It’s a holiday in the United States, so that means there are no press releases to mull over and games industry drama gets a big fat spotlight shined in its eyes instead. To be fair, this is an unfortunate story that we hope will be resolved promptly. Over on Reddit, a Mexican gamer claims that his PlayStation Network account has been closed due to a cultural misunderstanding.
According to his post, his username Kike_0615 was banned due to it including an offensive term. But as he explains, Kike is short for Enrique, which is his real name. Of course the word is also used as a derogatory name for Jewish people, which is why the ban was issued in the first place. “I’m really sorry if I offend anyone by posting my nickname, I swear to God that’s my nickname since I was little,” he explained.
Seeing as this is very clearly a misunderstanding, you’d think it’d be easily resolved, right? Unfortunately not. Multiple representatives at Sony’s customer services department have explained that nothing can be done, one even adding that he may need to try again in a few months when the PSN name change feature goes live publicly.
Of course none of this is good enough, because all of the user’s purchases are tied to his banned username. We’re confident that this will get resolved in due time, but it’s a sad situation. At least the victim is behaving very maturely about the whole unfortunate scenario: “I understand it’s offensive, and just like I don’t like it when someone calls me an offensive name I wouldn’t want to offend anyone I play with,” he said. “All I ask from Sony is to let me change my name.”
Update: All's well that ends well: the ban has been lifted.
[source reddit.com]
Comments 95
OH Sony what are you doing, lately you seem to have flown off the deep end, ever since you moved your operations state side
very unfortunate news.
sony was in the wrong with this one for sure.
but i am very happy to see the victim act like an adult and not resorting to insults and calls for boycotting.
some people on here and other media sites could learn from that whenever sony does something that may not be the best call. especially about things that are not as serious as this case.
anyway i hope this gets resolved soon and all the best to the guy.
and please don't let this article be troll and anti sony bait yet again.
Sony's behavior is starting to worry me lately, from heavy censorship to radio silence, it's not looking good hope doesn't last long.
This will probably be resolved in 2 days. They will just unbanned his account for the time being.
@AlejandroMora it’s normal behaviour for market leaders to act idiotic as we move towards the next generation. You would’ve thought they had learnt from the PS2 to PS3 generation... seems they haven’t.
Not like this Sony......... not like this
@SoulChimera well if all eyes are on you, you'll try to act as prim and proper as possible, it's still stupid of Sony to be doing this though, they need to listen to their fans and consumers, not the whiners who complain about censorship but don't buy or play games even :/
Banning his account over that is idiotic. But the customer support not being able to do anything about it makes zero sense. Seriously.
This is one of the unfortunate byproducts of the multi-cultural global market we live in. Derogatory language, slang, idioms, and profanity, can be very hard to standardize across multiple cultures. This probably is not an isolated instance. I feel bad for him since I had no idea until just now that the term was derogatory. Can’t say that I’ve actually ever heard it used (thankfully). Although his innocence seems genuine, I do agree with Sony making every effort to clean up offensive terms from usernames. Just let the poor guy change his name.
@Th3solution thinking about it that way, I guess there's no real solution to this issue :/
@AlejandroMora Do you really think any of these things are connected? As @Th3solution said, this is just an unfortunate case of a global product.
That said, I'm shocked that this is the first time something like this has occurred, and they should have a process in place to resolve it because it's clear that it's a genuine misunderstanding.
@get2sammyb I think Sony should check the account region during the naming process before passing judgement like that.......... we all have different cultures, that's a huge oversight I think.
@FullbringIchigo their behaviour lately is at best puzzling. Hopefully they sort themselves out in time for the Christmas hack attacks.
This is just the tip of the iceberg on Sony's recent behaviour/policy. A couple weeks ago a couple thousand (yes, thousand) PSN accounts were banned because of an suppossed "error": famous youtubers gave away codes for games during a live stream, thousands of people watching the stream tried all at the same time to claim the codes and the store algorithms detected it as an "attack" action and all the accounts were IMMEDIATELY and PERMANENTLY banned.
This event didn't reached major media press because it happened mostly on latin america (the youtubers involved were WillyRex and The Gregf, they are famous spanish/hispanic youtubers). Most of the people affected still haven't got their accounts back, weeks of contact with Sony support have been futile and they insist all those people violated their terms of use and they are not retuning those accounts. A close friend of mine lost his account like this and he tells me it's banned forever, Sony wont give it back no matter how much he contacts them.
Here's a link to the news (in spanish):
https://www.fullesports.com/sony-banea-usuarios-playstation-error/
@Amplified I agree. In theory they should probably have a filter system that prevents you from creating an account with potentially offensive phrases in them to begin with.
