Sony – the company that produces PlayStation 5 – has been caught up in a lawsuit accusing it of charging too high commission fees.
According to Kotaku, last year, there was a lawsuit accusing Sony of taking advantage of the monopoly on their PlayStation Store gaming platform to charge excessive commission fees. The London Court (UK) has now allowed this lawsuit to continue and the PlayStation 5 manufacturer is making efforts to protest the decision, as this could lead to compensation of up to 7.9 billion USD for the plaintiff. play in the UK if the lawsuit is successful.
The case began in August 2022, when a lawsuit was filed by a person named Alex Neill, claiming that Sony’s anti-competitive practices allowed it to charge a 30% commission on all sales. sales numbers on the PlayStation Store, a number that is considered too high. Sony attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed, but the appeals court declared that Sony had “failed to prove that the claims contained in the complaint were baseless.”
Currently, the lawsuit is continuing with arguments from both sides. Obviously, Sony is not accused of doing anything shady, such as secretly manipulating prices. The problem the lawsuit is facing is the same thing every modern gaming platform is doing: charging commissions along with stifling competition. The lawsuit claims that not allowing third parties to sell on the PlayStation Store will limit competition and sell games at high prices to players.
This incident is quite similar to the Epic and Apple lawsuit and the current Epic and Google trials in the US. The company that created the game Fortnite is accusing the App Store and Google Play of charging ‘exorbitant’ commissions to those who are selling content on these platforms.