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Sony Sued Over Bricked PS3s
Zarrot writes "If Sony's recent 3.00 PS3 firmware update bricked your console, you may now have legal recourse thanks to a class action suit against Sony. The complaint alleges that thousands of users (PDF) were affected by the update, and in some cases the PS3 hardware itself was damaged. It continues, 'For owners who sustained hardware damage from the Sony-required update, Sony is charging a $150 repair fee per unit. Sony, responding to the numerous complaints about the unacceptable effects of the defective update, released a further, optional update that it claimed "improves system stability" — yet performance problems continued, and the new update did nothing to remedy the systems of users who sustained hardware damage."'"
Never ascribe to incompetence that which can be explained by greedy self-interest. Is it possible that this was deliberate? After all, they deliberately rooted thousands of PCs (inclusing mine) a few years ago, so you KNOW they're evil even by corporate standards, and they're charging $150 to fix a problem that their "update" caused.
They won't brick MY PS3, because there's no way in hell I'll buy another product from the company that rooted my computer with a trojan in a music CD. Why do people keep buying stuff from this company? I won't -- once bitten, twice shy. Buy from Sony and you're asking to get screwed, with sand as lube.
Free Martian Whores!
I have a 60 GB PS3, hardware compatible PS2 mode, but I don't use it very often, partially because it runs hot, but partially because I am doing other things. When did this update come out, and if I try to update now, will they have fixed the problem?
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
I had the misfortune of buying one of their GPS units. Despite the fact that their support clearly acknowledged the defects the unit had from the day of purchase, Sony did not release a fix until 7 months later. Sony insists that I pay $99.95 to get that update. Needless to say, I no longer will buy Sony products.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
So now Nintendo and Sony have both managed to brick consoles with firmware updates. Great.
Sorry, fellas. YOU broke it, YOU don't get to bill US to fix your mistakes.
you may now have legal recourse thanks to a class action suit against Sony.
I'm probably being excessively pedantic, but you don't need a class action suit to have "legal recourse." It's just easier as a class. You can sue on your own if your property was damaged or a contract was violated.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
My PS3 freezes/crashes when displaying certain websites on the browser. It is a repeatable thing, it never happened before the 3.xx patches. Any recourse on my part?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I went with microsoft instead of sony...
I don't think these are really "bricked" consoles, are they? They boot, but they malfunction. That's not "bricking" anything.
Or, more accurately in this case, you buy it, we break it.
Well I suppose a bricked console is "stable", isn't it?
Sony is REPEATEDLY caught doing nefarious things. Rootkits on a CD. Deleting 2/3rds of a MMO (The Star Wars Galaxies NGE) the day after selling an expansion for it, which included features marketed that applied to the 2/3rds that got deleted. They've gotten caught multiple times price fixing CDs. They have released a version of the PSP, called the PSPGo that requires you to repurchase all your games. They've also been caught deploying astroturfers and viral marketers to fake reviews and artificially pump their products.
They also run what I believe is an illegal international lottery with respect to their "trading" card games in their MMOs.
So why would it surprise anyone that Sony, not exactly well known for the quality of their coding work (if SOE is representative of it) would release a buggy firmware that destroys hardware and then make people pay $150 to fix their own defect?
Sony is all about revenue streams! Stealing from their customers is just yet another one of those.
This suit is going to cost them millions and will no doubt harm their reputation even more than all of the above have. Sony must not care about their reputation, since they do nothing at all constructive to improve it. Hint: repeatedly assfucking your customers does NOT a good reputation make.
Corporatism != Free Market
Officially BANNED for life!
... if they'd simply added a clause to the End User License agreement to state that the hardware still belonged to them and the "owner" was merely "renting it" :)
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
This is why I continue to buy PCs I like to have a lot of control over my gaming system. That and Consoles are simply trying to play catch up with PCs still. Seriously only this generation has just now gotten 'online' support. The fact you have to pay for online capability on some systems is ridiculous too. It now seems that Sony is far from it's glory days of the PS1 and Nintendo far from theirs with the Super Nintendo.
Did anyone else have their HDMI output stop working after the update?
Sony will never get another dollar from me after this fiasco. Screw up my device with a required update and then require me to pay for it? Hell a LCD tv I bought of theirs died after 6 months showing shoddy parts. But at least they fixed that for free.
All in all, its just another Brick in the wall
This is why computers, smart phones, and other BIOS-updateable machines should have a "service mode."
