Sony and Nintendo have recently announced that both companies will be joining Microsoft in changing their automatic subscription renewal policies. This announcement comes from all three companies being investigated by Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), a business regulation agency in the United Kingdom. CMA began investigating all three companies over their automatic renewal policies, believing the practice to be exploitative and deceitful. With all three companies complying and changing their policies regarding their respective subscription services, the CMA announced the investigation is now concluded.
In January, Microsoft updated its Xbox Live subscription services in order to be more transparent. Namely, Microsoft made their prices more conspicuous to customers, such as the price of renewal and notifications of price increases are now more accessible. Furthermore, Microsoft now emphasizes that auto-renewal is active unless turned off, and the instructions on how to turn off auto-renewal are easier to find. Lastly, Microsoft will now offer refunds for accidental automatic renewals and will reach out to inactive Xbox Live accounts with offers to cancel their subscription. If no response is heard from the inactive accounts, Microsoft will automatically cancel the subscriptions.
Similar to Microsoft, Sony is implementing a policy of contacting inactive accounts. Now, Sony will message long-term Playstation Plus subscribers on how to cancel their subscriptions if inactive “for a while”. While unclear how long these accounts have to be inactive in order to be contacted, Sony asserts that if the customer still has not canceled their subscription while also still being inactive, Sony will terminate payments from that account.
Unlike Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo’s new policy will not start the subscription with automatic renewal as a default feature. Instead, Nintendo’s Switch Online service will start with automatic renewal inactive, only allowing customers the choice to turn on automatic renewal after signing up. This move departs from Microsoft and Sony most likely because Nintendo markets towards children more than the other two competitors.
When asked about these changes, CMA’s executive director of enforcement, Michael Grenfell, told gamingindustry.biz that these “changes have been made across this sector to protect customers and help tackle concerns about auto-renewing subscriptions.” Additionally, Grenfell declared, “companies in other sectors which offer subscriptions that auto-renew should review their practices to ensure they comply with consumer protection law.”