Lawyers to get $2.75M for SOE/PSN/Qriocity Class Action Suit for 2011 Security Breach — We’ll Get 450SC
Sony Online Entertainment, Playstation Network, and Qriocity customers located in the USA who had an account before May 15, 2011 have begun receiving e-mails notifying them of the settlement of a Class Action Lawsuit. The e-mails have been confirmed as legitimate provided they come from email-sonyonline.com.
If You Had a PlayStation Network, Qriocity, or Sony Online Entertainment Account Before May 15, 2011, You Could Get Benefits from a Class Action Settlement.
- Benefits you could get (if you qualify) include:
- Payment equal to paid wallet balances (if $2 or more) in PSN or SOE accounts that have been inactive since the Intrusions,
- One or more of the following: a free PS3 or PSP game, 3 free PS3 themes, or a free 3-month subscription to PlayStation Plus (once valid claims exceed $10 million, class members will still be eligible for one free month of PlayStation Plus),
- A free month of Music Unlimited for Qriocity accountholders who did not have a PSN account,
- $4.50 in SOE Station Cash (amounts will be reduced proportionally if valid claims exceed $4 million).
The law firms of Robbins Gellar Rudman & Dowd LLP, Barnow and Associates P.C., Law Offices of David A. McKay LLC, Grant & Eisenhofer P.A., Strange & Carpenter, Blood Hurst & O’Reardon LLP, and Casey Gerry Schenk Francavilla Blatt & Penfield LLP will split $2.75 million.
The complete e-mail being sent by SOE to customers is viewable here. The website for the settlement disbursement is here. If you wish to read the actual legal documents, they can be downloaded here.
Again, if your SOE account was active, then you get 450SC. If your account was inactive, then the details get trickier:
Inactive Sony Online Entertainment Accountholders:
If you signed in to any of your SOE accounts at any time from January 1, 2011 through May 14, 2011, but after that (through June 13, 2014) you did not have any sign-ins in any of them (and did not open any new accounts) because of the Intrusions, you can get a payment equal to any balance of paid virtual currency in your account wallet, if that balance is at least $2 (200 Station Cash units). The eligible balance does not include unpurchased or promotional Station Cash. If you do not submit a claim or your claim is invalid, the credit balance in your individual account wallet will be available to you for future use.
When you submit a claim for this benefit, your existing SOE accounts will be locked so that any wallet balances can be calculated. If your claim is approved, your wallet balance will be extinguished and your existing accounts will be closed.
Even if you are eligible for this benefit, you are not required to select it. Instead, you can choose to resume use of any of your SOE accounts and submit a claim for an active SOE accountholder benefit.
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Comments (38)
Eric T Lewis
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The lawyers are the obvious winners, and we get 4.50 in station cash, and that is laughable. I need to go to law school, man what a rip off.
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Kinya
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I don’t get it. Do we all get 450SC or only those who prove their CC info was stolen?
OMG what will I do with this amount of money?! Maybe research a GM.. oh, wait….
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Feldon
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The FAQ is pretty clear, but here’s my impression…
If your account was active any time prior to May 15, 2011 AND you have played since that date, your account is classified as “active” for the lawsuit and you are entitled to 450SC.
If your account was active any time between January 1 and May 14, 2011 but then you NEVER logged in after the breach, then you are entitled to a cash translation of however much StationCash you had in the now-dormant account, as long as it was least 200SC ($2). In other words, if you had 10,000SC in your account and never logged in after May 14, 2011, I believe you will get a cheque for $100. To get this payment, you must agree to have your account closed.
So basically this lawsuit mostly benefits those who walked away from their accounts after the breach.
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Kinya
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So I don’t have to fill in this? Sorry Feldon but my law related english is non existant 😀
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Kinya
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scratch my question – it is US only
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bhagpuss
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Hmm. 450 SC on all my 7 accounts sounds quite nice for something that didn’t materially affect me at the time or since.
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Wilhelm Arcturus
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“450 SC on all my 7 accounts sounds quite nice”
You wish! Read the letter. Americans only. It is a boondoggle of our legal system, so only we benefit.
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Jonathan
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I imagine that Sony’s legal department has had an idea more-or-less what this would cost for quite some time, maybe as long as a year or so. Any interesting news from Sony from about a year ago? Why, yes, yes there was. They chose to save some money by sunsetting four of their less popular, less profitable games, even though they had recently been spending money on them. It was something that was a surprise at the time. I recall Smed being rather defensive and sounding a bit bitter about it.
We’ll never know if there is a direct connection. But the timing is interesting. That lawyer-money had to come from somewhere, after all. Perhaps it impacted more than they are saying out loud.
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Erin
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And only to those who life in the US…
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Dhalkar
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I also want to add that this is only for USA, so us europeans need not to bother.
Here’s from their “FAQ”
5. How do I know if I am part of the settlement?
ANSWER:
The Court decided that the Settlement Class includes anyone residing in the United States (including its territories) who had a PSN account or sub-account, a Qriocity account, or an SOE account at any time before May 15, 2011.
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Kinya
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LOL I didn’t see it 🙂
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Mogrim
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Seriously people. Do NOT pursue this. SOE made good after the breech, and anyone who was involved in the game should remember the Station Cash giveaways, the “make good” bundle given to all players, the “making all zones hot zones events” and whatnot.
SOE made good on this. This is just lawyers being greedy. Don’t play their games.
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Feldon
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The lawyers get their $2.75M whether we file claims or not. It’s a sweet deal for them.
