 Welcome back to Nintendo Prime and we have an update today that affects Sony and Nintendo in particular. We're talking about the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch Because some new regulations have come down that fundamentally change the way these companies handle their online services and this is probably going to end up affecting a much broader scope of service-based ideals, think Netflix or whatever But that's just going to come down the line rather than now because they're kind of going industry by industry to reexamine Certain practices and right now. Yeah, certain practices at Sony and Nintendo are going to be changing But before we dive into that and look a little bit deeper and have a deeper discussion on this topic You know dealing with these online services and what's changing I want to remind you that hey, we do have prime gaming fest happening this June We're just waiting for summer game fest to announce its date so we can You know Reveal our entire show built around that with thousands of dollars with the giveaways and everything That you know with hundreds of winners and we are just really looking at saying thank you to our community In doing these giveaways and to participate in those giveaways and also help us Reach our 80,000 subscriber goal. Maybe 100,000 someday. I would appreciate if you would drop Subscribe to the channel hit that bell notification not only for that event But so you can catch all the latest gaming news in particular to Nintendo But sometimes covering others like the story covers multiple gaming companies And I want to say thank you to all of you just for listening in And let me know down in the comments You know, what is your favorite breakfast food? You know breakfast they always say is the most important meal of the day So do you like to just grab an apple? Do you like a nice bowl of cereal? Are you big on the bacon or the pancakes? You know, you want like bagels muffins? I don't know. You guys let me know what your favorite breakfast food is down in the comments below I'll dive into the story and I discovered this on game industry that based this morning And this says sony and nintendo to update subscription guidelines platform holders joined microsoft's efforts to update online services Following cma's investigation who is cma? Oh, we'll get into that in a moment Both sony and nintendo have agreed to update guidelines pertaining to the respective online subscription services Following an investigation into auto renewal practices by the competition and markets authority Sony has agreed to implement new measures for playstation plus subscribers Which includes contacting long-term customers that haven't used the service for a while to remind them How to cancel subscriptions if users don't cancel the service but are actively using it, sony will stop taking payments Nintendo has also altered its business practices in nintendo switch online service You will no longer be sold with automatic renewal set as the default option If users wish to turn it on they will need to do so after signing up The two platform holders follow microsoft's agreement to change how it presents information to game pass subscribers Back in january the company pledged a new term that clearly display information on a membership Including the price how to cancel and how to get a refund As a result of our investigation A number of changes have been made across this sector to protect customers and help tackle concerns about auto renewing subscriptions Said michael grenfell executive director of enforcement at the cma Today's announcement therefore concludes our investigation into the online video game sector Companies in other sectors which offer other subscriptions that offer renew should review their practices to ensure they comply with the consumer protection law Now obviously this isn't you know, sony's actually going the extra mile here And talking about you know, hey, we're gonna actually get a hold of people who haven't really been using our services yet Keep paying for it to let them know how they can cancel and then like if they don't respond it seems like they're just You know that they they're they're maybe they're you know passed away or something. Sadly, they're just gonna You know cancel those services for them and save them the money And while there's no direct policy there were they were necessarily going to get rid Of auto renewing as a default option on playstation They were going to do a much more a much better job at being Transparent, uh, whereas nintendo is like hey, we're not going to worry about people already subscribed We're going to focus on people who sign up new We're not going to let you know that be the default option where auto renews and obviously this just concludes You know cma's look at the video game industry. They're clearly gonna you know as as as the director points out Hey, look other industries. We haven't fully examined yet Hey, just so you know if this was our conclusion here likely going to be the same conclusion there so You know amazon prime, you know or or netflix or you know music subscription services tv subscription services Everything is going to be looked at uh industry by industry And probably forced to comply in a similar way where basically the cma has determined that Having auto renewal as an option isn't a problem Having auto renewal be the default option Is well an issue and i'll give you kind of a recent experience. I had uh, where i I don't like this. It's actually happened twice to me and unfortunately one of the times I'm pretty sure that I turned off auto renewal in fact I remember canceling and then somehow still got charged for it And we as consumers, you know Sometimes do sign up for a lot of services and don't really realize whether it's through free trials And and and that's the real thing i'm wondering was what what free trials, you know What gets you with the three trials is those automatic renewals It's gonna be interesting to see what happens with free trials moving forward, but I'll give you a couple incidences that that affected me that aren't necessarily related to the video game industry because I'm well aware like my microsoft account It does attempt to auto renew because that's what I haven't set to but it I have a default card on there That's actually a canceled account. So I only pay for it when I want to pay for it rather than Just having it automatically renew but not everybody does stuff like that. So here's what because by the way I like the reminder that the payments do that's one reason why I do that I don't want to you know Turn on my xbox and having out there not know that I I needed to pay I like to know days ahead of time. So that's why I still do that canceled card method But I didn't do this recently on hello fresh. So my fiance and I joined hello fresh a couple months ago and we signed up for a plan and We started for the plan because we were going to get 18 free meals With our plan and how, you know, how it was set up and how it was explained to us And I even called them on the phone was that basically we would pay For, you know, a couple boxes You know one coming per week and we were getting quite a bit, right? We were getting six meals for two people per week And then, you know, we would start to get our free meals We didn't have to buy like nine boxes or 10 by it was just supposed to be two boxes And then we would get a couple weeks of free meals before it would charge us again for a third box And what happened is not only did we never get our free meals I got charged for that third box because of the auto renewal And that did not make me very happy considering that is not the terms that we agreed to I should not have been charged for that for, you know, three weeks, right? 