If you haven’t been following the situation, all you need to know is that the North American demo of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune ended up being region locked (which is not normally the case for PlayStation Network demos), and PS3 users from Europe and Japan were not pleased to find that the 1GB+ download wouldn’t work on their system. The PlayStation blog eventually caught “fire,” and hundreds of angry replies directed at Naughty Dog were posted.
Christophe Balestra, Co-President Naughty Dog, posted an update the next day stating that they company was not aware of the ability to download PSN demos from other territories, and said that locking other countries out was not their intent.
We absolutely did not plan the demo to be region locked. As soon as we figured out the problem existed, Sam Thompson called me and I jumped into my car, drove to the office and fixed it right away. It’s an honest mistake and we didn’t try to prevent anybody from enjoying the Uncharted demo. I feel even more sorry because most of the people who experienced the problem are in Europe and I’m European myself.
And then, like magic, hundreds of angry replies turned into hundreds of mini love letters to Naughty Dog, and all was well in the PlayStation world.
