A US Judge has rejected Sony PlayStation’s settlement for the class-action lawsuit, calling it a ‘coupon settlement’.
The class-action lawsuit in question has been ongoing since 2019, when PlayStation stopped retailers like Best Buy and GameStop from selling download codes for digital games. The class size includes more than 4.4 million individuals, alleging that Sony is placing ‘unfair prices’ in the platform’s digital store and monopolising the sale of these games. The company’s effort to settle this case has been rejected.
Sony PlayStation Tried to Pay $7.8 million in Electronic Credits to Settle the Case
Spotted by The Gamer, a report from Reuters reveals that U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín has rejected Sony PlayStation’s class action settlement. The console manufacturer was willing to pay $7.8 million in electronic credits to the impacted users to settle the case.
Martínez-Olguín has referred to the settlement as a “coupon settlement”, which is “generally disfavored”. The Judge has asked Sony to demonstrate how the “value and structure of this settlement remain defensible.” Martínez-Olguín also wants to see an estimate of what individual class members would receive, along with examples of comparable cases.
Sony PlayStation has stated that they are settling to reduce further costs and the “distraction of continued litigation”. The settlement period includes all eligible game purchases made between April 2019 and December 2023.
The plaintiff’s lawyer has stated that they are seeking up to approximately “33% of the settlement for legal fees, or about $2.61 million.” If $7.8 million store credits were to be distributed by 4.4 million impacted users, then each individual would receive less than $2 as a settlement in store credits.
In other news, the pricing of PlayStation Store items has led to a class action lawsuit in the Netherlands. What are your thoughts on Sony PlayStation’s coupon settlement in their class action lawsuit? Let us know through the official Insider Gaming forums discussion.
For more information from Insider Gaming, read about Warframe’s Switch 2 port being delayed by a backlog of dev kits. Don’t forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter.
They are not using unfair prices they are actually preventing resalers from getting the codes and selling them cheap online like happens on pc and xbox for a lot of games