Updated ProSiebenSat.1 Feedback Thread

Hi Buggabug,

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) has been informed of an unauthorized third party access to one of ProSiebenSat.1 Games’ systems. ProSiebenSat.1 Games is actively investigating the breach and will continue to keep SOE and their player community informed. Effected players are being notified via email.

For more information, please visit ProSieben's information page: http://en.alaplaya.net/forum/alaplaya-news-f1445/important-announcement-t544305.html

It is always good to be cautious about e-mail security; more information can be found at the link I've provided above.

~Dexella

Saw this one coming a mile away, once it was discovered months ago that their forums use phpbb and the same logins as for the games.....
I too have a 'dummy' account to communicate with PSS1, but I have no email either. Found about about this thanks to Feldon at EQ2Wire.

Can't you just scrap this deal already? Make it clear that no more games will be transitioned?

It's still doing enormous damage to the SOE titles, you guys need to distance yourselves from ProSieben.

I still remember hearing that only some games were included in the deal, and if you got a Station account way back in the Stone Age (relatively) to play both EQ1 and EQ2 on the EU servers, for instance, you were doomed and were going to HAVE to get two separate accounts to play both games, with the extra cost involved (not just monetary, apparently...). :-/

Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much say, if any, SOE has in any of this, since the parent companies (SONY and ProSieben of SOE and Alaplaya, respectively) were the ones that put the deal together, and presumably they'd have the final say regarding it. The fact that it cost SOE and SONY hundreds, if not thousands, of customers hopefully gave them the idea that it's no longer worth it. :-/

Uwk

*boggle*
Sorry folks - but the moment I learned about the hack at PSSG ... I am still laughing. How often did they tell us "all will be good and ok and great and cool" - wasn't it even me who pointed out some security issues with their system? Oh well - what do I know. And yeah - data might be encrypted - let's hope the hackers don't have own accounts so they don't have a reliable source to start decoding on (uhh - wait ... difficulty to decode might drop from np-hard to p the moment they have a useraccount and password to use to work on decoding ... if they only had their own accounts located in the stolen data ... what they most likely have).

Or - who knows - maybe it wasn't such a great idea to hire "volunteer csr" folks ... ;-)

It all fits to what fellow players posted on one of our larger gaming websites lately "now that Pro7 startes to grab all those trashy games it will be easy to avoid that sort of games - just stay away from everything that is covered by Pro7 ...". Yay ... that's exactly what I want EQ / EQII / ... considered ... trash-game (NOT!).


I snatched some interesting piece of information off the PSSG boards (DCUO that is): A fellow player got hinted by PSSG that they are considering to reverse the transition of accounts!
Well - that would be a step into the right direction - thinking of all those accounts of DCUO players (paid for ... many bucks over time) who didn't transition to PSSG and now are stuck between SOE and PSSG.

Wouldn't it be clever if SOE reopened those accounts that didn't complete transition on their side? PSSG wouldn't miss them because they never got them.

Just to clear that up (you most likely had now way to learn about it - so ...):

ProSiebenSat.1 Games is owned by ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG (which is owned by Lavena Holding,
Telegraaf Media Groep N.V. and other shareholders).They bought companies like: Alaplaya, Browsergames.de and are about to acquire BigPoint.com, too.

Alaplaya doesn't have much to do with the SOE games at all - it's just (proven by fact) that PSSG uses the acquired platform (alaplaya) to host the SOE games boards.

SOE games are sub-licensed by PSSG to TF1 (might be wrong with that name!) in france.

I just had the feeling I should help you get a quick grasp about the structure ...

In general the information in excrpyted via a one way hash without knowledge of the 'salt' that was used they can't even write a reliable programe to decode what is encrypted, the password that a user inputs gets salted and converted to a hash and that hash is compared to what is stored in the database anyway.
As funny as it is that his happened to PSS.1 it is not any different than anyone else having it done, the extent of what personal information *if any at all* was obtained will never be released (unless the people that obtained it release it).

That said with the level of incompetence displayed by PSS.1 / alaplayer and the clowns that were 'fronting' for them to the players that were going to be forced to transition was epic.

Whee...what a mess. But thanks! Yeah, that helped.

Uwk

And the account migration is STILL down at Prosieben.... 3 months after it went down. What a great service.

Personally, I suspect that SOE is getting DCUO back in their own hands, and this is the reason the account migration isn't working

One could only hope the legal team had the foresight to include a performance clause that would enable SOE to take back IP that is being neglected.
I mean with PSS.1's escellent handling of everything from the beginning who could have ever saw this coming.

Well, had a chat today with both Prosieben and SOE, and they have no idea how to fix this. They then suggest that I re-purchase the game to gain the benefits??

I cancelled my all-access pass after that message.

It is so sad to see that there is no progress on this topic :-(
I just browsed the pro7 boards and they are indeed suggesting to players that they will want to create new accounts to keep playing while they try to sort out the problems.

What I find funny is that they obviously never told us that we have to "migrate now or never".

