I'm all for suing corporations for anti-consumer and anti-competitive practices, but this one really don't present a strong case so far from the bullet points we've seen. I guess we'll see how this all develops. PATREON: www.patreon.com/yongyea TWITTER: twitter.com/yongyea TOP PATRONS [CIPHER] - Joseph Lavoie [BIG BOSS] - Devon B - Jonathan Ball [BOSS] - Charlie Galvin - Gerardo Andrade - Michael Redmond - Peter Vrba - Time Dragonlord [LEGENDARY] - BattleBladeWar - D Kurtti - Theron Webb
I would love digital content to be priced cheaper just as a general rule... considering it's gone without service and you don't technically 'own' it to begin with.
Well one cool thing u get with digital is being able to play with multiple consoles at the same time as long as u r sharing enabled. I play games with my siblings and we all have our separate consoles, it would suck to buy multiple of the same games to play together in multiplayer etc
Answer me this: Sony takes all the cut from their games on their platform so why are they priced at 70$? Sony should be the last company to implement that pricing. You have companies like Capcom that release their games on steam, playstation, xbox and those companies all get a cut from capcom's sales yet their products are priced at 60$.
Basically comes down to two main points, first being the conversion rates compared to other countries, we pay £70 for a Sony game, in the US you pay $70 which converts to about £60. As you keep comparing to eshop, a Nintendo game costs £50, even cheaper if you nose around on shops online for a code. Second is Sony only sell gift cards outside of the PS store, so you can't buy digital games from other sources. Whereas other systems sell digital games codes outside of their store, so the customer can shop around for cheaper prices. Sony on the other hand is in control of all sales totally, and as such, keep the prices high.
80$ in Canada. Also the little box that says "renew PlayStation plus automatically" keeps getting checked after an update was really annoying they've robbed me a few times I had to remove my payment method from my account to make it stop.
Oogh. Valve's old problem. Sounds like Sony got inspired. And Nintendo was accused of price fixing during the chip shortage of the late '80s, but here it's clearcut. Sony is the most Jekyll-and-Hyde company out there: great products but hellish business ways.
@@Alistair_7609 yeah check this out. I have a ps5 but when they were selling out so quickly on Sony Direct I had to settle for a spur of the moment decision to get the digital only because the disc one was just sold out online in front of my eyes & I knew the digital would be next within 30 seconds. I didn't mind this too much because I normally wait for major psn sales to buy my games, when they're like 70% off. But it was a shame to see a game in gamestop at Ike 30 dollars new but on the PSN store it was still 60 dollars. This was abusing their power, they knew the value of the game was down but also knew everyone with a digital only console would have no choice but to pay that price if they wanted it. I didn't get it & waited for a sale on principle but that took MONTHS & I STILL didn't get as good of a deal. The digital only console is why I think PSN is getting this lawsuit. The other consoles give you the option of where to buy your games. This is coming from someone who mainly games on Playstation
I think you are missing a key detail, Yong. Games on the US Playstation Store cost $70, and £70 on the UK Store. If we go by currency conversion they should cost about £60 to be the same amount of money. On the other hand the US Nintendo eShop charges $60, while in the UK store the games are £50, which makes total sense. That's why this lawsuit is targetting Sony. They are indeed overcharging people compared to other markets.
@@o0Paynekiller0o were they doing this before the price jump? I live in US, but I don’t recall the price difference (even after considering VAT) being much of a difference compared to the pricing we’ve seen now. If I’m not mistaken, the prices listed were similar to as stated in original post.
When I was a wee little lad, I remember believing the first arguments for digital games. That these games will be cheaper due to pubs not having to ship games, pay for shelf space, pay for cases/artwork/manuals, etc. After ms transactions, live services, dlc, subscriptions, fees, drm, taking down old versions to force you to buy new versions, pushing out broken games....I think they might have been not telling the truth. 🤔
I remember as well and its interesting because it feels like originally they WERE telling the truth because digital versions were actually cheaper for some time... but some things changed in these companies after big money was rolling in and suddenly the entire damn system sprinted down predator avenue to try to rape everybodys wallet all the meanwhile customer service actually dropped off a cliff for a while as well. They eventually got clever and extra slimy about how theyd trick people into shit but those of us old enough to remember know this is a very different regime running gaming these days. Its why companies like fromsoft just releasing full games that work and have a ton of content with a couple little expansions are so fucking refreshing every time they do so. Its how things should be in most cases
Oh, here's the tragedy - they WERE cheaper, back when Steam first launched. Back before the major publishers got in on the digital distribution thing. Valve being developers, not publishers, originally had a much saner, more reasonable attitude, and games were about £10 to £15 cheaper on Steam compared to retail, for the very reasons you listed. But then I remember it clearly - Modern Warfare 2 came along. It arrived on Steam at full retail price; £40 I believe, maybe £45, when games on Steam were generally around £25. And people paid it. And the publishers realised - aha, they'll pay full physical retail price for digital games. And we were doomed from that point on.
one reason is the fact that i think sony and microsoft for consoles still make money through games rather than the hardware itself but yeah distribution should have reduced a price by little
@@NicholasBrakespear they don't need to complain about people waiting for a 50% discount on Steam sales then. That's basically the customers waiting for the price to adapt to the lower distribution costs. (only talking about AAA games here, Indies are a different story)
As one of the ancient beings who spent his childhood in arcades, it's been very funny watching the games industry figure out how to make their way back to getting you to pay as often & as much as possible. There was this tiny little golden age where you just bought a game & had it. It was nice. Now we're getting back to feed the machine your quarters.
I have no idea have many coins I have fed the 4 man Gauntlet arcade machine! "Blue Wizard, your lifeforce is running out!" Pop coins for more health! Good times though :D
Yeah, the good ol' days where you bought a game and it's done. In my case, I stopped at PS3 after seeing the games costs around $100. In Southeast Asia, that price is too painful.
literally, The Culling already tried it i remember Yong's video about it they wanted to charge PER MATCH you got into for like a battle royale/FPS.... and failed miserably i dont think a single game was ever played thank god
*Have you or a loved one been scammed by sony or playstation, between the years of 2023 and 2032? if so, you may be entitled to financial compensation*
I've been hospitalized for the last 3 months because of the physical and psychological trauma from purchasing a 5 year old AAA game for $60 instead of $20.
I'm fine if they use Playstation as a stepping stone but they need to get EA and other companies with literal gambling mechanics etc as well because as far as I am concerned games have strayed from players enjoyment being the 1# priority.
Consumer laws in America are basically non-existent. Wish I had been born in Europe. Better pay, better treatment, better prices. Best of all I wouldn't be living in a country with fascism on the rise.
Didn’t it come out recently that indie devs need approval from Sony to discount their own games on the Sony store. Microsoft and Nintendo don’t. Sony also rejected a lot of discounts apparently and now they don’t allow retailers to sell digital codes …so they do have a monopoly on digital sales and seem to exercise more control than the others. But yeah a lot of their points can be said for the other companies. I do believe Sony has always dominated the UK tho and still does over the switch.?? Maybe that’s why she’s targeting them first or she believes they are slightly worse?
There also the only platform that charges developers for cross-platform play. I think its to keep players buying microtransactions through them instead of others to get a cut of the money.
That is not something worthy of being even in the scope of a lawsuit. As a provider, its their choice whether they want to allow for this things or not. It is also the reason why other platforms, such as Microsoft, could actually have an edge over them because they allow such deals. Youd basically also be complaining about both GOG and Epic since their discounts arent the same as steam, and viceversa. So no, its very misguided to believe this is something demandable. Sincerely Im as confused as Yong; this is literally something every other company in the business is guilty of. I would be ok to get cheaper games based on the fact that we dont actually OWN the game since it could be taken down without even our knowledge from online servers, but thats not on the claim. Not sure was this claim is all about, just seems stupid. If its like this, why not include both MC and Nintendo too?You really going to argue that PS doesnt allows for discounts while saying Nintendo does lol?
I try to be "smarter" with my digital purchases and only buy games when they are on sale. And I do observe that Playstation's seasonal sales happen quite often. Having said that, I stand with the gaming community fighting for fair pricing.
Personally I stopped buying games. The games that come out now are either broken or not worth the time. I'll never understand why games were better 15 years ago than they are now, literally makes no sense
As a multi-platform gamer, I generally only buy games when they are on sale. What I’ve noticed is that for third-party games, PlayStation is usually the most expensive even the sale price is often higher than the sale price on other platforms. So, I only buy Sony exclusives for the PlayStation, unfortunately like Nintendo you can be waiting a while for a sale on most first-party titles. On Xbox, the opposite is true, you get nearly all the first party titles in Game Pass along with many great third-party titles. I started out gaming on PS & Nintendo consoles, and used to believe that the PlayStation was the best platform, but now most games I buy are for PC or Xbox because it tends to be a better deal. As someone who has bought all the PlayStation consoles, I don’t even know if I want to buy the next console because of how anti-consumer Sony has been the last few years. I hate exclusivity deals on video games, and Sony has been the biggest offender and now they are claiming that if Microsoft buys Activision that they would do the same thing. Yes, they could make Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox but they probably won’t but what they will do is give Xbox users the same type of exclusivity deals that Sony previously had with Activision. Sony tried to block cross-platform games and even charged game developers so much more to publish cross-platform games on their store to discourage developers from adding these features. Sony has also been paying third-party developers to not publish games on Xbox Game Pass. If Sony wants to win me back, they need to become more consumer friendly, otherwise this is going to be my last Sony console purchase.
@@PsiliPharm2012 Wait, are you actually, unironically, suggesting that Sony is *less* consumer friendly than Microshaft? The company-guzzling studio-killing anti-cross-platform Microshaft?
I've always felt digital goods should be priced cheaper just for the fact they're saving on other things. Manufacturing cost as related to discs, packaging, etc. Shipping costs and all those fees. All that stuff is baked into the price of game, just like with any physical good. So if they're not having to pay for all that, the price of my end product should reflect that. Since they're greedy though, that doesn't happen.
But the cost of video games have not kept up with inflation. And AAA video games are far more expensive to make and market than before due to increased competition for consumers' attention. The market is larger and technology has made it easier to create the games, but we are still getting a much better deal than we were in the 90s for single player, offline games. Live service/lootbox/gacha stuff is a whole 'nother story. We are getting ripped off on those even though they're often "free".
@@EdwardPaulet They caused their own problem, when game companies decided to prioritize graphics knowing it's an uphill battle. Now they want to pass it on the costumer, while implementing predatory measures of monetization. They don't have my sympathy, and they shouldn't have yours.
@@EdwardPaulet True but ultimately not that relevant. Games generate profit far in excess of their cost to make if the game is received well. God of War cost like 44 million to make and generated over 500 million in revenue. You're trying to tell me they needed more money from me? On a smaller scale look at Valheim, small budget, small price tag, game pushed ridiculous numbers and they made a killing. Big game or small, if you make a quality product your profit margins will be insane, inflation is not a significant factor in that. That is nonsense the companies tell you to try and justify raising the product price. Cyberpunk is a more recent example, all the problems that game had, all the bad press and they still made a ridiculous amount of money off that and that is one of the most expensive games ever made. When they talk about inflations it's when they put out garbage like Anthem and then want you to make up the development short falls.
Was wondering why Sony doesn't have a "gift" functionality where you can buy a game for a friend and gift them the code to redeem. It's because Sony is restricting game codes as much as they can otherwise you would see PS game codes on sites like g2a for much cheaper than Sony is selling in certain regions so thus Sony would lose out on money.
Yeah my nephew was gifted a ps5 digital edition and he keeps asking for games for Christmas or birthdays. I’m not even sure if his parents have a psn account for him.
@@captainzib bruv 💀 well you can always give him the money and ask your sibling and their spouse to please help them out because your want your nephew to get what you intended for him.
@@captainzib Even for Xbox you need an account man. Situation does suck though, I remember as a kid one of my favorite things was getting sent games for my birthday or Christmas.
This is very interesting to me as in a situation like this I would have expected Nintendo to be first on the chopping block considering the way they almost never lower the prices on games they publish, very curious to see what happens if this goes through but I honestly doubt it will, I'm not familiar with UK pricing laws and what-not so who am I to say.
Nintendo is very big on legal issues I wouldn’t take them on first and since Sony had that whole digital movie issue not long ago might help or be the reason why there first
These companies DID claim that digital games would be cheaper since there was nothing physical to manufacture. And they ended up selling digital games at the same price anyway.
You're missing the point of the lawsuit: Sony years back made it where you can't buy digital games for their system anywhere but through them. You can currently get Steam keys, Switch keys, and Microsoft keys on retailers like Amazon, Game Stop, and so on. Sony hasn't allowed that for years. You can only buy digital goods directly through Sony's own ecosystem. And that's not just for first party titles, it's for any game published on PlayStation. THAT'S what the lawsuit is referring to as anti-competition and monopolistic.
And yet the argument can be made that what Sony is doing is NOT anti competitive or monopolistic, because all they are doing is making themselves a worse product compared to their competitors. It's certainly a strange argument, but it's the first one that comes to mind: how is Sony making a monopoly when it's actions are, according to the most basic of free market economics, self-destructive?
Why would a company have to ensure their product can be purchased through third party sellers? I mean it's easy to make a case why that is virtuous and good, but _obligatory_ ?
@@Animal_lives_matter Because their competitors allow it and they do not. Also, Sony apply the 30% price increase thingy, which is fine... except when it's the only option to buy the game digitally.
So here in Brazil, Cult of the Lamb on Steam is about 65R$, while on the PS Store it's About 135R$, basically double the price And that's just one example EDIT. Another example is Ruined King, on Steam it's about 70R$, while on the PS Store it's 160R$
That's why I swapped from console gaming to PC gaming, the games a cheaper, the Steam store is just better in every way and a PC beats a console in literally everything. É por isso que eu troquei de jogar em consoles pra jogar no PC mano, o jogos são mais baratos, a Steam é infinitamente melhor que a PSN Store e PC é melhor que console em literalmente tudo.
That probably has more to do with Steam allowing devs to set regional pricing for weaker currencies.If Sony isn't selling them for more than a direct currency convertion + taxes then it isn't what the lawsuit is about.
I always found it strange why games oversea cost more or sometimes less even though it’s digital. Physical I get because importing cost a lot just by itself.
The reason is what Napoleon said but let me elaborate. In my county of El Salvador, where we use dollars as our national coin, we used to tax much more digital goods-which included games but not things like let’s say COD points. I’m not really sure how it worked in the very end, but the game and their publisher were applied the same amount as if they were an actual retailer here. Meaning that games would instantly cost 40%+ than what THE STUPID UNGRATEFUL AMERICAN ASSHOLES WERE PAYING-ahem, sorry, where was I? Yeah, you guys infuriated the shit out of me. It wasn’t until our most recent president’s term that they changed that. Even today, I can never buy physical copies unless I’m willing to pay the 40%+profits of the retailer. Games that are $60 on digital for me I find at $70 on a lucky, INSANE sale day.
While a lot of my PS library consists of games mostly bought on sale, at good prices, I do agree that something needs to be done. It costs about US $90 in my currency to buy any new AAA title.
@@terrysyvertson9205 nintendo can't spell the word SALE and you think one person is all there is? If you got a wallet Nintendo pisses you off. I just saw someone two days ago complaining how zelda BOTW still sells for full price when it's old AF.
This might domino into other gaming platforms, this was one of the things Epic was ranting about, monopolization the market. Right before they started trying to monopolize Kickstarter titles. Seems like someone believes they have enough of a case to be actually willing to take this to court and start a chain reaction.
@@thegamerfe8751 Yep, but they made such petulant statements at the time that it really emphasized how shamelessly they were chasing that bottom line.
@@KaiserAfini it's something similar to "the ends justify the means" but like the means are good (in a legal battle warning about monopolies and such) and the result is sorta bad sorta good (mostly greed from EG's part).
I disagree on the "other platforms have similar prices" argument. When it comes to prices, all of them agree and follow up. We saw how that went sorta recently: "Oh games are more expensive to make, we gotta raise them from 60 to 70 bucks!". *Every* AAA publisher adapted that pricing. Because "lmao, more money for us!"
Capitalism 101. The price isn't what the product is actually worth its what the consumer is willing to pay for it that's why a Versace plain white T shirt can cost 1000s of dollars. If we as a community held our foot down and refused to pay these new price tags companies would go back down to 60
Could be easily solved by people just NOT BUYING AAA games. They suck. They’re a mediocre experience. BotW is one of the most well-polished AAA games in decades, and the puzzles suck. They’re jokingly easy. Play Portal instead. $10. Much harder.
Tbh i live in the uk and i bought xenoblade 3 for like £50 and i got over 120 hours out of it already. Personally i just think that it’s a matter of quality, i would happily pay £50 for xenoblade, but the generic stuff? Hell no i’d go to the free games made by indie devs for that
@@almalone3282 Yeah it's impossible to control the casual that don't inform themselves and just consume without thinking, hell there's even people that play a lot more than 1/2 games a year and just don't think at all.
I remember Sony and Microsoft pushing so hard for digital sales years ago with the promise it would be cheaper for the consumer but digital sales have and always will be a rip off
Digital will only get more expensive when physical medium (cd/cartridge...) will disappear. Gamers want "only digital future." But they are going to regret it BIG time. I said from the beginning that services like GamePass = the death of gaming and i still strongly believe that.
