Over the years, Sony Group Corporation and its subsidiaries has been the subject of public criticism, regulatory scrutiny and legal action.
This includes controversies surrounding its digital rights management strategies, antitrust and regulatory investigations, corporate surveillance activities, market practices, environmental policies, cybersecurity incidents, the management and distribution of digital and physical media and relations with industry partners and creative collaborators.
Electronics Price fixing In 2007 an investigation launched in 2002 by the European Commission culminated in Sony, Fuji and Maxell receiving a total of 110 million US dollar fine for fixing professional videotape prices between 1999 and 2002 through regular meetings and other illegal contracts; at the time the three corporations shared a combined 85% control of the market.
Sony's part of the fine was raised by a third for trying to obstruct the investigation by refusing to answer inquiries made by the EU officials and shredding of evidence during the multiple law-enforcement raids. During the year 2001 prior to the investigation Sony sold professional videotapes for a total of €115 million inside the EU.
Environmental record In November 2011, Sony was ranked ninth (jointly with Panasonic) in Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics. This chart grades major electronics companies on their environmental work. The company scored 3.6/10, incurring a penalty point for comments it has made in opposition to energy efficiency standards in California. It also risks a further penalty point in future editions for being a member of trade associations that have commented against energy efficiency standards. Together with Philips, Sony receives the highest score for energy policy advocacy after calling on the EU to adopt an unconditional 30% reduction target for greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Meanwhile, it receives full marks for the efficiency of its products. In June 2007, Sony ranked 14th on the Greenpeace guide. Sony fell from its earlier 11th-place ranking due to Greenpeace's claims that Sony had double standards in its waste policies.
Greenpeace's 2017 Guide to Greener Electronics rated Sony approximately in the middle among electronics manufacturers with a grade of D+.
Since 1976, Sony has had an Environmental Conference.. Retrieved 7 July 2011. Sony's policies address its effects on global warming, the environment, and resources. They are taking steps to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that it puts out as well as regulating the products it gets from its suppliers in a process that it calls "green procurement".. Web.archive.org. (27 November 2007). Retrieved 7 July 2011. Sony has said that it has signed on to have about 75 percent of its Sony Building running on geothermal power. The "Sony Take Back Recycling Program" allow consumers to recycle the electronics products that they buy from Sony by taking them to eCycle (Recycling) drop-off points around the U.S. The company has also developed a biobattery that runs on sugars and carbohydrates that works similarly to the way living creatures work. This is the most powerful small biobattery to date.Sony develops World's Most Powerful Sugar-based Bio Battery Prototype . Techgadgets.in (24 August 2007). Retrieved 7 July 2011.
In 2000, Sony faced criticism for a document entitled "NGO Strategy" that was leaked to the press. The document involved the company's surveillance of environmental activists in an attempt to plan how to counter their movements. It specifically mentioned environmental groups that were trying to pass laws that held electronics-producing companies responsible for the cleanup of the toxic chemicals contained in its merchandise.
Smart TVs and customer surveillance In December 2025, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Sony and four other smart TV manufacturers, alleging that the companies were illegally "spying on Texans by secretly recording what consumers watch in their own homes" using automated content recognition (ACR) technology.
Sony Interactive Entertainment PlayStation Network hack
In April 2011, Sony experienced one of the largest security breaches in internet history when hackers compromised its PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. The intrusion exposed the personal identification data of approximately 77 million registered user accounts globally, including customer names, physical billing addresses, email addresses, login credentials, purchase histories and potentially unencrypted credit card details.
As a result of the incident, Sony completely shut down the PlayStation Network for 24 days, leaving millions of console owners unable to access online multiplayer gaming, digital storefronts or connected media applications while engineers rebuilt the platform's security infrastructure.
The company faced severe public, media, and governmental condemnation over its handling of the incident, particularly regarding its delay in notifying affected users. Sony waited nearly a week after discovering the intrusion before publicly disclosing that sensitive personal and financial data had been exfiltrated. The fallout led to international regulatory investigations, congressional inquiries in the United States, administrative fines from privacy enforcement agencies and a major class-action lawsuit that Sony ultimately settled by offering millions of dollars in free games, service credits, and identity theft protection coverage to affected customers.
Studio closures In the early 2020s, Sony Interactive Entertainment sparked severe criticism over the closure of several key development studios and the elimination of nearly 1,000 global gaming jobs. Through a series of corporate restructurings, Sony liquidated long-standing internal divisions, shuttered newly acquired developers and canceled active projects, drawing widespread backlash from players and industry veterans alike.
