PlayStation‘s announcement that it will be ending physical media production in about a year and a half has caused widespread, significant backlash, and now there are potentially hefty monetary consequences, to the tune of $450 million. PlayStation disc production will end in January 2028, all but ensuring that the expected PlayStation 6, which has yet to be officially announced, will be a digital-only device, locking consumers into only one option for game purchases, the platform’s proprietary, built-in store.
In response to this anti-consumer move from the Japanese gaming company, a Dutch nonprofit, Stichting Massaschade & Consument, has filed a lawsuit seeking €400 million to compensate affected PlayStation users in the Netherlands. This equates to roughly $457.3 million, which is being sought on behalf of 1.7 million Dutch PlayStation users in the lawsuit known as Fair PlayStation.
“No discs means no second-hand market and no alternative to the PlayStation Store, so from 2028, Sony alone decides what a game costs and even how long you are allowed to use it,” Sticting Massaschade & Consument chair Lucia Melcherts said in a statement provided to Wccftech. “That is exactly the harm our Fair PlayStation claim is about: a price can never be fair when the buyer is left with no ownership and no alternative.”
Without a resale market, the lawsuit claims the PlayStation Store is able to unfairly charge a so-called “Sony tax,” effectively price gouging customers and keeping the price of games high because there is no alternative, no market competition. The Fair PlayStation lawsuit would only award a class-action payout if successful; legislation would need to be passed in order to force Sony to change course. Other lawsuits against Sony and PlayStation are also in progress, including a £2 billion ($2.675 billion) lawsuit in the United Kingdom. A class-action settlement in the United States was granted “preliminary approval this spring” as well.
PlayStation consoles have already been trending toward digital-only. When the PS5 debuted, a model sans disc drive was available, and when it was given a mid-generation refresh – the PS5 “Slim” – the only disc drive option became a peripheral attached via USB. The PS5 Pro similarly only has a disc drive via secondary purchase. The elimination of physical game copies in totality, though, has already sparked PlayStation boycott movements, with users fearing this is a slippery slope to a streaming-only future without ownership of even hardware.
A similar boycott has targeted Grand Theft Auto 6, which recently announced that its physical edition would not contain a disc, just a download code in a box. The apparent unwillingness to release physical media is likely an attempt to save on manufacturing costs by gaming companies, but it is clearly an unpopular trend. The anti-consumer method could price certain people out of the hobby, and the new lawsuit lobbied at PlayStation in the Netherlands is hoping to at least acquire compensation for Sony’s attempted monopolization of game sales.
- Founded
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October 3, 1994
- Owner
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Sony Interactive Entertainment
- Known For
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Uncharted, God of War, Horizon, The Last of Us,