You can always get cd keys which are cheaper and have no difference from disks because they download the game on the system for xbox so making xbox games on disk is a waste of money and will kill the earth
@@Steven-tl8fs False. Any one who's been gaming longer than a decade would clearly want physical media. That has always been the media. Why even have a consol then? Digital only....what a joke.
I feel like this lawsuit is like throwing a bunch of stuff to the wall and see if something sticks. I'm glad people are finally trying to make these companies accountable but I don't believe this is the best aproach to make a strong case for more consumer friendly practices.
They do this because there's currently no real precedent for any of this. Game companies haven't quite gone over the line just yet to make it easily shown as monopolistic or violating any major laws. However, if they can get a single win on things like this, that win then sets a precedent, which can be used to go after all the rest. Unfortunately, just like the Epic vs Apple case, this likely isn't going to do much. I can see a few good points of argument that could be made in this case compared to the other, but it's going to depend heavily on whether it can be argued properly to a judge - who often aren't always the most up-to-date on technology-related issues.
@@AeriFyrein Yeah, the reason I think it's not the best aproach is precisely because I can see how this could be dismissed by the court. They need a more concrete or specific reason.
When the Quarry came out on Sony's consoles in the US, when you looked at the games page via the PS5 before release, you could pre-order the PS4 version via your PS5. On launch day, you couldn't get the PS4 only version IF you were in the US and you were on the PS5. I had the PS4 port in my cart as it was 10$ less and I console share with my brother down the block who has my old PS4 so it made sense. On launch it was gone and I contacted costumer support and found out the PS4 version was not available to buy while you're on the PS5's environment. This was NOT the same with my friends in other countries tho, just the US (as far as I know) I had to dig out my older PS4 just buy the the port. This was really messed up. When I pointed this out on Reddit, I got so downvoted and called "Crazy" and "stupid" because those who said they could do both weren't in the US but failed to read my post completely stating this very issue on how US citizens on the PS5 were locked out of buying the PS4 only version, unless you wanted to shell out 80$ where you could get both.....No Thanks Sony.
I made a poorly unscripted video talking about this and it was my most downvoted video on my channel because everyone thought I was cheap and didn't want to pay for it. I'm sure a lot of dislikes were due to my terrible attitude but the message was clear, I was wrong because I thought it was greedy.
@@HatCreature Bru I don't blame you for not wanting to pay 80 fucken dollars for a game 60 bux is semi reasonable 70 or 80 just for 60fps is not reasonable by any margin
It's the same in Australia and New Zealand, we pay $100-$120 for a AAA release for consoles at times, that's half a day to two days of work for a person to afford... it used to be we could afford them on an hour or two's worth of work and get dozens of hours of content out of the games.
@@otakufantic A lot of companies disregard currency exchange rates when it causes the number to be lower... I.e. Since £ is typically worth more than USD they like to ignore the exchange rates and make £ = USD pricing. While for other currencies that make the number go up, they go ahead and use the exchange rates (So 70 USD becomes ~100 AUD). Interestingly, Canada gets a bit of a discount (70 USD = 90 CAD but will be priced more around 80 CAD) To further add salt in the wounds, companies tend to offer worse customer service and server maintenance (As well as being less likely to provide compensation for server/service issues) to places outside of the US. So places like Australia and Europe get charged more, for worse service...
And that is why you don't buy a Digital PS5. They are still charging full price for some PS4 titles from 2016. And that's with all the competition there is on PS4 - used games, amazon, walmart, gamestop etc. Imagine if everyone had a digital console and HAD to buy all their games from the playstation store...
@@majingamer6109 Yeah, you can wait for sales and get some really good deals with digital games. But what if you just feel for playing X game - maybe a friend told you about it and you'd like to play together, maybe you saw a youtube video about it, could be anything. Do you really want to have to wait for a sale each time you want to buy a game ? Or do you want to be able to shop around? I agree with you, would be nice to have the option to buy digital codes elsewhere!
@@jinxx8456 - That's not Steam's fault, that's on the Publisher Activision for doing that. Publishers set the prices for their games, not Steam themselves. Now, while they do have some sales, you do have a point with no main permanent price drops. I just looked up Black Ops II on Steam, which was released in Nov 2012. Still priced $59.99 with all DLC still full price. However, everybody already knows Activision is very greedy and will probably never price drop those permanently. Honestly, there should be a policy or law where after 5 years, a game's price MUST dropped by up to 50% (permanently) from it's original price (if the game is price at $50 to 80 at launch). While I'd still say a $29.99 might be even too much, it's a helluva better than $59.99 (for the record, I'd just wait on a sale anyway). This is in general by the way, not at Call of Duty. It's like when I get various Blu-Ray's, I just wait until it's on sale for like $4.99 to $9.99 vs $25 to $30+.
Game companies have eliminated so much overhead by going digital. No longer do they have to pay for disc's, transferring the game to the disc's, disc's cases, box art labels and distribution, but somehow we have to pay more money. How do you cut cost but then say you need to charge more? Why is disc and digital the same price if they saved money from not having those expenses? Greed.
Isn't that stupid ? Imagine the no of sh*t cases that the court wastes energy dealing with em instead of doing something productive.Maybe that's why the US is sh*tshow cause u morons invest the energy into all the wrong things instead of getting a law that could work for the ppl not just the corpos that run the country.
@@ratedr7845 they do have a legitimate basis its just not what they seem to be focusing on, if they were to focus on the PlayStation store being a closed market or that their products are consistently overpriced compared to other markets relative to the exchange rates, they might have a legitimate case. Sony stopped all third party sales of digital products a while ago and from that moment became a total monopoly as they have complete control of the digital market and have disallowed any competition. both Nintendo and Microsoft allow 3rd party sellers and could theoretically argue that are not a digital monopoly because you can buy the digital version of their games from other stores and that's not getting into the grey market places like cdkeys and g2a. They also might have a point about overcharging British customers, the 30% number they say is completely irrelevant companies can upcharge whatever they want for their products they have no legal argument there. but they could however have a case that prices are too high in relation Sonys other markets and this could go against some of our consumer protection laws, if they can show that Sony has been further inflating the prices even after tax and the exchange rate has been accounted for, they could have a case that Sony has been deliberately exploiting the British consumer. That being said none of these are especially strong cases, they are definite arguments to be made but I'm sure any good lawyer would be able to argue against them and Sony has allot of those.
I have been wanting something like this for years since digital downloading had started to become popular in the PS3 and Xbox 360. Digital downloads shouldn't have to cost the same as retail because its not packaged and shipped or put onto discs and all of that is not free and costs the publisher a lot of money to do so. I am all for this movement to bring down the costs of digital content being cheaper then retail because the cost difference isn't there to support as to why digital should cost as much as retail.
My problem with digital prices is the fact that some games still cost prices that made sense within the first 3 years of its release. Lets say that you want to play the older CoD games on steam, you gotta fork over upwards to 50 bucks. Modern Warfare 3 for example still costs $40 which is way overpriced for a game that came out 11 years ago, meanwhile physical copies for some old games go for practically pennies compared to their digital copies.
I agree with you 100% but they can make the claim that "it's convenient so therefore there's a convenience fee" just beyond shady but they run the industry so they make the rules
I think to stop undercutting retail as being an unfair market they can get in trouble for that as well. If your note, each time the sale in digital the also the sale is in retail with the same price.
@@gearoidoconnell5729 it's preference but like how we have digital only consoles or ones with a disc and a large majority still believe in game preservation which means buying the physical copies and the cool limited edition big box pre order items. There is still a large market for retail even if it was cheaper to buy digital but right now it's cheaper to buy retail but for the ones who got digital only consoles are being locked in to over priced old games and paying more then retail atm.
I fully agree with this lawsuite. I remember Sony saying that prices for digital games would be lower then physical discs because of no printing, no cover, no shipping (trucks etc). But the digital store on PSN is always overpriced. And ALWAYS more expensive the in physical stores.
No they aren't. On launch, the games in physical stores are priced the same as those on the digital storefront. The price might go down later as the need for space for new product overrides the need for getting the most profit from a game, but that is entirely a store's own decision. And unless Sony signed a contract, them speculating that digital would be cheaper than physical was just that, speculation.
If you are for decreasing the price, you are basically asking them to reduce the quality of their games. They can't keep making games with an increased bar on quality with less money.
@@Uldihaa although that "later" point can sometimes be REALLY fast. and playstation aside I have seen really big games like pokemon BDSP going way cheaper literally on release day in a store
@@My1xT And? That is that store's choice. Do you understand how physical stores get their stock? They buy them at a price set by the publisher (usually $40-45 per unit for a $60 MSRP game, but sometimes less). If a store is willing to cut their profits, they can. But that has nothing to do with Playstation, Nintendo, or MS prices on their digital stores. The fact that they do sell physical copies of games to stores for less than MSRP while keeping their own digital versions at MSRP will completely undermine this lawsuit.
@@Uldihaa i am not saying that that is bad but it feels kinda stupid when a game is universally (especially after a few months) several euros down and digitally it always stays on the max except for a few days of sale
I am assuming this will be for outside U.S. pricing. Hence a game in the UK is £60 or £70 for a standard next-gen version which is $71 or $81 in the U.S. so in the UK we have been overpaying about $10 to $12 for years for every copy of a game which is unfair and it's not just the UK it's also in Europe and Asian countries.
They have a monopoly over there own store which is something you can’t technically do even if it sounds like you should be able to. Basically if you could buy a digital game from a separate site this wouldn’t be an issue. With Sony having full control over all digital purchases on the store, it creates a monopoly. The reason this doesn’t effect Xbox for example is because you can buy a digital code elsewhere meaning they can’t completely monopolise the MS store market. Monopoly’s are weird because you can find monopoly’s everywhere but market dominant platforms will always be scrutinised more
@@Rokabur steam is different. Steam is a digital store on the pc platform. Pc platform has many digital stores like Epic games, Ubisoft and ea. Playstation and xbox on the other hand only have one digital store
@@Rokabur Steam also technically competes with Epic Store and GoG. Obviously Steam is by far the most dominant PC games storefront, but there is at least _some_ competition there. Sony's only competition is physical retail, which they will be planning to eliminate ASAP imo. I'd bet money that's why they released the cheaper PS5 model with no bluray drive, they're testing the water to go 100% digital only with the PS6. Obviously Microsoft are making the same push too, that's why they've made Game Pass such an attractive proposition to gamers.
The problem with the argument is that there are multiple such monopolies, you just have to pick your poison. I agree with you this appears to be a monopoly or close enough to one that it should violate the principle of it.
It's bad news but good news for the people who had dealt with Sony and now they're exposed also you shouldn't love Sony they've been a shitty company for a while.
Huh? A luxury product seller have no right to set a selling price to a luxury product buyer? Games are not necessities like foods. A game is a luxury product. An incompetent government is not able to control the food price but makes a fuss to control the price of luxuries. People will not die without games. If games are too expensive, well......DON'T BUY THEM. However, if foods are too expensive, people still need to buy them. Therefore, governments should find ways to control the price of necessities not luxuries. No one buys luxuries, luxuries price will drop. Necessities are totally different from luxuries because the lifeline of everyone depends on necessities. You don't have the freedom of not spending money on food, water, shelter and power but you have the freedom to refuse spending on games - Sony did not put a gun to your head to force you to buy a game.
For real. The lawsuit likely will be thrown out for being frivilous, or, Sony will point out how they are far from the only one who does this and that if sony is forced to change, it would force every business on earth to change and would cause inumerable problems
That's not all that true. I picked up a full boxed copy of Star Control 2 from a thrift store and it had the original receipt in it, and the game was $49.99 in 1992.
The thing that is bonkers with these digital stores is keeping games at full price, *years* after release. And only get the occasional discount if there is a promotion (which is the actual market value anyway), or if you're a paying subscriber. Screw that, I'll buy used physical instead without the paywall.
I'm an Xbox guy through and through (though I've now been on PC for over a year) but I've never hated Sony. I really don't see how you can sue them over something like this. If you wanted a game, the price was there, you agreed to the price. That's a fair trade.
@@scratch7971 Did I miss something? Isn't this a class action lawsuit brought on by a private party? It even sounded a bit like those commercials you can see from law firms "If you were using so and so during whenever, you might be eligible for compensation" lol
This is a nonsensical lawsuit smh. This could be every company by this means. Despite it all. Even if it was equal grounds this lawsuit would not win either way
I’ve never understood people buying digital from their store unless it was the only option. Despite shedding the overhead cost of a physical disc/box/etc., pricing is higher for longer than physical.
Not everyone has the free time or energy to immediately to drive to a local GameStop or Walmart every time they want to buy a new game or 2. While it's more benefitting in almost everyway to buy physical games, it's easier for people to just put some money in their PSN wallet and just buy a game from the digital store quickly. Sony mostly tries to take advantage of these kinds of people, this is why you still see even old games like Assassin's Creed 3 still being sold for a full 40$ and such. It's a shitty business practice that they've been doing for a while, just like the multitude of other shit they've gotten away with that this lawsuit doesn't seem to be targeting which just comes off as strange.
@@aiellamori In some cases, sure. But even then, if their is an option to buy the game physically, it always goes down in price much quicker. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a physical game reduced to $30 or $40 and it’s still full price on the PlayStation Store.
Here is an even better idea that could be lined up; suing Sony for 7 times that amount for their excessive abuse of their censorship on Japanese videogames across the board especially anime games aimed at mature audiences. And no, that thought will never, ever leave my mind.
Not defending Sony, but this sounds like a legless, unintelligible lawsuit. I never thought Sony’s pricing on digital sales been anti-consumer at all. I only buy digital games in their sales, and they constantly have sales, decent ones at that.
IMO, all digital games are overpriced. The moment when they are sold at the same prices as a physical version, then it is overpriced. For a physical product, I can understand the cost, as you have to pay for the packaging, the artwork, the shipping, etc. but a digital product does not require these extra fees. IMO, all digital games should be on average 20% cheaper than their physical counterpart.
Bro, every game developer that wants to put their games on the PSN, Sony takes 30% from the profits of that game and forces the game to raise its own price. How's that not anti costumer?? If you wanna pay 40 dollars for a 2 hour indie game, go ahead.
@@user-vj4tk6jw8i What are you talking about? Do you have a source? And who’s paying $40 for a indie game, cause it ain’t me. I literally stated that I don’t pay full price, I wait for a sale. Sony constantly has sales going on, and I have yet to see a game mark it’s price up on PS specifically.
As much as I support working to keep massive corporations in check so that they don't abuse consumers, and their wallets, I don't think this case is going to get much, if any, traction based on what's been seen so far.
it will the UK and EU (which I'm surprised hasn't done this themselves ) are extremely strict with consumer laws, in Europe and the UK digital games are £5-£10 more expensive than they are for a physical copy in store despite having ZERO overhead/manufacturing (disk creation, packaging, transporting etc) this is because SONY as well as the other 2 console manufacturers are over charging by A LOT. you'll often see a game that sells for $59.99 in the US sell for £59.99 in the UK despite the pound being considerably more valuable of a currency not only that its often more, sometimes £10 more ...£69.99 for a game that would be $59.99 or $64.99 in the US they charge so high that they make a killing from the 30%...UK games should be cheaper owing to the more powerful currency ..its digital so its criminal to mark up prices so high - also under UK law you cannot have a monopoly so Sony having complete control over a digital market place is technically illegal as its considered a monopoly over a trading platform. if the UK markets authority get involved its going to be a pain in the ass for SONY + others
@@SirZanZa Thank you for the explanation, for myself and anyone else who finds this. I didn't really think much about how different laws across the pond are from laws over here. (Typical American amiright?)
@@SirZanZa Maybe the extra red tape in the EU could explain the cost. They have to pay for more lawyers to parse your bogus laws. My local target store was selling elden ring for $69.99 at launch maybe I'll sue them too.
This guy has the right idea. I recommend you go sue someone now. There’s plenty of people/ things you can sue like police departments, libraries, construction companies, school officials, cleaning services, financial institutions (local and international), your neighbors, your family members, your church, synagogue, or other religious institution, your employers, your employers’ customers, realtors, suppliers, glass blowers, companies in other countries, companies that made the drugs that were turned into the drugs that you took, the handicapped, Amish elders, and even yourself.
To be honest, this should've happened to microsoft as well. Any company that would hide behind a DRM while charging full price for games while it only being a "license" should be dragged to court. I know, some people will probably say that there's a law for that in their favor. REALLY? How did that "law" get introduced and then passed? These companies get "laws" passed by buying politicians while we're the ones getting screwed over. There was no DRM issue on the xbox 360, so when did the ownership of digital games become a problem and the sole property of these companies instead of the one that purchased it? That's like walking into a record store buying a cd and then being told that you don't own it, you're only renting it. Some may argue that there's a difference, how and why? It may be that you have a disc in hand but that disc is no different than buying and downloading a digital copy. These companies are the ones that said otherwise so that they could make millions while robbing us of our money. This is one of the biggest frauds ever to be pulled on the customer.
Then don't buy them and don't play them... it is literally that fucking easy. If shitheel assclowns like you didn't keep paying for these games from these companies, they wouldn't charge as much. Besides it doesn't matter of you have a disc or not it is still a digital version. When's the last time you bought a game that didn't require gigs of files to be downloaded before it would play.
Microsoft ruined online gaming. By making everyone pay to play online. Prior to ps4 this wasn't a thing on Ps3. It was all Xbox's fault with their gold pass bs.
So how much less than physical copies should digital ones be legally required to cost? I want an exact number here. The realm of laws is a realm of absolutes; you can't just leave this sort of thing up to gut feelings.
