For this entire generation I've been working on PC or 360 titles so I've never paid any attention to PSN beyond using it as a consumer but I've been talking to other devs about this downtime and it's really a mess.
MS has PartnerNet a completely separate network environment from the consumer Live network, Sony's dev network is the same network as their consumer one
so this downtime is affecting any development & testing of multiplayer parts of PS3 games.
Additionally Sony's payment system seems to be client trusted, there's been a bit of 'custom' firmware around that allows those who use it to use the debug credit card number to add credit to their accounts (it can do a bunch of stuff too but less ignore that). Sony are probably scrambling to rewrite much of PSN's backend, it sucks for them but it sucks more for gamers and developers.
If MS are smart (and they usually aren't) they'd extend their Gold for all weekend for the length of time that PSN is out for.
That any of that data can be held as plain text terrifies me, there have been some serious lapses in judgement when building this thing. If it's not plain text and they're saying they've got it then their security setup is really lapse. Which wouldn't surprise me, just look at the custom firmware that identifies your box as a dev machine since they don't use a separate network (see other thread for a small rant/exclamation of disbelief about that) and allows it to do things like use the debug CC number to add credit pointing to a client trusted system which in turn shows they either were arrogant enough to think no one could compromise it or didn't have enough knowledge to be writing this type of system.
With everything that's gone on they'd better be PCI compliant or MasterCard and Visa are going to *** them up:
http://www.pcicomplianceguide.org/pcifaqs.php
And taking over a week to say anything is a massive PR blunder.
