User:DeadPixel/sandbox/Sony's Business Practices

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), formerly known as Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), is a multinational video game and digital entertainment company wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation. The SIE Group is made up of two legal corporate entities: Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC (SIE LLC) based in San Mateo, California, United States, and Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. (SIE Inc.), based in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Their Japanese branch are the creators of the PlayStation brand of video game consoles.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Ever since they moved their headquarters to the US, they've started enforcing a hypocritical censorship policy on the PS4 and PS5 that limits creative freedom for developers. This is heavily targeted towards Japanese games (with the exception of a few) that show off a lot of fan-service and blood, despite Sony being the owners of the God of War franchise.
 * 2) In November 2021, they along with Microsoft managed to get a lawsuit accusing the company of widespread gender discrimination in their workplace, despite criticizing Activision Blizzard for the same practice.
 * 3) With the exception of Guerilla Games, they've been giving poor support to their non-American studios.
 * 4) *Despite a lot of their games being well-received, Japan Studio was unfortunately closed down and merged with Asobi Studio in 2021, with Sony's reason being that they were not profitable enough (though it's mostly because of they're shift from the Japanese market to the American market).
 * 5) *Over the years, they've been closing down many of their British studios such as Bigbig Studios & Evolution Studios, leaving some of their franchises like Pursuit Force & Motorstorm without any newer entries.
 * 6) *They have also not been handling San Diego Studio very well as they're mainly relegated towards releasing MLB The Show year after year with next to no improvement.
 * 7) Despite being against microtransactions, they still managed to succumb to them at certain times like with Killzone: Shadow Fall, Gran Turismo 6, Gran Turismo Sport and Destruction AllStars.
 * 8) When it comes to their online games, they've continuously been pulling their servers if they don't turn out to be huge successes. They did eventually speak out about it by claiming they're not good at managing their online games and are much more used to their Single Player experience.
 * 9) Unlike Microsoft and Nintendo, they don't allow third party retailers such as Amazon and GameStop to sell video game download codes for the PlayStation Store. Thankfully, they still allow these retailers to sell wallet codes for the PlayStation Store.
 * 10) They followed Microsoft's practice of charging for online multiplayer, a practice that Nintendo also would later follow.
 * 11) They did a poor job of handling Error CE-34878-0, a fatal error on the PS4 that could render the system unplayable. To make matters worse, they never offered a solution or compensation to the customers affected by the error, in fact they never publicly admitted that this error existed, they just let the controversy die.
 * 12) They disallowed PS4 users from engaging in cross-platform play with other consoles with certain games.
 * 13) *They even locked PS4 users from logging into their Epic Games accounts from other platforms and vice versa without giving any warning.
 * 14) Their customer support is terrible as they have very questionable terms of service.
 * 15) *Whenever your account gets a hack, Sony states the original user is to blame responsible for the hacking no matter what and can instantly ban their account with no second chances.
 * 16) They've sent cease and desist orders to third-party makers of all black and other custom colored cases for the PS5, which is only available in white and black right now.
 * 17) They've been following the practice of charging for next gen upgrades on the PS5.
 * 18) Sometimes, their social media promotes awful shovelware titles that have made their way to the PS Store.

Good Qualities
Despite their problems nowadays, Sony used to be a good company back then and they still have enough good qualities to also be on the | Awesome Games Wiki.