Dear Friends,

I know this has been a frustrating time for all of you.

Let me assure you that the resources of this company have been focused on investigating the entire nature and impact of the cyber-attack we’ve all experienced and on fixing it. We are absolutely dedicated to restoring full and safe service as soon as possible and rewarding you for your patience. We will settle for nothing less.

To date, there is no confirmed evidence any credit card or personal information has been misused, and we continue to monitor the situation closely. We are also moving ahead with plans to help protect our customers from identity theft around the world. A program for U.S. PlayStation Network and Qriocity customers that includes a $1 million identity theft insurance policy per user was launched earlier today and announcements for other regions will be coming soon.

As we have announced, we will be offering a “Welcome Back” package to our customers once our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are up and running. This will include, among other benefits, a month of free PlayStation Plus membership for all PSN customers, as well as an extension of subscriptions for PlayStation Plus and Music Unlimited customers to make up for time lost.

As a company we — and I — apologize for the inconvenience and concern caused by this attack. Under the leadership of Kazuo Hirai, we have teams working around the clock and around the world to restore your access to those services as quickly, and as safely, as possible.

I know some believe we should have notified our customers earlier than we did. It’s a fair question. As soon as we discovered the potential scope of the intrusion, we shut down the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services and hired some of the best technical experts in the field to determine what happened. I wish we could have gotten the answers we needed sooner, but forensic analysis is a complex, time-consuming process. Hackers, after all, do their best to cover their tracks, and it took some time for our experts to find those tracks and begin to identify what personal information had — or had not — been taken.

As a result of what we discovered we notified you of the breach. Our investigation is ongoing, and we are upgrading our security so that if attacks like this happen again, our defenses will be even stronger.

In the last few months, Sony has faced a terrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan. But now we are facing a very man-made event – a criminal attack on us — and on you — and we are working with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies around the world to apprehend those responsible.

In the coming days, we will restore service to the networks and welcome you back to the fun. I wanted to personally reach out and let you know that we are committed to serving you to the very best of our ability, protecting your information better than ever, and getting you back to what you signed up for – all the games and great entertainment experiences that you expect from Sony.

With best regards,
Howard Stringer

As you will have read in the letter from Sir Howard Stringer, that we posted a few hours ago, in the US we are offering all PSN users one year’s free access to an identity protection scheme. I can assure you that here in the SCEE region, we are working incredibly hard to offer you something very similar. As is often the case here, with so many countries in our region, this is a very complicated thing to achieve, but we are close.

Please keep an eye on the blog as we hope to be able to announce something about this very soon

As you may know, we’ve begun the process of restoring the service through internal testing of the new system. We’re still working to confirm the security of the network infrastructure, as well as working with a variety of outside entities to confirm with them of the security of the system. Verifying the system security is vital for the process of restoration. Additional comprehensive system checks and testing are still required, and we must complete that process before bringing the systems online.

As you’ve heard us say, our utmost priorities are the security of the network and ensuring your data is safe. We won’t restore the services until we can test the system’s strength in these respects.

When we held the press conference in Japan last week, based on what we knew, we expected to have the services online within a week. We were unaware of the extent of the attack on Sony Online Entertainment servers, and we are taking this opportunity to conduct further testing of the incredibly complex system. We know many of you are wanting to play games online, chat with your friends and enjoy all of the services PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have to offer, and trust me when I say we’re doing everything we can to make it happen. We will update you with more information as soon as we have it. We apologize for the delay and inconvenience of this network outage.

Also, look out for more information on the rest of our Welcome Back programme, including which free content you will be eligible for. We will be offering PSN users the opportunity to select two PS3 games from a list of five, as well as offering PSP users the opportunity to choose two games from a list of four. We will let you know exactly what games are available very soon.

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Ik wacht nog steeds op mijn gratis downloads/games

Bron: http://blog.eu.playstation.com
Gepost door: Chtus op 07-05-2011 11:19

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Ik las het inderdaad, ik hoop niet dat die PSP games ook in de tien gratis PSP games zitten
Gepost door: Henri-Alexander op 07-05-2011 13:23

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Ik vraag me af hoe ze dat gaan regelen. Ik en velen met mij hebben meerdere accounts op hun ps3 en ik neem aan dat Sony niet wil dat iemand met 2 accounts 4 gratis spellen krijgt. Maarja tis weer afwachten.
Gepost door: Sparxy op 07-05-2011 16:53

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Sony kennende is het gewoon per account. Wat maakt het uit als je op één console meerdere accounts heb? Als je op één account een item koopt hebben de andere accounts dat item ook. Eigenlijk krijg je dan zelfs meer service dan nodig, nietwaar?
Gepost door: Henri-Alexander op 07-05-2011 17:12

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Je kan kiezen tussen 4 games las ik, dus dan is het wel erg voor Sony
Gepost door: ChrissieOne op 09-05-2011 19:07

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Hoezo? Verwacht je dat je inFamous 2 en Uncharted 3 krijgt?

Reken er maar op dat je eerder uit games kan kiezen die al voor 5 euro uit de grabbelbak bij bart smit/FRS te halen zijn.

Daar zal Sony echt niet wakker van liggen om die gratis digitaal uit te delen ;-).
Gepost door: Sp4re op 09-05-2011 19:24

Inderdaad; hier ook: update gedaan, maar nog niet online kunnen

Ik las wel dat niet alle landen tegelijk online gaan, maar heb nog niet de planning van Nederland gezien... Wel zou alles vandaag weer online gaan, maar dat zal dan wel behoorlijk druk worden 666

Nu nog eens nadenken wat m'n PSN password ook al weer was, want die moet je wijzigen zodra je online kan...
Gepost door: ElCheapo op 15-05-2011 12:29

Werd eens tijd Kan ik eens de dlc van Mass Effect 2 downloaden. Nu ik een Xbox 360 heb speel ik toch eerst even deel 1 binnenkort.
Gepost door: NOFEAR17 op 15-05-2011 13:33

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Ik denk niet dat dat gaat DLC zit toch gekoppeld aan de PS-store? Welke nog niet online gaat
Gepost door: YoghurtBij op 15-05-2011 14:26