@@stevethepocket In paying a full price for a digital copy, while it being only a license to play it, is one of the most dishonest business practices I've ever heard of. Whether or not it's full price or a sale price, the fact remains it's dishonest. There was no DRM issue on the xbox 360, we could purchase games and we were the owners of those games. When Microsoft decided to come out with a new system, all of a sudden the games we purchase are no longer ours to own. If the "law" is absolute then it absolutely works in the favor of the greedy and corrupt. I can't give you a price on any game, I can't speak for others and what they would be willing to pay for games.
Maybe part of the reason is because Sony is the only company with a digital game only console so you are forced to pay the price they set for games on the PlayStation store if they limit the ability to buy from places like GameStop and stuff like that.
@@Marzxian I mean on one hand Woodsford is a so called firm that invests into suing large claims under false "for the people" excuses to make a larger profit, on the other hand one would see the lawsuit being dragged out until the firm goes bankrupt while the other one would release its bloodthirsty lawyers
@@bamban_garcia5562 Yeah makes sense probably just trying to get Sony to be like whatever and give them some money just to not deal with the hassle but idk.
@@Marzxian I mean -Woodswhores- I'm sorry meant "Woofsford" is literally a firm that funds lawsuits over large claims to make the most profit from while using bogus excuses to justify said lawsuits Heck their statement is pretty telling "Gaming is now the biggest entertainment industry in the UK, ahead of TV, video and music and many vulnerable people rely on gaming for community and connection. The actions of Sony is costing millions of people who can't afford it, particularly when we're in the midst of a cost of living crisis and the consumer purse is being squeezed like never before."
As someone from the UK, I don't see this one going anywhere. Sony doesn't have any control over microtransactions beyond overseeing the payment systems for them, and the comparative price is about the same when conversion rates are taken into consideration. These individuals seem to have forgotten that the value of the GBP has dropped in comparison to USD, so it's only natural it would appear more expensive.
These individuals seem to have forgotten VAT exists. In America prices don't include tax. If we add our 20% tax to $70 we get $84 which is £71.36. So they are actually slightly undercharging us compared to the US.
The problem is that games cost 60$ on us store and the same game cost 60£ on uk store And this is a bigger problem if you live in a region that dont have a store + how the hell does digitalgames have the same price as physical games
Paynikiller, it's false for Sony. If you buy a disk on PS5, the game is there (the gold master version). But I agree that for Microsoft, you don't have the complete game on the disk, they use the same disk for 4 consoles in several cases.
@@o0Paynekiller0o That's because the game has online requirements. I was talking about single player games. For games that require an online connection, you need to be updated to connect to the servers. Anyway, these games are gone when the servers close. Personally, I try to avoid these games (well at full price at least)
They are ripping off with the prices. I was going to add that “you don’t have to buy them” but they are the only digital option. Games can be on psn for a decade and never lower in prices. Then they treat “sales” as an opportunity to temporarily drop to msrp
They CAN be on there for that long without sales, but you'd have to have a myriad of examples if you want to present a lawsuit in court for 6 billion dollars.
That's not unique to Sony. Have you looked at the price of Call of Duty Black Ops 1 on steam? Unless it's on sale it's barely gone down. $40. Black Ops 2 is still $60 on steam. Have you looked at a Nintendo game? Breath of the Wild still $60 unless on sale. Super Mario Odyssey is also still $60. Sony doesn't have much of anything to do with this.
you mean like how Nintendo treat its E-Shop and how the "meme" of "Nintendo never lower their games prices" is actually a reality yet people just turning a blind eye to it? If they want to sue one, they should sue everyone that does it.
This is the dumbest lawsuit ever. This is like going to McDonald's and being upset because they won't give your money to Burger King because you want a whooper.
Devs are trying to say that next gen spec'd games warrant extra cost which may be true but only when games actually come out not broken at (Elden Ring excluded because God bless from software)
“Millions of people rely on games for community and connection.” I have a sick family member whom this is true as fuuuuuck for, and it’s indeed greedy and somewhat evil that they charge as much as they do for what is just is essentially monopolized entertainment often based on scarcity that is made scarce for adding the fear of missing out…. while you could theoretically get a computer or PC to “compete” against Sony- due to the chip shortage making new consoles a virtual extreme rarity- a lot of people don’t really even have the luxury of switching systems to “get a better price” on certain game purchases: as to ask someone to spend $400+ just to get one or two other options is a bit silly imo.
That still doesn't explain how this is greedy on the part of Sony, you could argue this against things like microtransactions but I don't really see that logic following over to instances where you're getting a full game at the same price
There are so many cheap as dirt games out there, from old classics to brand new indies. They’re much better than modern AAA games. There is no fuckin “monopoly” in any sense of the word.
Sony hasn’t use a anticompetitive strategy though or forced developers. 30% commission is industry standard. There’s no way this lawsuit will go anywhere as that is nearly impossible to prove Sony is this reason for it.
Cyberpunk 2077, $79.99 on Steam in Canada. Digital is definitely over-priced, compared to all the costs that used to exist for boxes on shelves. This "lawsuit" is definitely far too general and lacks focus on its goal for consumers.
The only thing i would *remotely* sue playstation (specifically) for, is taking away the rights (we had in hardware) to use our Vita and PS3 the way it IS: connecting and buying the software there with credit/debit cards. Also dont close those storefronts.
I really think that the lawsuit will probably be going nowhere anytime soon. PlayStation is a horrible choice for this lawsuit. While Sony has questionable practices, such as censorship of content, they probably won’t lose this, and at most will settle. Nintendo would have been a better choice. Nintendo eshop is the only way to get digital games on switch, prices almost never decrease, and some games cost more for worse versions on switch. I think that these people that say they’re “Representing consumers” are really just seeing if they can earn a quick buck and maybe score some attention. Too bad that’s probably not going to happen and nobody will remember it in a year.
That's entirely untrue, you can buy Digital Codes for Switch, Xbox, and Steam(Steam Keys) from other stores. Sony does not do this. The ONLY way to directly purchase a digital copy of a PlayStation game is through the PlayStation Store. Therefore Sony is the only one of these companies that holds a monopoly on Digital purchases of games for their platform.
I think you’re a little confused. For example. Madden 23 just came out. On Best Buy’s website I can buy the digital version for Xbox. But not for the PlayStation
Guys, just wanna ask. I'm currently studying about game pricing. If the physical version of the game costs $60, what is the ideal price of the digital version should be? I need your opinion
Well considering you can resell the physical copy and cannot resell the digital one , A digital game should take this into consideration but they dont . The digital game price should be minus what it costs to produce and distribute a physical copy ,but that does not seem to be the case on the ps store.
Do digital store fronts literally overmark and make a ton of extra cash of games they sell on them? Yes absolutely. Will this lawsuit change something? Probably not.
I remember when the first time the PS store went up around the PS3/PSP generation, some digital games were like $5 to $10 cheaper then the physical copy. While preordering games on Amazon and you have prime, they were $10 off.
That was a really nice deal. I used to buy most of my video games on Amazon because of that $10 discount. The ps3 store is still pretty good to be honest. They have a large catalog of ps1 and ps2 games for like $5-$10 each that the ps4/ps5 store still don't have. Big reason why everyone was so disgruntled about the ps3 store potentially closing was because Sony didn't bother porting all of it to newer systems.
Sorry Yong.....I have watched your channel for the past two years without missing a SINGLE drop.. This......is the ONE TIME that you got this completely wrong.... Take a 5000 foot look at this and not one of a journalist, This suit is stopping the practice of selling digital goods for the same as physical ones, where SONY HAS MANY TIMES, charged a player for a digital game and then changed the code to where you no longer own the game you downloaded..the case for the game CONTROL is one where they conspired with REMEDY to do this, I know because I was a play tester for that game and when they decided to "bundle for profit", that games BILLING code was changed in the PLAYSTORE and you had to repurchase the game.....just because the billing code changed. And to answer your question: YES I OWNED THE GAME AT THE TIME YES: I Could NOT access the DLC content....that I had already had the Platinum on because of this and yes I purchased the physical copy after this so they no longer had the ability to take something away from me They also do this with the "free " games they give out on the pass, but later down the line if you bought DLC, but no longer want to play on the game pass, you no longer have access to the FREAKING ITEMS YOU PURCHASED. please do your due diligence and reconsider your stance on this, because the optics on this will look very poor for you to back a greedy corporation that preys on the weak and young, purposefully makes it difficult to contact them and is all around a piece of shit company to its own consumers.y
The lawsuit will probably go nowhere, but they're not wrong. The price of the average game on the PSN store in the UK at the beginning of the PS4's life cycle was £39.99-£44.99. Now it's £59.99-£69.99. This is exactly the same with Microsoft however, as Yong and others in the comments have pointed out. It's a big part of the reason why people on console need to push back against digital only imo. Because as soon as Sony and MS feel confident enough to stop selling their consoles with bluray drives, retail game stores immediately go out of business and both companies now have complete control over pricing within their own contained ecosystems. Games have increased to $70 _with_ retail competition still in place, albeit struggling. When that competition disappears completely it will only be a matter of time before we see $100 games. At least on PC you've got multiple competing storefronts, so even though PC is mostly all digital nowadays there is incentive even for Steam to be careful about pricing. And the pricing of PC games reflects that, even the same game on PC will often be 10-20% cheaper than on console. Without retail stores to compete with, Sony and MS can charge whatever they want. They aren't even _really_ competing with each other, since for the majority of each consoles life cycle most of their customers will only own one of the platforms. Sure if one company goes completely insane with their pricing, everyone will abandon that console and only buy the other one. But they're not stupid. Sony will definitely be keeping a close eye on Microsofts pricing and vice versa. And that's assuming they don't just collude with each other outright.
@@AlexiaHoardwing Yeah the upgrade path stuff is just mad. I really don't know how Sony can justify charging an upgrade fee when Microsoft does it for free. Not only do Microsoft do it for free, they've also got free backwards compatibility via emulation of their original and 360 Xbox libraries that basically "remasters" your old games with an internal resolution bump and sometimes even a framerate increase. Meanwhile Sony is charging for (badly) emulated versions of PS1 games on the store that Duckstation plays better for free. I've got Duckstation _on my Xbox One S_ and that plays PS1 games better than the PS5 does (1440p internal res, PGXP correction and 20% emulator overclock with stable FPS on every game I've tried). Which is just laughable really. Don't get me wrong, I think both companies fully intend to shaft gamers in pretty much exactly the same way. They're both pushing towards an all-digital future where they have complete control of pricing on their own respective platforms. We knew this already about Microsoft, because it's what they initially had planned for the Xbox One if people still remember that shitshow. But as things stand right now, Xbox is by far the better value proposition. Sony have played their hand too early.
This has zero chance of getting taken seriously by any court 🤣. We would all love cheaper prices for our games. But just because I want a Ferrari and can't afford it, doesn't give me a right to sue Ferrari for making their cars to expensive.
How would you like it if Ferrari charged your country more for the exact same product for no reason whatsoever? Sony charges us brits £70 and you yanks $70, at the current rates we’re paying $12 more for the exact same product which means we’re being ripped off.
He just stated the obvious lol. Not affording something doesn't make it expensive. You want something and can't afford it?... Earn it. You can only question overpricng over necessities, but with video games?... I don't think so.
@@o0Paynekiller0o PlayStation is the only storefront where I’ve ever seen a £70 pricetag for a new game. The last time I bought a game at release was Elden Ring and that only cost me £50 on steam.
@@o0Paynekiller0o I’ve never played final fantasy but that’s not a surprise, square Enix sold its studios and IPs to dive head first into NFTs lmao. If £70 becomes the standard price for a new triple A game I’m never buying one at release ever again. Do these companies think we’re made of money?
You can't even buy the Ferrari you want. You need to buy some lower models before getting the higher end model. And you are basically forced to do maintenance at their garages. A lot worst than Sony imo lol.
There should be an ombudsman regulating the cost of monthly subscriptions for online games... they make billions at a greedy upscale where they could charge half of what they presently do and still make 100% profit at least... greed must be wiped out...
I think I understand the logic behind this First, they're probably going after Sony because they might be seen as the easier target between them, Microsoft, and Nintendo and that if they're successful in suing Sony in this then that opens the door and sets a precedent for lawsuits against the other two. Second, the monopoly they're referring to is probably that if you want to get something for a game on your playstation such as DLC then you have to go through Sony itself with their playstation store instead of being able to buy such things from the developer or a competing store. Imagine you have XCOM 2 and you want to buy War of the Chosen, you can buy the dlc from steam or you can go to GOG and buy it for much cheaper since it's on sale there as of the time of me typing this ($9.99 on GOG vs $39.99 on steam). Now if you want to buy War of the Chosen for the PS4 version of XCOM 2 then you have no choice BUT to buy it through the Playstation Store for full price unless if Sony decides to have it on sale. After watching a bit more of your video you do touch on the first point. I'm fairly certain that this is more to set a precedent against what might be viewed as a smaller company between the big three and it might even get the other two to change their policies if Sony does lose the case, which would result in fewer costly lawsuits having to be filed. These are just my assumptions though
what? "if you want to buy War of the Chosen for the PS4 version of XCOM 2 then you have no choice BUT to buy it through the Playstation Store for full price unless if Sony decides to have it on sale" Game publisher decides pricing not sony because they dont own it. also playstation games/DLC being purchased on playstation store make sense.. aint no way you buying something from steam & can play it on playstation. what?
I remember when companies tried to sell us on digital games by telling us money would be saved without the need for packaging and that savings would be passed on to us. Hah! That never happened did it!?! I'm all for this kind of suit in theory, but I agree with Yong at this point. Not sure this one has legs.
@@lasarousi Have you heard of the term "economies of scale"? When I was a wee'un in the 90's games cost ~£50 new, and that was when a game was considered a success if it sold a few hundred thousand copies globally. Now games are £70 and so, so, SO many more people are buying and playing games, to where even niche genres like survival horror regularly sell millions of copies. If anything prices should've gone *down* not up.
You're off on this one Yong. The reason they DO deserve to be sued is because the PS STORE is the ONLY place to get digital games for PS. For Xbox, you can buy digital games from other websites. PS *used* to allow us to buy digital games from various sites, and they were often cheaper... Nowonder Sony SHUT THAT DOWN, they wanted the Monopoly they DO have now.
Lawsuits need to have detail so the lawyers can know what they are attacking/defending. I am always concerned of Boomer Lawyers not understanding the context of what Micro Transactions and Loot Boxes are. They just label everything under (extra fees) of digital purchases. This can also target DLC which is often less predatory and more of a nice option if you can afford it and chose to buy into DLC for your games.
If a lawyer goes into a case they should be expect to know what they are talking about but then again years ago people took others saying video games cause voilence with no real proof seriously soooo
This isn’t Americans looking into this. The boomers overseas aren’t nearly as r3tarded as ours, so they have a better ability to look into new age matters.
@@zenora84 could you give an example I can't think of any dlcs off the top of my head that were absolutely nessacary though I will say and this is an issue I have with all digital media is the second the company decides it's old and isn't profitable anymore they can just get rid of it a huge example is Ubisoft they are shutting down old ac games servers as well as far cry 3 and splinter cell Blacklist by doing this they are also making the dlcs for those games unplayable even if you already bought it (even though that doesn't make sense eventually someone somewhere will buy it)
@@austinwalker2000 Dead Rising 4's actual ending was in a DLC. Asura's Wrath true end was in a DLC. Dead Space 3 had a better ending in the DLC. There are probably more games which had important parts put in a DLC, but this is what I remember at the moment.
I feel like ubisoft would be a way easier target for this kind of lawsuit. 1. Their games are legitimately designed to wear you down to paying for progression. 2. So many of their tittles have been neglected to the point that they no longer work as advertised, and have been telling people they're working on the issues for years. Almost all of the old assasins creed games are still listed as online and have nothing but error messages. They just flatout lie about shit that you can't figure out until your playing the game well past the point of a refund
I remember renting (yes, it was still a thing where I live lol at that time) The Division to try it. I put the game on the PS, had to connect to Uplay?? The uplay servers were down. I never tried the game. Never bought a Ubi game since that time.
Meanwhile me and other Australians aren’t complaining about the fact that we pay more for games than America and other countries when you do the convert the prices to other currencies.
This won't lead anywhere, Digital games will never be cheaper. I remember this "digital should be cheaper" logic used with books as well.Several years ago, someone tried to make digital books to cost less than physical ones. Bookstores were strongly against it, believing this would kill the physical-book industry (forgetting physical books have a lot of advantages that digital books don't have). It ended with the digital and the physical books being the same price instead. The end result? If I remember correctly, it ended with an agreement that digital books wouldn't cost less than physical versions, but not more as well. At the end of the day...digital content can't cost much less. While there are some things you don't need to do (find a publisher, pay for the cover,the discs being made and more), the developers,artists and more still need to be paid.Lower the price too much and it may mean the people who worked on it will get smaller salary than they usually did,while they had to work overtime to get the game finished. Regardless how the game ends up being (good or bad),the workers should not loose on income for the work already done.
You forgot one thing, with the digital only you pretty much cut out the middle man, stores usually take 10% from each game sold, but with digital only there is no store so that the publisher earns more money from each game sold.
If this does go through I could see this being a hugely damaging factor in the long run, losing that much money will hurt, and with Microsoft making serious moves, this could really set Sony back.
this lawsuit is pure BS. I'm supposed to sympathize with players who buy digital games? These are the same who are killing physical disk games and supporting always online digital games. the can go cry more.
