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Sony Interactive Entertainment has reached a preliminary agreement of 7.85 million dollars to settle a class-action antitrust lawsuit in the United States, which accuses the company of artificially inflating the prices of digital games on the PlayStation Store.
The case was filed in 2021 before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
The lawsuit alleged that Sony "illegally eliminated competition and monopolized the market for digital games," which would have caused buyers to pay inflated prices in violation of antitrust laws.
Sony denies the accusations, and the court has not determined that the company has engaged in improper conduct.
The origin of the conflict
The core of the accusation revolves around a decision made by Sony on April 1, 2019: the company stopped allowing external retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, Target, and Walmart to sell specific PlayStation game vouchers, a practice that had been in place since 2006.
By eliminating that option, Sony would have forced all digital game buyers to purchase them exclusively through the PlayStation Store, where the company controls prices without any real competition.
The period covered by the agreement includes purchases made between April 1, 2019, and December 31, 2023.
An agreement that came after an initial rejection
In July 2025, a judge rejected a previous version of the agreement because Sony proposed to compensate users with credits for the PlayStation Store itself, which was deemed an unacceptable "coupon deal" under federal law.
With approximately 4.4 million eligible users, each person would have received just 1.77 dollars with that initial deal.
After that rejection, the parties renegotiated the terms, and the new agreement received preliminary approval in 2026.
The final approval hearing is scheduled for October 15, 2026.
Who qualifies to receive the refund?
To be eligible, a user must have purchased a digital game through the PlayStation Store for which there was a specific coupon available at retailers before April 1, 2019, and have experienced a price increase of at least $0.50 after the discount.
The list of eligible games exceeds 100 titles, including entries from God of War, The Last of Us, Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, Demon's Souls, Mass Effect Trilogy, NBA 2K, and Call of Duty Classic.
The compensation amount per user depends on the number of eligible games purchased and the total claims submitted.
According to sources in the case, “the distribution can range from just a few dollars to three-digit figures in the most lucrative cases.”
What should users do?
Users with active PlayStation Network accounts will receive the credits automatically in their digital wallet.
Those with deactivated accounts must contact the agreement administrator before August 27, 2026.
The deadline to opt-out or contest the agreement is July 2, 2026.
The official site is PSNDigitalGamesSettlement.com.
A precedent that goes beyond money
The real impact of this case far exceeds 7.85 million dollars.
This is the first time that one of the major companies in the video game industry has accepted a financial agreement related to its closed digital store policy, in a debate reminiscent of the lawsuit between Epic Games and Apple over control of the App Store.
Sony also faces similar lawsuits in the United Kingdom for approximately $7.9 billion, and in the Netherlands, where consumer advocacy groups accuse the company of keeping "artificially high prices" in the PlayStation Store.
The precedent of the U.S. agreement could directly influence Sony's legal strategy in those jurisdictions.
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