Whether it's to replace a broken controller, or to find one that they find more ergonomic, players buy third-party controllers all the time. This includes controllers for consoles like Xbox or the PlayStation. However, thanks to an update they released a few years ago, Sony received fines from the court after a French antitrust regulator accused them of restricting third-party controllers.
Back on December 20, 2023, French antitrust regulator Autorité de la Concurrence fined Sony a total of €13,527,000 (or roughly $14,811,000). This was after a referral from French controller manufacturer, Subsonic. The regulator then followed it up with an investigation, where they discovered that Sony had placed counterfeiting measures onto their PlayStation 4. These counterfeiting measures went live back in November 2015. Although this may not sound like such a bad thing, said counterfeiting measures led to third-party controllers regularly disconnecting from the PlayStation 4 during system updates.
Not only that, but the regulator also discovered that whenever third-party manufacturers wanted to join Sony's licensing program, they had difficulty doing so. According to them, Sony “refused to communicate” the terms and criteria needed to join said licensing program. This means that even if manufacturers could create PlayStation 4-compatible controllers, they could not obtain official licenses and unique identification numbers. This means that their controllers would always be affected by the counterfeiting measures. According to the Autorite, Sony “applied the criteria in a discretionary manner, even though access to the programme was the only way to avoid disconnections.”
The fine was imposed “jointly and severally” on a total of three subsidiaries, as well as the parent company of the Sony Group:
- Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe Limited (in charge of the licensing programme in Europe);
- Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. K.K (responsible for rolling out operating system updates for the PS4 console);
- Sony Interactive Entertainment France (responsible for marketing controllers in France);
- Sony Group Corporation (parent company).
Whether the court's fines on Sony will make them loosen their restrictions on third-party controllers remains to be seen. Hopefully, though, they do loosen up, both for the sake of competition, as well as their own playerbase.
That's all the information we have about the fines placed on Sony by the court over their treatment of third-party controllers. Check out our gaming news articles for the latest in gaming news.
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