It's worth mentioning that Sony are the only ones pushing the 70 dollars video game prices as heavily, Xbox promotes it but at the end of the day the publishers can post games at 60 dollars (which some do) Sony enforces it and if your title is not 70 dollars it cannot go there
@@yuzuichikawa People don't like facts. ALSO people are forgetting how much N64 games( one example) were be back in the day and make them match current money value its insane.
Also worth noting, which platform do they not have a monopoly over? PC All ps titles there have been 50 dollars so far, the argument of "its old titles" could've been made, if it weren't for the fact that Spiderman remaster came out also at 50 dollars... So maybe Sony just saw an opportunity to abuse its most gullible consumers and took it
@@GhostZero17 that argument holds almost no weight, n64 titles were complete games from day one, the argument that game prices have remained the same is bs, it started with xbox360 and ps3 with dlc, and crap like on-disc dlc, and now we are with colors and emotes mtx... Let me remind you something if you want to talk about the past, alternate costumes, colors, emotes, etc used to be unlockable, not a paid comldity. Also games were playable and completable day 1, not bs live service or games requiring months worth of patches to be a finished product
For me, it's the censorship, a corporation shouldn't be allowed to tell you "this character is problematic" or "this game will be changed for this" and take that away from you while also forcing the devs of the game change because they want to push their own power over the artists. It's not right, there age rate for a reason, games shouldn't get unfairly censored.
Bruh digital games being $70+ on sony store is theft. They somehow made it the standard price for their triple AAA games. Very, very sneaky if you ask me. The game isnt even being shipped to you with case and everything. Relax Horizon Forbidden west is LITERALLY €80. Gran Turismo is €80. You will never find me purchasing games at that price point.
Remember when they said digital titles would be cheaper then physical? Cause noone does. Remember when they said In Game montization would mean cheaper titles? Cause noone does.
the standard prices haven't changed since 06 and i to pay more for gas,movies,food,utilities and everything else then i did back then gaming is no difference stop being such a baby
Sony and Microsoft both Artificially keep the price of their games higher because its a closed eco system. If you are a pc gamer you know that you can get the same game for 50 cent or a dollar,but on console it never drops below $20.the reason is that there is alot more competition in the digtal pc game space,so places like steam have to drop their prices down quite a bit or the games wont sell.
Actually Sony and MS price match steam during their summer sales, Nintendo not so much. I recently bought Panzer Dragoon for £2 on PS5 which is the same as Steam currently. Not to mention the free monthly games from PS plus etc are nice.
@@gameguy1337 that's because those developers wanted it that way. I've seen it first hand.steam will be asking $5 for a game,while on PSN and Xbox its $49.99. Hell go look up left 4 dead 1 or 2 on xbox to get the game and its dlcs will run ya around $30,yet on steam its basically always $2 and under for everything included. Another example was Mechwarrior 5 a few months back.i got it and all its dlcs on pc for $30 total,yet on xbox that package was nearly $80 + taxs at the time. Those on console get screwed nonstop.the prices never get down to as cheap as pc unless you buy used Physical,and they are doing everything they can to kill that off..hell even a shit game like Agents of mayhem on sale on xbox is $3 while on pc you can get it for 50 cents.
@@omarrodriguez4943 of course, but thats not really an easy comparison as the switch is vastly different then the ps,xbox,and pc. One could argue that Nintendo gets to charge a premium cause of the portability of their games,which does add value for some people. But ps,xbox,and pc are pretty much apples to apples as most of the time the only advantages or disadvantages between the different "versions" of the game are directly down to the policy of the platform. A perfect example of this is the Tony Hawk remake.on pc its basically a given that games allow you to switch between whatever resolution you wish in order to work on as many systems as possible. i have a top end gaming rig so i can play it at 720p,1080p,4k,8k,16k whatever my system can handle at no additional charge. yet on the consoles i am forced to pay an additional $10 "upgrade fee" if i wish to convert a "ps4 copy" of the game to a so called "4k ps5 version" which really is no different then going into the menu and changing my settings from 1080p to 4k on pc. See this is just one of the many ways console players get screwed and they don't even realize it's happening to them. They believe the ps5/series "version" is Superior to the ps4/one version so they pay the fee,when in reality its the exact same version but they have monotized the settings menu and are forcing each customer to payout $10 for a dev to take 2 minutes and toggle the display resolution and push an update downstream. See Microtransactions aren't just crap that scumbags like EA,Ubisoft, Activision etc push on you.its Actually always been Sony and Microsoft demaning these type of fees behind the scenes and you all never knew it. Sony and Microsoft are allowing the developers to Intentionally prey on the ignorance of their customers in order to make a profit. Sony and Microsoft Intentionally create an environment where that is not only possible but is expected and rewarded by their industry. More proof of this clam you can see right now is how Sony is first hand handling backwards compatibility of their older games by locking them all behind a paywall,eventho the hardware can easily natively support those titles. Thats not because those scumbag Publishers are forcing that on Sony,no its because Sony sees that now the customers will allow them to show their true greed without any backlash and harm to the platform. Grrrr this industry needs a hard crash so badly..
@@solidsnake6405 I'd say it's too early to rule them out on the "mid gen refreshes"... Once Switch 2 is already in the market, expect 30$ upgrades and maybe even more, Nintendo is historically the most scummy of these three companies.
Willing to bet they are targeting Sony first to see how well this attempt to redress the issue via litigation lands in a court ruling - possibly because Sony are notorious for their hesitance to enable cross play and provide other services access to their IPs. If successful, maybe they plan to follow up with additional suits against all of the other major vendors you mentioned in the video.
The lawsuit doesn't apply to Nintendo or Microsoft. This is about violating antitrust laws. Goto the gamestop website and look at games. You can buy digital Nintendo games, digital Xbox games.... but what you won't be able to find, is digital playstation games. Sony is the only company that forces people to buy digital games from them. That is what this lawsuit is about, Sony monopolizing digital games sales. I don't think YongYea understands that.
When it comes to class action lawsuits you don’t go after everyone at once, you go after a selected target (Sony) and if they fall or settle, then you start another lawsuit with the next target. The lawyers make more money and the settlements won’t be lumped together, limiting the potential $. This is just testing the waters, not leaving Microsoft nor Nintendo off the chopping block, just putting them in potential limbo.
Yong as a person living in the UK who has been using PlayStation as a primary means of playing games since PS1. This is well overdue. They have purposefully price gouged UK consumers for decades compared to basically every other platform. In the UK we actually pay way more than the US for video games when conversion and inflation is brought in. Sony take even further advantage of this by charging full price for games that are even years old. Microsoft choose not do this and usually follow discounts and sales that are on other platforms. Nintendo does do this as well so I can see them being targeted in the future. Right now this suit is targeting Sony. It has to start from somewhere. I was extremely happy to see this and I hope it ends up being successful. Sony do have sales occasionally but the prices for the items on sale are games that are decades old and can still be found cheaper elsewhere. As an example I recently tried to take advantage of the Destiny 2 discount on all older expansions to catch up with all of the content I missed as a returning player. On every single platform it was on the discount price except on the PlayStation store. No reason given. They have a monopoly on their store and they know they can get away with it. As someone who is usually on the side of consumers I am genuinely perplexed why you seem to be siding with Sony so obviously. And I'm a Sony fan. But it's your opinion and I respect it and appreciate you covering this. Thanks for keeping us informed.
I’m with you on who the law firm is targeting - go after EA for FIFA & other sports games, Diablo Immortal for addictive gambling in-game. Sony being targeted doesn’t make sense - they’re not even close to EA or Activision in scummy and harmful practices.
Nintendo and other companies have charged way more money for it's games from the 80's until now lol. If there's a a demand then an offer is made. People have payed willingly premium prices for cut content more than a decade they there's user base and how far they can get away with their greedy business practices, in big part the gaming community is guilty to an extent of the current situation and how it developed if we don't change our spending habits these corporations won't do their best to satisfy us as customers.
I hate that with digital gaming you never own the games you bought--the second the servers are shut down your money's gone with it. It's not a "service," it's a scam. The digital-only PS5 will LITERALLY be bricked the second Sony does another Vita/PSP on their library. Skins and other stupid MTXs, and pay-to-win elements, are _particularly_ awful when you sink all this money in a game that can be dead in less than a year. They're not even trying to be WoW, with zero actual commitment to making these 10-year "live services."
I'm not sure how Sony was being 'sneaky' in regards to pricing. Overall, I feel like this lawsuit is a bit too broad and not really an actual lawsuit-worthy thing. If they're going against PlayStation about this, this could also apply to Nintendo and Xbox as well. Why only PlayStation? The prices of games (digital and physical) as well as DLC & micro-transactions are readily shown and not hidden. They're making it as if Sony is not disclosing the actual price of games & additional content... If Sony does reduce that cut, developers aren't going to pass on that savings to the consumer. It's just more profits for said developer.
Most likely a smear campaign considering the firm "funding" said lawsuit profits more from making larger claims against said more successful companies cannot really go wrong with the console market leader that way
They'd have to be out of their mind to try suing three of the biggest corporations on the planet at the same time. If they're serious about this, and the vagueness of the suit makes me question that, they're after a precedent, meaning the other two would have have to fall in line anyway if Sony loses.
@@fierysmile2929 they aren't serious about this, someone has gotten upset about something and is venting a frustration that will go literally nowhere, reducing their comission just means price hikes elsewhere to cover the costs, so PSN fees will get higher
Yong is confused because this lawsuit can be applied to so many other companies doing the same thing: It will only make sense After and If the lawsuit wins... if they win over Sony, do they (A) stop. Then it would be confusing. or (B) move on to the next company with the same lawsuit, and just go down the chain of companies one at a time. Time will tell. Maybe it is easier to fight if it's one company at a time.. otherwise providing enough money to fight All the billion $ corporation lawyers at the same time might be too expensive. On the note of Digital purchases, I coincidentally had a conversation with a friend about this very topic. Why is it that we used to pay $60-$70 for a game, and told that part of it was for distribution to the store, the packaging, and the game itself being made into a physical thing, then all of a sudden, Digital Content that everyone thought would get a little cheaper without all that overhead actually slowly got more and more expensive, and Half the time now days, you don't even Own the content you buy. Absolutely not right. One of Many reasons I stopped buying AAA games. We have a voice, one day you will realize they need us more than we need them. If we work together WE CAN SET THE TERMS
The problem is there is no WE. There's only the casual plebs and the smart consumers. The smart consumers don't just go around buying buggy unfinished games at launch day at full price, they wait for reviews, patches and a price drop if the game isn't that great but decent enough. Guess what the casual plebs do? And they make the majority of the market, cuz paying with mommys credit card doesn’t need much thought to what piece of shit game you're buying.
Legally, I don't see this class action lawsuit getting very far. Morally, I agree there's something here to think and speak about. Just because every single videogame company overcharges you for the games they sell doesn't make it legally justifiable, much less morally.
This lawsuit kinda caught me off guard, as, while agreeing that gaming costs more than it should, Sonys prices are kinda on the better end in my opinion. When i compare it to switch, which is unbelievably stingy with their sales, Sony at least gives good deals more frequently. Its not rare to get a first party triple A game for more than 30% off on Playstation, Nintendo won't be caught dead putting on a newer mario game on sale with a big price cut
I'm all for suing corporations for anti-consumer and anti-competitive practices, but this one really don't present a strong case so far from the bullet points we've seen. I guess we'll see how this all develops.
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I would love digital content to be priced cheaper just as a general rule... considering it's gone without service and you don't technically 'own' it to begin with.
Well one cool thing u get with digital is being able to play with multiple consoles at the same time as long as u r sharing enabled. I play games with my siblings and we all have our separate consoles, it would suck to buy multiple of the same games to play together in multiplayer etc
That way, physical being more expensive makes sense. You’re also paying for the disc/cartridge and box, but it’ll last longer.
No store would carry games or consoles and would sue the shit out of them for not having a fair market
Either that or have two tiers one the typical way that's less expensive and another that is current price but you do "own" it.
Answer me this: Sony takes all the cut from their games on their platform so why are they priced at 70$? Sony should be the last company to implement that pricing. You have companies like Capcom that release their games on steam, playstation, xbox and those companies all get a cut from capcom's sales yet their products are priced at 60$.
If they really want to sue Sony it should be about their basically non existent refund policy for digital products.
You mean like very other media has
@@davelanger nah, many have refund these days.
@Meridias Watchtower actually gog never responded to my refund requests ...
Don’t you remember when they refunded people who bought Cyberpunk
@@yuukib.5528 Cool, you're an outlier. Not the norm.
Basically comes down to two main points, first being the conversion rates compared to other countries, we pay £70 for a Sony game, in the US you pay $70 which converts to about £60. As you keep comparing to eshop, a Nintendo game costs £50, even cheaper if you nose around on shops online for a code.
Second is Sony only sell gift cards outside of the PS store, so you can't buy digital games from other sources. Whereas other systems sell digital games codes outside of their store, so the customer can shop around for cheaper prices. Sony on the other hand is in control of all sales totally, and as such, keep the prices high.
Ive always brought up the conversion bs and it seems to go over most peoples heads.
Theres no reason we should have to pay more
80$ in Canada. Also the little box that says "renew PlayStation plus automatically" keeps getting checked after an update was really annoying they've robbed me a few times I had to remove my payment method from my account to make it stop.
Oogh. Valve's old problem. Sounds like Sony got inspired. And Nintendo was accused of price fixing during the chip shortage of the late '80s, but here it's clearcut. Sony is the most Jekyll-and-Hyde company out there: great products but hellish business ways.
@@ChrisMakesBeats Agree with that. had to turn offf both renews from the web page. sony store. and on console. ffs. I see where this is going.
@@Alistair_7609 yeah check this out. I have a ps5 but when they were selling out so quickly on Sony Direct I had to settle for a spur of the moment decision to get the digital only because the disc one was just sold out online in front of my eyes & I knew the digital would be next within 30 seconds.
I didn't mind this too much because I normally wait for major psn sales to buy my games, when they're like 70% off. But it was a shame to see a game in gamestop at Ike 30 dollars new but on the PSN store it was still 60 dollars. This was abusing their power, they knew the value of the game was down but also knew everyone with a digital only console would have no choice but to pay that price if they wanted it. I didn't get it & waited for a sale on principle but that took MONTHS & I STILL didn't get as good of a deal.
The digital only console is why I think PSN is getting this lawsuit. The other consoles give you the option of where to buy your games. This is coming from someone who mainly games on Playstation
I think you are missing a key detail, Yong. Games on the US Playstation Store cost $70, and £70 on the UK Store. If we go by currency conversion they should cost about £60 to be the same amount of money. On the other hand the US Nintendo eShop charges $60, while in the UK store the games are £50, which makes total sense.
That's why this lawsuit is targetting Sony. They are indeed overcharging people compared to other markets.
I sussed this out on my own yeah. This is pretty common on a variety of platforms, and I hate it. As someone who this doesn't even affect, I hate it.
@@o0Paynekiller0o were they doing this before the price jump? I live in US, but I don’t recall the price difference (even after considering VAT) being much of a difference compared to the pricing we’ve seen now. If I’m not mistaken, the prices listed were similar to as stated in original post.
@@o0Paynekiller0o I'm in a part of the country without any digital sales tax, so games are just as they appear price-wise
Thats nothing, in Turkey games are sold for 1000₺ and in steam its at least 200₺ which is basicly someones sallery
@@LaughingThesaurus same,I live in Georgia and I notice on the Xbox,I don't get taxed on digital purchases like I did in Florida
When I was a wee little lad, I remember believing the first arguments for digital games. That these games will be cheaper due to pubs not having to ship games, pay for shelf space, pay for cases/artwork/manuals, etc.
After ms transactions, live services, dlc, subscriptions, fees, drm, taking down old versions to force you to buy new versions, pushing out broken games....I think they might have been not telling the truth. 🤔
I remember as well and its interesting because it feels like originally they WERE telling the truth because digital versions were actually cheaper for some time... but some things changed in these companies after big money was rolling in and suddenly the entire damn system sprinted down predator avenue to try to rape everybodys wallet all the meanwhile customer service actually dropped off a cliff for a while as well. They eventually got clever and extra slimy about how theyd trick people into shit but those of us old enough to remember know this is a very different regime running gaming these days. Its why companies like fromsoft just releasing full games that work and have a ton of content with a couple little expansions are so fucking refreshing every time they do so. Its how things should be in most cases
Oh, here's the tragedy - they WERE cheaper, back when Steam first launched. Back before the major publishers got in on the digital distribution thing. Valve being developers, not publishers, originally had a much saner, more reasonable attitude, and games were about £10 to £15 cheaper on Steam compared to retail, for the very reasons you listed.
But then I remember it clearly - Modern Warfare 2 came along. It arrived on Steam at full retail price; £40 I believe, maybe £45, when games on Steam were generally around £25.
And people paid it. And the publishers realised - aha, they'll pay full physical retail price for digital games.
And we were doomed from that point on.
one reason is the fact that i think sony and microsoft for consoles still make money through games rather than the hardware itself but yeah distribution should have reduced a price by little
Why do they take down the old versions to force you to buy the new versions? One word: MONEY. 🤑💵
@@NicholasBrakespear they don't need to complain about people waiting for a 50% discount on Steam sales then. That's basically the customers waiting for the price to adapt to the lower distribution costs. (only talking about AAA games here, Indies are a different story)
As one of the ancient beings who spent his childhood in arcades, it's been very funny watching the games industry figure out how to make their way back to getting you to pay as often & as much as possible.
