PlayStation Network was not the only Sony service affected by the recent hacker intrusion; Sony Online Entertainment's games and Station network went down for the count, too. It's now coming back up. As with PSN, the restoration of SOE's games and services is happening in staggered phases.
"Restoration of SOE's game services will begin today," said the company in a statement. "This phased restoration will include the return of nearly all of our portfolio of online games, the reinstatement of our game forums and websites, and added functionality to require players to reset their passwords."
Both Sony and SOE are rolling out a "Welcome Back" program to earn goodwill from the community. While Sony remains mum about what PlayStation 3 and PSP players will gain access to, in addition to a free 30 days of service on top outage time, SOE has outlined the rather long list of in-game rewards.
I'm not going to publish the whole list here, but if you play any SOE games, you'll want to read this.
