The big three gaming titans, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, are currently under scrutiny of the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) branch, with an investigation having been opened in regards to the policies of their online services. According to the official press release, the CMA believes that the three aforementioned companies must be investigated to ensure that UK consumers are protected, and that the subscription services are legal within the country. Though there is no proof at this time that any laws have been broken, Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are required to respond to the UK government with information on their respective contracts, so that the CMA can research that the terms are fair. What they appear to be looking for are incidents where customers have had trouble cancelling the services, dealt with numerous price hikes, or were forced into having to turn on auto-renew. Once the investigation concludes, a decision will be made, and either nothing will occur, or the offending party will have action taken against them.

The CMA has written to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation and Xbox requesting information about their online gaming contracts to help better understand their practices. It is also calling on customers who use these services to get in touch with the CMA and share their experiences in order to assist the investigation, which will examine several issues, including:

• are the contract terms unfair? - do the companies’ terms give them wide discretion to change the quality of the deal, for example, by reducing the number of games included or increasing the price?
  
  
• how easy it is to cancel or obtain a refund? - are there any factors that make it difficult for people to cancel their contract or get their money back?
  
  
• how fair is the auto-renewal process? - are customers clearly told that their membership will be rolled over, are they regularly reminded that they are on a roll-over contract before further payments are taken, and is auto-renewal set as the default option?
  

Source

 

[lordelan]

Don’t defend paid online, sony had free online for PS3, Nintendo had free online up until the switch. These are billion dollar companies, they don’t need us to foot the bill for the servers, the servers are paid for. Online should be free on all consoles and we don’t need customers arguing in the favour of big companies.

Calm down please. I'm with you with all you said. I just responded to someone saying it should be illegal.
Also it happens sometimes that things that were free are not free any longer. Not that I appreciate it but it happens. I'm the last one to complain if online play would be free forever.

 

[Haloman800]

Oi mate, you got a loicense for that video game subscription?

 

[Chizko]

But many server in PSPlus is from the game dev, no from PS...so you're paying to conect to these server...

 

[D34DL1N3R]

i don't care about the perverted things in games it's just removing features from a game that is promised to be in there... also nintendo not get any thing censored is also a jerk move see now you guys are going get me bitching about this censorship bull shit...

also i bet some of your are suck ups to making people pay money for better features...

i could compare some censor ship stuff on here but i'm not going till unless someone makes PISSES me off and does.

forget one thing about nintendo they are censored things in the past but now there getting away with it...

Is English not your first language? You also sound like you're having a really bad day. Calm down.

 

[bi388]

sony and microsoft perform sanity checks first and then send you to whichever external server the game requires.
this benefit the companies because they don't need to implement a system to prevent cheating and such. so they still are doing something to earn that subscription money.

What theyre doing is a fraction of the work that the actual game makers servers are doing. So why do I pay the people doing little work on not the ones actually hosting the games? And if theyre preventing cheating theyre doing a shit job, ive seen people talk on reddit about what high rank console games are like, apparently theres cheaters everywhere.

 

[Xzi]

I don't see much coming from this investigation. I can say for certain that Nintendo's service hasn't had any price hikes, and it's easy to turn off automatic renewal through their website or on your Switch. The others I'm not so sure about, but I am sure that they'd rather change some minor features around than stop using paid online.

I also hate to say it, but the UK probably doesn't have much pull left when it comes to making international businesses change course. Their laws and regulations carried a lot more weight as part of the collective EU.

 

[Sakitoshi]

What theyre doing is a fraction of the work that the actual game makers servers are doing. So why do I pay the people doing little work on not the ones actually hosting the games? And if theyre preventing cheating theyre doing a shit job, ive seen people talk on reddit about what high rank console games are like, apparently theres cheaters everywhere.

are you talking about using k+m??
that's not exactly cheating and no one can even know if you are using such devices because appear as a normal controller to the console.
console is cheat free for as far as I can see while pc has his fare share of cheaters but isn't so bad either (for what I can see from the streamers I watch). come back when you have proof of blatant cheating like aimboting and such.

side note: also reddit is just a circlejerk of highlights and potg, not a very good source for anything.