The problem I see here is this:
We have paid for accounts in DCUO that we can not use anymore. SOE booted us out the front door as a welcome present for their new partner (PSG) and now that partner decided like "Hey ... we are sick of the issues we have with transition - let's just stop it.".

I for example decided not to transfer my dcuo account - so if I ever wanted to play again I indeed would have to start a new account with PSG because I couldn't migrate (even if I wanted to) and SOE just tells me to "f off - we have no business with you on dcuo anymore although you never migrated that account". Hmmm - strange.

Currently there is harm being done to both companies' reputations - and it could easily be avoided.
I think people would understand that you just can't "reverse transition" easily - so yeah - as long as those who already transfered are still able to play ... good for them (in a way).
But those that never transfered their accounts should be able to access them via SOE (like the enabled us for PS2).
While not making PSG look good - it would indeed make SOE shine!

Last time I didn't quote the comments about the possible "reserse transition" - so I digged up the thread.
It wasn't even on the PSG boards but here on the SOE boards (DCUO)!

This is the exact posting, where that fellow player commented about information he got from PSG:
http://forums.station.sony.com/dcuo...e-with-account-transfer.287/page-2#post-31414

and here if you rather want to start reading the whole thread from the beginning:
http://forums.station.sony.com/dcuo...e-with-account-transfer.287/page-2#post-31414

SOE has some very fine folks over there and I know quite a few of them in person - so I rather would like them to get a raise in respect, trust and credibility than PSG continuing in alienating loyal SOE customers even longer. They just need to step in like they did it back in time when the UbiSoft fiasco happened (ok - back then ... there was a great wall of silence, too. So ... hmm ... maybe they are not allowed to say anything yet).

What an interesting read. I watched all my friends quit splitpaw, and abandoned about 15 level 92/92 characters on Splitpaw myself, re-rolling on AB, just because I didn't want to even play with clientele funneled into the game from alaplaya and now this thread just makes me laugh.

What a debacle.

Hmm - you guys missed the announcement that everybody (regardless if SOE or PSG) will be able to play on any server?
That was announced a while after the community first got angry about that whole deal.

But there is one interesting thing: We also got a large influx of new players on Valor which is a good thing in general one might think. After a couple of months friends stopped playing because they couldn't stand the negative shift in community that came with those folks. While - for sure - there also joined some great people - the masses are typical PSG audience :-(

And no - you can not avoid them if they chose to join you on AB.

This thread has come back to my attention (EU player happily playing through SoE) for two reasons. Firstly I've recently read the interview with Smokejumper over at Massively about EQ Next. Just to be clear to any mods reading this, if I have to create a PSS account to play EQ Next I won't be playing the game, I'll stick with EQ2 playing and paying with SoE.

Secondly I tried to create a character on Splitpaw to have more of a choice of EU timezone guilds to join but the server isn't listed, is that server now locked to PSS customers only? In the end I've found a good guild on my home server of Freeport so I'm happy to stay put (and not to have to start all over again!), but I was surprised to not see Splitpaw as an option - did I miss it somehow on the server list?

This has nothing to do with PSS.
If you want to play on Splitpaw (or any of the other localised servers) you need to select the right version in your launchpad (in the case of Splitpaw, it's EU English)

Sure you can; that's what /ignore is for. ;->

Often, I find myself dealing with very, shall we say, WoW-like sorts, and Crossroads at that (WoW vets will know), on the Level 1-9 chat channel. Not all, to be sure, but I find it's most peaceful just not being on that channel once an alt gets to level 10. :-/

It's sad, though, that the pay-to-win crowd seems to be inundating the European servers now. Anyone notice that phenomenon on Splitpaw (England)? :-(

Uwk

Ok thanks for the clarification, not at all surprised I was missing something. I'll see how my Freeport guild experience goes first before considering a new server though.

Latest confirmation that the deal is sadly still very much alive, from Linda Carlson, SOE's Director of Global Community Relations:-

"Carlson explained that it was a difficult transition because it was a big change for overseas players. But ProSieben has built up a great team of people who actually have a lot of experience with SOE games as players themselves. They're doing a great job overall, she says, and they've done everything they can do to make players happy. But Carlson did say that coordinating with them and keeping them in the loop can be tricky. They have to make sure to keep both teams up to date on game changes, new content, and promotional contests, but they also have to make sure the development team isn't slowed down as a result. As SOE has continued to transition other games to ProSieben, it's learning each time, and it's going more smoothly as a result."

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/0...-linda-carlson-on-the-state-of-the-community/

What other games have been transitioned after the fiasco that was DCUO?

Dunno, but I'm just glad The Smedster made that Tweet he did (though I wish he realized not every being on the planet Tweets), that existing accounts (even EU-based?) can "[long-suffering sigh...] keep paying SOE". Hope he never changes his mind about that; I have no particular desire (and not a lot of money) to transfer all 9 of my characters. If I don't get any advanced warning of the need to, I'm gone. :-/

Uwk
based in the US, but still liking Splitpaw, even with a lot of my guildies gone :-(