everyone said it was bland and stupid.
Recent test groups for a newer version of Home have failed. Users hated it so much that further test market research was canned.
Sony has reported a 5 BILLION DOLLAR LOSS IN SIX MONTHS. Down from 12 million in January to 7 billion in June for a whopping 42% loss. Sony will have to take measures to resolve this, which will likely include the end of products that aren't very good or don't make money. Which Home is both.

So for all the Conrads, Joannas, lilblues, Lockwoods, and the like, enjoy the moment. It's coming to an end.

Oh man, this is turning into LOLz Festival 2010

2010-07-31T12:20:00.000-07:00

OK so (I'm laughing even as I type this) I was editing a new account last night, The-Home-Watcher (Spoooiiillerrr) and I was searching through the mounds of shit people call "Threads" over at the Lithium forums trying to find Something to even make a comment on at the Least. I came across this thread. Another good ol' fashioned brown-nosing thread made by NARDE15. Basically it was just him saying how much Home rocks his world, he added a few plugs towards the end for his podcast things, and then ended it by saying 'hola'. Which was weird to me, I mean, why would he saying 'hello' in Spanish at the End of his post?
Anyways, another guy comes in behind him, quite literally, and starts brown-nosing NARDE15 for his excellent brown-nosing, calling him "an awesome veteran closed beta tester." So now you have dual brown-nosing going on and things are starting to get hot and heavy. ADAMPwns comes in with some music and another dude asks "You're a Vet? Since When?". In which some other guy makes a snarky remark and tells the above person to "study up ;)".

Now that we're all up to speed, I present you with the following:

[*Note* this shot was taken before I posted it, obviously] So I kept an eye on the thread for a little while until i went to sleep. Just got home about an hour or so ago, go to check the thread and blamskee, perma-ban actiooonnn hahaha. I go into the forums anyways because, I'm Kapow and I do what I want, and check on that thread only to find that my criticizing RE had been deleted completely. Not really surprised at this point.
But I wonder, did they perma-ban my new account simply because of the name, or because I criticized their piece of shit "application", or....well, let's face it, that's Exactly why. I mean, I hadn't told anyone about that account up until now so there's no way they new it was me trying to "evade" my ban. I guess they don't give out warnings now either. They just profile people instead.

Anyways, hope this provided some entertainment for you guys like it did for me.

:O ! Bad Word!

2010-07-30T20:24:00.000-07:00

Hi guys! In case you're to lazy to read who posts what around here (author's names located to the left of the comments link under each article, ddduuuhooyyy), this is Kapow. I had been away for a few weeks and haven't posted anything in about a month but I'm finally back.
Anyways, enough about me, check this shit out; I was just editing my profile on the Lithium boards and while attempting to edit the "Personal web page" part, this happened:

Click to inyuk-chuk

We all know the word, or name, 'home-watch' has long since been censored by Lithium and/or Sony (out of fear, no doubt). But this just made me l o l, so i thought I'd share it with you kind folks.

Conrad Max Owned... oh and bug report

2010-07-29T22:49:00.000-07:00

According to this topic:

This bug was first reported 1st July 2010 and continues to be frequently experienced by users inside the Midway space.
Description: During a "Free Play" session, Midway often deducts a ticket from the player when it shouldn't.
Players who have purchased the Green Ticket report that they often lose a ticket during Free Play. Players whose token counter already reads "0" report seeing the counter become -1 (negative value). The bug appears to originate with a combination of latency effects (10 to 12+ seconds), occasionally truncated play time (lasting less than the 1 minute duration and related to a game queue crash), and the necessary completion of a queued user's play *after* the Free Play minute has officially "ended."
I have seen the bug specifically occur with Frog Flinger, Darla's Darts and Miz Fortune but it appears all the games are susceptible.
Persistence of this error is repeatable, especially with a slow network connection. I estimate paying players who participate in Free Plays over 8 hours will lose about 12-16 tickets out of 50 to this bug. It results in a significant loss of tickets. Please look into this. Thanks.

Pretty clear bug report. In fact, this is one of the most exceptionally clear bug reports I've seen on this dead forum. And of course Conrad_Max stops in with his usual sage-like advice.

When I realised that this was happening, after two or three games, I just wouldn't play the free games while I still had tickets on me. I just wait until I run out of tickets.

Which the reply was... delicious. This is one of the most awesome and honest ownings I have ever been witnessed:

With reference to the previous Reported Error mentioned above:
Conrad_Max 07-02-2010 01:43 AM (link: Re: Midway Carnival Rip off)
[...] I did purchase the tickets and I won many prizes. We don't have to buy the tickets, but it sure speeds things up. The atmosphere in The Midway was very much like a carnival.
After the space was fully loaded, everything seemed to run smoothly. I had no issues with the space other than when a free game was avauilable, I ended up using some of my tickets. A minor problem and one I can easily avoid. The games were fun and even challenging. Just like a videogame. [...]
I find the disingenuous nature of that response, and other comments along the lines of "Just buy a ticket, it's only a dollar and sure speeds thing up," to be highly disturbing. It is disturbing given you yourself noticed the ticket-loss error at the time, but still claimed that it was "not an error" and that there were "no tech issues to hamper my enjoyment of the games in the space."
Hello?? Only the most contorted logic can explain away this bug as a 'feature' that "works as advertised."
Avoiding the free plays while in possession of tickets is an obvious user-based solution, yes. But that does NOT excuse the existence of this error, which is a serious bug given that I have seen it occur in about 25-50% of my free plays. If we are in the space and see a flashing Free Play notification occur for a game right beside us, should we not reasonably expect that the game will actually be free?
Penalizing those who have actually invested in the space by buying tickets is not good business.
The matter is all the more significant given that some users say they have already spent $20+ in Midway but won only about 40 of the available rewards. This happens while playing both paid AND Free Plays.
Completing Midway requires a dedicated investment in both time and money, so an attrition (ticket loss) rate of even 25% of one's purchase is a serious problem for a lesser-skilled player. The Free Plays would have been an excellent way to manage and extend one's budget... *IF* they were actually free.
Strategically, there are certain games with such a difficult learning curve (Ball Squeezer, Rebound) that I had no intention of ever using tickets on them. Rather my intent was to use the Free Plays in order to figure them out-- and to be pleasantly surprised if I did manage to beat a level. The fact that I now have to avoid these games entirely while in the space is not acceptable. The fact that I cannot actually save my tickets to strategically spend them only on certain levels (for example, on levels 1-3, 8-9 of High Roller which require angled power shots) is likewise not a desirable situation.