There was this tiny little golden age where you just bought a game & had it. It was nice. Now we're getting back to feed the machine your quarters.
Thats why the older games are the most fun
I have no idea have many coins I have fed the 4 man Gauntlet arcade machine! "Blue Wizard, your lifeforce is running out!" Pop coins for more health! Good times though :D
It's actually kind of sad nowadays :/ I miss the gamecube era
Yeah, the good ol' days where you bought a game and it's done.
In my case, I stopped at PS3 after seeing the games costs around $100.
In Southeast Asia, that price is too painful.
literally, The Culling already tried it i remember Yong's video about it they wanted to charge PER MATCH you got into for like a battle royale/FPS.... and failed miserably i dont think a single game was ever played thank god
Imagine 10 years from now and we get one of those Mesothelioma Financial Compensation type commercials but for PS Store purchases
*Have you or a loved one been scammed by sony or playstation, between the years of 2023 and 2032? if so, you may be entitled to financial compensation*
Have you or a family member been purchasing PlayStation games you may be entitled to financial compensation
My god
If you or a loved one paid too much for Playstation digital titles or had a digital license stolen, you may be entitled to compensation
I've been hospitalized for the last 3 months because of the physical and psychological trauma from purchasing a 5 year old AAA game for $60 instead of $20.
If that's true. I hope I get a fortune lol
The consumer laws are much stronger here in Europe than in the US. My guess is that's the main reason for this lawsuit.
I'm fine if they use Playstation as a stepping stone but they need to get EA and other companies with literal gambling mechanics etc as well because as far as I am concerned games have strayed from players enjoyment being the 1# priority.
There are some better laws in Canada then in the US, but we still pay pay to much, in comparison.
The lawsuit will fail.
The people doing the suit don't seem to understand how the industry works.
Consumer laws in America are basically non-existent. Wish I had been born in Europe. Better pay, better treatment, better prices. Best of all I wouldn't be living in a country with fascism on the rise.
@@RubyRose23328 Its always relevant. It's another symptom of the same problem.
Didn’t it come out recently that indie devs need approval from Sony to discount their own games on the Sony store. Microsoft and Nintendo don’t. Sony also rejected a lot of discounts apparently and now they don’t allow retailers to sell digital codes …so they do have a monopoly on digital sales and seem to exercise more control than the others.
But yeah a lot of their points can be said for the other companies. I do believe Sony has always dominated the UK tho and still does over the switch.?? Maybe that’s why she’s targeting them first or she believes they are slightly worse?
This is all true, and it's precisely what this lawsuit should be suing Sony for.
There also the only platform that charges developers for cross-platform play. I think its to keep players buying microtransactions through them instead of others to get a cut of the money.
one thing I LIKED the most the discounts on games
HOPE none of the games that was discounted was not rejected
ON PS PLUS
That is not something worthy of being even in the scope of a lawsuit. As a provider, its their choice whether they want to allow for this things or not. It is also the reason why other platforms, such as Microsoft, could actually have an edge over them because they allow such deals. Youd basically also be complaining about both GOG and Epic since their discounts arent the same as steam, and viceversa.
So no, its very misguided to believe this is something demandable. Sincerely Im as confused as Yong; this is literally something every other company in the business is guilty of. I would be ok to get cheaper games based on the fact that we dont actually OWN the game since it could be taken down without even our knowledge from online servers, but thats not on the claim. Not sure was this claim is all about, just seems stupid. If its like this, why not include both MC and Nintendo too?You really going to argue that PS doesnt allows for discounts while saying Nintendo does lol?
I try to be "smarter" with my digital purchases and only buy games when they are on sale. And I do observe that Playstation's seasonal sales happen quite often. Having said that, I stand with the gaming community fighting for fair pricing.
Personally I stopped buying games. The games that come out now are either broken or not worth the time. I'll never understand why games were better 15 years ago than they are now, literally makes no sense
If those companies' egos are still there, it's no reason to buy games!
@@eddykaye8217 I've been replaying Dragon's Dogma for the last week. You aren't wrong, the peak of gaming was a decade ago, it's so sad.
As a multi-platform gamer, I generally only buy games when they are on sale. What I’ve noticed is that for third-party games, PlayStation is usually the most expensive even the sale price is often higher than the sale price on other platforms. So, I only buy Sony exclusives for the PlayStation, unfortunately like Nintendo you can be waiting a while for a sale on most first-party titles. On Xbox, the opposite is true, you get nearly all the first party titles in Game Pass along with many great third-party titles. I started out gaming on PS & Nintendo consoles, and used to believe that the PlayStation was the best platform, but now most games I buy are for PC or Xbox because it tends to be a better deal. As someone who has bought all the PlayStation consoles, I don’t even know if I want to buy the next console because of how anti-consumer Sony has been the last few years. I hate exclusivity deals on video games, and Sony has been the biggest offender and now they are claiming that if Microsoft buys Activision that they would do the same thing. Yes, they could make Call of Duty exclusive to Xbox but they probably won’t but what they will do is give Xbox users the same type of exclusivity deals that Sony previously had with Activision. Sony tried to block cross-platform games and even charged game developers so much more to publish cross-platform games on their store to discourage developers from adding these features. Sony has also been paying third-party developers to not publish games on Xbox Game Pass. If Sony wants to win me back, they need to become more consumer friendly, otherwise this is going to be my last Sony console purchase.
@@PsiliPharm2012 Wait, are you actually, unironically, suggesting that Sony is *less* consumer friendly than Microshaft? The company-guzzling studio-killing anti-cross-platform Microshaft?
I've always felt digital goods should be priced cheaper just for the fact they're saving on other things. Manufacturing cost as related to discs, packaging, etc. Shipping costs and all those fees. All that stuff is baked into the price of game, just like with any physical good. So if they're not having to pay for all that, the price of my end product should reflect that. Since they're greedy though, that doesn't happen.
1000% 👍
But the cost of video games have not kept up with inflation. And AAA video games are far more expensive to make and market than before due to increased competition for consumers' attention. The market is larger and technology has made it easier to create the games, but we are still getting a much better deal than we were in the 90s for single player, offline games.
Live service/lootbox/gacha stuff is a whole 'nother story. We are getting ripped off on those even though they're often "free".
Well said, that’s exactly right. It’s about greed to these companies, nothing more I’m afraid.
@@EdwardPaulet They caused their own problem, when game companies decided to prioritize graphics knowing it's an uphill battle. Now they want to pass it on the costumer, while implementing predatory measures of monetization. They don't have my sympathy, and they shouldn't have yours.
@@EdwardPaulet True but ultimately not that relevant. Games generate profit far in excess of their cost to make if the game is received well. God of War cost like 44 million to make and generated over 500 million in revenue. You're trying to tell me they needed more money from me? On a smaller scale look at Valheim, small budget, small price tag, game pushed ridiculous numbers and they made a killing.
Big game or small, if you make a quality product your profit margins will be insane, inflation is not a significant factor in that. That is nonsense the companies tell you to try and justify raising the product price. Cyberpunk is a more recent example, all the problems that game had, all the bad press and they still made a ridiculous amount of money off that and that is one of the most expensive games ever made. When they talk about inflations it's when they put out garbage like Anthem and then want you to make up the development short falls.
Was wondering why Sony doesn't have a "gift" functionality where you can buy a game for a friend and gift them the code to redeem.
It's because Sony is restricting game codes as much as they can otherwise you would see PS game codes on sites like g2a for much cheaper than Sony is selling in certain regions so thus Sony would lose out on money.
even xbox has a gift function which is good for consumers
Yeah my nephew was gifted a ps5 digital edition and he keeps asking for games for Christmas or birthdays. I’m not even sure if his parents have a psn account for him.
@@captainzib bruv 💀 well you can always give him the money and ask your sibling and their spouse to please help them out because your want your nephew to get what you intended for him.
@@AsteroSloth sure but that’s more work than it needs to be when the competition has a gift feature.
@@captainzib Even for Xbox you need an account man. Situation does suck though, I remember as a kid one of my favorite things was getting sent games for my birthday or Christmas.
This is very interesting to me as in a situation like this I would have expected Nintendo to be first on the chopping block considering the way they almost never lower the prices on games they publish, very curious to see what happens if this goes through but I honestly doubt it will, I'm not familiar with UK pricing laws and what-not so who am I to say.
Nintendo is absolute shit company for that. Have to pay 60€ for almost all games that interest me but are already out for a good while.
Nintendo is very big on legal issues I wouldn’t take them on first and since Sony had that whole digital movie issue not long ago might help or be the reason why there first
@@Malugako I find it amazing that Breath of the Wild is still 60 dollars after all this time
@@uhoh6706 Yeah but I can sell mine for $50, so the prices not going down is a win for me and other people who decided to sell their physical copies.
First thing that came to my mind as well, plus the ui for eShop is so damn miserable
These companies DID claim that digital games would be cheaper since there was nothing physical to manufacture. And they ended up selling digital games at the same price anyway.
well in Australia the digital copies are anything from $10 to 20 dollars more expensive for the base versions
They ARE cheaper... for THEM though
@@caiobispodossantossantana Haha there we go their egos
To be fair, it's nice that people who don't have great internet don't have to pay more.
I think the only one that claim that was Sony, the others (Nintendo and Microsoft) just go with Sony saying that.
You're missing the point of the lawsuit: Sony years back made it where you can't buy digital games for their system anywhere but through them. You can currently get Steam keys, Switch keys, and Microsoft keys on retailers like Amazon, Game Stop, and so on. Sony hasn't allowed that for years. You can only buy digital goods directly through Sony's own ecosystem. And that's not just for first party titles, it's for any game published on PlayStation.
THAT'S what the lawsuit is referring to as anti-competition and monopolistic.
And yet the argument can be made that what Sony is doing is NOT anti competitive or monopolistic, because all they are doing is making themselves a worse product compared to their competitors.
It's certainly a strange argument, but it's the first one that comes to mind: how is Sony making a monopoly when it's actions are, according to the most basic of free market economics, self-destructive?
Why would a company have to ensure their product can be purchased through third party sellers? I mean it's easy to make a case why that is virtuous and good, but _obligatory_ ?
@@Animal_lives_matter Because their competitors allow it and they do not. Also, Sony apply the 30% price increase thingy, which is fine... except when it's the only option to buy the game digitally.
@@auberginemanproductions1608 Again, that just raises the argument that the competitors have better business sense.
So here in Brazil, Cult of the Lamb on Steam is about 65R$, while on the PS Store it's About 135R$, basically double the price
And that's just one example
EDIT. Another example is Ruined King, on Steam it's about 70R$, while on the PS Store it's 160R$
I'm about to verbally exclaim the obvious...: That's just disgusting!
That's why I swapped from console gaming to PC gaming, the games a cheaper, the Steam store is just better in every way and a PC beats a console in literally everything.
É por isso que eu troquei de jogar em consoles pra jogar no PC mano, o jogos são mais baratos, a Steam é infinitamente melhor que a PSN Store e PC é melhor que console em literalmente tudo.
And you're telling me this is the same company that won the console war apparently
It the same with xbox and nintendo
That probably has more to do with Steam allowing devs to set regional pricing for weaker currencies.If Sony isn't selling them for more than a direct currency convertion + taxes then it isn't what the lawsuit is about.
I always found it strange why games oversea cost more or sometimes less even though it’s digital. Physical I get because importing cost a lot just by itself.
Taxes aren't the same everywhere...
Uh, what about server costs to host the downloads for all the games, they don't exsactly run cheap.
@@roberts3423 nope, it’s all taxes
The reason is what Napoleon said but let me elaborate.
In my county of El Salvador, where we use dollars as our national coin, we used to tax much more digital goods-which included games but not things like let’s say COD points.
I’m not really sure how it worked in the very end, but the game and their publisher were applied the same amount as if they were an actual retailer here. Meaning that games would instantly cost 40%+ than what THE STUPID UNGRATEFUL AMERICAN ASSHOLES WERE PAYING-ahem, sorry, where was I? Yeah, you guys infuriated the shit out of me.
It wasn’t until our most recent president’s term that they changed that. Even today, I can never buy physical copies unless I’m willing to pay the 40%+profits of the retailer. Games that are $60 on digital for me I find at $70 on a lucky, INSANE sale day.
Often times it's because the target country's money is worth less than the US dollar, so to receive the same amount in value, they have to charge more
While a lot of my PS library consists of games mostly bought on sale, at good prices, I do agree that something needs to be done. It costs about US $90 in my currency to buy any new AAA title.
I’m from Singapore and they don’t offer discounted price during holidays here! I always kept a lookout but the prices are never lowered!
Can we have this version of a lawsuit but for the Nintendo e-shop? Thanks
Im tired of paying US rates for the crime of being English educated in Asia
never happening, you are the only person I've ever seen who has an issue with the prices in the Nintendo eshop
@@terrysyvertson9205 that's why Nintendo=piracy (in my country)
@@terrysyvertson9205 Not alone. It's been a thing for many years. They're just tired of it. 10 years of overpriced games on nintendo.
@@terrysyvertson9205 nintendo can't spell the word SALE and you think one person is all there is? If you got a wallet Nintendo pisses you off.
I just saw someone two days ago complaining how zelda BOTW still sells for full price when it's old AF.
@@terrysyvertson9205 sup
This might domino into other gaming platforms, this was one of the things Epic was ranting about, monopolization the market. Right before they started trying to monopolize Kickstarter titles. Seems like someone believes they have enough of a case to be actually willing to take this to court and start a chain reaction.
Bethesda stopped putting the DLC for Skyrim on sale, found a key for only $13 when it totalled $45 on Steam.
You do know that Epic only said that in their fight against Apple just so they can make more money off of Fortnite right ?
@@thegamerfe8751 Yep, but they made such petulant statements at the time that it really emphasized how shamelessly they were chasing that bottom line.
@@KaiserAfini it's something similar to "the ends justify the means" but like the means are good (in a legal battle warning about monopolies and such) and the result is sorta bad sorta good (mostly greed from EG's part).
Gaming nowadays is an industry so messed up, that not even console manufacturers are getting away
I disagree on the "other platforms have similar prices" argument. When it comes to prices, all of them agree and follow up. We saw how that went sorta recently: "Oh games are more expensive to make, we gotta raise them from 60 to 70 bucks!". *Every* AAA publisher adapted that pricing. Because "lmao, more money for us!"
Capitalism 101. The price isn't what the product is actually worth its what the consumer is willing to pay for it that's why a Versace plain white T shirt can cost 1000s of dollars. If we as a community held our foot down and refused to pay these new price tags companies would go back down to 60
Could be easily solved by people just NOT BUYING AAA games. They suck. They’re a mediocre experience. BotW is one of the most well-polished AAA games in decades, and the puzzles suck. They’re jokingly easy. Play Portal instead. $10. Much harder.
@@sofamiller7133 You have to convince the casuals who only buy 1 or 2 games a year plus fortnite.
Tbh i live in the uk and i bought xenoblade 3 for like £50 and i got over 120 hours out of it already. Personally i just think that it’s a matter of quality, i would happily pay £50 for xenoblade, but the generic stuff? Hell no i’d go to the free games made by indie devs for that
@@almalone3282 Yeah it's impossible to control the casual that don't inform themselves and just consume without thinking, hell there's even people that play a lot more than 1/2 games a year and just don't think at all.
I remember Sony and Microsoft pushing so hard for digital sales years ago with the promise it would be cheaper for the consumer but digital sales have and always will be a rip off
Microsoft did deliver cheaper digital game with gamepass and some discount when buying game, meanwhile $ony did the opposite which is pathetic.
Digital will only get more expensive when physical medium (cd/cartridge...) will disappear. Gamers want "only digital future." But they are going to regret it BIG time. I said from the beginning that services like GamePass = the death of gaming and i still strongly believe that.
You can always get cd keys which are cheaper and have no difference from disks because they download the game on the system for xbox so making xbox games on disk is a waste of money and will kill the earth
Black mirror warned us about this
@@DBLCreations wait until they bring in programmable money and the end of human freedom
Stuff like this is why we need to fight to keep physical games being released.
No one wants physical games. Digital games are better.
@@Steven-tl8fs Yeah right.
@@Steven-tl8fs wow. That's incredible. Would you look at this Zonned Comfshorts...this is why it's become the norm. Stupid kids like this lol
@@Steven-tl8fs False. Any one who's been gaming longer than a decade would clearly want physical media. That has always been the media. Why even have a consol then? Digital only....what a joke.
@@Steven-tl8fs physical games are far superior to digital imo
I feel like this lawsuit is like throwing a bunch of stuff to the wall and see if something sticks. I'm glad people are finally trying to make these companies accountable but I don't believe this is the best aproach to make a strong case for more consumer friendly practices.
Could expose something rotten that can be taken out and blow the games industry wide open.
You go after the biggest target with the largest player base, you get a bigger cut.
They do this because there's currently no real precedent for any of this. Game companies haven't quite gone over the line just yet to make it easily shown as monopolistic or violating any major laws. However, if they can get a single win on things like this, that win then sets a precedent, which can be used to go after all the rest.
Unfortunately, just like the Epic vs Apple case, this likely isn't going to do much. I can see a few good points of argument that could be made in this case compared to the other, but it's going to depend heavily on whether it can be argued properly to a judge - who often aren't always the most up-to-date on technology-related issues.
@@zynet_eseled Right, I feel that the purpose of the lawsuit is to dig something up.
