16 years of hard work wiped out! The world's number one PS trophy collector's account has been permanently banned by Sony.

IT之家 reports on March 12 that David Tremblay, who once held the global record for the most PlayStation trophy wins, has had his PlayStation Network (PSN) account permanently banned. The former top trophy hunter blames hackers, as well as Sony’s “incompetent” customer service and security teams.

据《PC Magazine》报道，本周早些时候，特伦布莱的 PSN 账号 dav1d_123 因涉嫌违反平台规定被永久封禁。

In the lead-up to this ban, Tremblay was once the No. 1 player worldwide in terms of PSN trophy count, and even made it into the Guinness World Records for having the most Platinum trophies.

But in October last year, after his account was allegedly compromised by hackers, Tremblay announced that he was stepping away from trophy collecting.

“Your PSN account isn’t safe. Anyone could steal your account.” Tremblay said on Twitter that the hackers bypassed the double authentication (2FA) on his account and used phishing tactics via PSN online customer support to gain access to the account.

Just last week, Tremblay spoke to PC Magazine, revealing that PSN has serious security issues, and publicly shared the actions the hackers tried to take to extort him. It is said that it was because of this that the hackers led to his PlayStation account being permanently banned.

PC Magazine says that the hacker, who had previously been in contact with Tremblay and returned control of the account after not receiving a ransom, told the publication that: the former top trophy hunter lied, so “now his account is gone again.”

Tremblay suspects that the hackers used a “bomb message” tactic to get his account banned. Specifically, the hackers sent messages that violated Sony PSN rules to a small account. After that, even if they no longer controlled the account, they could still report those violations to Sony at any time, causing the account to be banned.

Tremblay said the hackers had previously threatened him: if he exposed the matter to PC Magazine, they would do exactly that.

As of the time IT之家 published this story, Sony has not issued any public response regarding this ban and related security issues.

After being banned last week, Tremblay said that the number of trophies on his account is now completely zero. “I’ve been collecting trophies on PlayStation for more than 16 years,” he said. “I spent tens of thousands of hours on it—so much that I don’t even want to admit it—and I took home all five related Guinness World Records. That’s truly heartbreaking. And even worse, I reminded customer service multiple times that any information sent while my account was stolen should clearly be considered invalid, but they completely ignored it. Everyone will feel that my account should have been protected more strictly, with comprehensive security measures, but it seems that’s not the case.”