Ouch. Perhaps Conrad will resist the urge to hover around the tech support graveyard looking for chances to save Home's shitty credibility. I doubt it, but I can dream. Conrad_Max hangs off Home's cock like a third nut.

More insider information

2010-07-27T13:15:00.000-07:00

Via Email:

Home is NOT profitable despite Abuser's latest PR bullshit propaganda. The biz model may be a profitable one...anyone in the gaming/virtual world industry knows that microtransactions are EASY money. Keep pumping out those virtual shoes and idiots will buy them! HOWEVER...that doesn't make a dent of different to Home's PNL..bottom line, etc. (PNL = Profit & Loss) It costs millions to run Home. Any money they make is dependent upon virtual item and personal space sales, as well as all those tacky promotions they do, like the stupid Criss Angel thing for A&E. My sources told me Promotions at Sony have already pulled out most of the promised money for Home because it's not getting enough traffic. So unless the virtual swag sales are enough to cover the costs of a whole dev team in London, the inflated salaries of Jack, kdel, and the other aholes running SCEA, and production costs...ain't NO WAY Home will be profitable by Q4 of this year, if ever. And if it's not....here come the axe.

Hmmm, looks like Home could be on it's way out. WTF will I do then? Perhaps I'll start a blog devoted to raising indoor tropical plants. Or perhaps a fishing lure blog. Choices, choices.

Playstation Plus - Don't do it!

2010-07-22T19:45:00.001-07:00

I'm sure many of you have taken the plunge or considered taking the plunge of getting Playstation Plus. I considered it heavily myself, when I saw they'd be giving away games each month. However, I have this annoying habit of reading fine print, so in case you weren't fully aware:

Any DLC you download as a Plus member is forfeited when you terminate the membership.
Any games you download as a Plus member is forfeited when you terminate the membership.
There are no options to not auto-renew. To prevent being charged you must manually cancel your account.
Plus has options to do "automatic updates of firmware." Played off like true scam artists, this has never been an issue for anyone. The only reason to add this bullshit feature is to continue Sony's backdoor policy of controlling the user's machine.
From the PSN Plus site: "There will be select opportunities to experience advance demos, download exclusive items, and throw your cash down for early purchases, leaving lesser gamers to eat your VIP dust." Translation: If you're not paying for this extra crap you'll be excluded from further beta testing, and you're a huge pussy.

This has to be one of the single most insulting additions yet. I'm amazed over and over at just how piss poor Sony treats their users. So if you bought Plus, I'm sorry to say YOU ARE A FUCKING MORON. And if you haven't bought into this scam, kudos to you for being smart.

Playstation Plus is a scam.

New Active Item Request

2010-07-22T11:22:00.001-07:00

Someone smarter than myself sent me a great one liner email:

Subject: you know what home needs?

rape whistles

And I agree. I'd like to see someone make an honest request for such an item. If someone could pass this along in the "suggested item" topic of the month that would be most appreciated.

Limitations

2010-07-20T22:52:00.000-07:00

In case you weren't aware, there's limitations to "active items" you can have. A reply explains it:

You Can Only Have 2 Active Items In Your House.
So In Total You Can Have The Original 50 Items Plus 2 Active Items. So Boombox & Darts, Darts & Pool, Or Boombox & Pool

aaaaaaand fail.

Problem with Home

2010-07-20T22:42:00.000-07:00

According to this topic:

I was standing in the WipEout space with friends when I noticed people coming up moving their arms but no text showing, I first thought they on my block list but soon every other person in the whole space started doing the same thing(I could see what my friends typed) , going to my apartment and returning didn't change anything. I restarted Home and when I got back in, my friends list on navigator says no friends, and was the same in pda, but my friends were still on XMB list, the original problem with not seeing what everyone typed remained what can be the cause and a possible fix, thanks.

And of course the first fucking reply is directions to uninstall and reinstall home. Shocker.

2010-07-18T23:52:00.000-07:00

Howdy Home-Watch,

I've been a supporter of your blog since it started, and I will defend to the death your right to be heard about what's really wrong with Home. I'm just writing in to tell you guys that my PS3 has failed for the fourth time, and I was hoping that I could look to you guys to shamelessly plug my crappy little fundraiser to get me some money for a new console. If you could give me the exposure, I'd be willing to write for you guys, or do anything else to help the blog. Thanks for reading.

All the best,

gman_harmon

Please donate to the gman needs a ps3 fund. Donations of money, marijuana, and naked pictures of your mother to: m590@mail.com

We got your back nigga!

2010-07-14T17:28:00.000-07:00

I got a great email today:

Hey,

I just tried to sign into my PSN account to find I have been suspended. I called Sony to find out what I had been suspended for, and they told me that I was quote "performing a 'hate-speech' on July 2nd". I found this hard to believe. When I picture a 'hate-speech', I think of someone standing on a soap-box spewing hateful ideas or views towards a particular race, sexual orientation, religion, etc. I asked Sony's representative to elaborate what happened on the incident in question. They said I used a 'v' in the word fuck to bypass their filters, for that I am guilty although that is hardly suspension-worthy. But the funnier part of this so-called "hate-speech" was the part where they said I was calling people "niggers". Now, I have never called anyone a 'nigger', I am an African-American and I use the word 'nigga'. I am sure that with today's popular culture, you are probably very familiar with the similarity and the difference in the 2 words. When an African-American refers to another African-American as 'nigga', it is the equivalent of using the words 'dude', 'brother', 'friend',("That's my nigga"), or if you use it in a different way it can be the same as 'person' ("That nigga's crazy"). We both know what the word 'nigger' means, so we won't get into that.

