PS3 PSN Outage Court Settlement is Here--How to Cash In

Did you have a Playstation 3 in 2011?  Did you experience the horrible PSN network outage that crippled games, online services, and other features for over a month?  Do you like free stuff?  If you do, I have great news--several court cases being hosted against Sony have been resolved, and as part of a 15 million dollar settlement, Sony is offering some free stuff to qualifying gamers who file a claim against them.

Here's how it works: if you owned a PSN account before May 15th of 2011, you can go to the following website to submit your information and your desired compensation to Sony.  You fill out a questionnaire that includes your contact information, some brief questions about your account at the time, and if you took part of the 'welcome back' program Sony first initiated immediately after the shutdown.  Following the questions, you get to pick between three reward packs:

Either one free PS3 or PSP game, such as God of War HD, inFamous, LittleBigPlanet or Rain. 

Three PS3 Themes.

Or a 3-month subscription to Playstation Plus.  Bear in mind that if you have a Playstation Plus account already, you can't use this to get three extra months.  Also bear in mind that when the number of redeemed claims reaches 10 million, you'll only get one free month, so sign up in a hurry if you want to cash in on that.

Some other information you need to know: if you can prove your identity was stolen as a result of the hacks, you can make a claim for reimbursement up to 2,500 dollars.  Again, if over one million dollars is given out by Sony by this program, the amount of money you can get back will be reduced, so get on it asap.  It's also important to note that this is a timed program, so if you don't get it before August 31st of this year, you won't get to be reimbursed. 

And, if for some reason you want to sue Sony yourself, you'll need to exclude yourself from the class action suit, which can also be done on the website linked above.  I wouldn't recommend doing that, however, as the vast majority of lawsuits issued against Sony resulted in failure for the persecution.

So if you qualify and you want more free stuff, hurry up and sign on!  Goodness knows I did before I wrote this article--because that's how much integrity I have.