PlayStation Plus forced by law to make change we've all been begging for

Happy Thursday folks. Hope you’re in the mood to learn about some antitrust and consumer protection laws this morning, because the United States Federal Trade Commission will be forcing Sony to make some changes to one of their services following a recent ruling.

So, bear with me here as I explain this because I am not a lawyer. I play video games for a living. Very much out of my wheelhouse with this one.

The FTC recently ratified something they’re referring to as the right to “click-to-cancel”. In short, this means that it’s now going to be a lot easier for consumers to cancel subscriptions for online services.

If you want someone smart who knows what they’re talking about to explain the ruling to you, have a peek at this article from Engadget’s Igor Bonifacic. If you want someone dumb to do it, here’s my attempt: you won’t have to navigate through a million different web pages to end your subscriptions now.

Dead Space is available to download this month on the essential tier.

So, why is this going to affect Sony? Well, apologies in advance but I’m going to have to bring up another source for this one, PlayStation LifeStyle’s Michael Ruiz.

As Michael explains, it’s currently an absolute pain in the backside to cancel your PlayStation Plus subscriptions.

Apparently, after selecting the Cancel Subscription option, he had to click through “five different screens” before he was able to navigate to one that actually allowed him to cancel his active PS Plus subscription.

Two of these screens were also only there to entice him into not following through with the cancellation. Under the FTC’s new ruling, all of that will be a thing of the past. You’ll simply click cancel, and boom - cancelled.

Of course, this law isn’t directly aimed at Sony and will likely affect other video game companies too, but it does seem like the type of egregious loopholes you have to jump through for PlayStation systems are exactly the kind of thing the click-to-cancel ruling was aiming to target in the first place.