If you are a OneDrive user who has 10GB of free cloud storage space that was labeled as a "Loyalty Bonus", you can rest easy. Microsoft has confirmed that bonus won't go away when it cuts down its free storage to 5GB for new users sometime in early 2016.
Here's the history of that extra space. Back when Microsoft called the OneDrive service SkyDrive, it gave people 25GB of free space. It then cut down that space to 7GB but allowed people who signed up beforehand to keep their 25GB of space. Later, when Microsoft increased that free space to 15GB of storage, the people who had the old 25GB of space got to keep it, except that it split that amount between the free 15GB and a extra 10GB of space labeled as a "Loyalty Bonus".
In November, Microsoft announced that it was cutting back the 15GB of free storage space down to just 5GB. Last week, after a massive backlash against that move by users, the company said they could keep that 15GB of space after all, if they signed up on a special site by Jan. 31, 2016. Many people have since asked if the 10GB "Loyalty Bonus" would remain. Douglas Pearce, Microsoft's Group Program Manager for OneDrive, confirmed they would indeed keep that bonus in a message on his Twitter account:
"The old loyalty bonus was never getting touched. Just the free quota and camera bonus which now you can keep."
In addition, OneDrive users with a paid subscription to Groove Music will still keep their extra 100GB of free space. The changes also won't affect any bonus space that users have received via referrals.
Source: Douglas Pearce (Twitter); Via: WinBeta
