If you were one of the unlucky many who were negatively affected by Microsoft's Xbox LIVE Cloud Save feature crapping out, the company wants to say "sorry" in a very nice way: with more Xbox LIVE.

Whether you were affected "a couple of hours or a couple of days," Microsoft is giving away a month of free Gold membership. No, not to everyone -- affected parties only. Apparently, they know exactly who you are, too.

In a message posted on New Year's Eve, Major Nelson notes the Cloud Save issues have been resolved, and he left a message from Xbox LIVE General Manager Alex Garden, email and all:

We want to thank all of our Xbox LIVE members impacted by the Cloud Saved Games service issue for your patience and understanding. It took longer than we expected to get back to full performance as we needed to ensure the integrity of everyone’s game saves. Whether you couldn’t access your game saves for a couple of hours or a couple of days, we sincerely apologize for the delay and inconvenience. We will be automatically applying a one-month extension to the Xbox LIVE Gold memberships of everyone who was impacted. We can assure you we’ll also be doing a thorough post mortem to help prevent this from happening again.

As always, I welcome your feedback. Game on!

Alex Garden
Email: Alex dot Garden at Microsoft dot com
General Manager, Xbox LIVE

Reactions have obviously been mixed, ranging from grateful to indignant. Well, we'd be feeling a mix of both too, were we part of that group.

Thanks for the tip, as always, LOD-squa!