World’s Leading PlayStation Trophy Hunter Faces Permanent Ban, Points Finger at Hacker

David Tremblay, once recognized as the world’s leading PlayStation Trophy collector, has received a permanent ban from the PlayStation Network. The former trophy hunting champion attributes this to a hacker and criticizes Sony’s support and security teams as “incompetent.”

Recently, Tremblay’s PSN account, dav1d_123, was “permanently suspended” due to alleged violations of rules. Previously, he held the title of the top PSN Trophy holder globally and even earned a spot in the Guinness World Records for the most Platinum trophies. However, he stepped back from trophy hunting last October after a hacker reportedly took control of his account. Tremblay warned, “Your PSN account isn’t safe. Anyone can steal your account,” after the hacker bypassed his two-factor authentication and used phishing tactics through PSN chat support to gain access.

Last week, Tremblay participated in a significant article discussing PSN’s security flaws, and after exposing the hacker’s extortion attempts, he claims the hacker retaliated by getting his PlayStation account permanently banned.

The hacker, who had communicated with Tremblay and returned access to his account after failing to extort money, allegedly told an outlet that Tremblay had lied, resulting in the loss of his account once more.

Tremblay suspects the hacker employed a “bomb message” tactic, where they send messages that breach Sony’s PlayStation Network rules to alternate accounts. Later, they can report these messages to Sony, leading to a ban, even if they no longer have access to the account. Tremblay noted that the hacker had “threatened to do exactly this” if he spoke out about the situation.

Sony has not publicly addressed the suspension or the reported security issues. Since the ban, Tremblay claims his account now shows zero trophies.

“I have spent over 16 years trophy hunting on PlayStation,” he shared. “I’ve dedicated countless hours—tens of thousands—to this and achieved all five related Guinness World Records. This is heartbreaking. To make matters worse, I had warned support multiple times that any messages sent from my account during the hacking period should be disregarded, but they completely ignored this.”

“You would expect my account to have stricter protection and security measures in place, but it seems that’s not the case.”