PlayStation Plus To Extend Membership As A Thank You To Customers; Sony Compensates For Holiday Hacks And Server Downtime With Five-Day Extension On Accounts

PlayStation Plus extends membership to compensate for the holiday hassles. Sony took a serious hit with the suspected DDoS attacks, also on the hacks which compromised a treasure trove of emails and upcoming projects. The company was also recently in hot controversy, with threats "The Interview" screenings would spark serious consequences.

The holidays are over, though, and Sony is making it up to console gamers with a PlayStation Plus extended membership. The extension is available to everyone with an active membership or free trial on Christmas day, and is effective for five days.

Members don't have to request the extension, as the offer is automatically implemented to all valid accounts. Memberships or trial accounts which expire before the extension is available and will still receive the five-day offer, upon notification.

Sony also announced a one-time offer for a ten-percent discount on cart purchases on the PlayStation Store, which should amount to serious savings for huge one-time purchases. The discount code will be shelled out sometime this month, valid for a limited time.

Sony said the discount is valid on a variety of content at the PS Store, which includes blockbuster releases, indie games and game add-ons, season passes, as well as TV shows and movies.

The PlayStation Store offers new titles this January, good enough for the PlayStation Plus extended membership and discount. There's inFAMOUS First Light (PS4) releases as the prequel to Second Son; Swapper (PS4, PS3, PS Vita), Woah Dave! (Vita), Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition (Vita), and Gravity Crash Ultra (Vita); Prototype 2 and DuckTales: Remastered releases on the PlayStation 3 (playstation.com).

Sony announced the offer for the PlayStation Plus extended membershipon the official PlayStation blog, as a holiday greeting to loyal customers, especially those who patiently waited for the server issues to weather out.

Sony servers were the target of suspected Distributed Denial of Service attacks in previous months, also of hacks which leaked company correspondences and upcoming releases.