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Sony Fined $14 Million For Damaging Third-Party PlayStation Controllers
(www.thegamer.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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Yeah, $14 mil is the cost of doing business for Sony, a slap on the wrist.
A straight cash amount is never enough, should be more like a whole number percentage of all dividends payed out that year. The guy who owns just a little of Sony might lose a couple dollars, the majority shareholders will lose millions personally and will put pressure on Sony to cut it the fuck out
It should be 2x the msrp for every damaged controller.
That doesn't account for the frustration and confusion, the time wasted troubleshooting, the loss of property and time spent replacing it, the consumer trust violations, and the destruction of private property. They should face criminal charges for destruction of private property. By "they" I mean the executives who created and mandated this idea. Then they should be required to pay pain and suffering to each affected user at a rate of $100 per hour, with 5-10 hours assumed, and then have to replace the controllers they broke. Not give money to replace them, they should be required to immediately ship a new controller of the same type that they broke. Anything else is just lip-service, and a nice check for some random law firm.
I don't think the controllers are literally "damaged", it sounds like just muddling legal terminology with technical terminology.
The controllers are still physically functional in the same way they were before the patch, they're just mo longer consistently connecting to the ps5. If Sony rolls back the patch they will return to normal.
That said, returns and reputational damages would be substantial to these companies and the fine does sound too small for such blatant anti-competitive and anti-consumer action.
If Sony caused them to malfunction to the point where the user bought a new controller, then I'd consider that damaged. The controller could no longer be used for its intended purpos.
Why is it sonys responsibility to maintain functionality for a bunch of knockoffs?
If they intentionally made 3rd party controllers not function with their product, that's monopolistic behavior and should absolutely be stopped.
If Sony didn't provide any message saying it was an unsupported device and caused people to buy new devices, that would be considered damages.
Fucking hardly. It's their shit, they can make it compatible with whatever they like.
It's not even that. That's like a rounding error for them. They won't even notice.
But this does damage the brand. Not only am I never going to buy another PlayStation, I'm not going to buy another pair of Sony headphones.
Unfortunately, brand damage isn't really a thing anymore. You're never going to buy a Sony product again the same way I'm never going to buy a Blizzard product again. They account for the loss of sales
Sadly, yea, you're not wrong. But consumers do have some agency, albeit a limited amount.
We have a lot more then we give ourselves credit for..but the amount of times I see people bitch about a store then go right back is absurd. People just don't care and companies know that. They are immune to punishment. It's just a bribe they make to have the paperwork go away and maybe make some generic twitter post about it.