PS4 Units Allegedly Sabotaged At Foxconn Plants Due To Employee Mistreatment

There has been a lot of chatter about the PlayStation 4 and the alleged defects that have been plaguing a small number of individuals. Things have taken a drastic turn that you probably didn't see coming... mostly because it almost seems too impossible to be true.

Like a John Grisham book adapted into a Paul W.S. Anderson film, this tale has turned from tragic troll-bait of a next-gen console launch to a potential international caricature of corporate sabotage.

According to Corrupted Cartridge, there are screen captures of a Chinese forum post on Club TGFC, from a purported intern working at the Foxconn manufacturing plant in Yantai, China. The post can be viewed below...

Roughly translated, the post is from an intern who worked at the Foxconn plant, expressing distaste for the company due to the inhumane treatment of their employees. This most recent case was highlighted in a very detailed article over on Polygon, where it was uncovered that Foxconn repeated a previous act of a despicable nature, where they would use students to work long hours at the plant to meet high demand from their clients. Some of these clients include high-profile companies such as Microsoft, Nintendo, Apple and Sony, just as we reported last year. If the students didn't work as Foxconn intended, they would threaten to take away the kids' scholarships so that they would never be able to graduate.

The intern noted that if Foxconn was going to treat their employees as if they weren't human, they would sabotage the PlayStation 4 at the plants so that users wouldn't be able to do much more than “reboot” the system. The post also praises the closure of Foxconn (a sentiment I can't disagree with). As noted in the post below. ..

Strangely, an IGN moderator closed down the threads relating to these posts, shutting out discussion or any additional leads that may have spawned from this alleged claim. Great way to help gather and spread information guys!

Whether or not the post is FUD remains to be seen. It does have a lot of strong supporting evidence, given that many users who claim to have defective PS4 units are stating that the units are stuck with the blue flashing lights and that the system does little more than turn on and reboot.

Additionally, as previously reported, many of these issues – though still small and isolated in comparison to the amount of PS4 units shipped throughout North America – have cropped up from customers who ordered from Amazon.

Many high-demand products from online retailers also ship directly from China, a tactic some companies – such as Apple – have used during big launches of hotly anticipated consumer products, as reported by CNET and The Register.

There's a running theme in many of the consumer reports of allegedly faulty PS4 units that, potentially, many of these stock keeping units are coming from the Yantai, Foxconn plant, and may be the subject of purported sabotage from the disgruntled interns.

Of course, there is no proof to tie together these claims yet, other than the postulation from the putative intern. Hopefully more information will be revealed to shed light on this. If for nothing else, perhaps this is the straw that breaks the camel's back; it would be a real win for humanists if some appropriate aid and support from proper authorities were issued, along with a thorough investigation into Foxconn if these claims turn out to be true. Maybe this time around something can be done about the working conditions at their manufacturing plants.

In the meantime, we'll keep digging to find out exactly what causes the blue flashing lights and why so many units coming from Amazon are supposedly faulty.

[Update: It appears the original thread from Club TGFC was made back on August 28th of this year, preceding all the news regarding defective PS4 units. The original poster of the thread was a student at a college, according to the user who re-posted the message for the public to see.]

[Update #2: It appears that there are potential rumors that the thermal paste of the PS4 may have been tampered with on the assembly line]