So Capcom senior VP Christian “Sven” Svensson mentioned that Capcom is losing money because the Playstation Network is down. This is especially hard on Capcom, because the phone-home DRM Capcom uses has locked all of their Playstation customers out of their games.

Svensson went on to lament:

In short, the hackers appear to be trying to ‘punish’ Sony for some perceived injustice, and they’ve been effective in that I suppose. […] But they’re also punishing millions of other consumers and businesses which makes it impossible to be sympathetic to their ’cause.’

(Long pause.)

So Sven… the hackers have hurt everyone in their fight against Sony. And that seems unfair to you? How does that compare to all of the people YOU hurt in your fight against the pirates? Do you think locking people out of their games has made them sympathetic to your ’cause’? They paid you money for a game they can’t play because of your DRM. I’ll give the Sony hackers this much: At least when they aim at a target, they manage to hit it. Your fumbling has hurt every single paying customer and not one pirate, anywhere. The Sony hackers are criminals who, if caught, would face prison. But where will your customers go for justice? Your DRM hurt them, and only them, and they have no recourse whatsoever. You made sure of that.

I’m not mad that Sven saddled his games with phone-home DRM. We’ve been through that fight. That ship has sailed. What I am mad about is that four years into the great phone-home DRM experiment, Sven has yet to internalize the basic principles of the system that his company advanced. It’s as if he never actually considered the ramifications of what his company was doing, despite the fact that people in my corner of the industry have been screaming ourselves hoarse. Even now, when the damage is manifest and everyone is partaking of the ruinous fruit of this system, he still doesn’t seem to have a handle on what this must mean to people.

PSN is down. No online games. This is exactly the moment when people are likely to turn to their single-player titles for solace, only to find those locked away as well.

Yes Sven, the hackers hurt people. They’re criminals. What’s your excuse?