I'm very glad to hear that they did this; it seems like a really heartfelt outpouring of sympathy, and I commend them.
Forgive me for making a tangentially related point, though: this is part of the reason things like games that always require online verification or always-on network connections from the first time they're installed both scare and frustrate me.
We have here a truly beautiful example of people who normally stand largely apathetic to one another's existence across the boundary of the customer/creator business relationship reaching out to one another and recognizing each other's humanity. And a chance for a life lost too soon to truly achieve something like immortality.
Doesn't it seem truly unfair that such a thing might be lost forever because a server was shut down?
I think many of us would feel outrage if the work of Mark Twain or Sylvia Plath or William Shakespeare was lost to us because it was no longer in a holder's financial interest to maintain its existence. If we really believe this medium has its own intrinsic value- even if we don't believe that value as high as that of poets, writers, directors- it seems like a real wrongdoing to permit access to it to be lost forever once a short window of financial viability is closed. It seems grotesque to deny people who have poured their heart and soul into a game the same immortality when arguably a digital copy ought to be even easier to preserve than some eminently corruptible piece of paper.
Just my thoughts. Anyway... Again, good for Gearbox for reaching out to a fan. It gives one hope for an industry that often seems happy to deal with the business as one of products and customers, rather than as experiences and people.