18 free meals That's three weeks should have been almost a month before I got charged for another box Because you and I were going to decide after getting a couple boxes and then getting those free meals for a few weeks If we wanted to continue the service and chances are We actually really enjoy hello fresh and Enjoyed having perfectly proportioned stuff a lot less waste in a house like ours and really healthy Wide variety of meals that sometimes we would normally wouldn't think about making so we actually enjoyed the service But after they charged us that third time when we weren't supposed to be I Immediately cancelled the service one because that was 100 plus dollars of Budget that I had not allocated for hello fresh at the time because that was now what we agreed to And because I never got my free meals. I didn't get the free meals. I got charged instead That to me felt like a pretty shady practice to Offer the free meals tell me when I'm gonna get those free meals and then instead of getting those free meals I'm just charged for another box even though I still like hello fresh and we still got a couple Hello fresh meals left to cook this week. It's not something that I'm actually pleased with so Bottom line is yeah, that's where an auto renewal can get you if auto renewal wasn't there I would have never got charged for that third box And would have just you know had a nice little phone call with them wondering Hey, where's my free meals that were promised to me? So Yeah, it's a problem, you know with there and then obviously you guys know when we do giveaways We've used various apps being be gleam.io or viral sweep and Sometimes the automatic renewal on those gets insane. I cancelled gleam And viral sleep multiple times And still got charged Could say that maybe it's worth pressing some legal issues on that because if you cancel your membership You shouldn't have to worry about getting charged. But that's neither here nor there That's for me to worry about in the back end. No, we're not talking 100 plus dollars But still 50 bucks or so for those services. It's not exactly, you know, something to just Scoff at and go 50 bucks just because that only fills up half a take of gas That's a half a take a gas worth of budget I could have had and considering that we only fill up half a take at a time right now because of the rising gas prices That's kind of a big deal to me. So Look auto renewals suck. I I haven't really met a single human being who has told me I love That when I sign up for a new service that it automatically renews I've never met a single person that likes that most people would like to know. Hey, you know what? There's so many services so many subscriptions that we use be it tv Netflix music services gaming services male services, whatever it is. There are so There are so many of these services that we sign up for that it gets to a point that it's really ridiculous that we're dealing with stuff like this and Yeah, they kind of protect us from ourselves. It's easy enough to say it's on the consumer You read the fire print or you didn't read the fire print. You should know about it You should check your budgets You should obviously keep a giant master list of all the services you signed up for and the dates you signed up for And honestly, you know the dates are going to be charged. What cards are on what service? I get it right part of that's just being responsible And I'm not blaming anyone for what's happened to me except for myself and my own stupidity but It is weird that that's the default option and a lot of these services Don't always do a good job telling you That you are going to be auto renewed So this is happening to the video game industry and kudos on obviously sony and nintendo although technically they were forced to comply so Is it really credit to them when they had to do something or face some sanctions? And fines obviously, I don't know how much credit they get Sony, you know, clearly you didn't have to contact current customers As part of what you know the cma wanted them to do sony's choosing to do that So I do give sony a little bit extra credit for that because that's a going to step above and beyond Also, it might you know conveniently help drag some of those customers who haven't been using their stuff back into the fold to spend more money So there is kind of a fringe benefit for the contact customers that haven't been active to maybe Get them active again, but that's neither here nor there I don't plan a company for wanting to actually get consumers that pay for their services to use the services and maybe give them more money Especially when sony has an upcoming increased service fan Plan like thing happening where they might say hey, you haven't joined us in a while. Why don't you come back? And look at these extra services we got now I don't know. So I think it's all kind of a ploy for money I don't I don't feel like any of these companies are going to run away from money So anyways kudos to nintendo and sony, I guess we're really kudos to the cma for looking out for the Everyday person that maybe is too stressed to keep track of this stuff has too much stuff going on and Doesn't want things to auto-renew. You know how they'll know if something isn't auto-renewed anymore When they go to use it and it doesn't work and then they want to pay for it Right now some people are gonna want like me I have a netflix on auto-renew because we use netflix every single month But if it's something that I don't use every month It would be nice if it doesn't automatically set to auto-renew because think about how much money all of us might have wasted Over the years on services that we're only using here and there and wouldn't necessarily need them Every single month every single week every single day whatever the subscription is for so Thank you guys so much for tuning in. I am with hand in rubber jabs from nintendo prime Let me know what you think about this down in the comments below Do you think that these companies should have just made these policies without being forced to? um Like I I do and obviously the cma is pleading that the all the other industries with the subscriptions out there Do the same before the cma gets involved Uh, because the cma is coming it came for the video game industry Now it's going to come for uh other companies by the way There's other companies with subscriptions with automatic renewals that aren't sony microsoft and nintendo Uh, I fully expect that, you know, we just haven't heard announcements from them yet Whether it's ubi software ea or whatever and they're likely going to be forthcoming soon because the cma is an illegal body And can cause a lot of problems for companies that don't comply. All right guys I'll cut you in the next video