Looking back at this whole hate-speech thing makes me remember the countless times I dressed my avatar up as an Arab man. When I signed into Home as an Arab male, I was appalled. I was bashed by everyone, male and female, young and old, noob trolls and well dressed veterans. They bashed me for being a Muslim, insulted my faith, my culture, they stalked me, some even sent me messages through my XMB even after I signed off of Home! I reported them multiple times via the in-home select button deal, I sent messages via the XMB to the Community managers, I was so fvcking offended. I got not one apology from anyone, not a message back, nothing, just more abuse when I went onto Home as that particular avatar.

So now they banned me from signing into their network because I wasn't talking like I would talk to my Grandmother. I made no "hate-speech", maybe I used a little inappropriate language at times, but it was far from a hate-speech. As a Muslim, they assaulted the core of my existence, my faith, countless times and I feel they should be held accountable for letting that behavior go unchecked while I get hammered on for using a couple inappropriate words they want to jumble around and call a hate-speech.

If you want to go on a little experiment again (I remember somewhere you were going to assume the role of a teenage girl), you should dress up as an Arab man, go on home and feel the pain and persecution of what an American Muslim must go through. The hateful and downright offensive things home mods will slip under the rug will astound you. I'm never signing back into Home again, when my suspension is lifted I'm deleting the application and creating a new account.

I remember reading somewhere on this blog "Sony is this generation's Sega", I think that hits the nail on the head and after their bullshit "10 year ps3 life-cycle" is complete we will be playing Sony games on Nintendo and XBox. They better pray Apple don't feel like jumping into the game world, we'll be using those Sony 3d game discs as coasters. "Make-Believe", yea, make believe your ships not sinking Sony!!!

Sorry to hear that nigga! I once got suspended for hate speech because I said "Let me bend over and take it in my ass like a fruit." I was horsing around with people I know outside the boundaries of others view. However a mod saw it I assume and bam. Hate speech. Not knowing what the fuck I did when I received this suspension, I called the tech support line and forced the guy to tell me exactly what I said. It was funny to hear him recite that exact line back to me, since my suspension happened like 3 days later. I forgot I even said it. I don't think "fruit" is really hate speech, same as nigga. It's all in perspective. Hate speech is reserved for... well, people who hate.

More insider information

2010-07-12T18:06:00.000-07:00

Via Email:

More dirt about Jack: last year he either dumped his wife (or vice versa) for being a coke-fueled party girl and gained sole custody of their daughter. Any appearances of the 2 of them before any of this happened made it clear that she thought he was a huge dork and sick of him. So none of this came as a big surprise. But around the time of his divorce is when he started acting extra-crazy on the job. He tried really hard to block GlassWalls, largely considered to be the best CM Home has, from being hired to Cyd's team probably because he is as prejudiced against gay people as women. It was also his idea to hire BuggieTechnica, the worst Home employee ever, who was ultimately fired for being a whiny bitch and hanging out on game forums all day, among numerous other offenses.

Katherine de Leon was an INTERN and former community manager (ha!) at Linden Lab only 3 years ago. How she managed to get the keys to the Home kingdom and fly around all over the country spinning her bullshit propaganda about Home is anyone's guess. She is nepotistic and hires all her best friends since they are the only people who can tolerate her....even some of them are looking to leave since she is such a horrible boss. Her latest hire was a woman whose virtual world development company failed and went bankrupt. Awesome choice. The 2 of them have a barely-concealed lesbo relationship and are plotting ways to be able to sleep with each other without getting in trouble with HR. Too bad "kdel" recently married a beard.

Not sure if this type of personal gossip is what you're looking for, but it sure is fucking entertaining, isn't it? Obvs I'm not going to get the true insider info about when exactly Home will self-destruct, but I'm sure it's not long now.

Toy Story Outfit Warning

2010-07-07T14:07:00.000-07:00

The new Toy Story outfits are bugged. Do not purchase them. It appears as always there's a bug, and in this case it appears to be stupider than usual. It appears they managed to get the genders completely backwards. According to this topic:

Did Sony/Home switch the male/female wings? I was in kiosk - looking at male - and saw the buzz lightyear wings on a female top - those dirty pillows DO give it away - hehehehe - then I froze - wait - my PS3 froze

Midway warning!

2010-07-07T01:23:00.000-07:00

If you haven't heard, The Playstation Home Midway is the newest ripoff pooped out of the bowels of Home's development teams. If you haven't heard the news, the Midway is quick to take your money and not give you shit in return. Here's some fun posts:

According to this topic:

I am having problems with midway I have the tickets but every time I go to play a game home glitches and it kicks me off from it and I try again and it says game is unavailable it happens with every game

And this topic:

hi home fixer ppl lol.. i was hopin one of u would read this and fix the earing in the carnaval i have all of them i think n they all only are workin for one ear n the other one is missing..i like them alot i was hoping it was a acident u cud fix it so that we have it for both ears if we won it. thank u very much =)

And this topic:

hey i've purchased 100 tickets from the midway carnival and did not receive any whats going on . the order numbers are 1704254068 and 1700520158

And this topic:

just went and purchased tickets and key and my system stuck on the download part any advise and did i just get ripped off

And this topic:

So, I decided to go play in the Midway ... Had 26 tokens to play with ... I played 4 or 5 games of Spilt Milk, and my token count went down to 4 ...that session cost me 22 tokens somehow
Then, I decide, I need more tokens so I go buy more ... it takes .99 from my wallet, and I get nothing ... I just payed to get 0 tokens, WHAT'S UP WITH THAT? and just like my missing hockey pants that I bought over a year ago (nice joke to play on a Canadian), I assume I'll get no response from the appropriate people ... it's bad enough that I had to change the aspect ratio on the tv just to play these games but now it's taking my money on top of it? Thank-you Sony

and this topic:

this is reseaworrioer i brought 2 99cent tickets an the key from midway and im upset because it's not working . i can't play any games NONE ..this is not the 1st time . i put in alot of $ into home . i just want what i paid 4 ... help please

and this topic:

So I bought some tickets today for The Midway, used them, and decided to buy more, so I did. Well the second set of tickets I purchased didn't register. It registered that I purchased them, but did not give me the actual tickets. So now I didn't get my tickets, ergo I can't use them, and I can't buy more (not that I would if they don't give them to me -.-).

