Pitchford hits out at "evil" PSN hackers

By Johnny Minkley Published 13 May, 2011

"We're all victims of cyber-terrorism."

Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford has condemned the "cyber-terrorists" responsible for bringing down the PlayStation Network, calling on gamers to support not attack Sony as it works to restore services.

Speaking to Eurogamer this morning in London as part of a promotional tour for Duke Nuke Forever, Pitchford said: "Every one of us who plays games on PlayStation Network – and especially Sony – we're all victims of cyber-terrorism.

"We should all be rallying our support, hating the terrorists, wishing to dismantle that problem, because that could strike at any time and disrupt our fun and disrupt our way of life as gamers."

He argued that much of the ire so far, therefore, had been directed at the wrong target.

"It's freakin' terrible. [The hackers] are evil, they're criminal," he said. "We're all throwing darts at Sony – we should all give 'em hugs and help 'em out.

"It's the first time we've experienced it in the games industry and I think we're failing in how we respond to it. Everyone who is attacking Sony right now is failing. We need to attack cyber-terrorists."

On the day that news broke of a separate hacking of Square-Enix's user database, Pitchford expressed fears that the PSN attack could prove "inspiring".

"Other people that want to feel that kind of result now have examples they can look at which could inspire them," he said. "Wow, cyber-terrorism is now an inspiration for other cyber-terrorists? We need to stomp this sh*t out and kill it."

Acknowledging that online systems would always be at risk of a hacking attempt, he argued that, "The best thing is to try and create a culture where that behaviour is not acceptable human behavior."

PlayStation Network and associated services have been down since 20th April. Sony told Eurogamer earlier today that it was working to "get the network back on as soon as we can."

Picture of Johnny.

About Johnny Minkley

Johnny Minkley is a veteran games writer and broadcaster, former editor of Eurogamer TV, VP of gaming charity SpecialEffect, and hopeless social media addict.

Read more articles from Johnny by visiting the Johnny Minkley archive page.

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Comments (64) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • PastorJones #1 1 year ago

    Yawn...

  • Scopeh #2 1 year ago

    Oh dear, the Xbox fanboys wont like this... They pretend to be disinterested in the articles, but still take a bash at Sony.
    Edited by Scopeh at 13/05/11 @ 17:12

  • roquey Verified Lead Quality Assurance Tester and Compliance Specialist, Universally Speaking #3 1 year ago

    Can i ask my imaginary cat what it thinks of the PSN notwork? then post it here? If a post contains Pitchford it shoudl be saying about Duke being brought forward and other games being in production.

  • YenRug #4 1 year ago

    We're not pissed at Sony for being hacked, we're pissed at Sony for handling our data in such a cavalier manner that the hackers could just wander off with it pretty much as soon as they broke through the security systems.

  • riceNpea #5 1 year ago

    send the SEALS to find the cyber terrorists. the little shits will soon be sorry.

  • Cronan #6 1 year ago

    It's not terrorism. Terrorism is when you setup a nail-bomb in a shopping mall for 11am on a Saturday, next to the daycare centre.

    The hackers aren't evil.Evil is when you crush a puppy and video-tape it.

  • LowEnergyCycle #7 1 year ago

    @roquey

    So what you're saying is that Pitchford can ONLY talk about Duke and nothing else right now? His opinions on a hack that has affected 70+ million gamers, himself included, are not relevant?

    Also, -1 for bringing up 'notwork'. It was funny, but only once.

  • andijames #8 1 year ago

    Completely agree with him here. Sony didn't help themselves with the security implementation but ultimately they were the victims and a lot of people have suffered from this ranging from developers to gamers. Whoever thinks this is acceptable behaviour wants their heads examined.

  • VandelayIndustries #9 1 year ago

    Good for him!

  • Vemsie #10 1 year ago

    Whatever you wanna call it, stealing credit card details and taking down a network isn't acceptable behaviour. It hurst publishers, developers and us gamers.

  • Transcendent #11 1 year ago

    Video game terrorism. Now that's a proper first world problem.