Set the "service mode" jumper and the machine boots to a ROM which does nothing but load new firmware from a known location.
In the alternative, have an easy-to-replace BIOS chip so bricked firmware can be replaced.
Of course, this won't do you any good if the bad firmware caused physical damage.
***Bonus*** if the device can't update its BIOS without a hardware switch being held down, to prevent stealth updates.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
After all that, if they win, every customer will get their machine fixes for free but with a 4-6 week turn around time, they customer will still have to pay $20-$35 for shipping the borked machine back, and get a nice voucher for $35 to reimburse the shipping cost usable in the Playstation Online store. Meanwhile the lawyers will get a multi-million dollar paycheck out of the victory.
Sony - 0
Consumer - 1
Lawyers - 10
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I kept ignoring the prompt, and I'm glad I did. My significant other keeps telling me I have great intuition, but I never believed her until it involved electronic hardware.
I bet only old Playstation consoles like mine (40GB) are at risk. You know what? It's been running for too long at Sony's taste. Time to buy another one, or pay them to make it work again.
Great -- so affected users have a shot at getting a check for like, eight dollars in acouple of years while some lawyer gets rich. Gotta love that...
Caveat Utilitor
Isn't a brick the ultimate goal in stability?
When it doesn't do what it's supposed to do (or stops doing what it's supposed to do), yeah, that's bricked.
No. It's bricked when there is no hope at all at making it playable again. If it can execute code, it's not bricked.
Honestly dude, It's bad enough the sensationalist media cannot use the term correctly.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I think they (and Microsoft and Nintendo) might consider this with newer iterations after all this shit happened.
Or maybe the greed really is there.
We'll find out soon enough if the money towards fixes really is "not for profit".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
i dont see why your all happy about sony getting the arse on this,
if successful, it will set a precedent.....ship a bug, get sued.
opens the door for EVERYONE.
soon enough, they wont bother offering updates anymore, because of the small chance it might brick a system.
Years ago, I bought their first "slim" digital camera. The DSC-T1. Shortly after buying it, I managed to break the totally unprotected LCD. I took full responsibility and called them up. "How much will it cost to have the screen replaced?" "If it was out of warranty, the cost would be $130 but defective screen is covered by your warranty." "No, it's not defective. I broke it. There's no way I could possibly pass this off as a manufacturing defect even if I was sleazy enough to try." "Oh, then it's $180." "What? Why does this cost more than a regular out of warranty repair?" "It just does."
And I was fucked. It was a brand new model so the chances of a "parts" listing showing up on ebay any time soon was pretty much zero. I was already into the camera for $500. The best grey-market refurb price I could find anywhere was $400. So I paid the out of warranty repair cost PLUS the $50 "because we're dicks" fee. It was either have a $680 camera or burn the $500 I'd already spent. When the repaired camera arrived, I affixed a thin sheet of plastic over the LCD. I swore I'd never purchase another Sony product as long as I lived. That lasted about 3 years when I bought one of their photo printers (which I still use occasionally). And I've bought another camera (mixed feelings about its quality), a book reader (rocks), a cell phone (rocked), etc.
Sony's like an ex who steals money from your wallet, badmouths you to her friends, and orders steak-n-lobster when meet up for lunch but the couple times a year you hook up seem so worth it. Until you check your wallet the next day and you swear you won't answer the phone next time she calls. And it works for a few months. But then you run into her at the mall and going to dinner is safe enough. God, she looks good...
Why do all the +5 Insightful comments have NOTHING to do with the article? Just "DONT BUY SONY THEYRE TEH EVILZ!" This is as bad as it used to be with Microsoft articles back in the day.
To all of the DONT BUY SONY CUZ THEYRE TEH EVILZ can you recommend me which game console to buy? Oh and please don't say PC, I game hours a day on my PC but I also like having a console for the console only games. Please tell me which console is not made by an evil corporation and doesn't brick with firmware upgrades? The ROCK SOLID 360? The Wii and it's recent hardware killing firmware too? Guess what, I'm going to buy the console that has the games I want. For me that's the PS3 and soon the Wii.
For the record my PS3, and the PS3's of my friends (yes, I know others with them) haven't bricked, so this is far from a EVERYONES PS3 JUST DIED that some people like to make it out to be. Saying don't buy a PS3 because SoE sucks or they released a rootkit 4 years ago is up there with saying don't buy Microsoft because Bob sucked or because they killed Netscape. Pretty much EVERY major corporation has done something evil.