This topic seems to think their ISP is to blame, however this topic brings it back to reality:

I just bought the $.99 ticket pack and downloaded it as normal. When I exited the ticket booth, my counter is still at zero. I have left the space and come back. Same problem. What should I do? I am very low on money and it was a tough call to give another dollar to this carnival when I've already spent so much on it. I don't like how I paid but cannot play.

Bottom line, the Midway is broken, and spending money on it is foolish. Spend that money on one of the games off PSN. You'll get more value for your money

TwilightVenom: Warrior of truth

2010-07-05T12:25:00.001-07:00

I was reading the comments of a previous post when I found TwilightVenom posted some interesting URLs, which he was smart enough to back up. He did what many of us have done recently, which was question the numbers Home keeps talking about. The conversation had no insults, no violations of Sony/Lithium's laundry list of rules. However, it was deleted. Which can only mean one thing. It was a conversation that threatened Home's already poor credibility, so it was removed in order to prevent further damage to egos. For further reading I suggest checking out the url backups TwilightVenom posted there. His argument is clean and intelligent, even in the face of the worst people Home has to offer.

http://backupurl.com/53zqby
http://backupurl.com/b9z3f1
http://backupurl.com/9rr6uw
http://backupurl.com/yj6d37
http://backupurl.com/n58xvk
http://backupurl.com/ckygy1
http://backupurl.com/ggzhc3
http://backupurl.com/2ouqwr
http://backupurl.com/tstngz

More insider information/Apology to the HCM

2010-07-02T16:40:00.000-07:00

So recently I've been getting a LOT of information from the sinking ship that is home. I'd like to share that with you now.

A brief history of Home:

Phil Harrison begins announcing the direction of Home, introduces media sharing, trophy room, etc.
Phil Harrison quits after a disagreement with Kaz, the head guy in Japan.
Katherine De Leon fills the spot of main producer
Jack Buser, becomes Director of Home.
CydoniaX, Glasswalls, Locust_Star become the HCM
Home releases public beta
Home operates for a year, under constant threat of being axed.
Game journalists rip on Home constantly
Katherine De Leon proposes a large scale redesign of Home, Focus groups hate it

Etc. Maybe sometime I'll actually make a timeline video or something. Here's some other interesting information:

The Home Community management team is FORBIDDEN to speak of promised features that have not come to be
Jack Buser might be losing his position
Home is STILL UNDER THREAT of being shut down
Game media still rip on home any shot they can, if they decide to acknowledge it at all.
Jack Buser fired CydoniaX because she reported him to the Human Resources division of Sony for "sexism, abuse, manipulation, undermining, and generally turning his whole team against each other"
Katherine De Leon is responsible for every space published in SCEA Home, so when something breaks, she is the one to ask about it.

I'd also like to humble myself at the moment, and speak a little bit about the HCM. Or what's left of it. Over the last six months of this blog, the HCM has taken quite a deal of punishment from this blog. We investigated them each in detail, and nitpicked their every move, post, and action.

Recently, I received an education about the HCM, and realized that they are not at fault for a good chunk of what we placed on their shoulders. However, Sony gave them zero permission to protect themselves nor gave them the ability to express what they were responsible for, and what they were not responsible for. This stemmed from above them, from the folks by the name of Jack Buser and Katherine De Leon. For months we have hounded and attacked the HCM because we assumed as many have that THEY are responsible for how shitty Home is. I have since discovered the truth.

What is disturbing to us is while we shit all over the HCM crew the people who were truly at fault sat in the background quietly, and allowed the HCM to accept all the blame for things that were their bosses' fault. That to me is even worse than the constant shit we've dumped on them over the last half a year.

Imagine enduring the abuse we can put out for half a year, knowing that none of it was your fault, however the folks who's fault it actually is force you to stay quiet and accept the blame that belongs to them. That's incredibly shitty management and Jack and Katherine should be fucking ashamed of what they've done.

So Glasswalls, CydoniaX, and Locust_Star, I apologize for the incredibly harsh way we've treated you. Although there have been many occasions where you did make mistakes and do silly shit, we wouldn't have gotten on you one tenth the amount we have had your bosses given you the ability to defend yourselves. For that I am sorry. Shoot me an email and I'll send a couple pizzas your way some day. All hush hush of course.

But back to the subject at hand. Jack Buser, Katherine De Leon, for months you've sat quietly in the background and let others take the blame for your incompetence. This is a polite warning to you: We are coming for you. You thought we were bad going after the HCM? Heh, you haven't seen shit yet. Better get some suntan lotion, we're coming after you with the fury of a thousand suns.

Joystik does Home

2010-07-02T02:42:00.000-07:00

In this article on Joystik, via Gamasutra they say:

Are marketers beating down the (virtual) door to get into Home? And how much does Sony really earn from the service annually? Until we get less vague statistics and hard numbers, we might never know.

This is true, why WON'T Home staff release numbers. Most Sony related things they release numbers each quarter. Home has been around two years and they haven't said shit. So I decided to read further into the the Gamasutra article. I wanted to pick out some pieces.

Recently, an employee with Veemee, developer of the Home space London Pub, even found it necessary to reportedly say that Home is "not shit" during the Game in Scotland event earlier this year -- apparently he felt that enough people thought Home was shit to warrant such a comment.

Wow, they actually had to go out of their way to say "Home isn't shit." Impressive.

PlayStation Home director Jack Buser acknowledges the skepticism and criticism that the service has garnered since its December 2008 beta launch. But he thinks there's an explanation for it.

"Home is new. We're doing a lot of really new stuff that I think the industry is still wrapping its head around," he said. "We're seeing a lot of innovation in the space, and some of us have hit success."

He added: "And I think it takes some time as the industry as a whole, whether that be consumers or whether that be the media, to start to shift their focus to these new types of platforms and see how people are actually spending their time with the console and with gaming in general. I think we are part of that evolution, part of that conversation."

