Sony to face £6 billion UK lawsuit for allegedly overcharging PlayStation customers

[MrShovelware]

I'm so happy to see this going ahead. 

Hopefully this will force them to allow refunds like every other digital store on earth. 

link:

Sony to face £6 billion UK lawsuit for allegedly overcharging PlayStation customers (yahoo.com)

[JCP3953]

Is this only for the UK? If this leads to games being cheaper then i'm all for it, i can see them simply giving everyone some psn credit to get away from it tho, but i don't fully understand what the lawsuit is for

Edited November 24, 2023 by JCP3953

[TJ_Solo]

Complete gibberish lawsuit. 

 

Quote

The lawsuit alleges that Sony’s practice of requiring all digital games and add-ons to be purchased exclusively via the PlayStation Store is unfair.

 

It isn't much of a practice since all multiplats and their respective add-ons are available on other digital stores.

 

 

 

Quote

Consumers currently pay a surcharge of around 30 per cent on all these PlayStation store transactions.

 

Consumers don't pay that surcharge. The 30 percent is a fee paid to Sony from the Publisher. The consumer doesn't pay it and the cost of the game doesn't change because of it.

 

 

Flawed logic. 
Cashgrab lawsuit.

Edited November 24, 2023 by TJ_Solo

[Xylobe]

The claim made in the suit boils down to "Sony is abusing its position as a market leader to artificially inflate its prices by charging the long-established industry standard 30% commission for products sold through its digital store." Or, to paraphrase: literal nonsense.

[PalaceOfLove706]

I don’t understand the lawsuit. For the history of video games, console makers have always got their cut from the game publishers. One could probably argue consoles are cheaper because of the money they make from games. 

[willows_blessing]

it wont go anywhere at all lol

[Eraezr]

Wasn't the gist of this what Epic tried to bring against Apple?

[sepheroithisgod]

This is Billy Mitchell level of lawsuit BS. They claim the 30% surcharge, which is paid by the developer to list the game, not the consumer. Doesn;t really make a lot of sense and probably won't amount to anything.

[FawltyPowers]

Well they say it's flawed from Start to Finish and yet, here we are. I guess we'll see how this unfolds.

 

Still makes me laugh that I can buy a physical copy of a game that has to be manufactured, packaged and delivered for less than a digital copy that is essentially a flag on your profile that gets changed from "No" to "Yes".

[Ashande]

1 hour ago, willows_blessing said:

it wont go anywhere at all lol

 

It shouldn’t have gotten this far, but the lawyer behind it has managed to push it from “hypothetical idea” to “actually starting to happen.” It’s nonsense, it’s BS, and anyone who knows how distribution actually works, both digital and physical, or knows how retailers operate in terms of their cut is well aware of it… but judges aren’t exactly up on those concepts in many cases, and when you’re willing to outright lie or skew the perception of naive or ignorant individuals - which the lawyer in this case has priors of doing as she fluffed her resume - it makes it pretty easy to push things through that shouldn’t.

[Letenko]

Not that I think this will go anywhere, but god forbid it does, I can't wait for another price increase for PS+ with the excuse of "bringing us more quality games" so Sony can lessen the monetary impact of the lawsuit.

 

For the players indeed.

[Virtua_Vince]

2 hours ago, MrShovelware said:

I'm so happy to see this going ahead. 

Hopefully this will force them to allow refunds like every other digital store on earth. 
 

I got a digital refund just the other day.  You just have to do it within 14 days and don't download it.  Clearly if I want a refund it must have been a mistake, and so I haven't downloaded it and played it.  I've watched youtube reviews about it beforehand and checked out some gameplay, so it was a mistake.  Why else would I expect the refund? 😁

 

As for the lawsuit itself, it feels like a cash grab.  Consumers have the choice to buy at full price or buy new at launch.  Or can wait for sales of which there are many.  

[TJ_Solo]

37 minutes ago, FawltyPowers said:

Well they say it's flawed from Start to Finish and yet, here we are. I guess we'll see how this unfolds.

 

Still makes me laugh that I can buy a physical copy of a game that has to be manufactured, packaged and delivered for less than a digital copy that is essentially a flag on your profile that gets changed from "No" to "Yes".

 

That's the free market at work. Depending on the day, sale, and store you can find better deals at any given time. 

 

Sounds more like the logical fallacy of assuming that digital should always be cheaper than physical. You list all these factors that go into the cost of phyical games but ignore and don't list the basic stuff costs of hosting data online. 

[OmegaRejectz]

2 hours ago, Xylobe said:

long-established industry standard 30% commission

and...? Since when is change a bad thing?

 

You're telling me Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Valve, and Alphabet all deserve 30% of every purchase?

[TJ_Solo]

13 minutes ago, OmegaRejectz said:

and...? Since when is change a bad thing?

 

You're telling me Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Valve, and Alphabet all deserve 30% of every purchase?

 

Then sue Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Valve, GOG, Nintendo....every online store that isn't Epic. 

The arguement for a lower fee isn't a consumer one and isn't anything more than "please charge less".

 

I don't know if it is a good or bad thing. I do know that it isn't a consumer level concern.

[OmegaRejectz]

14 minutes ago, TJ_Solo said:

 

Then sue Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Valve, GOG, Nintendo....every online store that isn't Epic. 

The arguement for a lower fee isn't a consumer one and isn't anything more than "please charge less".

 

I don't know if it is a good or bad thing. I do know that it isn't a consumer level concern.

... how is it not a consumer issue?

 

If a company is charging well above the actual cost and they're trying to make their margins astronomical how would that not be an issue?

