‘Sony essentially destroys its own defense’: How its disc-free PS5 plan triggered a $457M lawsuit and  undercut its antitrust defense

Sony’s plan to phase out physical PlayStation 5 discs by January 2028 has moved from a public relations problem to a legal one. 

Dutch consumer group Stichting Massaschade & Consument has filed a $457 million lawsuit on Tuesday on behalf of 1.7 million Dutch PlayStation users, arguing Sony’s 30% PlayStation Store commission will inflate game prices once physical alternatives disappear. 

This comes amid backlash to Sony’s move to get rid of physical games, with thousands of gamers flooding Sony’s Playstation blog announcement to vent their anger—ranging from disappointment to threatening to stop supporting Playstation altogether. This is because Sony now has control because without physical discs, there won’t be a resale market that puts money back in gamers’ hands or lets them get games more cheaply. 

How killing discs undercuts Sony’s own legal defense

But that control is exactly what makes the disc phase-out riskier than Sony may have anticipated.

Andrew Ching, the marketing chair at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, who studies video game demand, told Fortune the 30% “Sony tax” applies only to digital downloads sold through the PlayStation Store. 

Ching explained physical retailers, in contrast, pay Sony a lower, flat royalty based on how many copies they manufacture, not how many they actually sell. That structure makes physical games cheaper, especially second-hand ones, since a game’s resale value depreciates as it loses its “freshness.”

Sony has historically pointed to that physical marketplace when defending itself against antitrust claims, treating retail competition like used games in resale markets as evidence it wasn’t a monopoly. 

“However, by phasing out physical discs, Sony........

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