  • rockin_rob_1 #12 1 year ago

    I don't think too many people are attacking Sony for what has happened, more they've been upset with how Sony has handled it, i.e. lack of information and missing target dates etc. hopefully they've learned a bit from it anyway, don't promise what you can't give and keep your customers informed.

  • knocker #13 1 year ago

    I think , short of getting an extensive tapestry commissioned, literally everything that could have been said on this subject has been said.

    However, Derek Griffiths of playaway fame has yet to pitch in . Come on eurogamer. Get your act together.

  • Layzlo #14 1 year ago

    Wow. Someone with sense. I thought everyone was losing their minds. The victim got more heat then the hackers! Something tells me if these rumors about Sony being lax on security weren't circulating, people would find another excuse to s*** on Sony. I've never saw anything like it.

  • SavageEvil #15 1 year ago

    What I find funny is that people still piss and moan about Sony's handling of the whole thing. That is a yawn right there, no company in their right mind would just make assumptions without knowing enough about the situation to make a relatively well worded statement about what they thing might have occurred. Has anyone come forward saying that they have been defrauded? Not to my knowledge, but many are crying all sorts of manner of madness, trading in PS3's, claiming to boycott Sony and other grandstanding nonsense...really? What a great performance, here's your award.

    Hey how many people know if someone copied a file on your PC? Could you tell how many times? How many files? This is just on a regular personal computer, now lets look at a server and it's connections to many PC's, now consider that to gain access you must query the server and authenticate yourself, but since hackers can spoof themselves. How do you tell who is legit and who isn't? Thing is they can find out someone got through, but figuring out whether they copied data or not well that's the issue, you can't tell if someone stole it considering the data is still present. That is where they have to do work as millions perhaps billions of queries happen throughout a day on a server, figuring out where the query came from and then tracing that through the network...that's just complicated writing that mess out. I suppose it's much worse as that what I just wrote is akin to just simple internal networks like in a college. I can only imagine the crap they had to sort through at PSN servers, I just hope this new PSN is secured even better and have better walled gardens, but I just want to play my games online again.

  • Graveland #16 1 year ago

    I'd like to force Tesco carrier bags over the heads of these hackers, sellotape the bottoms tightly around their necks and then thrust Biros through their waiting eyes. I'd wiggle the pens around so to turn their eyeballs to a runny substance resembling veiny egg-whites which would collect around their necks. I'd then make them perform handstands and make them slurp the warm liquid as it pours back over their faces.

    Either that, or give them a good telling off.

  • pbz #17 1 year ago

    Personally I’m terrified of overweight teenage virgins with an aversion to UV and a penchant for port scanning!

    It’s like 911 x 1000000 …
    Edited by pbz at 13/05/11 @ 18:10

  • Smerdyakov #18 1 year ago

    Obviously the hackers are those who are ultimately responsible for this - surely that goes without saying? But it's unreasonable to ignore the fact that Sony's security was not adequate. Sony deserve all the criticism that they have received.

  • arcam #19 1 year ago

    Calling this terrorism is an insult to people who actually have to live through terrorism.

    They cause terror to achieve their aims. Who here has been terrified?

    They are criminals, but surely someone who steals credit card details to embarrassed Sony and someone who kills innocent people to cause panic among a population deserve different labels?

  • man.the.king #20 1 year ago

    @Boristhespie

    "Leaving the system wide open to hackers is "negligent""

    At this rate, Boristhespie will be saying in about a year "Sony kept CC numbers in clear-text, with CVC numbers side-by-side, along with Name, Address, DOB, Usernames, Passwords, Sec Questions, SSN numbers/NIS IDs, Photos, Videos of family on one Windows Server machine from 1995, with no firewall, no monitoring and absolutely no support personnel!!!"

    Methinks Boristhespie would probably be nodding enthusiastically if XBL were hacked in this manner and Pitchford was referring to the hackers as he has here.
    Edited by man.the.king at 13/05/11 @ 18:28

  • oi #21 1 year ago

    "cyber-terrorists"

    Oh do fuck off.

  • HyperTails #22 1 year ago

    Good for Randy Pitchford. Sony, and PSN users, alang with publishers and developers are the victims.