What next, getting banned because your name is a religion - Christian for example? Getting banned for using 'colour' (ie RedBaron, WhiteRose etc) in case its deemed racist?
What makes it worse is that Sony seem incapable of resolving this quickly and forcing some one to change their name too despite it being a term of affection in their native area. There are peoples names, think of a famous cook F. Craddock for example that has a different meaning in the US and UK and may well be considered 'taboo' in the UK yet could be a persons name that innocently is used as their GamerTag and be banned - ridiculous.
I think the onus should be on Sony (and MS too) to put in place some way of not allowing accounts to be setup with offensive words - especially if those offensive words are not offensive in some areas where the person may innocently use them. You can't expect people to know what may be considered offensive in some areas when they are names, affectionate terms etc in their language
Should be a raltively easy fix. Temporary ban, which has to be done, then help him change the username and get his purchases back. I don't know how engineering and running a network goes, depending on all the work that needs to be done, maybe it could take a few months. Hopefully for the user it all works out. I imagine Nintendo or MS would have to handle this situation similarly. This is why I stick to choosing my favorite sports teams for usernames. People can report those all they want, it's not going to get you banned unless the team name is offensive, in which case commonsense tells you not to use it.
@get2sammyb that's not offensive language, for all the Enriques in the world that's no different to Sam or Sammy for all Samuels and I'm sure there are a few hundred people on the Playstation Network, so what on earth happen?
Was he reported by another user who didn't care about anything that his own culture on a globalized product as PSN? And Sony just acts and don't think?
This is pretty much shameful
@BAMozzy i thought they already had a system in place to block offensive words?
@Gilvin more than likely he was reported for it i think, you know what it's like now a days people take offence at the slightest thing
@Gilvin Dude he's not saying that particular one is an offensive language, he's generalizing the whole naming filter and saying that if Sony is going to ban accounts for this reason (offensive names from different culture) then they shouldn't have allowed the account name in the first place, right at the moment he created his account
Let him change his name. Now.... he should have never made that user name to begin with. If your nickname is is offensive on a global scale, that's on you. If some one nickname was n****r and used that some way, I'd still want to throat punch them.
@Gilvin I imagine he probably got reported, yeah. It's just an unfortunate misunderstanding across the board, but hopefully it gets resolved and lessons are learned.
@Amplified I get that, but how do you determine that? without going into specifics and getting banned here in push square
Variations of could be potentially offensive also in Spanish and in French... and I'm sure it cand be done for most of the names out there (that was the point I clearly failed to make), so, how do you actually filter that?
@Gilvin well................. uhhhhhhhhhh, you got me there. Like I said earlier, Sony not considering and not properly using the regions of the account is a huge oversight on their part
@get2sammyb it has to be, but not sure how a lesson can be learned if no one is accountable for it.
@Amplified "Sony not considering and not properly using the regions of the account is a huge oversight on their part" is what I find mind boggling, I mean, they have a global product, the last thing you expect is that they acknowledge is multilingual and multicultural before acting.
@Cutmastavictory I disagree with you, is what he's been called since he was a newborn and the person is in no responsibility to know if that's offensive to any other culture, since there's no way to keep track to all the offensive terms known and used to mankind.
First censorship now this 🤦♂️ Oh Sony is this some kind of new marketing technique to attract attention for PS5
@Gamer83 Yeah, I hope your favorite NFL team is not located in Washington DC. 😉
@Gilvin I'm not trying to start an argument but the same can be said to the person when he was making a Global account, if you're making or naming something that can be seen globally you ought to consider what and how it comes across to other people, that being said......... I can't say any of them is at fault because of the how the world views cultural appropriation today, but he shouldn't have gotten banned for something he clearly not intended
First thing I read this morning...I opened up reddit and this was the first post!
I feel sorry for the guy...having tons of money invested in games and then losing everything like this is so sad...
I was perma banned in League of Legends and I lost all my skins, was sad like hell but losing my games would kill me!
Hope they do something for the guy!
Man, that sucks for this dude. I hope this gets resolved for him soon.
@Amplified no argument really, just an honest exchange of ideas.
I can understand what you mean but do you honestly know if your nickname, name or last name is offensive in other languages? There's no way to do that for a person, how many languages and variations of them you need to speak
So that's to me the interesting point, what would be the "other people"? will it be limited to which languages and cultures? To what extent?
Next bad Sony news. Check.
Disgusting customer service.
That's... really bad. And one of the reasons I understand people being extremely hesitant to go digital on modern systems, even as convenient as it often is. I get preventing people who display troublesome behavior from playing online, but nobody should EVER be barred from their purchases.