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Eric Poling
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I read this and immediately went to the scene in The Jerk where Steve Martin was writing all the checks for $1.97 to the people who won a class action suit against him. (And yes, I am sure I got the amount wrong. *smile* But it was something similarly low.)
But seriously, didn’t hurt me in any way. I looked at the online claim form just to see how complicated the procedure is and discovered it was really simple to do so I went ahead and made a claim.
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Enrico
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If that many lawyers take on sony and then split 3mil, I’m not sure if they would call it a win. If nobody’s happy then it’s probably a fair resolution. However, I’m a little confused how they can count their made-up currency as money. I’ll take it and be happy, but only because I agree with Mogrim – They made good, as far as I know. But if anyone suffered provable monetary damage, they should be paid in, you know, money.
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Enrico
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I can’t edit my post, but I see what you’re talking about now. Although I would have liked the SC, I’m not going to work for it by filling out whatever forms I assume are on that claim link. However, I am skeptical about it making a political statement in the “lawyer sharks vs our computer overlords” debate.
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Quote of the Day – Hard Earned Station Cash | The Ancient Gaming Noob
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[…] Feldon, Headline over at EQ2 Wire […]
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Kruzzen
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Can we banish all lawyers into the Sun in the great awakening?
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Nolus
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This doesn’t apply for me but I hate that you have to write to them to be excluded in the suite. I’m excluded because I am not a resident of the US. But yeah, waste of time and the lawyers make the money off of it.
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Caela
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Seems like I get a new notice of a class action suite every week – and they are all that you have to specifically exclude yourself – I think that is pretty standard for class actions.
I didn’t get an email on any of the three accounts I had active at the time.
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Caela
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Now that I think about it – I was on Freeport at the time, and it was still the EQ2X game – I wonder if they are not included in the class action???
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Feldon
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You were an SOE account holder, so yes.
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Caela
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We finally got our emails for all three accounts late last night.
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Karsten
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(Rant)
So. Sony gets attacked, information gets breached, and systems get shut down for about two weeks. And people sue Sony about it?
Yes, security is crucial, and a breach of security is not a trivial event. I respect that. Anyone whose information was taken has a legitimate claim against Sony as a result.
For the rest, whose information wasn’t stolen, this might constitute a loss of faith in Sony’s security. People of those opinions should cancel their accounts, and I expect they already have.
Anyone not belonging to the two categories above, who is still attacking Sony, is acting like a spoiled kid whose toys were taken away. And any lawyer promoting this sort of lawsuit deserves to be treated exactly like the spoiled kid in question. Choose your preferred method of demeaning childhood punishment and insert it here.
I’ll claim my 450SC because, as Feldon rightly pointed out, the lawyers get theirs whether or not I get mine. And the things I use my SC to buy are not costing Sony anything (spell research). But seriously… Aside from those whose information was indeed stolen and used maliciously- everyone else whining about this is literally whining. And I find it disgusting that our legal system rewards this behavior.
(End Rant)
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Dark Beast
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Damn, I need to read better, I just managed to get through forms etc and realised EU wont get anything =(
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Anonymousxx
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I agree with Mogrim, even though he does play a warlock. #Fatalityno.2!
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Eschia
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So we get less than 5 dollars worth of crypto currency that isn’t even enough to buy a mount. At the risk of having an account closed. Yay… I’ll pass.
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Feldon
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There’s no risk of having your account closed.
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Quintas
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Why isnt European Players included in this settlement? We were effected just as much as the USA. I know its only 450SC but it would be nice that our inconvenience was acknowledged too
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Enrico
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I would guess because US court doesn’t have juristiction, Quintas.
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milliebii
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That is not it. I know of at least three US based class action suites that had class members in Australia that received payments in settlement. It was the way in which this group of lawyers defined the class in their presentation to the court.
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Feldon
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I bet lawfirms in Australia didn’t smell enough
bloodmoney to make it worth joining the class.Reply
milliebii
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Nope, it is much more likely that our local ambulance chasers were completely ignorant of the whole thing. The ‘normal’ way these things happen is that the US law firm(s) contact an Aussie firm to do the leg work for them and drum up business. In this case it did not happen.
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milliebii
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I am not crying though I believe SOE did the right thing at the time with the “make good” package, this suite was vexatious and should have been dismissed IMHO.
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Noctew
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Because we European players, in fact all players have long ago been compensated by SOE voluntarily. We got 1 free month of All Access, research potions and more. This is just another case of greedy lawyers abosuing the US legal system.
To be fair, US customers have been hit by this a bit more than we did. Identity theft is almost non existant in the EU, but I’ve heard it can be a real nightmare in the US with creditors coming after you for debts incurred with accounts opened in your name. But as far as I remember SOE even offered to pay for a company offering protection from identity theft fraud.
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Bloodstormz
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LMAO wow they got off free and clear on that. split millions of dollars to lawyers and give compensation in “Virtual Funds” sounds like good old fashioned embezzlement scheme to me. Create a fake company, create a class action suit lawyers suck up the money in fee’s company files bankruptcy and then the so called lawyers are the “New capital investors”
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Oxymorphone
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“Omg 450 station cash. Please take all my information, I don’t need privacy. Please take my cc data again, I want moar.”
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Ereon
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To be fair as someone pointed out earlier, Sony basically made good already. Both the amount people are getting and frankly the lawyer fees (~3 Million is not a lot for even one law firm) are small. Take the SC and be done.
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