SYDNEY: Sony has offered disgruntled gamers a “holiday thank you” to ring in the New Year, extending PlayStation Plus memberships after a cyber attack left gamers unable to access network features over Christmas.
The thank you includes five extra days added to a member’s subscription, Eric Lempel, vice president of Sony Network Entertainment, wrote in a blog post Thursday.
PlayStation Plus is a subscription service that gives users access to a library of games, and is required for playing PlayStation 4 games online. Users must have had an active subscription or trial on December 25 to be eligible for the extension.
Lempel also announced Sony will grant a one-time 10 per cent total cart purchase discount for the PlayStation Store for PlayStation Network members some time this month.
The hacker group Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for disrupting Sony’s PlayStation network and Microsoft’s Xbox Live network on Christmas Day with attacks that overwhelmed servers.
Users reported difficulty redeeming download codes and creating new accounts, while existing PlayStation Network members had trouble logging into their accounts.
Sony’s offer drew mixed reactions from those affected. The Los Angeles Times contacted several through Facebook.
For some, the extension and discount are more than enough to make up for a few days of network problems. Robert Taylor doesn’t think Sony is obligated to offer PlayStation users any discounts because the server errors weren’t the company’s fault.
“It’s not like the servers went down because they went down. A bunch of kids decided to overload the servers with DDoS just to (mess with) Christmas for a lot of people,” Taylor, 30, said.
“Since the last time Sony got hacked and my credit card was compromised, I’ve made a separate credit card account and email for all my Sony accounting,” he said, referring to a 2011 outage that left PlayStation’s network out for more than 20 days. “It’s 2015, maybe you need to hire some more kids born in ’94 who can deal with these problems.”
The extended membership fell short for Bryan Nguyen, who said the offer doesn’t make up for a lacklustre Christmas weekend.
“Considering the importance of Christmas as the day that so many kids and gamers finally get to play the games they’ve been waiting to open, five extended days and 10 per cent off of money that we have to spend is not reparations,” Nguyen, 25, said. “It’s giving us what we deserved outright from the beginning and forcing us to spend more in the faulty tech company in order to reap the 10 per cent benefit.”
