Further PSN cutoffs

In addition to removing my PSN account from my Epic Games account last night, I've taken further steps to cut off PSN, this one related to other PSN users that aren't still using a PS3.

Roughly 4 days ago, I disabled receiving new friend requests on my primary PSN account.  This is because most friend requests I have been receiving do not have gaming history below PS4 or have no gaming history at all (normally meaning a new account for trolling/harassment purposes).  I may still be willing to add more PS3 friends in the future, but I didn't see a point in allowing additional incoming friend requests when they were people that I couldn't play with on that system or simply people trying to cause problems, so this will cut off people that are simply using PSN as an outlet to be abusive.

The second thing is I'm going to start pruning PSN friends that haven't been online in over a year.  Note that I'm going to be going by my PS3 friends list (not by what's on the site or the mobile app, as these have cut off PS3 support), meaning anybody who has not logged into a PS3 in over a year will be removed.  Of course there may be some exceptions, but for the most part, anybody listed as not being online in over a year when looking at my PS3 friend list will be removed.

Additional cutoffs are to be expected when it comes to the Sony brand name in the future.  A full boycott against Sony is still being considered, but as of yet, still not determined to be a step taken, but it's still a high probability in the near to distant future...

Console game streams on hold, Elgato/Twitch server malfunction at fault

Occasionally I streamed to Twitch from my PlayStation 3, however I recently found that I was running into an error when attempting to change the game name in my Elgato Game Capture HD software stating that I was getting a 404 error from Twitch regarding no response on the ingest server.

This particular issue might very well put the nail in the coffin in being able to continue streaming games on console systems in general (not just the PS3) until Elgato is able to fix this problem...

Up until now, I have been very adamant that Elgato was the way to go if you were going to be recording or streaming console games, but as you can see here (and apparently a number of people have been complaining about this, I found a long thread of replies with this same complaint on their Facebook page started back in 2013), I'm afraid I can't suggest Elgato as the optimal video capture device anymore, we'll just have to see if it gets fixed sooner or later...  I'll give it some time to see if the issue ever gets fixed, but I am intending on publishing a negative review against Elgato if the issue doesn't get resolved after a few months.  Of course this could very well be an issue on Twitch's side also, I wouldn't put it past them to have destroyed this software's streaming capabilities after what happened to the PS3 Twitch app (I suppose I can always stream console games to another site until it's fixed with Twitch)...

PS3 Twitch app discontinued

It is a sad day when you turn on your PlayStation 3 to watch Twitch & find that you can not connect to servers, getting the following error:

Oops! Something wrong happened
Sorry, but we can't connect to the Twitch servers right now.

I ran into this a few days ago, decided to wait a few days before doing anything about it, but ultimately I determined I was going to have to record a new video to add to the Broken Twitch app playlist on my YouTube channel & re-submit the petition that was previously used to get the app fixed.  On further inspection however, I found that rather than just breaking the app & not removing it from the store (as they previously did), they have actually fully removed it from the PSN store this time around, basically a big "fuck you" to all PS3 users that used to use the PS3 Twitch app...  So at this point it was no longer a matter of sending a petition their way to fix it, it was more a matter of seeing if there was any way to salvage the app in it's current condition.

There is a way to bring back functionality of the PS3 Twitch app, but in order to do so, you have to remain logged out & only use it as a visitor (save a list somewhere so you search for your favorite channels & consider setting up email notifications of when they go live).  You might be saying, "but I can't log out with this error locking the screen", well that's accurate, but there's still a way around it & I'm going to give steps on how to do this here.

First step is you have to remove the app from your PS3, this should be a fairly simple step for most PS3 users, just highlight the Twitch app, press ▲, highlight Delete & press X.



Remember I stated that the app had been removed from the store, so you won't be able to download it from the PSN store anymore.  There is still a way you can download the app however; to do so, go to Account Management, then Transaction Management, then Download List, you will find the download for the Twitch app somewhere in this list if you had downloaded it prior on the PSN account you may be logged into on your PlayStation 3.





Once installed, you are going to need to run it, this will update (if you can call it an update in it's broken state) it to version 1.07.


After installing the update, it's going to restart the app & as you can see in the screenshot below that this will at least give some functionality to it.


This will at least give some functionality, but there will be no personalization & no ability to report channels as being logged into the app is what causes the Oops! Something wrong happened. error you were getting before (in other words, the app is still functional, but access to account data appears to have been intentionally broken...as if removal of the app from the PSN store wasn't enough indication that they are sticking to their guns on not fixing it this time around).

It's a shame that we DID manage to get it fixed shortly after submitting the petition to their suggestion boards on their instruction after we had over 100 signatures, only for it to ultimately be killed regardless of it already being fixed...