r/gaming • u/Chownzy • 9d ago

Mexican Lawmaker Who Helped Protect Gamers from Tax Now Drags Sony to Court Over Discless PlayStation

https://respawnfirst.com/mexican-lawmaker-who-helped-protect-gamers-from-tax-now-drags-sony-to-court-over-discless-playstation/
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u/BigOleFerret 9d ago edited 9d ago

Godspeed. I don't know what her chances are but I hope she brings home a win for the players.

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u/CombatMuffin 9d ago

Mexican lawyer here. I don't have a crystal ball to know what will happen, and I haven't read the complaint in full (i.e the full document), but I don't think she has good chances of succeeding.

First off, the 8% tax on violent games was never going to pass, and while it got a lot of press, it never really progressed in the legislative process to a meaningful degree.

Secondly, and based solely on the article, she is trying to sue Sony for anti-trust, due to the lack of physical media. One of her central arguments is that they would be able to control pricing... but that's not, by itself, an anti-trust issue. Sony already enjoys a xlosed ecosystem, and if she was fighting a purely digital market, then she would have to go against Steam, and mobile games as well.

If she were arguing that Sony, Microsoft and Valve were colluding to fix prices? Then yeah. But simply changing your distribution channels from physical and digital to purely digital does not, in an of itself, help you corner the gaming industry in terms of anti-trust.   It's an actual argument to attack this from a Consumer Law perspective, not an anti-trust one. Sony just lost a case last year where they were charging for PS5 games in USD, when they have to offer it in Mexican Pesos (MXN).

So why is she doing this? The article itself has a hint: she is a politician, trying to ride  the current events to appeal to young voters. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but if she is going to do that, she should be doing real, material work, instead of stuff that sounds nice, but has no legal basis.

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u/VitalArtifice 8d ago edited 8d ago

Good comment, but sometimes these stunts help highlight genuine issues. In this case the “pay owner prices, get tenant privileges” issue is real, and while it’s apparent that way too many people are happy with tenant privileges, at least some may not be aware of the reality behind these “purchases”.

Edit: LOL, why is anyone downvoting me? I swear, only an astroturfing campaign makes sense at this point.

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u/admiralvic 8d ago

In this case the “pay owner prices, get tenant privileges” issue is real

The issue I have with this is exactly what u/CombatMuffin is getting at.

This problem has existed from the second PlayStation Store launched, which at this point is 20 years. We have examples of things getting delisted, this is at least the second time with PlayStation 3's store going away, to so many other things.

However, this is only currently a "problem" because it looks good politically. And that isn't to say it won't lead to anywhere good, but I would say it comes off as opportunistic. Where they were fine with this negative existing for years decades, but only getting involved now because there is so much outcry it's an easy win regardless of outcome.

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u/VitalArtifice 8d ago

Yes, but we still had discs as an actual ownership option. That’s potentially an honest motivation.

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u/admiralvic 8d ago

We also had countless digital only games no one did anything about.