@@AeriFyrein Yeah, the reason I think it's not the best aproach is precisely because I can see how this could be dismissed by the court. They need a more concrete or specific reason.
When the Quarry came out on Sony's consoles in the US, when you looked at the games page via the PS5 before release, you could pre-order the PS4 version via your PS5. On launch day, you couldn't get the PS4 only version IF you were in the US and you were on the PS5. I had the PS4 port in my cart as it was 10$ less and I console share with my brother down the block who has my old PS4 so it made sense. On launch it was gone and I contacted costumer support and found out the PS4 version was not available to buy while you're on the PS5's environment. This was NOT the same with my friends in other countries tho, just the US (as far as I know)
I had to dig out my older PS4 just buy the the port. This was really messed up. When I pointed this out on Reddit, I got so downvoted and called "Crazy" and "stupid" because those who said they could do both weren't in the US but failed to read my post completely stating this very issue on how US citizens on the PS5 were locked out of buying the PS4 only version, unless you wanted to shell out 80$ where you could get both.....No Thanks Sony.
I made a poorly unscripted video talking about this and it was my most downvoted video on my channel because everyone thought I was cheap and didn't want to pay for it. I'm sure a lot of dislikes were due to my terrible attitude but the message was clear, I was wrong because I thought it was greedy.
They really hid the cheaper ps4 version of horizon on ps5 as well I had to use my ps4 to get it cheaper with both versions!
I would have just put [EDIT] If you're outside the U.S. then this post doesn't apply to you, have some class and keep scrolling.
@@HatCreature Bru I don't blame you for not wanting to pay 80 fucken dollars for a game 60 bux is semi reasonable 70 or 80 just for 60fps is not reasonable by any margin
I pre-ordered the Deluxe Edition in case if I ever get a PS5. Same with Horizon Forbidden West. Got both PS4 and PS5 versions!
This could also be partly due to the prices of games on the UK store. New releases are £70 which does not translate to $70.
Canada has to pay 80 dollars and USA pays 70 dollars
It's the same in Australia and New Zealand, we pay $100-$120 for a AAA release for consoles at times, that's half a day to two days of work for a person to afford... it used to be we could afford them on an hour or two's worth of work and get dozens of hours of content out of the games.
@@okamikitsunegaming 80 Canadian dollars is 61.68 US dollars
Dnt they follow which ever countries currency exchange rate and various on line tax laws when they do online sales etc?
@@otakufantic A lot of companies disregard currency exchange rates when it causes the number to be lower... I.e. Since £ is typically worth more than USD they like to ignore the exchange rates and make £ = USD pricing.
While for other currencies that make the number go up, they go ahead and use the exchange rates (So 70 USD becomes ~100 AUD). Interestingly, Canada gets a bit of a discount (70 USD = 90 CAD but will be priced more around 80 CAD)
To further add salt in the wounds, companies tend to offer worse customer service and server maintenance (As well as being less likely to provide compensation for server/service issues) to places outside of the US. So places like Australia and Europe get charged more, for worse service...
And that is why you don't buy a Digital PS5.
They are still charging full price for some PS4 titles from 2016. And that's with all the competition there is on PS4 - used games, amazon, walmart, gamestop etc. Imagine if everyone had a digital console and HAD to buy all their games from the playstation store...
That's why I bought the disc version even though I never buy physical games. I don't want to give them any ideas.
Steams still charging full price for games and DLC as well. Wanna buy an old COD from 2011 to 2012 $60 per game and $50 for their season pass.
I have digital PS5 and have yet to pay full price on ANY game, I just take sales. But it would be nice to buy digital codes elsewhere and have options
@@majingamer6109 Yeah, you can wait for sales and get some really good deals with digital games. But what if you just feel for playing X game - maybe a friend told you about it and you'd like to play together, maybe you saw a youtube video about it, could be anything. Do you really want to have to wait for a sale each time you want to buy a game ? Or do you want to be able to shop around? I agree with you, would be nice to have the option to buy digital codes elsewhere!
@@jinxx8456 - That's not Steam's fault, that's on the Publisher Activision for doing that.
Publishers set the prices for their games, not Steam themselves.
Now, while they do have some sales, you do have a point with no main permanent price drops.
I just looked up Black Ops II on Steam, which was released in Nov 2012. Still priced $59.99 with all DLC still full price.
However, everybody already knows Activision is very greedy and will probably never price drop those permanently.
Honestly, there should be a policy or law where after 5 years, a game's price MUST dropped by up to 50% (permanently) from it's original price (if the game is price at $50 to 80 at launch). While I'd still say a $29.99 might be even too much, it's a helluva better than $59.99 (for the record, I'd just wait on a sale anyway). This is in general by the way, not at Call of Duty.
It's like when I get various Blu-Ray's, I just wait until it's on sale for like $4.99 to $9.99 vs $25 to $30+.
Game companies have eliminated so much overhead by going digital. No longer do they have to pay for disc's, transferring the game to the disc's, disc's cases, box art labels and distribution, but somehow we have to pay more money. How do you cut cost but then say you need to charge more? Why is disc and digital the same price if they saved money from not having those expenses? Greed.
Friendly reminder for those who dont live in the US, you can literally sue for anything here. It doesnt have to have any actual basis.
Isn't that stupid ? Imagine the no of sh*t cases that the court wastes energy dealing with em instead of doing something productive.Maybe that's why the US is sh*tshow cause u morons invest the energy into all the wrong things instead of getting a law that could work for the ppl not just the corpos that run the country.
But they're not being sued in the US, they're being sued in the UK, and we're a lot less lawsuit happy.
But here's the thing, without any basis, can they win? I don't think so
@@ratedr7845 they do have a legitimate basis its just not what they seem to be focusing on, if they were to focus on the PlayStation store being a closed market or that their products are consistently overpriced compared to other markets relative to the exchange rates, they might have a legitimate case. Sony stopped all third party sales of digital products a while ago and from that moment became a total monopoly as they have complete control of the digital market and have disallowed any competition. both Nintendo and Microsoft allow 3rd party sellers and could theoretically argue that are not a digital monopoly because you can buy the digital version of their games from other stores and that's not getting into the grey market places like cdkeys and g2a.
They also might have a point about overcharging British customers, the 30% number they say is completely irrelevant companies can upcharge whatever they want for their products they have no legal argument there. but they could however have a case that prices are too high in relation Sonys other markets and this could go against some of our consumer protection laws, if they can show that Sony has been further inflating the prices even after tax and the exchange rate has been accounted for, they could have a case that Sony has been deliberately exploiting the British consumer.
That being said none of these are especially strong cases, they are definite arguments to be made but I'm sure any good lawyer would be able to argue against them and Sony has allot of those.
@@alcain_x you can buy psn cards on Amazon then use that to buy games digital
Damm man there has been more lawsuits this year than game releases 🤣
We're in a bad timeline
I’ve seen games at walmart for 9-10$ that playstation store still tries to sell for 50-60$ on their store. this is certainly needed
Same does nintendo though...
Yup
Thats what i hate about digital games
@@KitsuManko except for the fact alot of nintendo games will retain their value.
Some one sue Nintendo for selling 2017 games for fucking $40.
I have been wanting something like this for years since digital downloading had started to become popular in the PS3 and Xbox 360. Digital downloads shouldn't have to cost the same as retail because its not packaged and shipped or put onto discs and all of that is not free and costs the publisher a lot of money to do so. I am all for this movement to bring down the costs of digital content being cheaper then retail because the cost difference isn't there to support as to why digital should cost as much as retail.
My problem with digital prices is the fact that some games still cost prices that made sense within the first 3 years of its release. Lets say that you want to play the older CoD games on steam, you gotta fork over upwards to 50 bucks. Modern Warfare 3 for example still costs $40 which is way overpriced for a game that came out 11 years ago, meanwhile physical copies for some old games go for practically pennies compared to their digital copies.
I agree with you 100% but they can make the claim that "it's convenient so therefore there's a convenience fee" just beyond shady but they run the industry so they make the rules
@@mioda3109 But Sony/PlayStation don’t make those prices, it’s Activison at fault.
I think to stop undercutting retail as being an unfair market they can get in trouble for that as well. If your note, each time the sale in digital the also the sale is in retail with the same price.
@@gearoidoconnell5729 it's preference but like how we have digital only consoles or ones with a disc and a large majority still believe in game preservation which means buying the physical copies and the cool limited edition big box pre order items. There is still a large market for retail even if it was cheaper to buy digital but right now it's cheaper to buy retail but for the ones who got digital only consoles are being locked in to over priced old games and paying more then retail atm.
I fully agree with this lawsuite. I remember Sony saying that prices for digital games would be lower then physical discs because of no printing, no cover, no shipping (trucks etc). But the digital store on PSN is always overpriced. And ALWAYS more expensive the in physical stores.
No they aren't. On launch, the games in physical stores are priced the same as those on the digital storefront. The price might go down later as the need for space for new product overrides the need for getting the most profit from a game, but that is entirely a store's own decision. And unless Sony signed a contract, them speculating that digital would be cheaper than physical was just that, speculation.
If you are for decreasing the price, you are basically asking them to reduce the quality of their games. They can't keep making games with an increased bar on quality with less money.
@@Uldihaa although that "later" point can sometimes be REALLY fast. and playstation aside I have seen really big games like pokemon BDSP going way cheaper literally on release day in a store
@@My1xT And? That is that store's choice. Do you understand how physical stores get their stock? They buy them at a price set by the publisher (usually $40-45 per unit for a $60 MSRP game, but sometimes less). If a store is willing to cut their profits, they can. But that has nothing to do with Playstation, Nintendo, or MS prices on their digital stores.
The fact that they do sell physical copies of games to stores for less than MSRP while keeping their own digital versions at MSRP will completely undermine this lawsuit.
@@Uldihaa i am not saying that that is bad but it feels kinda stupid when a game is universally (especially after a few months) several euros down and digitally it always stays on the max except for a few days of sale
Watch the video first lads, then we'll talk
I am assuming this will be for outside U.S. pricing. Hence a game in the UK is £60 or £70 for a standard next-gen version which is $71 or $81 in the U.S. so in the UK we have been overpaying about $10 to $12 for years for every copy of a game which is unfair and it's not just the UK it's also in Europe and Asian countries.
They have a monopoly over there own store which is something you can’t technically do even if it sounds like you should be able to. Basically if you could buy a digital game from a separate site this wouldn’t be an issue. With Sony having full control over all digital purchases on the store, it creates a monopoly. The reason this doesn’t effect Xbox for example is because you can buy a digital code elsewhere meaning they can’t completely monopolise the MS store market. Monopoly’s are weird because you can find monopoly’s everywhere but market dominant platforms will always be scrutinised more
And Steam allows to buy keys from third-party sellers.
@@Rokabur steam is different. Steam is a digital store on the pc platform. Pc platform has many digital stores like Epic games, Ubisoft and ea. Playstation and xbox on the other hand only have one digital store
I remember filling a Playstation census about codes probably a year or two ago, guess this is tied to it
@@Rokabur Steam also technically competes with Epic Store and GoG. Obviously Steam is by far the most dominant PC games storefront, but there is at least _some_ competition there. Sony's only competition is physical retail, which they will be planning to eliminate ASAP imo. I'd bet money that's why they released the cheaper PS5 model with no bluray drive, they're testing the water to go 100% digital only with the PS6.
Obviously Microsoft are making the same push too, that's why they've made Game Pass such an attractive proposition to gamers.
The problem with the argument is that there are multiple such monopolies, you just have to pick your poison. I agree with you this appears to be a monopoly or close enough to one that it should violate the principle of it.
God this is such bad news…bad because I love Sony but good news because it’s too show em they can’t get away with awful schemes.
What they did is done by everyone. Steam, xbox, nintendo, etc.
Fk sony and playstation xbox master race
@@blackbird7781 steam has huge sales where you can get games dirt cheap, I’ve barely paid any money for my pc library of games.
It's bad news but good news for the people who had dealt with Sony and now they're exposed also you shouldn't love Sony they've been a shitty company for a while.
@@blackbird7781 personally I think Nintendo is the worse when it comes to pricing
Huh? A luxury product seller have no right to set a selling price to a luxury product buyer?
Games are not necessities like foods. A game is a luxury product. An incompetent government is not able to control the food price but makes a fuss to control the price of luxuries. People will not die without games. If games are too expensive, well......DON'T BUY THEM. However, if foods are too expensive, people still need to buy them. Therefore, governments should find ways to control the price of necessities not luxuries.
No one buys luxuries, luxuries price will drop. Necessities are totally different from luxuries because the lifeline of everyone depends on necessities. You don't have the freedom of not spending money on food, water, shelter and power but you have the freedom to refuse spending on games - Sony did not put a gun to your head to force you to buy a game.
In all honesty, the person suing them won’t win this lawsuit
That's such an insight comment.
For real. The lawsuit likely will be thrown out for being frivilous, or, Sony will point out how they are far from the only one who does this and that if sony is forced to change, it would force every business on earth to change and would cause inumerable problems
exactly
Yeah the claims don't seem to hold much water
I'm actually happy to hear this because I've been calling this out for years. I've seen games jump in price 200-500% and no one bats an eye.
You mean kinda like how every other publisher has?
And dipshit Playstation users still buy it
That's not all that true. I picked up a full boxed copy of Star Control 2 from a thrift store and it had the original receipt in it, and the game was $49.99 in 1992.
@@mobiusone6994 You want them to stop the lawsuit because others did it too?
@@Kaylakaze 30 years ago though
The thing that is bonkers with these digital stores is keeping games at full price, *years* after release. And only get the occasional discount if there is a promotion (which is the actual market value anyway), or if you're a paying subscriber. Screw that, I'll buy used physical instead without the paywall.
I'm an Xbox guy through and through (though I've now been on PC for over a year) but I've never hated Sony. I really don't see how you can sue them over something like this. If you wanted a game, the price was there, you agreed to the price. That's a fair trade.
Even without understanding the ins and outs of the law, taking on Sony in court is a gutsy move. I am sure their legal department is a monster.
I assure you, the UK government is far more powerful than some conglomerate.
@@scratch7971 Did I miss something? Isn't this a class action lawsuit brought on by a private party? It even sounded a bit like those commercials you can see from law firms "If you were using so and so during whenever, you might be eligible for compensation" lol
Do they put a gun to peoples head and force you to buy the games from them? They're a private company they can charge what ever they want
This is a nonsensical lawsuit smh. This could be every company by this means.
Despite it all. Even if it was equal grounds this lawsuit would not win either way
So blind...sigh....that's the point! Sony is just the sacrificial lamb to slaughter! Granted Sony won't lose this.
Of course sony gets it, because she is the biggest
I’ve never understood people buying digital from their store unless it was the only option. Despite shedding the overhead cost of a physical disc/box/etc., pricing is higher for longer than physical.
Buying online only games makes sense digitally. Regardless of owning a disc, you can't play them unless you log into the game's server
I mean think it depends with digital games you can literally gameshare etc with a family member.
Not everyone has the free time or energy to immediately to drive to a local GameStop or Walmart every time they want to buy a new game or 2. While it's more benefitting in almost everyway to buy physical games, it's easier for people to just put some money in their PSN wallet and just buy a game from the digital store quickly. Sony mostly tries to take advantage of these kinds of people, this is why you still see even old games like Assassin's Creed 3 still being sold for a full 40$ and such. It's a shitty business practice that they've been doing for a while, just like the multitude of other shit they've gotten away with that this lawsuit doesn't seem to be targeting which just comes off as strange.
@@aiellamori In some cases, sure. But even then, if their is an option to buy the game physically, it always goes down in price much quicker. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a physical game reduced to $30 or $40 and it’s still full price on the PlayStation Store.
Agreed. I live in Korea and digital is often my only option to play games in German.
Digital games should be cheaper by default. They don’t have to manufacture, ship or store anything. This cost should be removed.
Sony: *abusing purchase conditions*
Sony: *gets sued*
Sony: 👁 👄 👁
Microsoft buys sony at a discount
Except there's really nothing to these claims and these claims could just as easily be made towards Microsoft and Nintendo
@@ericx6969 Sony pulls a no u and buys out Xbox because of its dropping market price because this lawsuit is fake and fraudulent
@@Ki11Th3mA11Kid That just means the same claims can be made to the other 2, it doesn’t mean they’re invalid claims. :p
When you have a game that costs more at launch digitally than physically, something's up.
Here is an even better idea that could be lined up; suing Sony for 7 times that amount for their excessive abuse of their censorship on Japanese videogames across the board especially anime games aimed at mature audiences. And no, that thought will never, ever leave my mind.
Not defending Sony, but this sounds like a legless, unintelligible lawsuit. I never thought Sony’s pricing on digital sales been anti-consumer at all. I only buy digital games in their sales, and they constantly have sales, decent ones at that.
IMO, all digital games are overpriced. The moment when they are sold at the same prices as a physical version, then it is overpriced. For a physical product, I can understand the cost, as you have to pay for the packaging, the artwork, the shipping, etc. but a digital product does not require these extra fees. IMO, all digital games should be on average 20% cheaper than their physical counterpart.
Bro, every game developer that wants to put their games on the PSN, Sony takes 30% from the profits of that game and forces the game to raise its own price. How's that not anti costumer?? If you wanna pay 40 dollars for a 2 hour indie game, go ahead.
@@user-vj4tk6jw8i What are you talking about? Do you have a source? And who’s paying $40 for a indie game, cause it ain’t me. I literally stated that I don’t pay full price, I wait for a sale. Sony constantly has sales going on, and I have yet to see a game mark it’s price up on PS specifically.
