
Frankly, nothing is going right at Sony these days. First of all, the manufacturer has to face an unprecedented leak from the Insomniac Games studio. Following a massive cyberattack, hackers have released gameplay images and artwork for Wolverine, the next big PS5 exclusive.
Recently, the Japanese manufacturer also drew the ire of gamers by banning dozens of PSN accounts for no apparent reason. We also need to mention this controversial decision to remove a lot of Discover content from the PlayStation Store, thus depriving players of their purchased movies and TV series.
Sony fined $13.5 million for sabotaging unofficial PS4 controllers
And this Tuesday, December 20, 2023, the High Competition Authority came to add its two cents. Meanwhile, a pinch of salt: $13.5 million fine for Sony and three of its subsidiaries. To summarize, the institution blames the Japanese company Abuse of dominant position in the PS4 controller market.
Initially, the High Competition Authority accuses Sony of launching the game in 2015 (i.e. only two years after the launch of the PS4). Technical countermeasures to combat rogue controllers. However, according to the agency’s review, these systems were implemented primarily for the following purposes: causes regular failures in third-party controllers Without a Sony license (including disconnects during console updates).
While underlining the legitimacy of its anti-counterfeiting goal, the institution nevertheless states that: such measures were disproportionatebecause these affected all “unlicensed” controllers indiscriminately.
Licenses were allocated in a non-transparent manner
The High Competition Authority later stated: non-transparent licensing policy. In fact, to get permission to sell PS4 controllers under the Sony brand (and in addition to avoid experiencing the aforementioned mistakes), manufacturers need to integrate an affiliate program.
But it seems Sony was careful not to give exact acceptance criteria to third party manufacturers. Like this, “Sony was able to implement these optionally, although access to the latter was the only way to avoid disconnections.” By combining these two practices, the authority found that Sony had significantly damaged the brand image of the affected third-party manufacturers with both distributors and players.
Source : High Competition Authority