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aTokenYeti on 14 February 2022
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Captain_Yuri said:

I am sure they will be able to find ways to either circumvent that or find ways to make money.

For example, lets say the bill goes through. Most likely, a store like EGS won't come pre-installed on Playstation and the user has to go out to their website and install it. Now I'd say that's already quite a lot of console users that won't go out and install other stores. But on top of that, I am sure to develop on a closed platform like Playstation, you would still need Sonys approval regardless of whether you publish on Playstation Store or some other store.

So Sony could add in a clause similar to what Valve does with Steam where if you want to publish a game on Playstation, you cannot have the MSRP be lower on any other store on Playstation. So if a game dev wants to put a game on Playstation Store for $20, they can't release the game on EGS for $15. And at that point, I think most people wouldn't even install another store.

So I wouldn't be too worried.

If this bill passed, and were it applied to consoles, Sony (and Microsoft, and Sony) would not be able apply pricing controls to third parties operating on their platform using a different store front. Meaning a company like EA could sell fifa for $70 on the PlayStation store or $50 on their own store front. Or, what would actually probably happen, EA would pull all their games from the PlayStation store, and would then direct users to install their own EA storefront on their PlayStation. The law would explicitly prohibit PlayStation from doing anything to stop this. The law would also explicitly prohibit app discrimination, meaning platform holders would be explicitly prohibited from hiding or trying to direct users away from competing storefronts