I'm seriously wondering how in the fuck Sony could ever deal with Jack Buser piloting the SS Bullshit. His PR speak is so weak and terrible. However, a quick peak at his myspace page his education includes:

So an effeminate musician from Kentucky, with a minor in women's studies. This is who they pick? So with this in mind reading comments out of his mouth sound so ridiculous:

I think it takes some time as the industry as a whole, whether that be consumers or whether that be the media, to start to shift their focus to these new types of platforms and see how people are actually spending their time with the console and with gaming in general. I think we are part of that evolution, part of that conversation.

If anyone figures out what the fuck he's saying, please let me know. I long since lost my phony2english dictionary.

They're understanding that through micropayments, they can gain social context and social capital, or they can through gameplay context, upgrade their gameplay experience through microtransactions. And that's just becoming part of gaming.

Oh my christ it hurts to read stuff this stupid sounding.

"Our heritage is games, it's in our DNA, but it's also in the DNA of our users,' said Buser. "Games are the glue that can bind the social network together."

Even Jim777 has something (about Home) to bitch about

2010-07-02T00:41:00.000-07:00

When this guy is complaining about something in Home, you really know something's wrong.

Stay Tuned

2010-06-30T16:35:00.000-07:00

Massive information about Jack Buser.
Let's get to know him in the absence of CydoniaX
STAY TUNED

A step in the right direction

2010-06-30T01:35:00.001-07:00

Pool tables FINALLY available for your personal spaces:

Coming soon.

Chewout!

2010-06-30T01:14:00.000-07:00

Last night I got a somewhat suspicious email. Although I usually call bullshit when I receive insider information, tracking down the person who sent it opened a shitload of doors. I don't plan on posting the entire content of the email because it could easily identify the sender, however it corrects a good chunk of information we have here. Via email: (Removed parts of the email marked with [...] to protect the identifying parts of the email)

Dear PSN Home-Watch Retards: (Had to keep that intro, it's priceless!)

[...] First of all, all the myriad of problems with Home (and you're right about one thing, there are a ton of them) have nothing to do with the community managers.
[...] They don't make business or content decisions, all they do is get paid to interact with and entertain thankless aholes like you.
[...] SCEA Home is failing because of 2 people. #1 being JACK "ABUSER" BUSER. That guy is mentally ill, incompetent, and his entire team HATES him. He has ZERO experience with virtual worlds, the video game industry, or anything else having to do with Home. [...] Want to know the real reason CydoniaX is gone? Buser got rid of her [...] He's a real piece of shit and will be responsible for Home's downfall. Mark my words.

The other person ruining Home is its main producer, KATHERINE DE LEON. She is the 2nd most hated person on that team. [...] Her shitty work speaks for itself: she is responsible for every space published in SCEA Home and they all fucking suck.[...]

If you're going to attack people, at least go after the ones who deserve it. Oh yeah, and your site fucking sucks. Sorry your mom hates you and you never, ever, ever get laid.

[...] Oh and this just in: 2 more people have quit the Home team since Cyd left. [...]

Home: Land of a Thousand Errors

2010-06-29T13:56:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've sat down and picked apart the latest bugs in Home. So Here goes.

Before that, I'd like to make mention once more that Home staff makes no efforts to communicate with it's users about bugs. This topic asks why there's no communication, which is truly an irritation. Of course Popeye the Hometroll Man dropped his 2 cents:

All last week the Home Managers have been at E3. There are pictures of them at E3 posted in PlayStation Home General. The Head Moderator of Home stood in for them relaying information. And then we had this last weekend.
The Managers are now back and are starting to post again. They have some catching up to do. There is no reason to insult or cop an attitude. Just keep your problem at the forefront so that it can be taken care of. Your problem will very likely be addressed or fixed by next Thursday.

Ok good point. Except E3 was 3 days, not a week. Oh, and Home staff has never, ever, ever, EVER made an effort to speak about bugs. But anyways. More bugs.

NEW BUGS IN HOME:

Playstation Home error Z(7, -104) - Disconnection issue - NO ANSWER
Mexico: NO Home Support Z(7,-12) - Users in Mexico unable to join in on Home - NO ANSWER
wheres my Zerg shirt - Reward item not received - NO ANSWER
Will they ever fix the Uncharted 2 space? - Updated space caused games there to become crippled and non-functional - NO ANSWER
Cabin Boy: Trout Trouble Capers List Not Populating - Instructions for game not appearing - NO ANSWER
Annoying Glitch - User is experiencing a glitch causing them to get kicked off Home each time they join - NO ANSWER
Things are still broken and or missing. - User is asking about long term glitches that have never been fixed, such as the golf quiz - NO ANSWER
Home Error Code: 7 - User is.... I think suffering from a bug that causes a reward item to not appear? I'm unsure. - NO ANSWER
New Boom Box use error. - New (terrible) boombox item isn't functioning, causing crashes - NO ANSWER
FEVA SIMULATION SHOP- "TRADER BEWARE" GREEN FOOTBALL MISSING - User's keyboard has broken capslock button. Also game isn't functioning correctly - NO ANSWER
Toy Story 3 Andy's Room Jump on Bed problem - game not functioning correctly, not starting. Multiple topics on this - NO ANSWER
Freezing in the gamer's lounge? - Gamer's lounge freezes PS3 - NO ANSWER

And now for something completely different

2010-06-27T02:12:00.000-07:00

"The iPhone 4 is literally sucking my dick, right now, as I'm speaking to you."

Youtube Brings Home Fans

2010-06-26T20:24:00.000-07:00

Here's something classic. I had to share this awesome comment from this youtube video.

look have u been on it latly no so stop slagening it just cus ur xbox 360 fand boy i have stent over £1000 on it so fuck u the playstation home is much beter than the xbox 360 and u sed u spend £600 on it ball shit if so u wun not hate it and the videos showing the ps3 stuff its no ur stuff he coped it form a video on youtube and i no the pouseon its fucking me if u tack my video agen i will kill u go it u pussy and the playstation home has millons and millons and millons of ppl use it nerey day

Times Change

2010-06-25T23:06:00.000-07:00

Aren't you glad we live in a world where cliche black people scream and pronounce words funny is a thing of the past?

Home says: FUCK YOU CANADA (Again)

2010-06-24T17:22:00.000-07:00

In the past we have made effort to expose Home's bias towards the Canadian people. I think We've done it once or twice.... or three, four, maybe five times.

