Christmas extended due to blackout
Due to the Playstation Network and XBox Live DDOS attack over the Christmas holiday, most gamers did not have the capability to enjoy seasonally-timed events in online games. This has now been corrected.
Two weeks ago Grand Theft Auto Online introduced a surprise update that added seasonally themed items to the game: snow, Santa hats, festive masks, ugly sweaters, even the ability to have snowball fights in the streets. It would have been a blast if anyone were there to enjoy it on Christmas morning. These special events were originally to be removed January 5, but will now remain in the game for an unspecified period of time. (They WILL be removed eventually, so even if it feels a bit awkward on December 29, get your Yule on now.)
GTA isn’t the only game to be affected by the outage. Destiny has the mysterious traveling merchant Xur, a character that only shows up on weekends and will trade the player common items in the game for rare and exotic weaponry. Because no one could reach Xur last weekend, he will make a rare weekday appearance in the Tower, at least until 10PM Monday (perhaps longer if he gets a lot of service).
Finally, anyone who owns the PC game Nuclear Throne by January 1 will be given a free extra copy of the game to give to a friend. This has nothing to do with hacks or outages, which didn’t affect Steam. It’s more of a tactic to balance the game’s online mode out by attracting new players. According to Vlambeer, the developing studio that created the game, Nuclear Throne is still being fine-tuned and the current crop of players are too good at playing it to result in sufficient data.
Krissttina Isobe
January 4, 2017 @ 5:55 am
That's so nice to have the option to celebrate Christmas again. Too bad they were attacked right at Christmas time. These games costs so much money too, so though it's past Christmas you can get Christmas on again, though it's past Christmas. What a kind thing they do for everyone who was affected by the attack!
kamai
January 4, 2017 @ 4:53 am
How unfortunate for the gamers to lose their Christmas gaming opprtunity but good thing the owners let them have it for some extra days, I think that is very nice of them. Most players prefer spending their Christmas playing gameing specials so I guess they were devastated knowing about the attack.
Ammyfan
January 4, 2017 @ 8:22 pm
It's good of them to extend the offers, since so few people got to use them. I do find the Nuclear Thrones update funny though – having to give away new games because their current players are too good isn't a problem I normally hear about!
kingcool52
January 5, 2017 @ 3:51 am
To be honest I didn't even notice that the servers were down for PSN. I did play some Battlefield on christmas day and online seemed to be working perfectly fine for me. I'm glad that the GTA seasonal stuff have been extended so that we can enjoy it for longer, I just wish they would keep the snow as well for a bit longer, I wasn't able to enjoy it as much as I wanted to
TheKnight
January 5, 2017 @ 4:51 pm
Those people that did that don't deserve any Christmas at all unless they do a Grinch and reward anyone they wanted to hurt. I'm glad people were still able to enjoy the holiday outside of the holiday. Better late than never.
efrain silva
January 5, 2017 @ 6:33 pm
I was actually hoping something like this would happen some day or some year. I didn't know that it could happen. I love Christmas!