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A class action antitrust lawsuit has been certified against Electronic Arts (EA) for allegedly monopolizing the football video game market and price-gouging consumers. According to the decision, any consumers who purchased Madden, Arena Football or NCAA football games after August 2005 can join the class action lawsuit.
The EA antitrust class action lawsuit alleges EA violated antitrust and consumer protection laws by holding exclusive license agreements with the NFL, NCAA and Arena Football leagues. This monopolization allowed EA to dive out competition in the market for interactive football software and increase the price of its football games by as much as 70%, the class action says.
“We believe EA forced consumers to pay an artificial premium on Madden NFL video games,” said an attorney representing class members in the Madden Football class action. “We intend to prove that EA could inflate prices on their sports titles because these exclusive licenses retrained trade and completion for interactive sports software.”
According to the EA class action lawsuit, EA has engaged in “blatantly anticompetitive conduct” since 2004 and continues to do so. For example, the suit claims, rather than continue a pricing war with competitors during that time that resulted in EA cutting its Madden 2005’s sticker price, EA secured exclusive deals with the NFL, NCAA and Arena Football leagues so that the following year it was able to raise the price of Madden 2006 by nearly 70%.
U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker certified the class action on December 21, 2010.
“Consumers now have a legal standing to demand that EA refund consumers millions of dollars it made from Madden NFL and other sports titles through what we contend was an illegal price-gouging scheme,” the class members’ attorney said.
A copy of the Electronic Arts Antitrust Class Action Lawsuit, entitled Pecover et al. v. Electronic Arts, Inc., can be read here.
UPDATE: A class action settlement was reached and approved. Payments went out to Class Members in late October 2013.
All class action and lawsuit news updates are listed in the Lawsuit News section of Top Class Actions
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