Well it's time for another episode of:

HOME HATES CANADA!

Over the last 24 hours I've gotten four emails from Canadians about their Canadian based topics being removed. In this time of World Cup, it's a possibility someone over there is a bit bias towards the threat to American spirit. First there was this topic, Canada's Top Avatar. This is in the long line of folks who have created these types of topics, however only the Canadian one has been closed. Then there was the "O Canada Dance Party" which was shoveled off to the Clubs & Events graveyard. Then there's this topic. Oh, and this topic. Honestly I could post links all day, but I think the point has been driven.

This is especially insulting to the top half of North America due to the fact that CANADIANS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN HOME EVENTS OR CONTESTS. Please, if you have an example of this constant Canadian bias, please email us to let us know.

SAMUEL L JACKSON: HOME TROLL

2010-06-24T16:12:00.001-07:00

episode #1

Come visit me on Home!

2010-06-23T18:14:00.000-07:00

I'm kicking back, and spending some time on Home. Under the name PSHOMEWATCH. I want to see how long this account can last. Shoot a friend request!

And now for something completely different

2010-06-23T15:45:00.000-07:00

So yesterday was the PS Store update, and with it came new avatars, namely the World Cup Sackboy avatars. So I'm lookin' through em (there's a lot) and checkin' out each countries flag painted onto a Sackboy and they look ok. But then I come to the U.S Sackboy and..uuhh...what's that? Is he?... Nooo...is he...cover in oil??

That's right folks! Now, I know, obviously this avatar was made to intentionally make the U.S, the same U.S that is going through an oil spill fiasco right now, Sackboy look like he's cover in oil but...honestly I can't help but to think of that every time I look at it.

So, I made this post on twitter yesterday, among a few others. Later that evening I get a DM from none other than @PlayStation asking, "Pics (or it didn't happen) ?"

So, of course, I obliged.

Am I right? I mean, what the fuck is that? Dark blue stuff splashed onto him with a single white stripe going across his chest? No stars or red paint or anything? All of the other Sackboys had proper, discernible flags painted on them, why did the U.S get the oil treatment?

What do you guys think?

Sony San Diego - What are you looking for?

2010-06-23T14:39:00.001-07:00

I noticed Sony's San Diego Online branch poking around the blog. Searching for the terms: atsivaluhc, ramled, and ogeidnas. A quick trip to the ps3 browser found that all three of these are user names. A quick google search discovered they are Home mods. Three we were unaware of. Thanks San Diego, we'll correct this by adding them to the blog.

PlayStation Home’s E3 Booth an Enormous Failure

2010-06-23T13:03:00.000-07:00

Via Email:

Greetings! I currently am a developer, and I was at E3 this year. I was Googling E3 stuff when I found this blog, and I have to say it's really funny! I have to admit, I'm more of a Microsoft fanboy this generation. Their development packages and kits are significantly better, as are the hardware tools. Which is a shame because last generation with the PS2 Sony had a great setup. As a MS supporter, I didn't pay too much mind to Sony this year. With good reason though, Sony was flat out BORING this year. Their booths were just plain dull. The only thing that captured my attention this year was the Twisted Metal stage show, and that was more nostalgia for my college years, spent battling my friends in Twisted Metal 2. Sony disappointed this year. They keep pushing their wii controller knockoff and other products that were boring. I wanted to let you know that Sony was pretty much abandoned this year, and the Home booth was especially. To be honest I had no idea Home was still around. I had to check my ps3 menu to see if the icon was still there. All I can recall is a handful of sony guys orbiting the booth, and it had a tv showing home, which looked to be empty. This was the subject of some jokes later on when we were comparing the Move controllers to Home and debating which sony would give up on first. Thanks for the laugh and you guys should do a blog that just rips on all of sony's poor practices. Sony is this generation's Sega

Thanks for the email! I found it somewhat amusing this email came moments after getting an extremely large hate mail from a Home fan who claimed to be at E3. I think the whole "This generations SEGA to be the best comment ever sent to us!

A note on Playstation Move

2010-06-21T17:46:00.001-07:00

Since home is so into the Move as Sony's add-on of the day, I figured I'd give my opinion on the move. Have you ever seen anything that looked more like a sex toy?

Glasswalls & Locust_Star post with a friend!

2010-06-21T01:18:00.000-07:00

Well it seems as though E3 was pretty dull this year. Sony showed off a bucket filled to the brim with raw sewage which they then threw out on the crowd. Honestly other then the ice cream truck thing for the new Twisted Metal, I didn't see a damn thing that stuck out in my memory.

Speaking of things people forget, Home had a microscopic booth. Most people stopped by to ask questions of the Home staff such as "Where's the bathroom" and "holy shit, you mean Sony's still supporting Home?" The booth was almost an afterthought, as Sony made zero mention of Home the entire time at E3. Honestly it makes sense to avoid bringing attention on your retarded children, but you want to make them feel included. It's almost as though they had them there to simply escape the embarrassing talk that they might have given up on the concept. No, the large scale massive social networking software of the future can still be found.... in a tiny booth near the Ladies restroom, past the Hot Dog-on-a-Stick. Sadly, CydoniaX didn't make it. Guess it wasn't in the stars! (HAHA SEE WHAT I DID THERE) Although unconfirmed sources are suggesting she has been fired, although her name still appears in the message of the day.

The funniest part of the whole thing is they were giving codes away at E3 for free home items... which were broken and didn't work. At least the folks at E3 got the full home experience.

Home Board Game!

2010-06-21T00:59:00.000-07:00

If one thing I love, it's seeing dumb people suffer. Which is the case in this epic topic, where the resident brown-noser created a board game.

Sadly, everyone's' favorite bus driver crapped on the parade. However I am DEVOTED to seeing this game come to life. So In an effort to help make this dream a reality, I want to invite the Home-Watch family to help create new and exciting bits for this game. I promise you, I'll be doing the same.