@Th3solution
Yup, which is why commonsense should dictate, same with MLB's Cleveland Indians, somebody will get annoyed by that. I'm a Jets fan by the way, ugh...
Sorry, but this is a perfectly understandable reaction from Sony. I fully appreciate that he didn't intend to offend, but as PSN is a global service, these things need to be taken into account. They don't necessarily know the story behind it, but even so, at the end of the day it's an offensive term to some.
If there were a nation where "ni**er" wasn't offensive, and someone used that in their name, would people be okay if Sony let it slide? I highly doubt it.
heres another suggestion for sony. when some on puts offensive name. change it for them. you could get someone with homophobic name changed to gay pride. racist I love everyone. So much better punishment think of the rage it would induce on the muppets.
This is the second time now. I would expect Sony to be more careful with their system after they were attacked by thousands of people the last time. First a guy with the real name Jihad was banned 8 years after creating his account and now this. The fact that so many people are banned many years after they made their account shows how deeply flawed whatever automated system they have is. Judging from forum posts, it seems to take them close to 10 years to ban actually offensive names.
@Lando_
Next drama. Check
@JJ2 👍
Why can't Pushsquare be like Nintendolife and pretend that everything Sony is awesome?
Yeah, I have a pal called Enrique who goes by Quique and it's not exactly uncommon. Hopefully this is sorted for him.
Things like these is why I buy everything I can in physical format, and will quit modern gaming once it becomes digital/streaming-only. I won't ever lose thousands of dollars in purchases due to any of these corporations' whims.
@Lando_
Nintendo what they do but the whole internet is about drama haha
@grbolivar PlayStation is my favorite platform, and I have always bought third party games on PlayStation systems, but if that happened to me and Sony didn't help me, I'd be so pissed that I would jump ship and get everything I can on Xbox. I wouldn't feel like supporting Sony anymore if they don't help me after I explained what happened. Especially when there's money on the line.
Or they could just do nothing and let people be offended. He's obviously not intending to cause offense.
Never know, they may appreciate realising that they didn't actually implode and life did actually carry on regardless...
@Lando_
I genuinely hope this get sorted soon enough.
That said, its been like a day right ?
This is the perfect example why digital only is awful. He lost everything on his account, including all the games he bought. That simply couldn't happen if he had them on discs.
@Paranoimia In China they say it all the time. Just like the Japanese say "ano" when they try to figure out how to phrase something.
I think people need to understand that Sony is in a position here that no matter what they did they were going to be looked at in the wrong. So they decided the banning was the only right way to go rather than outrage the entire Jewish population and all the vocal supporters of them.
In the post the author says that when the name change becomes live for all it wouldnt do any good since his purchases are tied to his current account but I can confirm that isn't true as I'm in the beta and I changed my name and all 926 games purchased followed over to my new PSN ID
@Bliquid and what happens if you're wrong and they keep selling well?
You guys need to try to get this recognized on Twitter.
I see some suggestion that companies just allow offensive behavior and leave consumers to just deal with it. While I’m no fan of banning and censorship I understand why it’s done.
My PS3 username was HipHopGodd and people automatically assumed that I’m black (I am). I’d receive the most vile messages after I owned competition l in games or after I screwed up a game for my team. Judging from the comments I’d receive I’m sure “K*ke, ni**er, sp*c, etc” would be included in many PSN aliases. Which wouldn’t be good for Sony, or any company for that matter.
Watch as the Sony defence force flock.
Whats so shocking about this. Offensive names always gave you a ban.
I think they should give you notice and a chance to change your name. Ofcourse when you use a clearly racist or hatefull name you should be banned but thats what i think.
With the name change option of the future that should be no problem.
This happened to me a couple of years ago. They let me pick a new name all my purchase were transferred but lost friends list and trophies. My name was much worse than LOL
@grbolivar that is stealing and appalling.
don't forget the credit card charge back and hackers issue, 1000s of accounts lost on that too.
It's unbelievable that they haven't been trialed in court, there really is no consumer protection from them taking your digital goods without any reason needed.
I really need to stop buying digital, I get a habit of doing so but every time I read stuff like this it should give me more incentive to stop doing it.
@3Above Doubt it. But we'll see.
@Ralizah it's a consumer right to have access to the content that you rightly paid for but sony (and others no doubt) breech that and should be punished for that.
@Gilvin Watch the racial slurs. Do that again and you will be banned from the site. We do not tolerate that here.