Feel free to mod me down, I got some Karma to burn.
One used to be able to trust the mainstream console makers, but not so much anymore.
This is why I only play DONKEY.BAS
All I need is my computer!
Bricks are useful. You can build a house, a fire place, they are strong, good insulators, etc...
A PS3 after crappy hardware destroying update is useless, except for giving toxins to some poor asshole in a 3rd world country to try an recycle it.
Any "bios reset" switch would be done on the hardware-vendor level.
Dell, HP, Apple, [and Nintendo,] are you listening?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
After all, you spend time and energy getting it fixed. Or does that logic only work for MS-fanboys complaining about Linux?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Maybe Sony is taking a page from Microsoft, and now trying to boost market share.
Think of it this way:
1) The XBox360 has between a 50 and 50% hardware fail rate
2) Many XBox360 users are on their THIRD purchase.
Because many people will conflate "overall hardware sales" with "installed base", the (till now) higher quality of the PS3 has put Sony at a HUGE DISADVANTAGE.
It's all about numbers, folks. ;-)
So, I am thinking these days to buy a console. Can't really decide.
PS3: nice little thing, has overheating problems, and update bricks it. I will love giving money for that.
Wii: nice little thing. Update bricks it. I will love giving money for that.
Xbox360: nice little thing. 54% of Xbox360 consoles had a problem (rrod, etc). Heats like crazy, and there is a high chance it'll die within a year. I will love giving money for that.
What the fuck happened to consoles?
Several years ago Sony released a rootkit with their CDs that cause major problems for PC users. I haven't bought a Sony product since. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Sony goofed, oh, people love to call names and all, but Nintendo recently did EXACTLY the same. It has everything to do with cost cutting and pressuring developers to push new features while cutting testers because it don't accomplish anyway.
And then you get a bug that slips through you can't just patch in the next version and it all falls apart.
And we are ALL part of it.
We go for cheap. The PS3 sold 1 million extra units when it dropped price. We want our airplane tickets as cheap as possible, so we happily accept that the runways are to short if things go wrong and don't even have a runoff area as long as F1 cars get. That is because we value F1 drivers, not ourselves.
For people who are so confused about the high costs of repairs and spair parts btw. I will tell you that there are TWO kind of products out there:
The VERY cheap to produce and VERY expensively sold, the frames of glasses. They costs pennies to produce but sell for a hundred or more. So, I have personally ripped them apart, to get a spare screw to ship to a customer. it is CHEAPER to tear one apart then keep all the bits in supply.
Then there is the very expensive to produce and cheaply sold. Things like laptops. it costs a fortune to replace an LCD because ALL the costs savings that mass production brought to the laptop are lost in stocking and shipping a single part that a fraction of customers will need AND because it is so expensive, even fewer will buy.
The 360 has an insanely high failure rate, Wii and PS3 have been bricked. PSP had pixel problems. The results of bad engineering trying to cut costs until stuff just falls apart.
The sad thing is that there is almost no alternative. The consoles are all owned by companies who have long since given up on producing a quality product.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If I read the .pdf of the class action correctly, the plaintiff bought their now malfunctioning PS3 in Jan 2009 (no mention of new, only that it was for several hundred dollars) and the update was in Sept 2009... that's less than a year and this should be covered by the warranty (not for $150 which is the standard price for out of warranty repairs). It would appear that the PS3 in question was used and over a year old. Who knows what that particular unit's history was??? Methinks there's more to this than just bugs in the code (which could be there).
Oh, and I have 3.0 and 3.0.1 on a PS3 20GB (launch Nov 2006) and a new Slim that are running just fine (anecdotal I know).
all bleeding stops... eventually.
One day someone will design a machine that lets the user restore screwed up firmware externally. It really shouldn't be hard, just have something in a physical ROM chip that will load a firmware installer from a USB drive without needing working firmware or system software to do it. Quite frankly it is shameful that this keeps happening, screwed up firmware updates are a pretty obvious failure, and one that should be resolvable without an RTM. Keep it mind it's not even just consoles that this happens to. I've heard stories of just about every piece of hardware that has firmware doing this at one time or another. For that matter my freaking mobo has a warning on it that screwing up a firmware update will brick the board. Sadly I can only think of one computer that actually DOES allow recovery from corrupted firmware, and that, of all thing, is the Lego RCX (a little 8 bit machine built into a Lego brick that you can build robots with), and I actually wonder in retrospect if what they call firmware was actually just some system software.
