We’ve all been there. We try a free trial for an online service that, I don’t know, allows you to astrologically assess your entire Twitter timeline (politicians are such Geminis), and then you forget to cancel and end up paying subscription fees for months. Well, the consumer protectorate Competition And Markets Authority of the UK is tackling the issue, and has gotten Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo to change some of their policy regarding their online subscription services and renewals.
On Nintendo’s end, buying NSO will no longer default to automatically renewing it whenever your term is up, meaning that the process is now opt-in rather than opt-out. The other services are also opting to take measures to cancel subscriptions for users who haven’t used them in a long time, though the CMA didn’t announce whether Nintendo was taking that specific measure or not.
At the moment this appears to be policy change for the UK only, though Microsoft at least has announced plans to roll it out worldwide afterwards. Hopefully the same will happen with other console developers as well. We’ll have to wait and see.
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Written by Amelia Fruzzetti
A writer and Nintendo fan based in Seattle, Washington. When not working for NinWire, she can be found eating pasta, writing stories, and wondering about when Mother 3 is finally going to get an official localization.
