Young Gamer Called 911 About PSN/Xbox Live Hacker Outage

A young gamer in Florida called 911 last week to complain about Lizard Squad’s holiday PSN/Xbox Live hack.

You know what stinks? Waking up on Christmas morning and unwrapping that awesome game you’ve been waiting for only to discover that you can’t use the multiplayer because someone decided to knock out Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network for the holidays. Granted, there are worse thing that could happen, but it still has to be disappointing.

The thing is, there’s a very solid line between “disappointing” and “an emergency that I need to call 911 about.” And while I’m going to go on a limb and say that most of you probably know that, a recent Tweet from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office would seem indicate that some gamers don’t quite understand the difference.

According to the Tweet, which was posted a few days after Christmas, a gamer called the PBSO emergency line to inquire if the operator knew what was “going on with [the PlayStation 4 and Xbox networks] being down.” The operator told them no, prompting the caller to reply that the networks had been down “since Christmas” and that they’d heard two people had been arrested. Understandably annoyed, the operator informed them that the outage didn’t qualify as an emergency and suggested they “try going outside or read a book.” A partial recording of the call itself can be heard here.

Now, it should be noted, that the caller sounds relatively young. That’s still not a good excuse,but I can also see how calling 911 over something you’re really frustrated about might make sense to a kid. That being the case, one would assume that having access to the PSN or Xbox Live would also mean they have an internet connection. If so, why not just Google the outage? Maybe it’s just me being a smug fogey, but I just feel like calling 911 is the last thing that would have come to mind when I was that age.

Source: WPTV