The bad news continues for Sony following its three-month hacking nightmare...

For those of you who don't own a PS3 - and are truly oblivious to the world around you - Sony, and a number of its subsidiaries, are currently recovering from one of the worst external attacks in recent years.A little over three months ago, Sony's PlayStation Network (PSN) - their online alternative to Microsoft's Xbox Live - was shown to be severely lacking in the security department, when it was hacked by what the company claimed was an "outside party".

However, it was Sony's attempt to keep things quiet that really aggravated the public. After six days of PSN outage, Sony finally released a statement informing the public that they had in fact taken down the PSN network as a result of an "external intrusion". Worse still, the company were forced to warn their users that they may now be the target of identity theft, informing the public that said hackers had gained access to user names, passwords, addresses, birth dates and, most disturbingly, their payment-card data and security answers to change passwords. To put it simply, everything the user had shared through their PSN account was now privy to hackers across the globe - for all they knew, their payment and address details could have been shared between thousands, possibly millions, of random strangers.

So, for the next three months, Sony were forced to grovel back to their followers, hoping that the combination of time+generosity would = forgiveness. They offered free games, free downloads...heck, in certain cases, they offered free consoles.Furthermore, the company told its users that the PSN network would stay down until they were sure of a successful integration of new, security protocol. As a result, many areas were kept offline for months, forced to replay campaign after campaign as they waited out this indefinite time-line.

However, with Sony finally welcoming Japan back, users have been left pondering the long-term effects of said hacking. Some suggested that Sony would see a huge fall in PSN accounts...they haven't. Others suggested that gamers had lost faith in the company, and would stop purchasing their games...again, this is not the case. However, after a recent survey, conducted by US retail chain GameStop - which says the bulk of its digital content is made up of DLC sales - it would appear that gamers have lost faith in online purchases, with 50% claiming they are unwilling to buy DLC's online since the attack.

In a statement from research firm Baird, the company revealed that " A company survey revealed that 50 per cent of buyers indicated they would not have purchased the content without the in-store merchandising. Furthermore, DLC buyers also indicated, in a company survey, that they will buy digital content from GameStop again, due in large part to trade-in credits, loyalty reward points, and the convenience of game discovery".

If I'm being honest, the news is hardly surprising, but one has to wonder what this result will do to sale of DLC's on the whole. What percentage does online downloads acquaint to total DLC sales, and will this number be lost entirely, or will gamers simply head to their local game store instead? Either way, its more bad news for Sony...

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