Sony, a company that has seen much success recently with the sales of the PlayStation 4, is very close to settling a class action suit stemming from events of roughly three years ago, when success for the company was a little harder to come by with last generation’s PlayStation 3. This class action suit, formed by a collection of customers affected by the massive breach in security and subsequent outage of the PlayStation Network of 2011, will result in a distribution of roughly $15 million of virtual goods according to Polygon, who provides more specifics regarding the breakdown of the nature of virtual goods being offered. The settlement still needs final approval from a judge, but if approved, Sony will give out things such as games, themes, and subscriptions for services like PlayStation Plus to those included on the suit.

It is key to note that anyone involved in the suit that already participated in the giveaway Sony had immediately following the outage, where some games were given away for free for a limited time, will not be entitled to the same amount of free virtual goods as those who have received nothing as reparations for the debacle. The final details of this settlement won’t be available until May 2015, unfortunately, as that is when the judge is set to make his final decision in the matter.

Are virtual goods enough for a class action suit that deals with things as serious as credit card and other billing information being leaked? It seems as though monetary compensation would be the clearest form of reparations, and giving out virtual goods, no matter what amount is given out, presents a new problem for both Sony and those customers looking to put the PSN outage and their subsequent security violations behind them. It could potentially reignite an issue of trust for a company that just barely was able to weather the last stirring of said issue.

The inherent flaw of settling a class action suit such as this with a handout of virtual goods rather than monetary compensation is that giving out virtual goods assumes that those plaintiffs attached to the suit are all still using the very service that betrayed them in the first place. It is three years later, and surely many of the millions of people affected by the outage have forgiven Sony and returned to using PlayStation products, but one must assume that those that are attached to the class action suit are those that were affected in the worst way by the 2011 outage. These are the customers that would be most likely to not forgive and forget, not return to PlayStation products in any way. Certainly it would seem that these customers would be least likely to use the PlayStation store again, and in redeeming codes for these virtual goods, all of this is made necessary.

As I have mentioned time and again, it has been three years. Who is to say that some of these class action plaintiffs even own a Sony console at all anymore? If they don’t, do they receive nothing? This seems to be an inherent flaw in this plan for settlement, and in a worst case scenario it could prove to be counter-intuitive, in that it could reinvigorate strong feelings of distrust left over from 2011, which has to be the last thing Sony wants. The judge may in fact bring up this flaw, but only time will tell. Hopefully come 2015, we won’t be hearing more stories of angry and distrustful Sony customers.