Sony PlayStation users in the US could be due a collective $7.85 million (£5.8m) in refunds after a judge primarily approved a class-action settlement in an antitrust lawsuit.
The lawsuit, detailed by Saveri Law Firm LLP and spotted by IGN, accused Sony of “eliminat[ing] competition and monopolis[ing] the market for Sony digital games” due to its closed-shop digital store on the PlayStation Network.
Players who bought a digital game on PSN between 1st April 2019 and 31st December 2023 could be eligible for compensation. It doesn’t matter if you hadn’t elected to take part; unless you actively objected to be part of the legal action and do nothing by 2nd July 2026, the settlement will apply to all US players who has an active PSN account and bought one (or more) copies of these games between the two dates given above.
The list includes Destiny, Destiny 2, Nier: Automata, Resident Evil 4 Remake, The Last of Us, Until Dawn, and more.
Players who no longer have a PSN account are also eligible, but will need to contact the lawyers handling the lawsuit.
I wouldn’t pop the cork just yet, though. While the court has now scheduled a hearing to assess whether to approve the settlement, the plan for allocating the settlement amount to injured parties, and assess the payment of attorney’s fees, this won’t be until 15th October, 2026.
It’ll be a colossal blow to Sony, having denied anti-competition claims. We’ll have to wait and see how, or if, this will impact users outside of the US.
It follows a prior loss in 2024 in which Sony fought to prevent third party add-ons being sold for PlayStation games.
The European Court of Justice dismissed Sony’s claim that the Action Replay cheat software sold by UK company Datel infringed its copyright as it did “not change or reproduce either the object code, the source code, or the internal structure and organisation of Sony’s software”, but “merely changes the content of the variables temporarily transferred by Sony’s games to the console’s RAM, which are used during the running of the game”.
