{"id":46468,"date":"2018-09-10T19:38:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-10T19:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/326174"},"modified":"2018-09-10T19:38:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T19:38:00","slug":"german-org-calls-on-sony-to-fix-customer-hostile-terms-conditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/09\/10\/german-org-calls-on-sony-to-fix-customer-hostile-terms-conditions\/","title":{"rendered":"German org calls on Sony to fix ‘customer-hostile’ terms & conditions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sony is\u00a0facing possible legal action in Germany after the Consumer Association of North Rhine-Westphalia (Verbraucherzentrale NRW) issued a complaint regarding the terms and conditions imposed on customers\u00a0using\u00a0PlayStation Network.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This isn’t the first time Sony has been called out for their terms and conditions of PSN<\/a>, as\u00a0the Norwegian Consumer Council issued a similar complaint\u00a0against Sony, Origin, and Steam back in April\u00a0for violating European consumer protection laws (the complaints were later dropped).<\/p>\n

A cease and desist letter reportedly sent to Sony by\u00a0the NRW claims\u00a0to have found three sections\u00a0where the terms and conditions of PSN were “incompatible with the law”.<\/p>\n

The first\u00a0includes a “customer-hostile” policy\u00a0where\u00a0prepaid funds uploaded to PSN expire after 24 months should they\u00a0go unused.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Secondly, the\u00a0NRW is criticizing\u00a0policy governing a customer’s right of withdrawal regarding\u00a0pre-orders and pre-payments on video games. The group claims it has found no indication that customers must explicitly agree to forgo this right when completing digital purchases.<\/p>\n

The last claim attempts\u00a0to fight back against a clause where Sony is holding\u00a0parents responsible for any in-game purchases that are made\u00a0by young children.<\/p>\n

The NRW confirmed that it will apply for a court order against Sony if the cease and desist is not heeded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sony is\u00a0facing possible legal action in Germany after the Consumer Association of North Rhine-Westphalia (Verbraucherzentrale NRW) issued a complaint regarding the terms and conditions imposed on customers\u00a0using\u00a0PlayStation Network.\u00a0 This isn’t the first time Sony has been called out for their terms and conditions of PSN, as\u00a0the Norwegian Consumer Council issued a similar complaint\u00a0against Sony, Origin, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}