An investigation has been initiated by the UK’s Competitions and Markets Authority to determine whether Sony PlayStation, Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Switch are conducting their business practices in a fair, legal way.
Currently, the investigation is in its earliest stages, where the competition watchdog is gathering responses from public in order to garner more of information on matters such as auto-renewal of user subscriptions, the terms and conditions as well as the refund policy of these companies. Moreover, the authority has also written to the three companies in question, requesting them to provide information related to their gaming contracts online in order to better understand the practices adopted by them.
The antitrust body plans on examining if the terms of the contract of each of these companies are fair, the transparency and fairness of the auto-renewal memberships and if the users can cancel or else refund with ease.
Notably, a similar kind of probe has been launched by a few other regulators worldwide earlier. In the previous year, both Sony and Nintendo were accused of violating the European consumer protection laws which makes sure that European consumers could opt out of a purchase or refund within a period of fourteen days.
