More insider information - HARD NUMBERS ARE HERE!

Well, it's now known what the virtual item sales are for Home. With all the Kotakus, IGNs, 1ups, and other gaming new sites out there, a tiny blog got them first. And they are SAD. A forewarning, these numbers don't include the income from advertising. This is only the sales from micro-transactions, and only for the USA.

Home rakes in on average $125k a week. That's right Home fanatics, it's not even breaking a million per month. Hence the reason it's quite possibly being canceled in the near future.

So who's to blame for all of this? Well first off there's Katherine De Leon, who is responsible for the virtual spaces in Home. So when the [all] spaces bugged out, she would be the one to blame. We reported prior to this that they had hired someone to "revamp" Home, and it turns out it was Katherine who did the hiring. She hired a woman by the name of Celia Pearce, who claims:

Celia Pearce is a game designer, author, researcher, teacher, curator and artist, specializing in multiplayer gaming and virtual worlds, independent, art, and alternative game genres, as well as games and gender. She began designing interactive attractions and exhibitions in 1983, and has held academic appointments since 1998. Her game designs include the award-winning virtual reality attraction Virtual Adventures (for Iwerks and Evans & Sutherland) and the Purple Moon Friendship Adventure Cards for Girls. She received her Ph.D. in 2006 from SMARTLab Centre, then at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London.

Her website can be found here. Be warned, her website is an eyesore that challenges even the worst Geocities pages of the late 1990s. Higher than Katherine though is Jack Buser. Jack Buser (seen here doing his best impression of Animal from the Muppets) has failed to keep Home's development moving forward. While most successful companies and software projects excel due to the teamwork and combined efforts of everyone involved, Jack Buser had made every attempt possible to do the polar opposite. Every member of the team, if it be Katherine De Leon, Glasswalls, CydoniaX, Locust_Star, Buggie, or [insert name here] has had issues with Buser. According to sources he's a bit bipolar and has an extreme fear of failure. So chances are he's scared shitless at the moment because Home is doing really poorly.

It seems to us Buser's biggest mistake is placing his responsibility as the director for Home on the shoulders of the dingbat Celia Pearce and her idea of what Home could be. She spent months hanging out at malls and theme parks, taking pictures, and put all this together into some sort of grandmaster "redesign for Home." So there you have it...the future of Home is a giant mall/amusement park designed by a clueless, socially inept middle-aged lady who billed so much money to Sony for this "work" she bought a house with it. She then passed off this piece of shit to Katherine who passed it off to Jack, who decided to bank Home's entire strategy for the year on it. Now, normally strategic direction of a platform should come from the DIRECTOR, don't you think? But since Jack is so incompetent he dove on this thing like a fat kid on cake.

Most of the costs for Home development are in London, but there's also a ton of money paid out to 3rd parties who also build a lot of their virtual spaces and items. In fact, this is how most stuff is being created for Home this year, since Katherine De Leon has managed to hog most of the budget for her internal team of about 25 people to only work on the piece of shit Home redesign.
Some other interesting information, we have discovered Home does have its own QA team and they also use Sony's internal QA. Each region also has their own. Katherine, Jack, and the Home business manager talk to game developers to try to convince them to make stuff for Home. Jack answers to the Senior Director of PSN Marketing, Susan Panico.

So we have to ask: Susan Panico, what the fuck is going on? Why are you letting this crap go on? Isn't it time to cut and run?

More insider information

Via Email:

More dirt about Jack: last year he either dumped his wife (or vice versa) for being a coke-fueled party girl and gained sole custody of their daughter. Any appearances of the 2 of them before any of this happened made it clear that she thought he was a huge dork and sick of him. So none of this came as a big surprise. But around the time of his divorce is when he started acting extra-crazy on the job. He tried really hard to block GlassWalls, largely considered to be the best CM Home has, from being hired to Cyd's team probably because he is as prejudiced against gay people as women. It was also his idea to hire BuggieTechnica, the worst Home employee ever, who was ultimately fired for being a whiny bitch and hanging out on game forums all day, among numerous other offenses.

Katherine de Leon was an INTERN and former community manager (ha!) at Linden Lab only 3 years ago. How she managed to get the keys to the Home kingdom and fly around all over the country spinning her bullshit propaganda about Home is anyone's guess. She is nepotistic and hires all her best friends since they are the only people who can tolerate her....even some of them are looking to leave since she is such a horrible boss. Her latest hire was a woman whose virtual world development company failed and went bankrupt. Awesome choice. The 2 of them have a barely-concealed lesbo relationship and are plotting ways to be able to sleep with each other without getting in trouble with HR. Too bad "kdel" recently married a beard.

Not sure if this type of personal gossip is what you're looking for, but it sure is fucking entertaining, isn't it? Obvs I'm not going to get the true insider info about when exactly Home will self-destruct, but I'm sure it's not long now.

