Owners of the old school, fat PlayStation 3 might want to grab their console out of their closets, storage spaces, or gaming centers. A lawsuit that Sony settled on back in October 2016 is still giving out claim rewards, and the amount of money has actually gone up since. Originally, those that made a claim would only be rewarded up to $55, but now this has increased to $65. It’s possible that this increase may be due to the small number of claims that have been made since October 2016.
The lawsuit in question was related to the “OtherOS” feature that the PlayStation 3 had at launch. This allowed users to partition the console’s hard drive and install Linux. Essentially, you could (and plenty did) use your PlayStation 3 as a computer. In April of 2018, Sony took OtherOS out of the PlayStation 3, which lead to a lawsuit claiming false advertising and breach of warranty, among other things. Sony settled this lawsuit for a grand total of $3.75 million. This explains the increase in claim rewards, as the attorneys will only get up to $400,000 of that, and five specific plaintiffs only get $3,500.
For those of you looking to stake a claim in this PlayStation 3 lawsuit, you have to own one of the original fat PS3 of the 20 GB, 40 GB, 60 GB, or 80 GB variety. It needs to have been bought by an authorized retailer. You have to have been aware that you could run Linux on it, or that you otherwise lost value when Sony got rid of OtherOS. You’ll have to go to this website and enter either your PlayStation Network username or the serial number off the back of your original PlayStation 3.
Source: Polygon