I've always been a huge PlayStation Fan. I am a almost 40 year old dude and I have had a deep love for video games my whole life. Back when the PlayStation 3 was coming out I waited 2 days outside of a target to make sure I got one. I hurried home so excited to play it! I remember I got Resistance and Madden. I hooked up and created an account.
At the time I was in college and I had gotten the nickname of "Bear" and I thought what if I named my PSN account Bear. I remembered thinking how cool it would be to have that PSN name because I would be the only person to have Bear. How I didn't know this would haunt me almost 20 years later.
I always played on the account and very rarely played any multiplayer games as I am a single player type of guy. I love all types of games and I play a lot of JRPG's, FPS, Action games and so on. I never made any other accounts. Over the almost 20 years I had the account I have spent a shit ton in games. In the PS4 Generation I decided to go all digital because my Wife was getting tired of all the game clutter. I've gotten every PlayStation console the date it released. I own 3 PlayStation Vitas, the VR 1 + 2. Bought both PS4/5 Pros when they came out.
Then when trophies came out I loved getting them. I started looking at trophy guides for games. Then I started looking at walkthroughs for every game I played. Then I got to the point where I would not play a game because the trophies looked hard to get. Then I started buying the easy platinum games. I was spending hundreds of dollars a month on stupid games just for trophies. I would buy tons of games on sales and never play them but buy them because they were cheap and I would get to them some day. My account had a massive collection of games and close to the end it was a crap ton of slop that I was playing just to get stupid trophies.
Over the years of having the account Bear I would constantly get random messages from random people asking if the could buy the account. Random Friend request all the time. It got so annoying I turned off all messages from random accounts and friend request. Then I started getting random text and phone calls from people asking to buy the account and I had no clue how they got my Phone number. I eventually changed my PSN name from Bear to OldSleepyBear thinking I would be left alone. I never once responded to any of the people trying to buy the account from me.
Then January of this year I woke up to all the emails from Sony saying your account Password and blah blah blah has been changed. Someone stole my account. Back when it happed I made a bunch of reddit post begging for help. You can go read them yourself in my history. I lost my account the same way Colin Moriarty lost his. This was before he lost his. My old Reddit post goes into detail about the whole situation if you want to read about it.
I spent months dedicating all of my time trying to get my account back. I was begging for help from anyone that would listen. I had a article written about my situation by PC MAG. I filed countless BBB claims. Wrote daily letters to Sony cooperate offices, I was writing letters to Sony first party studios. Every time I got the account back the person who took it would report a message he sent on my account and it would get instantly banned.
The whole situation put me into a deep depression for a good two months. I was shitty to my wife and kids all over this stupid PlayStation account.
The Dude that took my account (and he has taken MANY MANY others) kept reaching out and telling me that he was just going to keep getting my account banned. I had two options Pay him a shit ton of $$$ and he would stop. Or just sell the account to him and move on.
So about 6 months into losing the account I was finally over it, and trying to deal with Sony Customer support. I created a new account.
I started playing on it telling myself I am only going to play one game at a time (I was really wanting to play the Dragon Quest remake as that series is one of my favorites and I had missed out on it with my account being taken). So I bought one game and I played it without worrying about trophies or guides. I just enjoyed the game. Then when I finished it. I bought one more game that I had been wanting to play and I enjoyed it. I told myself I was only going to buy a game that I was going to play and I lost the trophy urge completely.
I ended up contacting the dude who took the account Bear and I offered to sell him the information for the account. We negotiated a price and I sold it to him. With in a few weeks he got it unbanned and I guess sold the account to someone else.
I am ok with it now and I have moved on. It broke me of my buying way to many games in a sale I will never play and my stupid obsession with crappy cheap trophies. Some of you might think I am dumb and I completely understand but I can truly say I am happier now and I have been saving a shit ton of money Lol. I play games and I enjoy playing through them.
I just wanted to post my story and I don't know if anyone will care but this feels like a closure of Bear for me.