More insider information/Apology to the HCM

So recently I've been getting a LOT of information from the sinking ship that is home. I'd like to share that with you now.

A brief history of Home:

1. Phil Harrison begins announcing the direction of Home, introduces media sharing, trophy room, etc.
   
2. Phil Harrison quits after a disagreement with Kaz, the head guy in Japan.
3. Katherine De Leon fills the spot of main producer
4. Jack Buser, becomes Director of Home.
5. CydoniaX, Glasswalls, Locust_Star become the HCM
6. Home releases public beta
7. Home operates for a year, under constant threat of being axed.
8. Game journalists rip on Home constantly
9. Katherine De Leon proposes a large scale redesign of Home, Focus groups hate it

Etc. Maybe sometime I'll actually make a timeline video or something. Here's some other interesting information:

1. The Home Community management team is FORBIDDEN to speak of promised features that have not come to be
2. Jack Buser might be losing his position
3. Home is STILL UNDER THREAT of being shut down
4. Game media still rip on home any shot they can, if they decide to acknowledge it at all.
5. Jack Buser fired CydoniaX because she reported him to the Human Resources division of Sony for "sexism, abuse, manipulation, undermining, and generally turning his whole team against each other"
6. Katherine De Leon is responsible for every space published in SCEA Home, so when something breaks, she is the one to ask about it.

I'd also like to humble myself at the moment, and speak a little bit about the HCM. Or what's left of it. Over the last six months of this blog, the HCM has taken quite a deal of punishment from this blog. We investigated them each in detail, and nitpicked their every move, post, and action.

Recently, I received an education about the HCM, and realized that they are not at fault for a good chunk of what we placed on their shoulders. However, Sony gave them zero permission to protect themselves nor gave them the ability to express what they were responsible for, and what they were not responsible for. This stemmed from above them, from the folks by the name of Jack Buser and Katherine De Leon. For months we have hounded and attacked the HCM because we assumed as many have that THEY are responsible for how shitty Home is. I have since discovered the truth.

What is disturbing to us is while we shit all over the HCM crew the people who were truly at fault sat in the background quietly, and allowed the HCM to accept all the blame for things that were their bosses' fault. That to me is even worse than the constant shit we've dumped on them over the last half a year.

Imagine enduring the abuse we can put out for half a year, knowing that none of it was your fault, however the folks who's fault it actually is force you to stay quiet and accept the blame that belongs to them. That's incredibly shitty management and Jack and Katherine should be fucking ashamed of what they've done.

So Glasswalls, CydoniaX, and Locust_Star, I apologize for the incredibly harsh way we've treated you. Although there have been many occasions where you did make mistakes and do silly shit, we wouldn't have gotten on you one tenth the amount we have had your bosses given you the ability to defend yourselves. For that I am sorry. Shoot me an email and I'll send a couple pizzas your way some day. All hush hush of course.

But back to the subject at hand. Jack Buser, Katherine De Leon, for months you've sat quietly in the background and let others take the blame for your incompetence. This is a polite warning to you: We are coming for you. You thought we were bad going after the HCM? Heh, you haven't seen shit yet. Better get some suntan lotion, we're coming after you with the fury of a thousand suns.

Chewout!

Last night I got a somewhat suspicious email. Although I usually call bullshit when I receive insider information, tracking down the person who sent it opened a shitload of doors. I don't plan on posting the entire content of the email because it could easily identify the sender, however it corrects a good chunk of information we have here. Via email: (Removed parts of the email marked with [...] to protect the identifying parts of the email)

Dear PSN Home-Watch Retards: (Had to keep that intro, it's priceless!)

[...] First of all, all the myriad of problems with Home (and you're right about one thing, there are a ton of them) have nothing to do with the community managers.
[...] They don't make business or content decisions, all they do is get paid to interact with and entertain thankless aholes like you.
[...] SCEA Home is failing because of 2 people. #1 being JACK "ABUSER" BUSER. That guy is mentally ill, incompetent, and his entire team HATES him. He has ZERO experience with virtual worlds, the video game industry, or anything else having to do with Home. [...] Want to know the real reason CydoniaX is gone? Buser got rid of her [...] He's a real piece of shit and will be responsible for Home's downfall. Mark my words.

The other person ruining Home is its main producer, KATHERINE DE LEON. She is the 2nd most hated person on that team. [...] Her shitty work speaks for itself: she is responsible for every space published in SCEA Home and they all fucking suck.[...]

If you're going to attack people, at least go after the ones who deserve it. Oh yeah, and your site fucking sucks. Sorry your mom hates you and you never, ever, ever get laid.

[...] Oh and this just in: 2 more people have quit the Home team since Cyd left. [...]