This is why computers, smart phones, and other BIOS-updateable machines should have a "service mode."
Set the "service mode" jumper and the machine boots to a ROM which does nothing but load new firmware from a known location.
The problem with this is that it makes firmware replacement trivial, and while you and I might be interested in doing this, Sony, Nintendo, et al. are most certainly against our doing so.
It's amazing how this is blown completely out of proportion.
The story itself is inaccurate and misleading. The users affected were having trouble with their blu-ray drives after the 3.0 update. There is no bricking involved. The 3.01 update was never meant to fix the problems with the blu-ray drives, it fixed a problem with stability in Uncharted.
Wether the update caused the blu-ray problems or not is only speculation. One user said his player started working again after reformating his hard-drive and reinstalling the 3.0 update, so it might be the case, but it might also be coincidence.
The "1000's of users" statement is completely bull****, and is a number completely drawn out of the plaintiffs a**.
It strikes me that these reports (and the british Yellow Light of Death TV-programme) started spreading precisely when the PS3 Slim was announced and the PS3 price drop took effect. It feels like a well crafted FUD campain.
Not really. It would be easy enough for them to put some DRM crap in the ROM, so it would only load a new version of the firmware if that version is correctly signed.
(Of course, it's possible that the ROM implementation might have bugs, but I don't think that qualifies as making firmware replacement trivial. :))
I can 100% attest to the fact that the PS3 update 3.0 and 3.01 did indeed disable my system. My system (a 60GB) worked flawlessly for 2 years until 3.0, which caused issues in regard to getting into games online. 3.01 broke dvd, and blu-ray playback, and caused freezing issues with the XMB which you couldn't exit while playing a game if accessed. I called Sony, they told me there was no troubleshooting for the issue and it would $150. I spoke to a supervisor, who in so many words said. 1) You can't prove it was the firmware. 2) Even if it was the firmware, we accept Sony takes no responsibility as per terms of the agreement when we download the firmware. Of course, we're force to agree to this 'agreement' when we're forced to download the firmware. Anyway, I consulted Sony's own forums which were ablaze with complaints. A user fix 'rebuild the database' fixed my system in less than 10 minutes. So here is my proof that the firmware did indeed disable at least some systems.
When I updated my Wii (bought in 2007) to 4.2 , Nintendo had no issues sending my a replacement console right away (free of charge). My warranty ran out in 2008. My only beef was I had never done a back-up so I lost all my save data.
Your ex analogy hits the mark, often times with brand loyalty there's are feelings of attachment and personal support. The company's been there for you and like a woebegone lover, the company you have stuck by for years with fond memories leaves you on the lurch holding the proverbial bag full of abandoned leftovers.
I had a similar experience years ago with a Sony Mini Disc player that just "quit working". I didn't drop it, spill anything on it or mistreat it. As a consumer product it fit that perfect niche and at the time, was fairly cutting edge. I felt betrayed, abandoned, angry and frustrated. Any attempt reconcile would have surely proved to be an exercise in wasted resources. And like the former significant other, you end up hanging on to the unusable wreckage in hopes of it someday being repaired or replaced. Each time you open the drawer or box and take stock of the random components it's a sad reminder that once there was something useful and beautiful where only disappointment and obsolescence remains.
It's a strange thing brand loyalty, where the highs are heavenly and the lows are disdainful. We let their name roll off of our tongues as a trusted endorsement or spit it venomously as a perilous warning.
When it was THEIR fault?? Well gotta admit that takes balls...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It happened to me. I have an original 60GB PS3. One day it says there is a system update, just like all the previous ones. Press a button to download it, start it off, it gets halfway through, then the screen goes black, and game over. Nothing would revive it, not switching hard disks, not the service menu options, nothing. I do believe it broke something in the hard disk interface somehow. I ended up buying a new slim PS3, but I am very upset since my old PS3 had hardware backward compatibility, one of the main reasons I bought the thing, as I have many PS2 games.
Mike from www.myallo.com/blog
If you are stupid enough to get rooted then you deserver what you get. Besides that happened FOUR years ago, why to hold a grudge.
This particular story is inspiring some of the most hilarious comments I've ever read!
Yet another reason to boycott Sony. The cassette deck I purchased about 5 years ago is probably the last penny that Sony will ever get out of me.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
Does this mean the fanboys will no longer be able to use their only reason to argue the ps3 is better then the xbox? Its not quite the same thing as the RROD problem but at least MS provided free, prompt, replacement (including shipping) and even extended warranties to cover the units they were expecting to fail at some point in the future.
