For anyone looking to cash in on some make-good freebies for the personal information breach and inconvenience of not having online play for three weeks stemming from the PlayStation Network hack, Sony has plenty of goodies it would like to give you as part of its “Welcome Back” customer appreciation program. Contents of the program vary by region, but here in North America the freebies will include the following:
1. Your choice of two PS3 games from a pool of LittleBigPlanet, inFamous, Dead Nation, Super Stardust HD and Wipeout HD + Fury.
2. Your choice of two PSP games from a pool of LittleBigPlanet, ModNation Racers, Pursuit Force and Killzone Liberation.
3. A selection of “On Us” movie rentals for one weekend. Titles to be determined.
4. A 30-day PlayStation Plus membership for non subscribers.
5. A 60-day PlayStation Plus membership extension for existing subscribers.
6. Existing Music Unlimited Premium Trial subscription members will receive an additional 30 days of free premium subscription.
7. Additional 30 days + time lost for existing members of Music Unlimited Premium/Basic subscription free of charge for existing Premium/Basic members.
8. 100 free virtual items in PlayStation Home, plus the next addition to the Home Mansion personal space and Ooblag’s Alien Casino.
These freebies will be available for 30 days once the PlayStation Store reopens its doors, which is currently expected to happen by the end of the month.
To further catch up on the three weeks of missed PlayStation Store updates, Sony will also be publishing backlogged content multiple times per week once service is restored. Special plans for the inFamous 2 beta and SOCOM 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops multiplayer communities are in the works as well.
Details for PlayStation Network and Qriocity Customer Appreciation Program in North America [PlayStation.Blog]
PSN FAQ – Restoration Questions Answered [PlayStation.Blog]
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As expected, a shell game.
First, they owe us nothing – so anything is a ‘bonus’. But once they announced a plan for compensation, it becomes open to scrutiny.
PSN+ is a ‘demo’ – pay more or lose it all.
30 days extra for PSN+ /Qriocity members is just ‘due recompense’ since this outage was not ‘beyond their control’. In other words, they HAD to give that.
The games … yeah, it is a nice gesture – BUT (PSP specific here):
1. 2 of the games are good, 2 are garbage. 2 are *5 YEARS OLD* … oh well, free is free.
2. As a loyal and voracious PSP gamer I own all of them on PSN …so I get NOTHING.
Yay Sony … typical.
Typical Sony? Sounds more like typical irrational anti-Sony hate to me 🙂
This was exactly the point I made in other posts. No matter what Sony did, angry, entitled customers were never going to be happy. Face it, as a reviewer and a “loyal” PSP gamer, you’ve most likely played or already own every game they could have offered you any way.
By your logic I should be even more critical of Sony than you. I own all four of the PSP games AND all five of the PS3 games, and I don’t have much interest in PS+ or Qriocity or the Home items, so all I’ll be getting out of this is some free movie rentals (which I may or may not use). Yet I could care less, because looking beyond my own situation, I see that the vast majority of PlayStation system users are getting 2-4 great games for free, plus some other bonuses. I just don’t see anything to complain about.
This was a Sony problem as well, so it’s not like they were going to give away third-party games and cut into potential sales many publishers already lost out on due to the PSN store outage.
The thing is, all of it does nothing to address the core issue – Sony treated customer data with what has been described as ‘systemic security apathy’. They showed little regard for its importance, ignored warnings from security experts, used known outdated software, and so on. Heck, there are more than a couple of countries who won’t let them open up for business again yet because there is no real evidence that they have learned anything!
You are right – there is little they could have done that wouldn’t have met with some anger. Yet there is a reason why there is such uniform dissatisfaction: we have the longest service outage ever, a massive data breach and huge security issue that Sony has only half-acknowledged. And the Sony response is to largely deny anything other than that they were totally the innocent victims (sorry, not buying it – I’ll take the word of impartial experts over a company with a long history of ‘truth modification’) – and tell us ‘trust us, THIS TIME you’ll be safe … here, have a cookie!’
And based on the magnitude of the betrayal of customer confidence – and you really can’t debate that, since they failed to protect our data, failed to maintain industry-standard hashing methods, failed proper encryption, failed to update protocols, and so on – based on that magnitude, when they said they would ‘make it right’ …
… customers expected something more than whatever they found at the bottom of their sock drawer.
Again:
– PSN+ DEMO: cost to Sony? $0
– Qriocity TRIAL extension: cost to Sony? $0
– PSN+/Qriocity subscription extension: cost to Sony? Less than write-off.
– ‘Free Games’: cost to Sony? Less than write-off.
Doing a quick analysis, Sony actually comes out with a NET PROFIT for this. They want to hook more folks for PSN+,likely since they will require you to sign up to get the ‘free’ time, and then charge you after 30 days (because that is how Sony does EVERYTHING).
The reason for the anger? Most people can look beyond the smoke and mirrors and see the BS engine at work. A third party game would have (a) hurt the 3rd party or (b) required Sony to spend money. Sony didn’t want to pay for this program – just like they didn’t ever want to pay to keep our data secure.
If they are unwilling to deliver any actual value to customers after basically giving away the data of 77 million PSN users and 25 million SOE users … why should we expect that once the spotlight is off that they will not revert to treating our personal data like scrap paper again?
Exactly. It doesn’t address the security problems, nor was it meant to. It was meant as a simple gesture to those who suffered through the outage, nothing more. I think you are severely undervaluing the package as well – most PSN users appreciate the Welcome Back package from what I’ve seen, and sites that have itemized the content out have shown that users can get upwards of $100 worth of free stuff out of this if they take advantage of everything.
Like using PS+ for a month. You can’t keep content once the subscription ends, true. But for that month you’ll basically be able to rent some games for free. There’s much more value there than you are giving it credit for (depending on what PS+ content is released during the free month of course), and existing PS+ subscribers are getting two free months, which is more than anyone would be credited for an outage of any other kind of service.
And why does it matter to you how much these items cost Sony? When any company goes through a service outage or similar problem to this, they don’t reimburse customers to their detriment, nor should they.
In this instance, Sony has already taken a massive hit in terms of stock loss, loss of system and game sales during this period, pending legal battles, and, most importantly, consumer trust, and deservedly so on all counts. But they’re dealing with tens of millions of PSN accounts here, so to expect them to give out more than what they are is unfair and unrealistic.
I’m a regular PSN customer on both platforms with credit card info saved to my account, and Sony has certainly lost some of my trust — as soon as the store comes online I will be removing my CC for good and it’ll probably be a while before I consider buying anything on PSN. We should all be angry at Sony for the lax security and we should question the fact that it took them nearly a week to let us know about the personal data compromise. But that anger should also be tempered by the fact that Sony was targeted by a malicious attack, and any network targeted in a similar way would have been just as vulnerable. To continue piling on by ripping apart their Welcome Back offer and everything else they try to do to make amends just seems so petty to me.