Is Sony quietly closing out PSN data slurpers?

By Joe Fourhman | July 4, 2009

PS3TrophyCard.com is down for maintenance and they’re pointing the finger directly at Sony. From their site:

We apologize for the issues our service has experienced over the last few weeks. Sony has invested resources to actively work against sites like PS3TrophyCard.com which has made it impossible to update newer games with our current system.

PS3TrophyCard.com is one of a handful of third party sites that grab PSN data (using your PSN login name) and turn it into banners and forum sigs for users to post all over the internet. You know, like what Xbox users have had for years? Sony of America has never quite figured out how to do this sort of thing. And while Sony may not be maliciously targeting PS3TrophyCard.com (the failure may just be the result of Sony tweaking and PS3TrophyCard simply being reliant on now-obsolete code), this certainly seems like another case of Sony taking the ball and going home. Remember when that LittleBigPlanet fansite was shutdown?

All this does is underline Sony’s Web 2.0 isolation. Sure, it’s great that some PS3 games push to YouTube, but being able to show off Trophies to the world outside our PS3 seems so basic that Sony’s half-assed efforts to date are an embarrassment. Clearly the technology is there if random third party fansites can get to it… then why is Sony’s own Portable ID only able to display a username and icon? Further confounding the matter is that Sony Europe DOES have a Trophy sig service.

For their part, PS3TrophyCard says they are working on ways to crack the code and get back up and running.