PlayStation Network Outage: Sony Makes Holiday Reparations
The 2014 holiday season in the United States brought a number of cyberattacks along with it -- including one that affected gamers.
Sony's PlayStation Network went down due to some unaccounted-for activity, but the popular console manufacturer has attempted to make up for it with some new deals.
"Happy New Year! Since access to PlayStation Network was impacted during the holidays, we wanted to show our appreciation for your patience by offering all PlayStation Plus members that had an active membership or free trial on December 25th a membership extension of five days," reads a Jan. 1 PlayStation blog post. "The extension will be automatically applied, so no action is necessary to receive the extension."
Sony's PlayStation Network was rendered useless for many during the busiest time of the holidays -- around Christmas -- which left many gamers without the option to purchase, update and do more on the gaming network. On top of the membership extension, Sony is also offering a one-time 10 percent discount code to all PSN users that they can use towards a final purchase. This includes "blockbuster new releases, award winning indie games, game add-ons and season passes, and an enormous selection of TV and Movies."
While this is a positive move on Sony's part, it might not make up for the lack of access during an important time of the year.
"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% off of money that we have to spend is not reparations," Brian Nguyen, 25, told The Los Angeles Times. "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% benefit."
Sony has not revealed who exactly was behind the attack, although hackers named Lizard Squad have claimed responsibility, and the company has acknowledged that it was the handiwork of some malicious individuals.
"As you probably know, PlayStation Network and some other gaming services were attacked over the holidays with artificially high levels of traffic designed to disrupt connectivity and online gameplay," Sony stated soon after the outage was discovered. "This may have prevented your access to the network and its services over the last few days."
Microsoft's Xbox Live network also experienced a similar outage during the same time.
Let us know if you think Sony's concessions are good enough, or should companies do far more to prevent instances like this from happening?
For more stories like this, follow us on Twitter!