Win Back At Sony

As Ardwulf notes, SOE's winback campaign is underway now that the services are back up.  Change your Station Account password and then check your subscription statuses - you likely have 45 day pending subscriptions for all SOE games that you have ever paid for.  This deal must be claimed by August, but extending it to former customers seems like a smart move - it costs them nothing if the player does not take them up on it, and the amount of time involved is long enough that they could potentially win back some former players during that time.  (Besides, they coughed up former player data alongside current player info.) 

EQ2 players are also getting a variety of goodies, including 30 days worth of rent deposited to their houses, 35 days worth of spell upgrade research time, and about two weeks of double exp.   (EQ2X non-subscribers get 30 days of Gold time, so load up your broker slots early and often.) 

On the PS3 side of the house, they're offering up two free downloads from a list of five games (US list here).  Again, the cost isn't that impressive - we have two greatest hits games with recent full-priced sequels and several PSN-only games that Sony is probably hoping will convince people to consider buying more in the future.  Longtime players have probably played the ones they wanted, but relatively recent PS3 owners who spend most of their gaming time doing other things (like MMO's) are likely to find something nice in the care package. 

(Infamous was on my want list anyway, and I'm sure I'll get at least some mileage out of whatever I pick from the others - probably Wipeout, I liked F-Zero back in the day, and this looks vaguely like F-Zero with missiles.) 

On top of this stuff, they're reportedly working on identity theft protection for everyone affected, which is the most obvious direct remedy to the actual harm that people potentially suffered.  I can think of any number of times when some third party has disclosed my personal info in ways I would have preferred they not do and I've walked away from the deal with a lot less to show for it. 

Will it be enough to convince players to put this all behind them?  Not counting folks who were looking for an excuse to cut their ties with the company anyway, I think they've done what they can.  Even if their reputations are mostly back, the cost is substantial, and time will tell what the impact of that is.  Still, I think it could have been worse - hopefully we won't have to find out.