 

[Xabring]

Well, if this means better services/prices, I am okay with this.

 

[Xzi]

console is cheat free for as far as I can see while pc has his fare share of cheaters

Consoles haven't been cheat-free for several generations now, and ForkNife is infested with cheaters regardless of platform. Quantity of cheaters always correlates with the popularity of the game.

 

[Viri]

console is cheat free for as far as I can see

Hah, that's a good one.

 

[Wombleton]

then how do u know you are banned. your purchaser might be at trouble

What i was told when on the phone to Sony's customer services, my friend had the PS4 from me so i know it isn't banned, but i can no longer log into my PSN (not that i care) but i suspect it is in fact banned, to be fair that make sense to me, why would sony continue to let me use an account that had a charge back on it, if they did it would open up all sorts of scams etc for there service.

to go back to the original point though, no subscription service should auto renew(or at least have it as an opt in auto renewal and not a opt out which 99% of company's seem to do)

 

[brunocar]

lol
Have you heard of server costs?
The amount is debatable though.

have you heard of steam, hell, the piece of shit epic store even has free online

 

[Sakitoshi]

Hah, that's a good one.

not talking about wii, ds, wii u or 3ds here, but about consoles that care about the state of their online play.

ps3: if you are caught running cfw = ban.
x360: if you login to live with rgh = ban.
vita: you can login to psn with cfw and do everything like normal, but if you try and use cheats online = ban.
ps4: I'm not aware of the scene here, but I guess is like ps3.
xbone: IDK, but same as x360 I guess.

 

[Deleted User]

I think its fair, as long as they're throwing in free games with the service. I think Nintendo has it right with their pricing and the free stuff they give you for it.

You mean free stuff that noone wants and nothing that everyone is asking for.

 

[Viri]

not talking about wii, ds, wii u or 3ds here, but about consoles that care about the state of their online play.

Splatoon 2

 

[Sakitoshi]

Splatoon 2

thanks for confirming that nintendo doesn't care (?)

that doesn't change much what I've said.

but now that we are into it, can I ask what kind of cheating happens on splatoon 2?

EDIT: I don't follow the switch scene but for what I've seen cfw users are banned almost instantly.

 

[Captain_N]

All these people bitching about online services..... How about you just dont pay for them and dont use them. As for auto renew, dont use a credit card. For nintendos online i bought a $20 eshop card. cant auto renew that. Running an online service costs money. Nintendo has to pay a hosting company. you think the hosting company lets you have unlimited bandwidth for free?

 

[MushGuy]

Auto renewel should be illegal

 

[Wrathcaster]

have you heard of steam, hell, the piece of shit epic store even has free online

To cover their costs and server costs they take a good chunky (unfair) percentage off the devs from each sale though, hurting the devs which in turn results them going elsewhere and is the reason why there is so many different stores/launchers now and making everything extremely fragmented.
Not to mention that ontop of all that, games in steam and other stores are almost always cheaper compared to consoles, lowering the devs profit even lower.

 

[Kraken_X]

I bought my girlfriend an Xbox One, Minecraft, and 6 months of Xbox Live on a prepaid card for her birthday. After the 6 months were up, Microsoft used an old credit card she linked to her Xbox 360 years ago to keep auto-billing her. She called to cancel. They didn't cancel it. She called back to cancel again when she realized it a few months later. They confirmed that she hadn't even turned her Xbox on since before the 6 months expired and that they had a log of her calling to cancel and they still kept charging her. They would not refund the money even though they acknowledged that she did not agree to the auto-renewal and did not use their service. They literally stole money from her. If she goes to the bank or a lawyer, they will steal hundreds of dollars worth of games and thousands of hours of saves.

Not that going to a lawyer would even do anything because corporations in the US can simply declare themselves above the law with "mandatory arbitration" clauses buried in their 60 page EULAs. And yes, the conservative US supreme court ruled that it is legal for them to do this. To literally steal money and absolve themselves from any US law.

Good on Britain for at least pretending to stand up for their citizens.