Thanks for understanding
You mean Sony has made an arse of it? Wow really? Well colour me surprised 🙄
Ok guys let's watch the racial slurs please. We have users from all over the world so there is no reason to be using terms like that. I had to clean up a few comments already so just be respectful to others before you post
Thanks for understanding
@NecuVise agreed that's another reason why i will ALWAYS prefer Physical over Digital
and now i also have a reason to not use a nickname as an online ID and as for my real name well i'm sure William isn't offensive anywhere
Man this make me think of our digital future on playstation ecosystem
Playstation gamers deserves better customer services, if there's problem on xbox live, xbox gamers can tweets on xbox executives and get answer, I hope playstation can be like that too.
It's unacceptable. Hopefully Sony resolves this mess very quickly and lifts the ban.
The author sure likes his manufactured anti-sony outrage pieces. Hey at least it's not on the banner front page this time!
Why was that word deleted from my comment when it's in the article I'm commenting on. It's the guy's name come on!!
Are you going to remove the word from the article too or is it only offensive in the comments?
I've never heard that word, not English native. So, theoretically if my name would be Kiran Kelly and I would choose two first letters of name and surname... Banana? BTW, many Spanish words syntax sounds and reads as most offensive and rude word in Russian language, how to be with this when children reading them loudly?
Wow, Sony have seriously hit the self-destruct button, being taken over by offended Americans. They're an absolute shambles right now, and an insult to the memory of what they used to be.
@EatMeek As per community rules
Do not post offensive remarks towards others; Show respect for all users, remarks about racism, sexism, origin, creed and handicap will NOT be tolerated and will most likely be deleted by staff, and the poster will be warned, suspended or banned.
Thanks for understanding
@Tasuki I didn't, just said the guy's name. Quoting the same word or name used in the article above
"According to his post, his username that word_0615 was banned due to it including an offensive term. But as he explains, that word is short for Enrique, which is his real name. Of course the word is also used as a derogatory name for Jewish people, which is why the ban was issued in the first place. “I’m really sorry if I offend anyone by posting my nickname, I swear to God that’s my nickname since I was little,” he explained"
@EatMeek Yeah nice try. It's still a racial slurs. I suppose if my username was N-----231 or whatever that would be ok as well.
Rules are still rules.I am afraid no matter how you want to find a loophole around it. And that's all I am going to say concerning this matter.
Thanks for understanding
@Tasuki What if you lived in Republic of the N---- would it be okay for me to use it then? No, what a Joke
Thanks for understanding
@Rephlex Sadly it's all about them clicks.
@RainbowGazelle Quite the exaggeration.
@EatMeek This will be the last time I ask you to drop it, so I suggest you do so. I don't come.up with the rules here I just make sure they are followed. If you have a problem with the rules here then feel free to use a contact form. But by creating an account here you agreed to follow the community rules.
Thanks for understanding
I want to switch to Nintendo, be always nice to everyone, sing happy songs every day and fart rainbows.
@Sebatrox If only that was my name which it isn't so nice try.
Is he the only one in the whole world with that word in the username?
It's worth noting that it's actually pronounced "Key Kay" as well according to the reddit post. Didn't read full article or comments so sorry if this been posted.
@TowaHerschel7 Check my name again it's Tasuki, no that other word which is offensive. It would be like saying brass is offensive because a** is part of that word. Next time you have a problem with me come to me instead .
So saying something like Puto_Lover77 could get me banned?
The guy just updated Reddit. His account is restored.
Another reason I don't do digital smh. Doesnt matter if his account was restored he couldn't access his purchases and account for an extended period of time. Until SONY said so. you get what you pay for I guess...
And...... Its over.
In a way I'm sure the coverage helped resolve his issue quickly, which is great, but... Watch people go full drama over one day ban.
What if there wasn’t a name change ability on the way?
I strongly suspect this is Sony making a bad, cagey PR move.
They dare not show a freebie name change being given ahead of time since it’s going to be a charged ‘feature’ with a one time free option for all on ‘release’.
They are entirely capable of making a quick switch for the boy, now, and they should.
@naruball Where?
@THGhost Wow they actually sorted it out in less than 48hrs 👏👏👏 Good Job Sony.
@3Above Very good! 👏
@RainbowGazelle "Wow, Sony have seriously hit the self-destruct button, being taken over by offended Americans. They're an absolute shambles right now, and an insult to the memory of what they used to be."
There.
@JoeBlogs You may not think it’s a big deal but I have thousands tied to my PSN and would be pissed if it got banned. So, I felt bad for the guy.
@naruball Not seeing anything.
I kinda feel sorry for the chapp because it also happened to me with my psn name which is Thundertears which means in a Irish song called tears of hurcules from a music band called celtic thunder and yet Sony says it was a evil spirit from Korea
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