    Hackers are scum. Complete scum, and I don't know how people can honestly defend them.

  • man.the.king #23 1 year ago

    @arcam

    While I think Pitchford may be going a bit overboard, he is not too far off-target. The hackers ARE criminals, they DID BREAK INTO servers that stored OUR information, and put around 70 million people at quite a not inconsiderate amount of tension, worry, fear for our finances and hassle.

    Terror, as it stands, is just a greater degree of fear, if I understand the emotion correctly. That is, the difference is in degree, not meaning. Also, even in terrorism scenarios, do people ACTUALLY feel terror, other than momentarily? Or do they just have a heightened sense of fear and anxiety? In that respect, as I said above, you could say Pitchford is not too far off target. And the hackers DID resort to a milder form of cyber-terrorism, whether by design (revenge hack) or circumstance (hacking for theft).

    That brings to mind an interesting thing though: Has anything EVER been successfully achieved by resorting to terrorism? As far as I can see back in history, it was only through overt action (if, indeed, at all - most changes took place in people's minds in the form of undercurrents of thoughts long before actually manifesting as any tangible actions) that most sudden changes have happened.
    Edited by man.the.king at 13/05/11 @ 18:59

  • stegabba #24 1 year ago

    here you go psn hackers what you deserve

    ....................../΄―/)
    ....................,/―../
    .................../..../
    ............./΄―/'...'/΄――`·Έ
    ........../'/.../..../......./¨―\
    ........('(...΄...΄.... ―~/'...')
    .........\.................'...../
    ..........''...\.......... _.·΄
    ............\..............(
    ..............\.............\...

    scumbags

  • arcam #25 1 year ago

    Yes they are criminals, absolutely.

    But they are not terrorists. Check the front page of BBC News if you want to see terrorism.

    Can you imagine going to that market in Pakistan, speaking to people cleaning body parts from the streets and saying: "I feel your pain. I too am a victim of terrorism"?

    *@EG: How come when I try to post a link to BBC News I get a 403 Forbidden page? Other people seem to be able to post links just fine, including spammers of course. Hopefully you're just testing stuff, and I haven't been marked as some kind of troublemaker?

  • silversun #26 1 year ago

    I 100% agree with that , we should support not hate on them.

  • lavalant #27 1 year ago

    A big company bullying a hardware hobbyist, no doubt lobbying to get him jailed just like they did the piratebay founders, hacking community are the only ones who stand up for him, and the hackers are evil? fuck Sony, I hope there are more instances of retaliation against large corporations who act in such ways.

    Also didn't sony infect our PC's 5 years ago with spyware when we put their music CD's in our Pc's, feel sorry for them? it's been a long time coming.

  • silversun #28 1 year ago

    "I'd like to force Tesco carrier bags over the heads of these hackers, sellotape the bottoms tightly around their necks and then thrust Biros through their waiting eyes. I'd wiggle the pens around so to turn their eyeballs to a runny substance resembling veiny egg-whites which would collect around their necks. I'd then make them perform handstands and make them slurp the warm liquid as it pours back over their faces.

    Either that, or give them a good telling off."

    Your name isnt jack bauer is it? : )

  • betrayerofhope #29 1 year ago

    Only gamers could be so pathetic as to blame the victim instead of the hackers.

    then again, that's what console fanboyism does to people.

  • arcam #30 1 year ago

    I guess if this is terrorism, then with 100m victims this makes this incident the biggest terrorist attack of all time?

  • Murton #31 1 year ago

    The one thing that I think we needed the most since this story broke (other than an ETA for restoration) was one, just one balanced article, and while Randy Pitchford finally adding a positive voice to the saga is welcome, he kinda oversold it and took it too far in the other direction.

