PSN Breach Settlement Reached

Some big news coming out of Sony:

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In what may be the closing chapter in the 2011 breach of the PlayStation Network, Sony has agreed to pay a settlement of $15 Million for users whose identities were compromised in the cyber attack.

The settlement will be paid out to users of the PlayStation Network through several options of free games– Infamous and LittleBigPlanet are among the offered titles – themes, or three free months of PlayStation Plus.

Users who already claimed a free game through the Welcome Back program– an initiative launched by Sony in the months after the Playstation Network originally went down– will be able to choose one of the payout options. Users who did not take advantage of the Welcome Back program can select two.

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Source

I can still remember when the whole ordeal went down. I didn't have a PSN account at the time so I wasn't at risked. Was anyone here affected? Will you be taking advantage of the settlement? I can't say Infamous is much of an offer.

Discuss.

didn't we already get like two pretty new games for free years ago?

Yeah that was Sony's way of making up for it. From what I understand, the Class Action suit is for people who opted out of that to sue instead. They're pretty much getting the same deal, though, it's the attorneys who make out.

Nothing like this had ever really happened before, I'm guessing the people behind it were never caught. I remember Socom 4 had just came out at the time as a big multiplayer game for Sony, so the attack pretty much guaranteed the game would fail. It's likely that this contributed to Zipper studios closing down.

One positive that came out of it was that it got Sony more comfortable with giving away free games, something they now do every month with PlayStation Plus, 2 a piece for each of their platforms.

I would easily accept digital download games as payment for things, as long as I got to choose when, and from the entire store selection, and for whichever platform I wanted.

The entire PSN hack was stupid. Sony essentially provided a network for free which people thought was great but when they were losing money on every console made people should have been questioning what security upgrades or server upgrades were getting done. It's one of the main things Microsoft definitely had in the bag even in the days of PS2 and Xbox original console.

Sure paying for your Online Gaming Access kinda sucks as you pay for your Broadband already. Especially when, you could get it free but the promise that the money from Gold is funnelled in to improving XBL and expanding it's pool of dedicated servers meant that at least you knew that it was secure (You could also throw in how it is also more stable but lets not start a debate over consoles pointlessly). It now seems that Sony have realised this as you're given rewards similar to the Games with Gold (2 free games per month, sometimes there's an additional game given for fun, not to mention the deals with gold which ensures a sale on different content and games each month) feature for paying and the PS4 if I recall reading correctly actively demands you have PS+ to use Multi-Player gaming.

Whilst I'm glad to see Sony seem to have learnt from the incursion to their systems and the negative press. I'm still not certain they won't repeat the same feat by funnelling cash from PS+ in to the hole made by the production cost of PS4 consoles being more expensive to make than they retail for which is something I sincerely hope I am wrong about.

That being said; $15million isn't even all that much when you consider the scale of the attack and the people who held out for the law suit, clearly have been dicked by the lawyers settling. What makes it worse is that they've settled in a way which isn't going to actively offer anyone who stopped using Sony consoles as a direct result of the PSN hack any benefits or compensation at all even if it does turn out that they were one of those whose bank and other personal details were actively compromised as a result.

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Originally Posted by Iceglow

It's one of the main things Microsoft definitely had in the bag even in the days of PS2 and Xbox original console.

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While Microsoft may have avoided a major hacking thus far, the last thing I'd ever assume that company has in the bag is security. That would assume that they had competent software and hardware designers that are allowed to do their jobs correctly. Something they've spent a few decades proving they don't. At best they occasionally luck into doing a competent job. Or competent enough anyway.

I unfortunately have been hacked by the fifa hacker. I have called psn support and thought it was settled and they were going to take the false charges off my account, yet aftera week and a half I got an email saying it was denied....