Sony and Nintendo come to an agreement with the CMA in the UK and stop charging for unused subscriptions.
Sony and Nintendo join Microsoft on a very specific point of their management of customer subscriptions, namely pause direct debits for unused subscriptions. A measure that comes into force in the Kingdom. Indeed, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has reached an agreement with the giant Sony to reduce the accounts PlayStation Plus not used. Sony will remind inactive subscribers how to terminate their subscription and, if there is still no activity, will automatically terminate the charge. Nintendo, meanwhile, will no longer automatically renew Switch Online subscriptions by default.
Sony and Nintendo reach an agreement with the CMA in the United Kingdom
Microsoft said last January that it would cancel Xbox Live Gold and Game Pass subscriptions in the UK first, then everywhere else in the world. Like Sony, the Redmond company will initially inform customers (following a full year of inactivity) and, a year later, will stop the levy. Microsoft also said it would provide more accurate and immediate information regarding these subscriptions, such as auto-renewal or refunds.
and stop charging for unused subscriptions
These changes led the CMA to terminate an investigation into the services of video games which had been initiated in 2019. It focused not only on automatic renewals, but also on the difficulty of obtaining refunds and potential unfair subscription conditions. No one knows, at this stage, if the CMA was able to solve all the problems brought to light, but the main one seems to have been managed in any case: you should have less risk of being invoiced for a service than you stopped using a long time ago.
