For the past four years,Sonyhas beenembroiled in a legal battlewithPlayStationgamers over how it prices games on its proprietary PlayStation Store, specifically the fact that digital game purchases have been restricted to the storefrontand that its prices are “supercompetitive” compared to retail stores and potentially other digital storefronts.
Flash forward to today, and Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California has rejected Sony’s proposal to settle the class action lawsuit via electronic coupons.
Impacted PlayStation Gamers Would Have Earned Virtually Nothing Under This Proposal
As reported by Reuters, the proposed settlement would have provided impacted gamers $7.8 million in electronic credits. Those credits would’ve gone to millions of users that have been impacted.
However, it was rejected on the basis that it was a coupon settlement that is generally unfavored by the courts. “Any renewed motion for preliminary approval must address the propriety of such settlement coupons and whether the value and structure of this settlement remain defensible,” the ruling read in part.
In a report from TweakTown, it was noted that there are roughly 4.4 million users impacted by the current suit. Under Sony’s original proposal, those who were impacted by the situation would’ve stood to get back around $1.77 in credits to use on the PlayStation Network, a rather paltry sum, all things considered.
To this day, obtaining digital games outside the PlayStation Store is pretty much next to impossible.The decision Sony made back in 2019 to essentially stop providing such keys to retailers, including deactivating keys that hadn’t been sold yet, has had wide-ranging ramifications to this day, particularly as the company sells a digital-only console variation, meaning its consumers are locked to the proprietary storefront and whatever sales it has at any given point.