    In the eyes of the law these people will probably be viewed as terrorists, by actual definition they're not quite terrorists but definitely major league criminals well worth whatever resources are required to catch them. We need an no cost too high approach to their detection and apprehension as soon as possible in order to prevent Pitchfords dark prophecy from happening. Enix were attacked today with people making off with a load of details, how long before someone goes after one of the big boys, how about a WoW subscriber list complete with payment details? A big bust with the PSN/SOE hackers being dragged away at gunpoint maybe even a nice story where one resisted arrest and had to be "forcibly incapacitated" to prevent his escape, something to say "don't even think this, it's a bad idea and we will get you"

    Also "The best thing is to try and create a culture where that behaviour is not acceptable human behavior."
     I'd like to think that we already have that culture, what we need a economic shift that makes personal data less valuable. If there was no prestige or profit to be had from these sorts of actions then arguably people wouldn't bother, though I'm pretty sure the fact that our data protection laws (and by our I mean every country not just the UK) can't be applied outside of the relevant jurisdiction doesn't help. It essentially means that if you choose your target properly any digital crime is technically above the law, and nothing seems to be being done about this.

  • TopKatt #32 1 year ago

    So is Eurogamer ready to condemn the hackers yet?

  • RESIDENT_nEVILe #33 1 year ago

    So those protesters blocking the road to the new Tescos are 'Road Terrorists'?

    And those dodgy guys who commit identity theft are also 'Terrorists'?

    What worries me is that when I go out later I am going to have to face all those 'Pub Terrorists', who knowingly stand at the busy bar chatting, forever causing a nuisance and blocking my access.

    OH, THE TERROR :(


    bring on the negs, baby. We've got a whole weekend ahead of us.
    Edited by RESIDENT_nEVILe at 13/05/11 @ 20:15

  • Kaminari #34 1 year ago

    @Pitchford

    Sony told me to tell you that they left a post-it on your door with your bank account number written on it so you can remember it everytime you get back home. The post-it is perfectly secured, the Sony security dude sticked it upside down so that nobody can read it but you.

  • darkmorgado #35 1 year ago

    Oh please. They're hardly Al-Qaeda.

    Boo hoo, huge multinational company lost a few million and had their farcical security exposed.

    Cry me a river.

  • silversun #36 1 year ago

    "'Pub Terrorists', who knowingly stand at the busy bar chatting, forever causing a nuisance and blocking my access."

    A few drinks and you will soon forget : )


    some places though can get super busy though at weekends.

  • funkateer #37 1 year ago

    "Yes they are criminals, absolutely.
    But they are not terrorists. Check the front page of BBC News if you want to see terrorism. "

    Of course, but otoh there are different levels of terrorism.
    For example if you'd make heavy breathing phonecalls to somebody every night at 2, while obviously not at the same level as the terrorists on the front page of BBC news, you're still terrorizing somebody.

    These hackers do inflict fear with their actions. Be it something mundane like fear of getting your CC details stolen, or something a bit more serious as game studios fearing for their business and personnel's jobs. Those are real fears that can have great consequences, even if it doesn't involve killing.

  • arcam #38 1 year ago

    A bank robber inflicts fear with his actions, but he is not a terrorist.

    If we don't make these distinctions the word becomes meaningless.

  • darkmorgado #39 1 year ago

    @arcam

    +1000000

    The word terrorist is bandied about far too much. Calling someone who makes harassing phone calls a terrorist is truly pathetic.

  • zarglu #40 1 year ago

    hmm? Terrorists? He just made himself a laughing stock and lost the argument.

    Terrorist is the insta-kill of debates, whoever misuses the term loses the argument and has to wear the "George Bush Junior" hat for the week-end. Better laugh about a loser than spit on the victims of true terrorism.

  • darkmorgado #41 1 year ago

    Equating things to terrorism is the new Godwin.

  • funkateer #42 1 year ago

    Perhaps you guys should look up what the word 'terrorist' actually means. It's all about inflicting fear (which is what 'terror' means), often for religious or idealistic goals. These hackers still fit the bill there.
    The stray phone calls at 2 at night I mentioned is a real life example that me and my wife experienced, and the behaviour was called 'terrorizing' by the police. And yes, we truly felt terrorized, especially when the perpetrator mumbled that he was 'going to get us while asleep'.
    I'm not in any way equating this with the level of terrorism of Al-Queda, but it's still terrorizing.

  • darkmorgado #43 1 year ago

    Lots of people are scared of spiders. Does that make all spiders terrorists?

