Sony Details SOE Compensation Package

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Sony has released details of its ID protection and SOE compensation plans.

Though Sony’s been quite consistent with its PSN-related updates to the PlayStation Blog, we haven’t seen nearly as many updates for SOE users. The company recently detailed compensation packages for users and revealed that it would offer 12 months of AllClear ID PLUS at no cost to PlayStation Network and Qriocity account holders. At the time, there was said to be something similar in the works for SOE users. This week, SOE detailed what it’s doing to ensure users are protected and compensated for the outage.

Sony Online Entertainment yesterday announced that Station Account holders based in the United States would be offered coverage with the same identity theft protection program as PSN users. Enrollment in Debix’s AllClear ID PLUS program includes cyber monitoring and surveillance to detect the exposure of your personal information, including the monitoring of criminal websites and data recovered by law enforcement agencies. If your data is discovered by Debix, they’ll contact you by phone and email to advise you on what steps to take. You’ll also gain access to the licensed private investigators and identity restoration specialists Debix has on staff and be covered by a $1 million identity theft insurance policy. Sony is offering users 12 months of this service for free.

The company also talked a little bit about how it plans to compensate users for the downtime. First of all, each impacted player will receive 30 days of free game time added to the end of the current billing cycle in addition to one free day for each day the system remains down. Lifetime subscribers will get 20,000 coins for Free Realms, 7,500 Galactic Credits for Clone Wars Adventures and 10 Marks of Distinction for DC Universe Online. Station Access subscribers will also receive 500 Station Cash.

There’s also game-specific bonuses to ‘welcome players back,’ and these apply for both PC and PS3 games. Check them out below:
   

  • DC Universe™ Online: Batman™ and Two-Face™ Inspired Masks and 30 Marks of Distinction
  • Free Realms®: Free daily items (7 to collect)
  • Clone Wars Adventures™: Count Dooku v2 Outfit
  • EverQuest®: A series of events, including Double XP, Double Rare Mob Spawns and Double Faction Gains
  • EverQuest II and EverQuest II Extended: A series of events, including Double XP, Double Guild XP, Loot Bonanza, and City Festivals
  • Vanguard: Saga of Heroes®: A series of Double XP events
  • Star Wars Galaxies™: Bounty Hunter Statue, a miniature model of Boba Fett's ship, the Slave I™
  • Magic: The Gathering - Tactics™: Four of each of these spells: "Ivory Mask", "Duress" and "Angelheart Vial", plus 500 Station Cash
  • PoxNora®: Limited edition Carrionling, Welcome Back 5K Gold Award Tournaments and two Draft Tournaments, plus 500 Station Cash

As for when PSN and SOE will actually be back online? Sony still has nothing to tell us other than it’ll be “at least a few more days.” We’ll keep you posted.

Further Reading

SOE: Sony Online Entertainment Offering Free 'AllClear ID PLUS' Identity Theft Protection in the United States through Debix, Inc.

SOE: May 12 Update

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Jane McEntegart

Jane McEntegart works in marketing communications at Intel and was previously Manager of Content Marketing at ASUS North America. Before that, she worked for more than seven years at Tom's Guide and Tom's Hardware, holding such roles as Contributing Editor and Senior News Editor and writing about everything from smartphones to tablets and games consoles.

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27 Comments Comment from the forums
  • tacoslave
    What if we dont play any of these games then what were just screwed? Again
    Reply
  • jeff1304
    what no specific bonus to planetside ?
    Reply
  • mosu
    Sony, please make one more move on GeoHot or anyone else and then wonder why!
    Reply
  • razor512
    That compensation will only satisfy idiots. They are basically giving people digital goods for their troubles, eg editing a single number in someones stats.

    If sony really wants to compensate people then they need to do something like bring back the other OS option and also throw in a extra controller or for everyone with an out of warranty console, give them an extra 1 year warranty, and for everyone else with a console under warranty, extend their warranty by a year.
    Reply
  • razor512
    PS, 1 year of protection is useless as most criminals don't attack you the first year anyway. Stolen info is held onto for a while when attention dies down, then it is exploited and when it happens, there no reports so the authorities will not get involved.

    for any of those protections to be even slightly useful, it would need to be lifetime.
    Reply
  • jalek
    No SSN's in their database, they have name, address, phone, login name, and security question on those accounts. The first three things can be obtained through only minor wizardry like using a telephone book. The last two only matter for station accounts, and if nobody keeps those...
    Reply
  • memadmax
    What a joke....
    Reply
  • spitfire372
    For everyone flaming Sony you need to take some things into account. Everything connected to the Internet is in just as much risk as the Playstaion Network. If anyone can recall Xbox Live also had an outage back in 2007. I'm not favoring either or companies sides I own both consoles both very good and have their different things to offer. But Sony may need to handle the situation a bit better and keep us up to date on things as I think Microsoft would do. But it's better then Sony throwing their network back online to end up back in the same situation it can happen to anything on the Internet loom at the deus ex and epilodos websites that were just attacked.. It can happen it's just who happens to be the company they attack. Their ain't no stopping hackers. You got hacks for consoles, iPods/iPhones, Android, video game hacks and every time they try to fix it they come out with another its never ending. I don't blame Sony for having the network down so long I rather them fix the network and make it safer and better the next time I connect to their network then a quick fix. Sony just happened to be targeted really bad because of the GeoHot case. But everyones freaking out because of no online. When consoles first started coming around their wasn't no Ethernet hookup or wifi. It wad straight single player or playing with some friends right next to you. Multiplayer is fun but their is more to games then just online play.
    Reply
  • ubercake
    What about people who are former PSN users who decided the PS3 and the PSN is crap compared to Live on the 360?

    Their numbers were still in the hacked database. How will they be compensated?
    Reply
  • bobusboy
    "player will receive 30 days of free game time added to the end of the current billing cycle in addition to one free day for each day the system remains down."

    I thought PSN was free....
    Reply