Sony reportedly sued for its “monopoly” over PlayStation’s digital game downloads

The lawsuit alleges consumers have paid up to 175 per cent more for digital games

A group of PlayStation users have reportedly filed a lawsuit against Sony for its alleged monopoly over the sales of digital games for its consoles.

The proposed suit, Caccuri v. Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC, was filed on Wednesday (May 5) in a San Francisco U.S. District Court. The consumers are seeking class-action status for the lawsuit.

In the suit, the users claim that Sony’s 2019 decision to stop third-party retailers from selling digital codes for PlayStation games has created an unfair monopoly, reports Bloomberg. The retailers in question include giants such as Amazon, Walmart and Best Buy.

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“Sony’s monopoly allows it to charge supracompetitive prices for digital PlayStation games, which are significantly higher than their physical counterparts sold in a competitive retail market, and significantly higher than they would be in a competitive retail market for digital games,” the consumers said, per Bloomberg.

The lawsuit also alleges that by preventing third-party retailers to sell these game codes, consumers have ended up paying up to 175 per cent more for digital games as compared to their physical disc counterparts.

Sony has yet to comment on the matter.

Earlier this year, Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) was hit with another class action lawsuit, which alleged that the PS5 DualSense controllers are defective due to drift. The lawsuit claimed that Sony was reportedly aware of the situation “through online consumer complaints, complaints made by consumers directly to it, and through its own pre-release testing”.

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