Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe has given an undertaking to the UK Competition and Market Authority (CMA) to improve its PlayStation Plus subscription practices. The undertaking comes after an investigation by the CMA into online gaming service subscriptions.
The investigation, which began in 2019, looked at the automatic renewal of subscriptions. There was concern that people could find themselves locked into these subscriptions unless they took action to cancel them.
According to the CMA, the main concern was subscriptions that auto-renew, even if people aren’t using them or do not want to use them anymore.
In this day and age, where people can be subscribed to many different services, it can be easy to forget to cancel something you no longer use. This means that people have been losing money on auto-renewing subscriptions that they stopped using.
New measures to be put in place by Sony to protect PS Plus customers
The undertaking by Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe will see some new measures put in place. These new measures will protect customers who haven’t used their PlayStation Plus subscription in a long time but are still paying for it.
Sony will now contact these customers to remind them to stop payments. Furthermore, if the customers continue to not use their PS Plus subscription, Sony will ultimately stop taking payments from these customers.
The CMA has not specified how long “a long time” is though.
Microsoft and Nintendo have also had to agree to similar undertakings related to their subscription services.
Some good news then for UK consumers who have subscripted to PS Plus but no longer use the service. Now, all we need is for Sony to improve its horrible refund policies.
Sony has recently announced a revamped version of its PlayStation Plus subscription service. The new service rolls PlayStation Now into PlayStation Plus and has three subscription tiers.