As a software engineer, I feel some sympathy for those who release patches for desktop computer OSes. A computer is a general-purpose device that is intended to allow users to install third-party applications that have full access to a huge API; to install applications like antivirus utilities that dig deep into the OS; and add hardware and the low-level drivers that go with them. The OS update is applied to an environment that may have wandered far from its starting point. Every customer has a unique configuration that probably has meaningful differences from any box in the SQA department.
But a game console? A game console is a walled garden, the applications need only a circumscribed set of functions, the vendor has total control over what goes on it, and nobody is adding third-party hardware to it.
Sony should be ashamed of itself, and should have volunteered to fix damaged systems for free--long before anyone complained.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
What do Sony, Microsoft, and Verizon, and the RIAA have in common? They all just don't get it. Plain and simple, they don't give a rats ass for the customer base. Don't care if a product works, Don't care about your privacy, Don't care if you get screwed, and apparently don't care if you will be a return customer. The have "Brand Bling" and don't need you. I would also add Direct TV to that list. Screw them all.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
The PS3 has one:
hold down the power button as you power it up until you hear three beeps. Since none of the "ZOMG Evil Sony's evil update Bricks0red my PS3" people in this thread mention using it, they might not even know about it.
So overall, yes, they did improve stability.
Sorry, the bricking itselft is part of the story. PC manufacturers moved to a 2-phase process for BIOS/fimware updates where a backup copy is in place in case of failure in the update. Console manf wouldn't dream of adding that extra 40 cents or so to their BOM (bill of materials) cost so bricking is possible there. Haven't heard of a bricked PC in 5-10 years.
As I posted back here.
Why not just develop a model off it - update players, generate a number between 1 an 3500, if it's 7, disable the blu-ray drive. With say 5 million Ps3s out there, that's an extra $250k in revenue every release, it trickles in so it can't be tied to any one release, and there ya have it. Free monies.
I almost lit my Ps3 on fire and put the video of said arson on youtube, now I'm glad I waited, maybe they'll repair it for free after all. Bastards.
the langue in this post isn't good even for adults that are senitive to filthy words
I use it to play games off disk, period. Since the BD no longer functions, that's pretty much bricked for me.
A chance to give half a dozen law firms a bunch of money, and for me to get $10 on the settlement.
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/consumer.shtm
This falls under federal jurisdiction because of the intertubes were used as a delivery method.
open source sub sim. I might start coding again for this. http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/contribute/
Why didn't you just wait for the warranty to expire and then pay the $130 instead of $180? Or say it's grey market it has no warranty?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Why the hell are consoles serving ads? I never had much desire to pick up a PS3/X360, but what little there was just plummeted.
Uh, actually, 3.00, as might be indicated by the "point oh oh," was a pretty massive overhaul. Any PS3 owner noticed this at bootup, it's not that big a secret. The thing already has all the DRM it needs, this was probably a failed bugfix or something. Still, they seriously need to learn from their mistakes: the PS3 has a pretty good firmware backup system, and botched versions have already slipped past it twice. Not much of a failsafe... Is the difference between configs/models that hard to account for?
Sendou Wave Kick!!
Or in this case, your official update compromised and/or disabled my console.
Therefore you are going to fix it, and smile as you say "no charge - sorry for the inconvenience" while you pray to the marketing gods that I continue to support your company...
Now that I reread that, it sounds somewhat egotistical and condescending. Of course, this is Sony, so it's probably best to use language they understand...
The sony playstaion official page is dripping with sarcasm and deeper in the posts are not moderated. Deeper in you see people saying games even crash and freeze now! http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/08/playstation-3-firmware-v3-00-update/comment-page-40/#comments
It's a recession. A corporation has to make a few bucks where it can.
I boycotted Sony for several years after the rootkit incident. Then, I started buying Sony products again (I bought my first PS2, brand new, this last December). Now I see an article like this and I believe it's time to stop buying all Sony products for another couple of years. Business practices like this are just unacceptable and a class action lawsuit is never proper punishment for actions such as these. Will everyone just get a $5 off coupon for their next console purchase? No, I think everyone should just stop buying Sony products until the company requires a Japanese gov 'save our ass because we're a horrible company, please' payout.
I guessed it did improve the average PS3 stability by a kind of survival of the stabilist.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!