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World’s biggest PlayStation trophy hunter cuts ties with Sony over account ban-Michael Beckwith-Entertainment – Metro
A now former PlayStation partner and Guinness World Record holder alleges his account was unfairly banned by Sony.
Hakoom has been an avid PlayStation fan since the PS1 (Hakoom via X)
A now former PlayStation partner and Guinness World Record holder alleges his account was unfairly banned by Sony.
No matter how much you enjoy earning PlayStation trophies (the Sony equivalent to Xbox achievements), you probably don’t love it as much as Abdul ‘Hakoom’ Hakam.
The man was once so dedicated to collecting PlayStation trophies that it got him in the Guinness Book of World Records five times, and he still holds the title for most PSNProfile trophy points collected, at 2,306,475.
Although he retired from trophy hunting in 2021, his accolades landed him a partnership with Sony. The relationship has recently turned sour though, and Hakoom has decided to split from Sony following an incident regarding his PlayStation account.
Why has Hakoom quit Sony?
In a joint Instagram and X post, Hakoom explains how, on September 9, his PlayStation account had been hit with a permanent suspension for apparently no reason.
He claims he never received an email regarding the ban and, after allegedly receiving no help from Sony’s customer service, he got in contact with another department who promised to investigate the matter.
Hakoom was later informed that his suspension was because of multiple violations of Sony’s terms and conditions, but Hakoom argues the ban was still completely unwarranted.
Why was Hakoom’s PlayStation account suspended?
According to Sony, Hakoom’s violations were as follows:
He earned the Platinum trophy on games, which normally require at least 100 hours, within only a few hours.
He had completed games in zero minutes.
He had logged in over 2,000 accounts across 29 PlayStation consoles.
What are Platinum trophies?
When you complete a specific achievement in a PlayStation game, you earn a trophy. If you earn every trophy in a game you’re awarded a Platinum trophy as proof you’ve completed every challenge. These aren’t always tied to 100% completion of the game, but they’re typically the final accolade players unlock.
Hakoom denies all of these supposed violations, pointing out that his quick Platinum trophies were a result of Sony’s auto-pop feature. Basically, if you earn the Platinum on a PlayStation 4 game, you automatically get it upon booting up the PlayStation 5 version of that game.
As for the multiple accounts and consoles, he says this is a result of playing PlayStation for 17 years, having signed up for accounts for lots of now-dead online games and needing to purchase, for one reason or another, 10 PlayStation 3s, five or six PlayStation 4s, four PlayStation Vitas, two PlayStation 5s, and two PlayStation TVs.
He also points out that the PlayStation Store is filled with games that can easily be beaten in less than a minute. Such games are commonplace and designed for easy Platinum trophies; in fact, this is why Hakoom opted to retire from trophy hunting in the first place.
His account has since been restored, but he’s been removed from Sony’s partnership program, which is what has prompted him to go public with these allegations of what he calls ‘corruption and oppression.’
Metro has contacted Sony about the allegations but they are yet to comment.
Sony has not issued a response at this time (Sony)
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