(Reuters) -Britain’s competition regulator has secured pledges from Japan’s Sony and Nintendo over the subscription renewal rules for their online gaming services, bringing to an end a three-year probe into the sector.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) had kicked off the investigation into Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft in 2019 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-to-investigate-online-gaming-companies-roll-over-contracts to check whether their “roll-over” contracts were fair to customers in Britain.
The CMA said on Wednesday it got undertakings relating to Sony’s PlayStation Plus and the Nintendo Switch Online Service, months after Microsoft made similar pledges for its Xbox services.
Sony has agreed measures to prevent customers from paying for its services when they have not used it for a long time, the CMA said https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-welcomes-sony-and-nintendo-s-gaming-subscription-improvements, and the Nintendo Switch Online Service is no longer sold with automatic renewal as the default option.
PlayStation Plus services start at 6.99 pounds ($9.1) per month in Britain, while Nintendo Switch Online is available for 3.49 pounds.
Sony and Nintendo did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment on the CMA undertakings.
($1 = 0.7688 pounds)
(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)