Survey

2010-06-18T16:00:00.000-07:00

Via email:

Hello Home-Watch,

Just thought I'd let you guys know that Sony sent me an email last week asking if I wanted to participate in a focus group being held next Thursday in Santa Monica, and I got in. The little quiz I had to fill out had some questions about Playstation Home, so I think Home might be a part of the discussion. Won't know for sure until I get there, but I figured I'd let you know in case you wanted me to forward any complaints or suggestions from the blog and get this shit heard. Here is a copy of the email I received:

Sony Computer Entertainment America will be conducting focus groups to discuss consoles, software and other gaming-related topics on the evening of June 24th in the Los Angeles area.

If you qualify,you will participate in a discussion lasting approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes. All participants will be paid $100 each.

Because we want your unfiltered opinions, we have hired an independent research company named Focus Pointe Santa Monica to conduct these discussions. If you would like more information or would like to participate, please click here and fill out the questionnaire about yourself and the videogames you play. If you qualify, you will then be contacted as soon as possible to see if you are available.

Remember, we are looking for all sorts of different gamers, so just answer the questions honestly. We would love to hear your opinions!

PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, please click here and you will be contacted if you qualify.

Thanks,

Sony Computer Entertainment America

Thanks in advance for your time, and keep up the good work on the blog.

Warmest regards,

gman_harmon

PS. If you do post this, go ahead and keep my handle so anybody else who has something they want to say can get it to me so I can pass it on at this shindig.Awesome. I suggest everyone take the quiz and get their name on the bill for the focus group. I've already filled out mine, and I'll be filling out another 10-15 more. Unless Sony wants to invite me themselves

Mission Statement Update

2010-06-18T15:44:00.000-07:00

Some may have noticed the mission statement has been updated.

Our new mission contains no desire to help Home, or seek it's improvement. Home-Watches goal is now 100% to expose Home, and to provide information for others in an effort to combat it's abusive and manipulative practices. We will no longer support Home in any form, and dedicate the future of this blog to showing the world the fraud and abuse Sony is putting their customers through.

The Queue System

2010-06-18T00:44:00.000-07:00

Home has changed a lot since it was first shown at GDC '07, from core update to core update. The most major of which, version 1.3, made many changes, including the removal of glitches. One of the features added to this client update was the queue system.

I know, old news right? But there's a reason I bring it up. The queue system is quite possibly one of the worst features added to Home for several reasons, and I feel that it's something that just isn't talked about enough. It's a great idea, in theory.. but in practice? Not so much.

If you want to play with friends, let's say you and some friends go to the bowling alley and you want to play a game. You can't. The reason for this is because the bowling alley and the games in it are often extremely crowded, but, that's what the queue system is for, right? Wrong.

The queue system is fine if you're by yourself, with friends however, is a different story. Because of the way the queue system works, holding each person in a spot in a line until a game is open, if you and your friends join the queue - you won't necessarily be able to play a game together. I've spent countless hours (and for the record, I don't anymore) trying to get into a game with friends only to be stopped by the queue system.

The only alternative that I've discovered, is to have none of your friends in the queue, rather just wait for a lane to open up. There's a problem with this though, because those who are in the queue are given priority when accessing the game, if there is anyone in the queue, you cannot access the lanes, essentially causing game disruption, which is after all against the rules, right?

On top of all these problems; there is another. Because the queue system is only used on a select few games, many are extremely hard to get into, the prime example being the Ward of Despair. I remember when the feature came out, people complained due to the fact one of the most popular games, which still is to this day, Ward of Despair did not make use of this feature.

What the hell were you thinking, Sony? Did the thought ever occur to you that people may want to play with their friends? As I recall, Home is by your definition a social network designed for gamers, it would only make sense that people want to play with their friends.

LilBlueEyes

2010-06-17T19:29:00.001-07:00

Via email:

I have been having problems with a certain user on the Home forums and
as such, I felt the need to expose this user for what she really is.
She is one of the "privileged"

First of all, LilBlueEyes is not the blond hair, blue eyed person she
likes to portray/make people think she is. In fact, she's quite the
opposite.

http://chakuu.deviantart.com/

Seems she has an obsession with the furry subculture and stuffed
animals in general. In case you doubt this is her, you can check her
youtube which links to it. The following page links to it from her
PlaystationHomeToday:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ChakuuFoxDragon

Have fun.

Bug Report: 6/17

2010-06-17T17:45:00.000-07:00

It's Thursday, and you know what that means, more bugs. Let's take a look at Sony's errors from this content update.

The long awaited ~~interactive item~~ gimmick, dice, is available in Home now, for a price of only $1.99! I for one wouldn't pay that much for something we were supposed to get with 1.3 back in October. It was met with countless delays and despite that, bugged upon release.

According to MercuryValentine, the new head moderator, users who purchase the item will not receive it in their inventories. Well that's lovely, I always love spending $1.99 to find out that I didn't receive the product I paid for! This doesn't come as a surprise to me though, given their impressive track record, managing to literally screw up at least one thing per week.

Users also report losing their Move controllers, which were an item received by redeeming a limited use code (don't you ever learn Sony?). I personally haven't lost mine, but from what I understand, people losing theirs had entered the code via Sony's website.

I'd also like to take the time to remind Sony that the 1.36 bug is still active. I know it's cheaper to tell people to use the workaround than to actually fix it, but I would have to say that the issue is a little bit more important than content within. Then again, we have to remember that Sony doesn't make any money from core client updates. There's a lot more money to be made shoving overpriced content down our throats than making sure the client works properly.

Just to clear things up...

2010-06-17T05:12:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to clear up a little bit who's who in this picture. Everyone likes to put name to a face.

Does behind the scenes confirm the lack of a QA team?

2010-06-16T21:20:00.000-07:00

Recently when Sony released the PlayStation E3 Booth space, they also released yet another video regarding the upcoming playground space. In the video, there were several members of the development team talking about the upcoming space and discussing the development process. I'm personally glad to see this, as it is something that had been suggested before, but there was something interesting I noticed about the video.

Approximately two minutes into the video, Adrian, who is apparently the senior software engineer for Home discusses the game of chess that will be in the space. He then goes on to say that because it is a multiplayer game, he has to use two consoles himself to test it. What is interesting about that statement? Well, a few things.