  • knocker #44 1 year ago

    Hackers preventing us from playing games with strangers literally are terrorists.

    Eurogamer in reporting this is has literally turned into mein kampf.

    It's the end times.

  • GreyBeard #45 1 year ago

    "The best thing is to try and create a culture where that behaviour is not acceptable human behavior."

    Amen brother.

  • GreyBeard #46 1 year ago

    "The best thing is to try and create a culture where that behaviour is not acceptable human behavior."

    Amen brother.

  • funkateer #47 1 year ago

    "Lots of people are scared of spiders. Does that make all spiders terrorists? "

    Spiders don't have the goal of scaring arachnophobiacs, so of course not.

    Clowns however, I'm undecided about ;)

  • jarek98 #48 1 year ago

    Eveyone bashing Sony should ask himself/herself one question: if you are robbed by a "regular" thief, you are blaming yourself for not being protected enough, or you are blaming the thief?
    There are no security measures that cannot be broken. I don't know if Sony security infrastructure was good, but I know that the fact that it was compromised is not a proof, that it was abysmal.
    The security was not on CIA level for sure - but I would not expect it to be.

  • man.the.king #49 1 year ago

    @arcam

    "But they are not terrorists. Check the front page of BBC News if you want to see terrorism. "

    That is your take on it. I'm afraid I have to disagree. And this is coming from a person originating from a country that has long been a victim of terrorism (India).

    From my perspective, anyone who maliciously causes a degree of fear in others, is some form of terrorist. Applying that term only to people who use guerrilla tactics to cause large or moderate scale destruction to life and property is well, a bit, narrow-minded, in my opinion.

    I'm confident that if some of these people were to use dirty bombs or the Internet to destroy communication infrastructure on a state/national level without actually blowing something up or causing damage to life, governments and people would refer to that as cyber-terrorism as well.

    Well, this PSN hack, that is not so far removed from the cyber-attack suggested above. And that is why I would call it an instance of cyber-terrorism.

    As far as the definition of cyber-terrorism goes, I skew towards the broad definition, while you skew towards the narrow. But as far as I can see, even the narrow definition seems to argue my point, e.g. "...particularly via the Internet, to cause physical, real-world harm or severe disruption of infrastructure.". The infrastructure here is corporate, but it does affect millions of humans.

  • funkateer #50 1 year ago

    "A bank robber inflicts fear with his actions, but he is not a terrorist. "

    His primary goal is not inflicting fear on people in bank buildings, so primarily he's not. He might have terrorized a few people in the process, though. However, when he's getting notorious and people are becoming truly afraid to go into banks, he might be called a terrorist as he thinks his goals for stealing money is prevalent above his terrorizing actions to his goal.

    I still see clear analogies with the 'cyber-terrorism' Pitchford is speaking of. True, not the same as Al-Queda, but nobody has called Al-Queda "CYBER-TERRORISTS" now have they?

  • gamniac #51 1 year ago

    Cyber terrorism.
    The mistake occurs when you confuse Physical terrorism with something that's not harming people physically,
    although physical terrorism inflicts mental harm cyber terrorism is totally mentally harm.

    Terrorising is not only related as The war on terror, a fther can terrorize his familly too, get your perspectives STRAIGHT, what Randy Pitchford means is Cyber Terrorism as in affecting people in income ( revenue for devs ) as in entertainment for gamers,
    the terrorism you link it to is not what he means.
    Terrorism is more then suicide bombers, or 9/11.

    [link url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism
    ]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism
    [/link]
    conducted by an organization with an identifiable chain of command or conspiratorial cell structure (whose members wear no uniform or identifying insignia) and

  • riseer #52 1 year ago

    My only problem is Sony was a bit slow saying what happend other then that i support Sony.The fact is this Sony is the only company that does care about their gamers.People can talk all the shit about them,they deliver alot of great games.Something Ms can't do.

