I haven’t been following this, but if I understand, all this flows from Sony’s decision to (a) disallow developers targeting their platform from selling the game in regions that PSN isn’t available, even on other platforms, like Steam, and (b) not to offer PSN service in the Baltics. I’m not actually sure that it’s legal for Sony to do this.
I don’t think that that’d be fraud – as some people are talking about – but I do know that the EU has had some digital single market legislation that doesn’t let you buy something in part of the EU if you can’t use it in another part. I think that their interest is that they don’t want to have companies creating barriers to movement of labor around the EU, where someone can’t move from EU member A to B because it makes all their digital products unusable. If you cannot play a game in the Baltics, I’m not sure that it’s legal to sell it, under EU law, in France or the like.
It might also be legal – not sure. Probably depends on how it’s structured, what exactly Sony is doing, and the specifics of the European Digital Single Market restrictions. And I’m not familiar with the fine points of any of those.
It would be an interesting issue to resolve if the EU were to pursue it. I guess one could argue that PS5s are sold in the EU, even with the PSN restriction in certain regions. I’d guess a resolution to this would have Sony remove all of their content on Steam, which I consider a negative for gaming in-general.
I’m guessing there is, or will be, a carve out for this type of thing. Precedent could be argued with my PS5 example above.
The idea is to encourage the opposite. If they want access to furnace, Germany, Italy, they need to make it available in smaller countries. It becomes financially viable to cater to small countries when not doing so loses the big countries.
I entered into an agreement with a car manufacturer to be able to sell their cars in the UK. After I had people place orders (and pay) for a bunch of them the manufacturer decided that they were no longer supplying cars to the UK. Forcing me to issue my customers with refunds.
You should look up what the word “fraud” means in a legal context.
You would have an incredibly, overwhelmingly difficult tike attempting to prove that in court at this moment.
Fraud requires intentional deception and requires you to have lost something. This is a proactive action to prevent misunderstanding and from you purchasing something that won’t work, and refunds your purchase. The loss, and the intent, are both missing.
It sounds to me like you are talking about what Steam is doing, with the geolocking and refunds (not fraud), while the other person is talking about what Sony is doing, with adding PSN requirements after the fact (maybe fraud?).
Fraud exists because you were driving the car for a while with your normal drivers license and everything was perfectly fine, but now (for example) Elon says you have to get a specialized additional Tesla certification license from Tesla, but only offers it to countries whose names start with vowels because he was on a ketamine bender one night.
It’s a retroactive, unilateral change to a contract, which is generally considered legally questionable at the very least. And - you guessed it - possibly fraud.
There is a big difference between cancelling an order and taking away a product that you have been using.
I don’t agree with Sony’s actions as everyone should be able to buy the game but this is Sony cancelling an order as the game isn’t even out yet on PC.
It’s now a pattern and practice, though. HD2 could have been a fluke. But this now indicates that they’re probably going to do something similar with all of their current-gen games. THAT is the point people are becoming furious with.
That was obvious though. There was articles last week saying that Ghost of Tsushima wouldn’t remove the PSN requirement. It is also listed above the buy button (although that could be recent).
It was pretty clear from their response to HD2 that they would try again. Sure they shouldn’t have been selling preorders in countries that don’t have PSN access but it isn’t really surprising that they are enforcing it here.
I’m not but what’s funny is that EA, Ubisoft and Rockstar require an account to play their single player games and even their awful launchers which Sony isn’t doing and no one cares. Suddenly Sony does the same thing and everyone is furious about it.
Maybe it’s time for everyone to start review bombing these publishers too.
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