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Story by Nathan Grayson

Fri, May 13, 2011 | 08:32 BST

Devs speak out on PSN downtime, effects on development

Not being able to duke it out/shop for fake clothes online is kind of a bummer, but – at least, for most of you – your livelihood isn’t on the line. Some game developers, however, aren’t so lucky.

Speaking with Giant Bomb, a number of developers discussed the recent PSN outage. Among other interesting tidbits, Sony has apparently carried its tactic of being “uncomfortably quiet” into its business practices as well – keeping development partners at arm’s length.

The testing process – which frequently relies on friends lists for connections – has also taken a pretty major hit, which is obviously bad for development no matter how you spin it.

And then, of course, there’s the elephant in the room: the PlayStation Store. It’s sort of hard to release a game, after all, when your virtual storefront has a giant “Closed for Renovations” sign hanging in its window.

“It’s a bit frustrating when the one and only store selling our game is closed, but we’ll be on the virtual shelf as soon as possible when PSN is up and running again,” Bionic Commando: Rearmed 2 developer Fatshark said, speaking about its new game, Hamilton’s Great Adventure.

“The only thing is that we’d prefer to have the PSN and PC players getting the game at the same time, as no one wants to wait. But, this is the case now, and I guess we gotta roll with the punches. We’re talking with Sony almost on a daily basis, and they are being as helpful as they can be.”

Which sort of contradicts the whole “uncomfortably quiet” allegation from the other (conveniently unnamed) developer, so that’s all nice and confusing. At any rate, PSN is set to see partial service return “this week” (it’s getting a bit late for that), with the PlayStation Store staying out of action until later “this month.” Thank goodness, too. We were getting really tired of all this hacking nonsens– well, shit.