As much as I support working to keep massive corporations in check so that they don't abuse consumers, and their wallets, I don't think this case is going to get much, if any, traction based on what's been seen so far.
it will the UK and EU (which I'm surprised hasn't done this themselves ) are extremely strict with consumer laws, in Europe and the UK digital games are £5-£10 more expensive than they are for a physical copy in store despite having ZERO overhead/manufacturing (disk creation, packaging, transporting etc) this is because SONY as well as the other 2 console manufacturers are over charging by A LOT. you'll often see a game that sells for $59.99 in the US sell for £59.99 in the UK despite the pound being considerably more valuable of a currency not only that its often more, sometimes £10 more ...£69.99 for a game that would be $59.99 or $64.99 in the US they charge so high that they make a killing from the 30%...UK games should be cheaper owing to the more powerful currency ..its digital so its criminal to mark up prices so high - also under UK law you cannot have a monopoly so Sony having complete control over a digital market place is technically illegal as its considered a monopoly over a trading platform. if the UK markets authority get involved its going to be a pain in the ass for SONY + others
@@SirZanZa Thank you for the explanation, for myself and anyone else who finds this. I didn't really think much about how different laws across the pond are from laws over here. (Typical American amiright?)
@@SirZanZa Maybe the extra red tape in the EU could explain the cost. They have to pay for more lawyers to parse your bogus laws. My local target store was selling elden ring for $69.99 at launch maybe I'll sue them too.
Depressing that we default to defeat. Idk much about EU but I do know they give a shit at all about their citizens.
This guy has the right idea. I recommend you go sue someone now. There’s plenty of people/ things you can sue like police departments, libraries, construction companies, school officials, cleaning services, financial institutions (local and international), your neighbors, your family members, your church, synagogue, or other religious institution, your employers, your employers’ customers, realtors, suppliers, glass blowers, companies in other countries, companies that made the drugs that were turned into the drugs that you took, the handicapped, Amish elders, and even yourself.
To be honest, this should've happened to microsoft as well.
Any company that would hide behind a DRM while charging full price for games while it only being a "license" should be dragged to court.
I know, some people will probably say that there's a law for that in their favor. REALLY? How did that "law" get introduced and then passed? These companies get "laws" passed by buying politicians while we're the ones getting screwed over.
There was no DRM issue on the xbox 360, so when did the ownership of digital games become a problem and the sole property of these companies instead of the one that purchased it?
That's like walking into a record store buying a cd and then being told that you don't own it, you're only renting it.
Some may argue that there's a difference, how and why?
It may be that you have a disc in hand but that disc is no different than buying and downloading a digital copy.
These companies are the ones that said otherwise so that they could make millions while robbing us of our money.
This is one of the biggest frauds ever to be pulled on the customer.
Then don't buy them and don't play them... it is literally that fucking easy.
If shitheel assclowns like you didn't keep paying for these games from these companies, they wouldn't charge as much.
Besides it doesn't matter of you have a disc or not it is still a digital version. When's the last time you bought a game that didn't require gigs of files to be downloaded before it would play.
Microsoft ruined online gaming. By making everyone pay to play online. Prior to ps4 this wasn't a thing on Ps3. It was all Xbox's fault with their gold pass bs.
😆😆😆😆😆😆😆
So how much less than physical copies should digital ones be legally required to cost? I want an exact number here. The realm of laws is a realm of absolutes; you can't just leave this sort of thing up to gut feelings.
@@stevethepocket In paying a full price for a digital copy, while it being only a license to play it, is one of the most dishonest business practices I've ever heard of. Whether or not it's full price or a sale price, the fact remains it's dishonest.
There was no DRM issue on the xbox 360, we could purchase games and we were the owners of those games.
When Microsoft decided to come out with a new system, all of a sudden the games we purchase are no longer ours to own.
If the "law" is absolute then it absolutely works in the favor of the greedy and corrupt.
I can't give you a price on any game, I can't speak for others and what they would be willing to pay for games.
Maybe part of the reason is because Sony is the only company with a digital game only console so you are forced to pay the price they set for games on the PlayStation store if they limit the ability to buy from places like GameStop and stuff like that.
Doubt it when Microsoft also has a digital only console
@@bamban_garcia5562 Yeah your right I forgot about the series s
@@Marzxian I mean on one hand Woodsford is a so called firm that invests into suing large claims under false "for the people" excuses to make a larger profit, on the other hand one would see the lawsuit being dragged out until the firm goes bankrupt while the other one would release its bloodthirsty lawyers
@@bamban_garcia5562 Yeah makes sense probably just trying to get Sony to be like whatever and give them some money just to not deal with the hassle but idk.
@@Marzxian I mean -Woodswhores- I'm sorry meant "Woofsford" is literally a firm that funds lawsuits over large claims to make the most profit from while using bogus excuses to justify said lawsuits
Heck their statement is pretty telling
"Gaming is now the biggest entertainment industry in the UK, ahead of TV, video and music and many vulnerable people rely on gaming for community and connection. The actions of Sony is costing millions of people who can't afford it, particularly when we're in the midst of a cost of living crisis and the consumer purse is being squeezed like never before."
As someone from the UK, I don't see this one going anywhere. Sony doesn't have any control over microtransactions beyond overseeing the payment systems for them, and the comparative price is about the same when conversion rates are taken into consideration. These individuals seem to have forgotten that the value of the GBP has dropped in comparison to USD, so it's only natural it would appear more expensive.
These individuals seem to have forgotten VAT exists. In America prices don't include tax. If we add our 20% tax to $70 we get $84 which is £71.36. So they are actually slightly undercharging us compared to the US.
The problem is that games cost 60$ on us store and the same game cost 60£ on uk store And this is a bigger problem if you live in a region that dont have a store + how the hell does digitalgames have the same price as physical games
Paynikiller, it's false for Sony. If you buy a disk on PS5, the game is there (the gold master version).
But I agree that for Microsoft, you don't have the complete game on the disk, they use the same disk for 4 consoles in several cases.
@@o0Paynekiller0o That's because the game has online requirements. I was talking about single player games. For games that require an online connection, you need to be updated to connect to the servers. Anyway, these games are gone when the servers close. Personally, I try to avoid these games (well at full price at least)
They are ripping off with the prices. I was going to add that “you don’t have to buy them” but they are the only digital option. Games can be on psn for a decade and never lower in prices. Then they treat “sales” as an opportunity to temporarily drop to msrp
They CAN be on there for that long without sales, but you'd have to have a myriad of examples if you want to present a lawsuit in court for 6 billion dollars.
That's not unique to Sony. Have you looked at the price of Call of Duty Black Ops 1 on steam? Unless it's on sale it's barely gone down. $40. Black Ops 2 is still $60 on steam. Have you looked at a Nintendo game? Breath of the Wild still $60 unless on sale. Super Mario Odyssey is also still $60. Sony doesn't have much of anything to do with this.
you mean like how Nintendo treat its E-Shop and how the "meme" of "Nintendo never lower their games prices" is actually a reality yet people just turning a blind eye to it? If they want to sue one, they should sue everyone that does it.
Yet another reason to buy physical copies
@@Broomer52 nintendo has never lowered the price of their physical copies either
This is the dumbest lawsuit ever. This is like going to McDonald's and being upset because they won't give your money to Burger King because you want a whooper.
If anything I thought this lawsuit would be about them charging 70$ for games
It can't be since Sony wasn't the one who started that. It was 2K games that started that price crap.
lol i remember this same exact thing being said when prices went from 50$ to 60$.
SNES games were $70 back in the 90s
120 dollars for oink ladies and gentlemen.
Devs are trying to say that next gen spec'd games warrant extra cost which may be true but only when games actually come out not broken at (Elden Ring excluded because God bless from software)
“Millions of people rely on games for community and connection.”
I have a sick family member whom this is true as fuuuuuck for, and it’s indeed greedy and somewhat evil that they charge as much as they do for what is just is essentially monopolized entertainment often based on scarcity that is made scarce for adding the fear of missing out…. while you could theoretically get a computer or PC to “compete” against Sony- due to the chip shortage making new consoles a virtual extreme rarity- a lot of people don’t really even have the luxury of switching systems to “get a better price” on certain game purchases: as to ask someone to spend $400+ just to get one or two other options is a bit silly imo.
That still doesn't explain how this is greedy on the part of Sony, you could argue this against things like microtransactions but I don't really see that logic following over to instances where you're getting a full game at the same price
There are so many cheap as dirt games out there, from old classics to brand new indies. They’re much better than modern AAA games. There is no fuckin “monopoly” in any sense of the word.
Sony hasn’t use a anticompetitive strategy though or forced developers. 30% commission is industry standard. There’s no way this lawsuit will go anywhere as that is nearly impossible to prove Sony is this reason for it.
Cyberpunk 2077, $79.99 on Steam in Canada. Digital is definitely over-priced, compared to all the costs that used to exist for boxes on shelves. This "lawsuit" is definitely far too general and lacks focus on its goal for consumers.
The only thing i would *remotely* sue playstation (specifically) for, is taking away the rights (we had in hardware) to use our Vita and PS3 the way it IS: connecting and buying the software there with credit/debit cards. Also dont close those storefronts.
@Bruh Bruh Bruh..BRUH 😁
I really think that the lawsuit will probably be going nowhere anytime soon. PlayStation is a horrible choice for this lawsuit. While Sony has questionable practices, such as censorship of content, they probably won’t lose this, and at most will settle.
Nintendo would have been a better choice. Nintendo eshop is the only way to get digital games on switch, prices almost never decrease, and some games cost more for worse versions on switch.
I think that these people that say they’re “Representing consumers” are really just seeing if they can earn a quick buck and maybe score some attention. Too bad that’s probably not going to happen and nobody will remember it in a year.
That's entirely untrue, you can buy Digital Codes for Switch, Xbox, and Steam(Steam Keys) from other stores.
Sony does not do this. The ONLY way to directly purchase a digital copy of a PlayStation game is through the PlayStation Store.
Therefore Sony is the only one of these companies that holds a monopoly on Digital purchases of games for their platform.
I think you’re a little confused. For example. Madden 23 just came out. On Best Buy’s website I can buy the digital version for Xbox. But not for the PlayStation
Guys, just wanna ask. I'm currently studying about game pricing. If the physical version of the game costs $60, what is the ideal price of the digital version should be? I need your opinion
Well considering you can resell the physical copy and cannot resell the digital one , A digital game should take this into consideration but they dont . The digital game price should be minus what it costs to produce and distribute a physical copy ,but that does not seem to be the case on the ps store.
Do digital store fronts literally overmark and make a ton of extra cash of games they sell on them? Yes absolutely. Will this lawsuit change something? Probably not.
I remember when the first time the PS store went up around the PS3/PSP generation, some digital games were like $5 to $10 cheaper then the physical copy. While preordering games on Amazon and you have prime, they were $10 off.
That was a really nice deal. I used to buy most of my video games on Amazon because of that $10 discount. The ps3 store is still pretty good to be honest. They have a large catalog of ps1 and ps2 games for like $5-$10 each that the ps4/ps5 store still don't have. Big reason why everyone was so disgruntled about the ps3 store potentially closing was because Sony didn't bother porting all of it to newer systems.
Sorry Yong.....I have watched your channel for the past two years without missing a SINGLE drop..
This......is the ONE TIME that you got this completely wrong....
Take a 5000 foot look at this and not one of a journalist,
This suit is stopping the practice of selling digital goods for the same as physical ones, where SONY HAS MANY TIMES, charged a player for a digital game and then changed the code to where you no longer own the game you downloaded..the case for the game CONTROL is one where they conspired with REMEDY to do this, I know because I was a play tester for that game and when they decided to "bundle for profit", that games BILLING code was changed in the PLAYSTORE and you had to repurchase the game.....just because the billing code changed.
And to answer your question: YES I OWNED THE GAME AT THE TIME
YES: I Could NOT access the DLC content....that I had already had the Platinum on because of this and yes I purchased the physical copy after this so they no longer had the ability to take something away from me
They also do this with the "free " games they give out on the pass, but later down the line if you bought DLC, but no longer want to play on the game pass, you no longer have access to the FREAKING ITEMS YOU PURCHASED.
please do your due diligence and reconsider your stance on this, because the optics on this will look very poor for you to back a greedy corporation that preys on the weak and young, purposefully makes it difficult to contact them and is all around a piece of shit company to its own consumers.y
The lawsuit will probably go nowhere, but they're not wrong. The price of the average game on the PSN store in the UK at the beginning of the PS4's life cycle was £39.99-£44.99. Now it's £59.99-£69.99. This is exactly the same with Microsoft however, as Yong and others in the comments have pointed out.
It's a big part of the reason why people on console need to push back against digital only imo. Because as soon as Sony and MS feel confident enough to stop selling their consoles with bluray drives, retail game stores immediately go out of business and both companies now have complete control over pricing within their own contained ecosystems. Games have increased to $70 _with_ retail competition still in place, albeit struggling. When that competition disappears completely it will only be a matter of time before we see $100 games.
At least on PC you've got multiple competing storefronts, so even though PC is mostly all digital nowadays there is incentive even for Steam to be careful about pricing. And the pricing of PC games reflects that, even the same game on PC will often be 10-20% cheaper than on console.
Without retail stores to compete with, Sony and MS can charge whatever they want. They aren't even _really_ competing with each other, since for the majority of each consoles life cycle most of their customers will only own one of the platforms. Sure if one company goes completely insane with their pricing, everyone will abandon that console and only buy the other one. But they're not stupid. Sony will definitely be keeping a close eye on Microsofts pricing and vice versa. And that's assuming they don't just collude with each other outright.
Look up PS4 upgrade path vs PS5, such as the $60 vs $70 Horizon Forbidden West.
Lookup Nintendo games that are 5-10yrs old with less money spent on development and ask which company is really robbing you
@@MrSwade009 All of them are. All of them are ripping you off.
@@AlexiaHoardwing Yeah the upgrade path stuff is just mad. I really don't know how Sony can justify charging an upgrade fee when Microsoft does it for free. Not only do Microsoft do it for free, they've also got free backwards compatibility via emulation of their original and 360 Xbox libraries that basically "remasters" your old games with an internal resolution bump and sometimes even a framerate increase. Meanwhile Sony is charging for (badly) emulated versions of PS1 games on the store that Duckstation plays better for free. I've got Duckstation _on my Xbox One S_ and that plays PS1 games better than the PS5 does (1440p internal res, PGXP correction and 20% emulator overclock with stable FPS on every game I've tried). Which is just laughable really.
Don't get me wrong, I think both companies fully intend to shaft gamers in pretty much exactly the same way. They're both pushing towards an all-digital future where they have complete control of pricing on their own respective platforms. We knew this already about Microsoft, because it's what they initially had planned for the Xbox One if people still remember that shitshow. But as things stand right now, Xbox is by far the better value proposition. Sony have played their hand too early.
The whole $70 started with Sony. And I'm pretty sure Microsoft isn't forcing devs to change the price to accommodate microsoft's, unlike Sony.
This has zero chance of getting taken seriously by any court 🤣. We would all love cheaper prices for our games. But just because I want a Ferrari and can't afford it, doesn't give me a right to sue Ferrari for making their cars to expensive.
How would you like it if Ferrari charged your country more for the exact same product for no reason whatsoever?
Sony charges us brits £70 and you yanks $70, at the current rates we’re paying $12 more for the exact same product which means we’re being ripped off.
He just stated the obvious lol. Not affording something doesn't make it expensive. You want something and can't afford it?... Earn it. You can only question overpricng over necessities, but with video games?... I don't think so.
@@o0Paynekiller0o PlayStation is the only storefront where I’ve ever seen a £70 pricetag for a new game. The last time I bought a game at release was Elden Ring and that only cost me £50 on steam.
@@o0Paynekiller0o I’ve never played final fantasy but that’s not a surprise, square Enix sold its studios and IPs to dive head first into NFTs lmao.
If £70 becomes the standard price for a new triple A game I’m never buying one at release ever again. Do these companies think we’re made of money?
You can't even buy the Ferrari you want. You need to buy some lower models before getting the higher end model. And you are basically forced to do maintenance at their garages. A lot worst than Sony imo lol.
There should be an ombudsman regulating the cost of monthly subscriptions for online games... they make billions at a greedy upscale where they could charge half of what they presently do and still make 100% profit at least... greed must be wiped out...
I think I understand the logic behind this
First, they're probably going after Sony because they might be seen as the easier target between them, Microsoft, and Nintendo and that if they're successful in suing Sony in this then that opens the door and sets a precedent for lawsuits against the other two.
Second, the monopoly they're referring to is probably that if you want to get something for a game on your playstation such as DLC then you have to go through Sony itself with their playstation store instead of being able to buy such things from the developer or a competing store. Imagine you have XCOM 2 and you want to buy War of the Chosen, you can buy the dlc from steam or you can go to GOG and buy it for much cheaper since it's on sale there as of the time of me typing this ($9.99 on GOG vs $39.99 on steam). Now if you want to buy War of the Chosen for the PS4 version of XCOM 2 then you have no choice BUT to buy it through the Playstation Store for full price unless if Sony decides to have it on sale.
After watching a bit more of your video you do touch on the first point. I'm fairly certain that this is more to set a precedent against what might be viewed as a smaller company between the big three and it might even get the other two to change their policies if Sony does lose the case, which would result in fewer costly lawsuits having to be filed.
