Peter Edward, director of the Home platform for Sony, has told an audience at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival that users who consistently abuse the upcoming Home service face having their machines banned and disabled from being used online. Edward noted that a serious abuser would “have to move house and buy a new PS3 before they could get online again.” Does this seem a bit too far?
“Ultimately we know a user’s details, we know machine details and we know where they live,” said Edward
“If you really feel like you’ve been abused or that someone has just shown wholly inappropriate behaviour then you are able to complain about it. If you really, really misbehave you can have your console disconnected at a machine level, so you would actually have to move house and buy a new PS3 before you could get online again.
Edward admits that they do not want to ban lots of people from online gaming, but if it comes down to it then they have the power. Sony expects players to police themselves and other users, taking advantage of various methods for blocking communication with any users that are disruptive.
“It’s relatively simple to be confident that somebody is over 18. So it’s no problem to have areas that are only open to those aged 18 years’ and over. We are able to do that quite comprehensively, we have access to the log-in data that they use for the PlayStation Network,” offered Edward.
[Via: Games Industry]