Sony on Friday began offering free videogames and virtual goods to members of its PlayStation Network (PSN) in a bid to make amends for hackers breaking into its online entertainment service.
A “Welcome Back” program unveiled in North America lets network members with PlayStation 3 consoles pick two free videogames from a five-title list including Infamous and LittleBigPlanet.
Network members with PlayStation Portable handheld gaming gadgets can chose two of four titles, with options including Killzone Liberation and ModNation Racers.
Photo: EPA
Sony also offered PSN members a free month of access to its PlayStation Plus subscription service featuring game software, discounts on titles, and exclusive digital content.
The apology package also included 100 virtual items from a PlayStation Home shop disabled along with PSN and Qriocity music-streaming service after hackers looted user information from Sony’s systems.
“Today, we’re excited to launch the ‘Welcome Back’ program to thank you for your loyalty,” PSN senior director Susan Panico said in a post on the PlayStation blog.
The program launched on Friday and free content will be available until July 3, according to Panico.
“Welcome Back” packages were to vary based on regions.
Sony on Thursday restored PSN services everywhere except Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea, after being targeted in a massive online attack that prompted the Japanese company to shut down the network to improve its defenses.
The consumer electronics titan has been under pressure to get its gamer network back in action and users appeased before the start of a major Electronics Entertainment Expo videogame gathering in Los Angeles next week.
Sony was attacked in one of the biggest data breaches since the advent of the Internet, in which the user names, passwords, addresses and birth dates of more than 100 million people may have been compromised.
The company later suffered attacks on Web sites including in Greece, Thailand and Indonesia, and on the Canadian site of mobile phone company Sony Ericsson.
On Thursday, a group of hackers calling themselves Lulz Security claimed to have compromised more than 1 million passwords, e-mail addresses and other information from Sony movie site SonyPictures.com.
They published a number of files on the Web containing lists of thousands of stolen e-mail addresses and passwords.
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