First and foremost, judging by this video and this statement alone we can see a major problem - there appears to be no QA team. You see, when developing software, there is usually a team dedicated to testing it before it goes live. This is called quality assurance. It is there to ensure quality so we do not end up with what Home is - essentially a buggy mess. I have theorized for a long time that the Home team is severely understaffed, and that there couldn't possibly be a QA team due to the high number of bugs we often see.

Granted, a QA team cannot catch everything, that is theoretically impossible, but it is their job to ensure that things such as the infamous 1.36 bug (which, as far as I know, still persists). If this video confirms my theory, it could explain the amount of bugs we see on a regular basis. However, that does not make it acceptable. We're dealing with a service that is used by millions (according to Sony), owned and maintained by a Fortune 500 company, and is mostly profit.

Well I'm not willing to make a further investment when little (if any) of the money earned goes back into the service. I know, Sony is a business, there are licensing fees, the cost of running the servers and more, but we know nothing about what goes on behind closed doors. What I do know however, and anyone who uses and has used Home knows, is that more of their efforts go toward content as opposed to improving the service and keeping the community satisfied with it. After all, there's no profit in free core client updates, even if they do charge us ten dollars for a hovercraft.

Here's a tip Sony;

Get a QA team. Maybe then you wouldn't have bugs that compromise data and piss everyone off.

Playstation Move items

2010-06-16T15:18:00.001-07:00

Here's a code for Playstation move shirts/hand items. Get it while they are good.

TNJC-M9BA-6NA5

More bias from Home staff towards their loyal band of suck-ups

2010-06-15T16:03:00.000-07:00

In Jerquall's thread about the new E3 space, he is showing off pictures of the lame E3 space in Home (something that was done over 2 years ago in the closed beta in Japan with CES. and done a lot better at that.)
Anyways, while viewing this kudo hungry thread I'm wondering, "What's the point of this besides searching for kudos' and acknowledgement? Just a bunch of pictures and.. stuff... wait, what did he just say?"

Just announced so I can now talk about it. The booth at the convention center at E3 has been replicated and will be going live in just awhile. build specifically for home by N.A. devs just for us! Home items are coming to!

That's right folks, apparently this jerk wad claims he already knew about this space, acting like he signed a fucking NDA to take a look at some exclusive title, or like he himself made the space. So why we'rent the rest of the users notified of this space? Why was he (and most likely the other suck-ups; Jim777, footballrule, Sophrnia, Joanna, etc..) told about this and apparently many other things, but not the rest of the users?

Well, I wonder. . .

Dear Home Fans: Fuck you.

2010-06-15T13:24:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone enjoyed the bare mention of Home this year. Shows y'all exactly what Sony thinks of the product. Be surprised if Home is around much longer.

Video 3

2010-06-07T22:44:00.000-07:00

Here's video #3. Enjoy!

J-T-W-NY Talks about her "mystery ban"

2010-06-06T11:48:00.000-07:00

As many have seen, J-T-W-NY is an outspoken critic of Home, as well as a Home user. Recently she was banned for account scamming.... which she never did. According to the folks she dealt with when trying to fix her account, there was no reason for the banning. Her words:

Abolished from Home
My nightmare began on Friday, May 28th. I had been in Home that morning. But I logged in again in the early afternoon and found that I could not log in. I received the "You cannot use PSN with this account" with the (8002A231) code. I phoned SONY to find out what the suspension was for and it's duration. I honestly thought it would be a week to a month for "text abuse" because I recently was in a discussion with someone about whether the word "negro" is meant to be a slur or not.
Imagine my surprise when, after being shuffled through several people, I finally received the answer. I was told that my account is "abolished," given a permanent suspension for "account scamming." The rep told me, when I asked what "abolished" meant, that there is no hope for my suspension being lifted.
I asked for details, and he told me it stemmed from an incident in Home on May 21st, the previous Friday, where I was trying to find out people's passwords and get into their accounts so I could use their personal information on a website that generates PSN codes.
My heart sank and my mind went reeling at this false accusation. I thought that either an honest mistake was made or someone was out to get me.
Several times I asked which website and which user's account I supposedly hacked. He didn't know. H said there was no more information except the charge and date. I asked him what I said on May 21st. Perhaps I said something that was misconstrued, I reasoned.
I was placed on hold while the customer service rep looked up that information. After fifteen minutes on hold he comes back on and tells me it will be a while, and offered to call me back. I told him that I'm fine waiting on hold. So I go back for another twenty minutes.
He finally comes back on and is looking through something on his screen. I'm not sure if he was searching actual chat logs (which wasn't likely) or looking through comments and words that were flagged by the mods. He finally arrives at May 21st and, after a pause, says "this is strange. I can't find anything. This is the strangest thing I've ever seen."
He mentions lifting the suspension and releasing the account, but he needed to speak to the "Home people" before doing so to find out what is going on. He apologizes for the upcoming Memorial day weekend and for the long wait I'm going to have but promises to call me back next week.
I wait. I phone SONY on Tuesday and am told the rep is looking into it. The rep I spoke to calls me on Wednesday to tell me he's not forgotten me and is waiting for a response from Home. Thursday passes and finally on Friday June 4th he calls, and tells me that my account has been unsuspended and I can use it now.
I did ask if there were an explanation for this, but he told me he doesn't know. The impression I got from my conversation is that he asked, but the Home people didn't tell him the reason for this. I found it interesting that our conversation ended with rep giving me his personal number with the admonition to call him if anything else happens in the future.
Without concrete information it's difficult to draw conclusions from this incident. It could have been an honest mistake, but the extremity of the charge and the severity of the punishment suggest otherwise. I sometimes think it is a response to my defending of artform-fazeone on my blog on May 22nd, but it's all speculation. However, I am happy that I reached a caring customer servic rep who took the time to look into the matter and correct it for me.

A mystery. Seems anyone willing to speak out against Home has a bad day. More of these as they happen.

101 Reasons Home Sucks Videos 1&2.

2010-06-05T01:02:00.000-07:00

First two are ready. Enjoy!

Home-Watch Youtube

2010-06-04T18:37:00.001-07:00

So I managed to finally put together the Home-Watch Youtube account. I decided to stop being lazy since the 101 Reasons Home Sucks video series is on the way. (16 reasons in, 85 to go!)