In 2021, Sony reorganized and effectively dissolved Japan Studio, one of its oldest internal divisions responsible for acclaimed titles like Ape Escape, Gravity Rush, Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian, ending decades of legacy development in Tokyo. Former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden later reflected on the shuttering, describing the closure as "like pruning a bonsai" to eliminate projects that lacked growth potential, while acknowledging the loss of the studio's eccentric creative legacy. Industry commentators, such as Inverse, criticized the move as one of Sony's "biggest mistakes".
In early 2024, Sony laid off approximately 900 employees across its global gaming workforce and completely shuttered London Studio, a 22-year-old development team known for pioneering virtual reality and experimental PlayStation hardware titles.
Later that year, Sony pulled the multiplayer hero shooter Concord offline, just two weeks after its August 2024 launch due to catastrophic commercial failure, permanently closing its developer, Firewalk Studios, shortly thereafter. During the same restructuring wave, Sony closed mobile developer Neon Koi before the studio could release its first game. Following the simultaneous closures of Firewalk Studios and Neon Koi in October 2024, the decisions drew sharp condemnation from labor organizations, including the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The union stated that the shutterings demonstrated how "highly-insulated video game CEOs are creating perilous working conditions for workers by eliminating their job security," while raising anti-competitive concerns over Sony's market dominance and its retreat from competing in the open mobile gaming space outside its proprietary PlayStation ecosystem.
Gran Turismo 7 review-bombing
Following its release in March 2022, Sony Interactive Entertainment and developer Polyphony Digital faced widespread backlash over the monetization and updates in Gran Turismo 7. Despite strong initial reviews, player backlash grew rapidly after Update 1.07 cut race payouts. This made expensive cars far harder to unlock without buying microtransactions, a feature that was turned on only after early reviews were published.
The issue got worse when Update 1.07 caused a 30-hour server outage. Because Gran Turismo 7 required an internet connection even for single-player modes, players could not use most of the game. In response, angry players review-bombed the game on Metacritic, dropping its user score to 2.0 out of 10, the lowest ever for a Sony-published title. Polyphony Digital CEO Kazunori Yamauchi later apologized, promising to raise rewards and giving affected players one million in-game credits.
Helldivers 2 review-bombing In May 2024, Sony Interactive Entertainment sparked severe public backlash when it announced that PC players of the hit cooperative multiplayer shooter Helldivers 2 on Steam would be required to link their Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to continue playing. The announcement came three months after the game's initial launch. The policy decision immediately created a major geographic crisis because the PlayStation Network is officially available in only around 70 countries, leaving prospective players in over 170 countries and territories without legitimate access to PSN services. As a result, hundreds of thousands of PC players who had already purchased and played the game faced the sudden threat of being locked out entirely. Sony itself pulled Helldivers 2 from sale on Steam across all non-PSN supported regions, blocking new purchases across vast portions of the globe.
Players launched a massive "review bomb" campaign on Steam, submitting over 200,000 negative reviews within a few days and driving the game's recent review rating down to "Overwhelmingly Negative". Beyond storefront reviews, fans organized refund requests en masse, criticized Sony's corporate strategy on social media platforms and pointed out security concerns regarding mandatory PSN account creation following Sony's historical data breaches.
Faced with unprecedented pressure from players, widespread media coverage, and public opposition from the game's developer, Arrowhead Game Studios, Sony capitulated less than 72 hours after the initial announcement. The company issued an official statement on social media acknowledging the feedback and confirming that the mandatory account-linking update for Helldivers 2 would not move forward.
Removal of features and purchased content System updates for Sony gaming consoles have occasionally removed previously advertised features or content. These removals were typically cited as measures to reduce licensing costs, enhance system security against modding, or adapt to expiring media distributions. In December 2023, Sony announced that it will remove the Discovery app and its content, even if previously paid for, from its gaming consoles.
Similarly, in 2026, Sony notified users in several European markets that over 550 movies and TV titles produced by Studiocanal would be deleted from PlayStation libraries without refunds, highlighting ongoing concerns regarding digital media ownership and licensing rights.
Dynamic pricing experiments In early 2026, independent price-tracking platforms discovered that Sony was conducting unannounced dynamic A/B pricing tests across digital storefronts on the PlayStation Store. Data-mining of store API responses revealed experimental identifiers, such as IPT_PILOT and IPT_OPR_TESTING, showing that logged-in users within the same geographic region were being quoted differing prices and variable discount rates for identical digital titles. The algorithmically driven experiment spanned over 150 first- and third-party games, adjusting prices based on customer account data, historical purchasing habits and perceived price elasticity.