[Ashande]

12 minutes ago, OmegaRejectz said:

... how is it not a consumer issue?

 

If a company is charging well above the actual cost and they're trying to make their margins astronomical how would that not be an issue?

 

Sony would not be the one making the margins astronomical in this case. They’re charging an industry standard fee to the publisher, since Sony has to pay for and maintain the servers, bandwidth, etc… and I’d note that most retail outlets take a similar cut. We going to sue Wal-Mart, Target, GameStop and Best Buy, too? Further, Sony doesn’t decide what the prices of items are; that’s up to the publisher. Ditto if and when it goes on sale, at least digitally. Last, it’s a percentage; Sony will take 1/3rd of whatever the price is, be it the 30 cents they get from something like Lady in a Leotard With a Gun or the $23 they claim from Final Fantasy XVI, and since the publisher sets the price, Sony just takes their cut and moves along.

Edited November 24, 2023 by Ashande
Incorrectly said “dev” when I meant “publisher.”

[TJ_Solo]

8 minutes ago, OmegaRejectz said:

... how is it not a consumer issue?

 

If a company is charging well above the actual cost and they're trying to make their margins astronomical how would that not be an issue?

 

The "charge" is a business to business charge. 
The "charge" has always been in place in some form or another.

The "charge" doesn't change the cost you pay for a product.

The "charge" being reduced by Epic is to encourage devs/publishers to put games on their store in order to keep more money in the publisher's coffers not to make games cheaper for consumers.

[MrShovelware]

1 hour ago, Virtua_Vince said:

I got a digital refund just the other day.  You just have to do it within 14 days and don't download it.  Clearly if I want a refund it must have been a mistake, and so I haven't downloaded it and played it.  I've watched youtube reviews about it beforehand and checked out some gameplay, so it was a mistake.  Why else would I expect the refund? 😁

 

As for the lawsuit itself, it feels like a cash grab.  Consumers have the choice to buy at full price or buy new at launch.  Or can wait for sales of which there are many.  

Stop fanboying sonys archaic and illegal (in australia anyway) refund policy.
 

 

3 hours ago, willows_blessing said:

it wont go anywhere at all lol

lets find out

Edited November 24, 2023 by Stevieboy
clean up

[OmegaRejectz]

32 minutes ago, TJ_Solo said:

The "charge" is a business to business charge. 

last I checked the amount that middlemen charge directly affects the cost of the product.

32 minutes ago, TJ_Solo said:

The "charge" has always been in place in some form or another.

and again. How is that a reason? Just cause something's always been that way doesn't mean it should stay that way forever.

32 minutes ago, TJ_Solo said:

The "charge" doesn't change the cost you pay for a product.

Ummm. No? It definitely does.

If a store charges 10% to sell a companies product, that company is going to have to either

cut costs or raise prices

How is having a cheaper/inferior product or having to more for the same product not an issue to a consumer?

32 minutes ago, TJ_Solo said:

The "charge" being reduced by Epic is to encourage devs/publishers to put games on their store in order to keep more money in the publisher's coffers not to make games cheaper for consumers.

... you do realize not every publisher/developer makes a quintillion dollars and that its only a handful of large publishers that are raking in the dough? There's plenty of indie devs just trying to pay the bills doing something they enjoy. But yeah, you're right. When it's the store holder they're totally in the right for charging 30% for something that does not require 30% in maintenance costs, etc, however, when it's the publisher not getting screwed over it's just greedy suits

Edited November 24, 2023 by Stevieboy
clean up

[Jeanolt]

1 hour ago, TJ_Solo said:

You list all these factors that go into the cost of phyical games but ignore and don't list the basic stuff costs of hosting data online. 

You can sell physical games, that alone make them more valuable than digital.

[JCP3953]

40 minutes ago, MrShovelware said:

lets find out

 

I can’t see this going anywhere, I don’t know the laws regarding this in UK but in my country this wouldn’t really make it to courts, I’m interested in watching where this goes, and in the end would this mean if they decrease the charge would that cost less for us or just give the devs more money 

Edited November 24, 2023 by Stevieboy
clean up

[PalaceOfLove706]

14 minutes ago, JCP3953 said:

I can’t see this going anywhere, I don’t know the laws regarding this in UK but in my country this wouldn’t really make it to courts, I’m interested in watching where this goes, and in the end would this mean if they decrease the charge would that cost less for us or just give the devs more money 

If Sony lowered their cut, the game publishers for the most part would just pocket the money. Look at the Epic Games Store. Publishers get 88% and EA Sports FC isn’t any cheaper as an example. 

Edited November 24, 2023 by Stevieboy
clean up

[JCP3953]

2 minutes ago, PalaceOfLove706 said:

If Sony lowered their cut, the game publishers for the most part would just pocket the money. Look at the Epic Games Store. Publishers get 88% and EA Sports FC isn’t any cheaper as an example. 

That’s the most likely case, would be nice if they made the games cheaper instead, games are getting quite pricy in my country 

[ObsiEez]

Really hope it goes through. The fact digital is becoming more expensive than physical is asinine. For example here in Canada, Dead Island 2 is $98 on the PSN Store, but it's $90 to buy it physically off Amazon or any other physical game store. There are other examples of this, like Final Fantasy 16 being $3 more, Persona 3 Reload pre-order being $3 more, & probably some others that I can think of off the top of my head.

 

Digital should ALWAYS be cheaper because not only do they not have to produce actual physical versions of the game, but once you buy it, you're stuck with it because of Sony's terrible refund policy. I doubt the lawsuit will actually go anywhere, but I'm praying it does