Victims of the notorious attack against Sony’s online gaming service and associated websites in 2011, which exposed details for up to 77 million subscribers, are to be offered $15m in digital goods as compensation for the outage and exposure of data, according to Polygon.
Victims will be offered a list of PS3 and PSP games including hits such as Dead Nation, InFamous and LittleBigPlanet, or a three-month free subscription to the premium PlayStation Plus service. The Plus subscription will only be available to U.S. gamers.
The offer is still subject to approval by a judge in May 2015. “Boy won’t those games look appealing then,” commented Eurogamer referring to the vintage of the titles, none of which are very new. The site suggested that Sony’s legal letter was best enjoyed read out in the voice of crooked lawyer Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad.
Sony hacked - too little, too late?
A previous judgement by Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office fined Sony, and said that the attack, “could have been prevented if software was up to date,” according to ZDNet’s report.
The class-action suit was brought immediately in the wake of the hack, which exposed personally identifying details for 77 million users, at that point among the biggest breaches in history. It also took several months before Sony’s PSN service was working fully in all territories.
"A proposed settlement has been reached in the class action lawsuits arising from the April 2011 criminal cyber-attacks on the PlayStation Network, Qriocity, and Sony Online Entertainment services,” Sony told gaming site Polygon via email. "While we continue to deny the allegations in the class action lawsuits, most of which had been previously dismissed by the trial court, we decided to move forward with a settlement to avoid the costs associated with lengthy litigation."
Sony - "We continue to deny the allegations"
Sony claims there has been no evidence of credit card fraud as a result of the attack, and offers a cash settlement to anyone who can prove they have suffered financial damage.
The games are also on offer on a first-come, first-served basis - once $6 million have been handed out, the rest of the settlement will be in the form of subscriptions.
