An American federal court has chucked out the class action lawsuit brought against Sony earlier this year, after the company disabled the PS3’s Other OS feature in a system update in April 2010.
The suit, originally filed by California resident Anthony Ventura, alleged that the feature’s removal constituted “intentional disablement of the valuable functionalities originally advertised as available”.
According to a report over on Gamasutra, judge Richard Seeborg dismissed the claims, saying that “”[Almost] all of the counts are based on plaintiffs’ fundamental contention that it was wrongful for Sony to disable the Other OS feature, or, more precisely, to [force PS3 owners to decide between] permitting the Other OS feature to be disabled or forgoing their access to the PSN and any other benefits available through installing [the firmware].”
Technically, Sony does not require PS3 owners to update their console firmware, even though not doing so means that access to the PSN is subsequently denied.
“The flaw in plaintiffs’ [argument] is that they are claiming rights not only with respect to the features of the PS3 product, but also to have ongoing access to an internet service offered by Sony, the PSN,” added Seeborg.
Despite dismissing the claim, however, Seeborg was critical of Sony’s decision to remove the feature.
“The dismay and frustration at least some PS3 owners likely experienced when Sony made the decision to limit access to the PSN service to those who were willing to disable the Other OS feature on their machines was no doubt genuine and understandable,” he said.
“As a matter of providing customer satisfaction and building loyalty, it may have been questionable.”
Lucky for Sony, making “questionable” business decisions is apparently not an actionable offence. Just in case, though, they’ve got all of that covered now with that new no-class-action-suits-plz clause in the PSN terms of service.
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