Sony PlayStation Customer Service offered to restore the account of Saudi user Jihad, whose account had been banned on PSN over supposed breach of Terms Of Service. Jihad, whose name Sony PlayStation Customer Service reportedly declared offensive, will have his PSN account and purchases restored once the Saudi user changes his name.
Jihad Al Mofadda was initially asked to change his PSN account name by the Sony PlayStation Customer Service from iJihad on June 7. A few days after, however, another Sony PlayStation Customer Service representative made the decision to place a full ban on the account for iJihad altogether.
Kotaku reports that Jihad Al Mofadda has been using the account name iJihad on the Sony PlayStation Network since 2008 (or 2009). Since then, Jihad Al Mofadda has made numerous digital purchases, earned trophies and developed stats on the PlayStation Network for his iJihad account.
These became inaccessible to Jihad Al Mofadda both online and offline on the Sony PlayStation Network after the June 7 ban. Jihad Al Mofadda questioned the fairness of citing breach of the Sony PlayStation Terms Of Service on his name.
According to Eurogamer Jihad Al Mofadda sent Sony PlayStation Customer Service a copy of his passport page to prove his name. Jihad also explained that he was named not for any religious or ideological reason but because in Arabic, his name literally means to struggle for a noble purpose.
"As stated in our previous email, we have to consider the network as a whole and we need to take every ones feelings into account," a Sony PlayStation Customer Service representative wrote in response. "I can appreciate that your name has many meanings but it has one meaning that a lot of users find offensive and there for, when a report was submitted the decision to ban your account was taken."
Jihad Al Mofadda's dispute with Sony PlayStation was also picked up by various media outlet, most conspicuously on Reddit. Presumably resulting from the attention given to Jihad Al Mofadda's story the company offered to allow his Sony PlayStation purchases to be restored but only if he changes his account name from iJihad to a different one.
Jihad Al Mofadda told Kotaku that he wished Sony and the PlayStation Customer Service offered a better solution. Jihad Al Mofadda posted a social media message thanking all who supported him in this discrimination issue with Sony and the PlayStation Network.