  • RoaringPanda #53 1 year ago

    The word terrorist seems a bit strong... Unless they brutally murder multiple people I wouldn't call them that

  • funkateer #54 1 year ago

    @man.the.king

    +1, you've put it much better than me
    Edited by funkateer at 13/05/11 @ 22:06

  • gamniac #55 1 year ago

    @man.the.king
    Excellent comment man...

    But i think they think terrorism is only what the news brings the last years,while it's so much broader than that,anyway +1 well deserved.

  • RESIDENT_nEVILe #56 1 year ago

    The whole precedent of the article is bollock. Not even bollocks. Technically Randy Pitchfork is spouting shite.

    Even if you want to call anonymous a group of evil cyber-terrorists - thus devaluing the word terrorism, the Playstation Network was not brought down by them.

    Sony themselves took PSN down after realising they had some pretty nice security holes in their network structure and that a theft of data had been committed by an unidentified individual/group of hacker(s). No group has come forward, no statement has been issued - it can only be classified as data theft.

    Everybody wants to throw the word terrorist about whenever they get a chance. If you go down that route then everybody is a terrorist to someone. Like the big boys who used to kick you in the head after school - they were a group, they had a particular aim and they used violence.

    So who are cyber-terrorists a terrorist to? One particular company? Sony? A group of sweaty gamers? Or do you have to be against a government or a populace to be considered a cyber-terrorist?

    S'all bollock.
    Edited by RESIDENT_nEVILe at 13/05/11 @ 22:49

  • gamniac #57 1 year ago

    Yeah by that logic every murder is terrorism,
    Every fight between groups is terrorism, you forget the fact this action affected customers who had no beef or argument with whoever did this, uncalled for,not prevoked by the people THEY state to defend.
    If anything it's treason to your own ideology..

    lol.. people defending them have no chance.. it's transparant how their ideology is shite.

  • RESIDENT_nEVILe #58 1 year ago

    I'm not defending Anonymous - I just don't think they deserve to share the same descriptor as Osama Bin Laden and the IRA.

    edit edit edit
    Edited by RESIDENT_nEVILe at 13/05/11 @ 22:44

  • Murton #59 1 year ago

    "The security was not on CIA level for sure - but I would not expect it to be."

    Funny thing is, by extension of EG-reader logic we can surmise that the PSN enjoyed much greater security than the CIA, given that Sony was hacked by a dedicated group of "cyber-terrorists" operating under a DDOS smokescreen and the CIA, along with NASA and some other Federal Agencies were hacked and regularly accessed without detection for over a year by a single curious Scotsman with mental health issues. (Gary McKinnon for those who are unaware of his case)

    Bigger breach carried out by a lesser party, their security must have been non-existent.

  • mvc3nerd #60 1 year ago

    If the hackings were done to punish Sony, then it did. But do they really know who they're hurting? It looks like their target was the big Sony execs that make the decisions and control Sony as a whole. But, who did it really hurt? I'm sure the Sony execs got a slap on the hand, maybe a few lost jobs here and there. But, a lot of us who work at Sony in the smaller departments got laid off because of all this. I just recently got laid off(one of many waves), and I won't be surprised if there's more to come. Either way, if it was the hacker's intentions to kick it to "the man," they've instead kicked dirt on the normal every day people who are just trying to make a living. Thanks.
    Edited by mvc3nerd at 13/05/11 @ 23:11

  • darkmorgado #61 1 year ago

    Since when was it declared to be Anonymous?

    Oh, right. It wasn't. It's just some geeks deciding it must be.

  • HenryFitz #62 1 year ago

    HACK THE PLANET!

    /1995

  • scoop #63 1 year ago

    Might as well blame progress, er I mean Amazon

    [link url=http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2011/05/14/playstation_network_attack_from_amazon/
    ]http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/...[/link]

    :p
    Edited by scoop at 14/05/11 @ 16:25

  • Spekingur #64 1 year ago

    Most "hackers" already work in computer security. Are they also criminals? For someone working in the industry Randy doesn't show off a lot of knowledge.

    In any case, how can you not blame Sony for not having sufficient security measures? Oh, did the bad men make the big multibillion multinational corporation cry? Oh, how sad...
    Edited by Spekingur at 15/05/11 @ 20:52