These are just my assumptions though
Ummm... Sony is bigger than Nintendo.
what? "if you want to buy War of the Chosen for the PS4 version of XCOM 2 then you have no choice BUT to buy it through the Playstation Store for full price unless if Sony decides to have it on sale"
Game publisher decides pricing not sony because they dont own it. also playstation games/DLC being purchased on playstation store make sense.. aint no way you buying something from steam & can play it on playstation. what?
@@gamingaddict2944 I think a Nintendrone is salty here. XD
@@ramonandrajo6348 I'm wondering who he buys his switch games dlc from 🤭
@@gamingaddict2944 What?
I remember when companies tried to sell us on digital games by telling us money would be saved without the need for packaging and that savings would be passed on to us. Hah! That never happened did it!?! I'm all for this kind of suit in theory, but I agree with Yong at this point. Not sure this one has legs.
Have you heard of the term inflation?
THIS....IS EXACTLY WHAT WE SHOULD BE FOCUSED ON BRO
@@lasarousi bro........how do you add inflation to copy and paste mechanisms?
@@lasarousi Have you heard of the term "economies of scale"?
When I was a wee'un in the 90's games cost ~£50 new, and that was when a game was considered a success if it sold a few hundred thousand copies globally. Now games are £70 and so, so, SO many more people are buying and playing games, to where even niche genres like survival horror regularly sell millions of copies.
If anything prices should've gone *down* not up.
Digital games should get cheaper over time no matter what they are and how well they sell. Especially after a year.
You're off on this one Yong. The reason they DO deserve to be sued is because the PS STORE is the ONLY place to get digital games for PS. For Xbox, you can buy digital games from other websites. PS *used* to allow us to buy digital games from various sites, and they were often cheaper... Nowonder Sony SHUT THAT DOWN, they wanted the Monopoly they DO have now.
Oh please and What about Nintendo they don’t even drop prices for their old games
@@sarahbembry7512 well, NO company should be allowed a monopoly...
Lawsuits need to have detail so the lawyers can know what they are attacking/defending.
I am always concerned of Boomer Lawyers not understanding the context of what Micro Transactions and Loot Boxes are.
They just label everything under (extra fees) of digital purchases.
This can also target DLC which is often less predatory and more of a nice option if you can afford it and chose to buy into DLC for your games.
If a lawyer goes into a case they should be expect to know what they are talking about but then again years ago people took others saying video games cause voilence with no real proof seriously soooo
my biggest issue is that sometimes, DLC can feel mandatory but it's better then lootboxes 100%
This isn’t Americans looking into this. The boomers overseas aren’t nearly as r3tarded as ours, so they have a better ability to look into new age matters.
@@zenora84 could you give an example I can't think of any dlcs off the top of my head that were absolutely nessacary though I will say and this is an issue I have with all digital media is the second the company decides it's old and isn't profitable anymore they can just get rid of it a huge example is Ubisoft they are shutting down old ac games servers as well as far cry 3 and splinter cell Blacklist by doing this they are also making the dlcs for those games unplayable even if you already bought it (even though that doesn't make sense eventually someone somewhere will buy it)
@@austinwalker2000 Dead Rising 4's actual ending was in a DLC.
Asura's Wrath true end was in a DLC.
Dead Space 3 had a better ending in the DLC.
There are probably more games which had important parts put in a DLC, but this is what I remember at the moment.
I like playing on PC because i can buy heavily discounted games and outside of exclusives is not limited by choice.
I feel like ubisoft would be a way easier target for this kind of lawsuit. 1. Their games are legitimately designed to wear you down to paying for progression.
2. So many of their tittles have been neglected to the point that they no longer work as advertised, and have been telling people they're working on the issues for years. Almost all of the old assasins creed games are still listed as online and have nothing but error messages. They just flatout lie about shit that you can't figure out until your playing the game well past the point of a refund
I remember renting (yes, it was still a thing where I live lol at that time) The Division to try it. I put the game on the PS, had to connect to Uplay?? The uplay servers were down. I never tried the game. Never bought a Ubi game since that time.
Ubisoft is gross
Meanwhile me and other Australians aren’t complaining about the fact that we pay more for games than America and other countries when you do the convert the prices to other currencies.
Why wouldn't you?
This won't lead anywhere, Digital games will never be cheaper. I remember this "digital should be cheaper" logic used with books as well.Several years ago, someone tried to make digital books to cost less than physical ones. Bookstores were strongly against it, believing this would kill the physical-book industry (forgetting physical books have a lot of advantages that digital books don't have). It ended with the digital and the physical books being the same price instead. The end result? If I remember correctly, it ended with an agreement that digital books wouldn't cost less than physical versions, but not more as well.
At the end of the day...digital content can't cost much less. While there are some things you don't need to do (find a publisher, pay for the cover,the discs being made and more), the developers,artists and more still need to be paid.Lower the price too much and it may mean the people who worked on it will get smaller salary than they usually did,while they had to work overtime to get the game finished. Regardless how the game ends up being (good or bad),the workers should not loose on income for the work already done.
You forgot one thing, with the digital only you pretty much cut out the middle man, stores usually take 10% from each game sold, but with digital only there is no store so that the publisher earns more money from each game sold.
If this does go through I could see this being a hugely damaging factor in the long run, losing that much money will hurt, and with Microsoft making serious moves, this could really set Sony back.
And it would be Sony’s fault Sony gets set back if that’s the case. :/
The first thing they'll use as defense is point at Xbox and Nintendo, Steam and Epic and more. This isn't going to go anywhere.
@@RJBuildsPcs if you believe this you're part of the problem >
How is that your problem?
What do you mean? Microsoft and Nintendo will surely be next.
this lawsuit is pure BS. I'm supposed to sympathize with players who buy digital games? These are the same who are killing physical disk games and supporting always online digital games. the can go cry more.
It's worth mentioning that Sony are the only ones pushing the 70 dollars video game prices as heavily, Xbox promotes it but at the end of the day the publishers can post games at 60 dollars (which some do)
Sony enforces it and if your title is not 70 dollars it cannot go there
Even tho 2K games actually started that?
@@yuzuichikawa People don't like facts. ALSO people are forgetting how much N64 games( one example) were be back in the day and make them match current money value its insane.
@@GhostZero17 it’s sad cause google is everywhere.
Also worth noting, which platform do they not have a monopoly over? PC
All ps titles there have been 50 dollars so far, the argument of "its old titles" could've been made, if it weren't for the fact that Spiderman remaster came out also at 50 dollars... So maybe Sony just saw an opportunity to abuse its most gullible consumers and took it
@@GhostZero17 that argument holds almost no weight, n64 titles were complete games from day one, the argument that game prices have remained the same is bs, it started with xbox360 and ps3 with dlc, and crap like on-disc dlc, and now we are with colors and emotes mtx...
Let me remind you something if you want to talk about the past, alternate costumes, colors, emotes, etc used to be unlockable, not a paid comldity.
Also games were playable and completable day 1, not bs live service or games requiring months worth of patches to be a finished product
Regardless of whether or not Sony loses this case, their store is absolutely run with anti consumer practices at its' core.
For me, it's the censorship, a corporation shouldn't be allowed to tell you "this character is problematic" or "this game will be changed for this" and take that away from you while also forcing the devs of the game change because they want to push their own power over the artists. It's not right, there age rate for a reason, games shouldn't get unfairly censored.
Bruh digital games being $70+ on sony store is theft.
They somehow made it the standard price for their triple AAA games. Very, very sneaky if you ask me.
The game isnt even being shipped to you with case and everything. Relax
Horizon Forbidden west is LITERALLY €80.
Gran Turismo is €80.
You will never find me purchasing games at that price point.
wait fr?? I play on Xbox so I had no idea that Sony made that the norm for y’all, That’s fuckin insane dude
Literally extra $10 just for adjusting the PC settings a bit
Remember when they said digital titles would be cheaper then physical?
Cause noone does.
Remember when they said In Game montization would mean cheaper titles?
Cause noone does.
the standard prices haven't changed since 06 and i to pay more for gas,movies,food,utilities and everything else then i did back then gaming is no difference stop being such a baby
@@JArt872 Wdym?
Sony and Microsoft both Artificially keep the price of their games higher because its a closed eco system.
If you are a pc gamer you know that you can get the same game for 50 cent or a dollar,but on console it never drops below $20.the reason is that there is alot more competition in the digtal pc game space,so places like steam have to drop their prices down quite a bit or the games wont sell.
Actually Sony and MS price match steam during their summer sales, Nintendo not so much. I recently bought Panzer Dragoon for £2 on PS5 which is the same as Steam currently. Not to mention the free monthly games from PS plus etc are nice.
@@gameguy1337 that's because those developers wanted it that way. I've seen it first hand.steam will be asking $5 for a game,while on PSN and Xbox its $49.99.
Hell go look up left 4 dead 1 or 2 on xbox to get the game and its dlcs will run ya around $30,yet on steam its basically always $2 and under for everything included.
Another example was Mechwarrior 5 a few months back.i got it and all its dlcs on pc for $30 total,yet on xbox that package was nearly $80 + taxs at the time.
Those on console get screwed nonstop.the prices never get down to as cheap as pc unless you buy used Physical,and they are doing everything they can to kill that off..hell even a shit game like Agents of mayhem on sale on xbox is $3 while on pc you can get it for 50 cents.
You could include Nintendo in there.
@@omarrodriguez4943 of course, but thats not really an easy comparison as the switch is vastly different then the ps,xbox,and pc.
One could argue that Nintendo gets to charge a premium cause of the portability of their games,which does add value for some people.
But ps,xbox,and pc are pretty much apples to apples as most of the time the only advantages or disadvantages between the different "versions" of the game are directly down to the policy of the platform.
A perfect example of this is the Tony Hawk remake.on pc its basically a given that games allow you to switch between whatever resolution you wish in order to work on as many systems as possible. i have a top end gaming rig so i can play it at 720p,1080p,4k,8k,16k whatever my system can handle at no additional charge.
yet on the consoles i am forced to pay an additional $10 "upgrade fee" if i wish to convert a "ps4 copy" of the game to a so called "4k ps5 version" which really is no different then going into the menu and changing my settings from 1080p to 4k on pc.
See this is just one of the many ways console players get screwed and they don't even realize it's happening to them. They believe the ps5/series "version" is Superior to the ps4/one version so they pay the fee,when in reality its the exact same version but they have monotized the settings menu and are forcing each customer to payout $10 for a dev to take 2 minutes and toggle the display resolution and push an update downstream.
See Microtransactions aren't just crap that scumbags like EA,Ubisoft, Activision etc push on you.its Actually always been Sony and Microsoft demaning these type of fees behind the scenes and you all never knew it.
Sony and Microsoft are allowing the developers to Intentionally prey on the ignorance of their customers in order to make a profit. Sony and Microsoft Intentionally create an environment where that is not only possible but is expected and rewarded by their industry.
More proof of this clam you can see right now is how Sony is first hand handling backwards compatibility of their older games by locking them all behind a paywall,eventho the hardware can easily natively support those titles.
Thats not because those scumbag Publishers are forcing that on Sony,no its because Sony sees that now the customers will allow them to show their true greed without any backlash and harm to the platform.
Grrrr this industry needs a hard crash so badly..
@@solidsnake6405 I'd say it's too early to rule them out on the "mid gen refreshes"... Once Switch 2 is already in the market, expect 30$ upgrades and maybe even more, Nintendo is historically the most scummy of these three companies.
These people get free healthcare and now they want cheaper games.
Willing to bet they are targeting Sony first to see how well this attempt to redress the issue via litigation lands in a court ruling - possibly because Sony are notorious for their hesitance to enable cross play and provide other services access to their IPs. If successful, maybe they plan to follow up with additional suits against all of the other major vendors you mentioned in the video.
The lawsuit doesn't apply to Nintendo or Microsoft. This is about violating antitrust laws. Goto the gamestop website and look at games. You can buy digital Nintendo games, digital Xbox games.... but what you won't be able to find, is digital playstation games.
Sony is the only company that forces people to buy digital games from them. That is what this lawsuit is about, Sony monopolizing digital games sales. I don't think YongYea understands that.
When it comes to class action lawsuits you don’t go after everyone at once, you go after a selected target (Sony) and if they fall or settle, then you start another lawsuit with the next target. The lawyers make more money and the settlements won’t be lumped together, limiting the potential $. This is just testing the waters, not leaving Microsoft nor Nintendo off the chopping block, just putting them in potential limbo.
Yong as a person living in the UK who has been using PlayStation as a primary means of playing games since PS1. This is well overdue. They have purposefully price gouged UK consumers for decades compared to basically every other platform. In the UK we actually pay way more than the US for video games when conversion and inflation is brought in. Sony take even further advantage of this by charging full price for games that are even years old. Microsoft choose not do this and usually follow discounts and sales that are on other platforms. Nintendo does do this as well so I can see them being targeted in the future. Right now this suit is targeting Sony. It has to start from somewhere. I was extremely happy to see this and I hope it ends up being successful. Sony do have sales occasionally but the prices for the items on sale are games that are decades old and can still be found cheaper elsewhere.
As an example I recently tried to take advantage of the Destiny 2 discount on all older expansions to catch up with all of the content I missed as a returning player. On every single platform it was on the discount price except on the PlayStation store. No reason given. They have a monopoly on their store and they know they can get away with it.
As someone who is usually on the side of consumers I am genuinely perplexed why you seem to be siding with Sony so obviously. And I'm a Sony fan. But it's your opinion and I respect it and appreciate you covering this. Thanks for keeping us informed.
I’m with you on who the law firm is targeting - go after EA for FIFA & other sports games, Diablo Immortal for addictive gambling in-game. Sony being targeted doesn’t make sense - they’re not even close to EA or Activision in scummy and harmful practices.
Nintendo and other companies have charged way more money for it's games from the 80's until now lol. If there's a a demand then an offer is made. People have payed willingly premium prices for cut content more than a decade they there's user base and how far they can get away with their greedy business practices, in big part the gaming community is guilty to an extent of the current situation and how it developed if we don't change our spending habits these corporations won't do their best to satisfy us as customers.
I hate that with digital gaming you never own the games you bought--the second the servers are shut down your money's gone with it. It's not a "service," it's a scam. The digital-only PS5 will LITERALLY be bricked the second Sony does another Vita/PSP on their library. Skins and other stupid MTXs, and pay-to-win elements, are _particularly_ awful when you sink all this money in a game that can be dead in less than a year. They're not even trying to be WoW, with zero actual commitment to making these 10-year "live services."
I'm not sure how Sony was being 'sneaky' in regards to pricing. Overall, I feel like this lawsuit is a bit too broad and not really an actual lawsuit-worthy thing.
If they're going against PlayStation about this, this could also apply to Nintendo and Xbox as well. Why only PlayStation? The prices of games (digital and physical) as well as DLC & micro-transactions are readily shown and not hidden. They're making it as if Sony is not disclosing the actual price of games & additional content...
If Sony does reduce that cut, developers aren't going to pass on that savings to the consumer. It's just more profits for said developer.
Most likely a smear campaign considering the firm "funding" said lawsuit profits more from making larger claims against said more successful companies cannot really go wrong with the console market leader that way
They'd have to be out of their mind to try suing three of the biggest corporations on the planet at the same time. If they're serious about this, and the vagueness of the suit makes me question that, they're after a precedent, meaning the other two would have have to fall in line anyway if Sony loses.
@@fierysmile2929 they aren't serious about this, someone has gotten upset about something and is venting a frustration that will go literally nowhere, reducing their comission just means price hikes elsewhere to cover the costs, so PSN fees will get higher
Yong is confused because this lawsuit can be applied to so many other companies doing the same thing: It will only make sense After and If the lawsuit wins... if they win over Sony, do they (A) stop. Then it would be confusing. or (B) move on to the next company with the same lawsuit, and just go down the chain of companies one at a time. Time will tell. Maybe it is easier to fight if it's one company at a time.. otherwise providing enough money to fight All the billion $ corporation lawyers at the same time might be too expensive.
On the note of Digital purchases, I coincidentally had a conversation with a friend about this very topic. Why is it that we used to pay $60-$70 for a game, and told that part of it was for distribution to the store, the packaging, and the game itself being made into a physical thing, then all of a sudden, Digital Content that everyone thought would get a little cheaper without all that overhead actually slowly got more and more expensive, and Half the time now days, you don't even Own the content you buy. Absolutely not right. One of Many reasons I stopped buying AAA games. We have a voice, one day you will realize they need us more than we need them. If we work together WE CAN SET THE TERMS
The problem is there is no WE. There's only the casual plebs and the smart consumers. The smart consumers don't just go around buying buggy unfinished games at launch day at full price, they wait for reviews, patches and a price drop if the game isn't that great but decent enough. Guess what the casual plebs do? And they make the majority of the market, cuz paying with mommys credit card doesn’t need much thought to what piece of shit game you're buying.
Legally, I don't see this class action lawsuit getting very far. Morally, I agree there's something here to think and speak about. Just because every single videogame company overcharges you for the games they sell doesn't make it legally justifiable, much less morally.
This lawsuit kinda caught me off guard, as, while agreeing that gaming costs more than it should, Sonys prices are kinda on the better end in my opinion. When i compare it to switch, which is unbelievably stingy with their sales, Sony at least gives good deals more frequently.
Its not rare to get a first party triple A game for more than 30% off on Playstation, Nintendo won't be caught dead putting on a newer mario game on sale with a big price cut
they may as well try to sue the gas companies for making gas cost so much