Sony PlayStation has been sued by British consumer rights advocate Alex Neal for violating competition laws. The amount of compensation is £5 billion, equivalent to regarding KRW 7.937 trillion.
UK Sky News reported on the 22nd.announced a £5 billion lawsuit once morest the Sony PlayStation.
Alex Neil, who filed the lawsuit, is the CEO of The Resolver Group, a consumer organization that works in the field of consumer complaints and dispute resolution. She claimed that Sony violated competition laws by charging a 30% fee for digital games and in-app purchases on its PlayStation Store. In particular, she claimed, along with these fees, she abused her market power and ripped off the game by forcing unfair terms and conditions on developers and publishers.
Neil stated that Sony’s behavior has overcharged digital game purchases by around £5 billion over the past six years. Documents filed with the Competition Appeals Tribunal are said to include 9 million British people who have purchased content from the PlayStation Store since August 2016, with estimated damages between £67 and £562 per person. Neil argued that 9 million users were entitled to the reward.
“The game on the Sony PlayStation is over,” Neil said in a statement via Sky News. He also noted the importance of the game industry, saying that gaming is a bigger entertainment industry than TV, video, and music, and that vulnerable people depend on games for their communities. It emphasizes that the general consumer, not a specific class, is suffering.
Neil’s legal move is with law firm Milberg London LLP. In particular, Natasha Pierman, a lawyer in Milberg London, a competition law expert in the EU and the UK, argued that Sony dominates the digital distribution of PlayStation games and in-game content.
Alex Neal and Milberg London are running a campaign called ‘PlayStation You Owe Us’ along with this legal lawsuit.
However, there are many views that view the outcome of this lawsuit negatively. The fact that the 30% fee that Sony charges to the store company is already being set by several other companies / The fee setting was reflected in the overall game market at the time / The individual price of the game is set by the company, not by Sony, etc. This is the reason. In addition, the fact that it is difficult to see that the price of a game will be lowered by setting a fee of less than 30% like the Epic Games Store that charges a low fee is also considered an example of predicting the outcome of this lawsuit.
Meanwhile, Sony has recently been sued for violating antitrust laws by changing its policy to not sell digital download codes for PlayStation games on third-party stores. However, the judge in charge of the case dismissed the case, saying that Sony’s antitrust violations were not proven.
