As of last night, Sony have deactivated Facebook integration from the PlayStation 4 today, shutting off the ability to add friends through the social network, share photos or videos online, and so on. Sony “apologize for any inconvenience”, but do not explain the reasoning for the decision in a to-the-point support page notice.
Here’s their run down of what this means:
PlayStation®4’s share features will remain the same, except Facebook will no longer be offered as a destination to share screenshots, videos, music, trophy details, or links to gameplay broadcasts.
- Users will no longer have the ability to link their Facebook account to their PlayStation™Network account. This means Friends List features, such as adding friends from Facebook will be removed.
- Profile pictures imported from Facebook will no longer be used. We recommend selecting a new picture for PlayStation® friends to identify you. There are multiple options for changing your profile picture on PS4™ to an Avatar or image of your choosing.
- On PS4™, go to [Settings] > [Account Management] > [Account Information] > [Profile] > [Profile Picture]
- Alternatively on PS4™, you can select your Profile from the Function area. Click on the […] button to the right of [Set Online Status]. Then [Edit Profile] > [Profile Picture]
- You can also upload an image in the PlayStation® App from your mobile device
Though there’s no explanation for this – you could speculate that Sony found Facebook abusing their access, as they are so commonly found to do on other platforms – it seems that Facebook are optimistic of restoring the feature to the PS4.
In a statement to Kotaku, a company representative said, “We’re working with Sony to finalize an updated contract designed to improve the Facebook integration on PlayStation. While these discussions are in progress, Facebook features will not be available on PlayStation 4. We hope to bring these features back as soon as our teams reach agreement.”
The change has come alongside the release of PlayStation 4 System Software 7.00 – it’s live now, so brace yourself for a console update – but is not noted in the patch notes. You need to be logged into PSN in order to post to social networks, so will have be to on version 7.00 anyway.
Outside of this, System Software 7.00 makes just a couple of changes. Party chat can now scale up to 16 players chatting all at once, with improved audio quality and a new chat transcription feature for a connected app. Sony have also launched a Remote Play app for Android.
Andrewww
Very good, every service should show the decency to kick these bastards out.