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Sony taking 22% cut from charity Overwatch skin (Developing, Read OP)
- Thread starter Axisofweevils
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Sony should be called out because they are making customers pay tax for their purchase/donation instead of paying the tax out of their own pocket?
This is horse crap dude. It is not standard practice to eat the cost of taxes.
Go ahead and look at all those companies corporate tax dodging and go ahead tell yourself that somehow makes you righteous and fully understanding of the whole situation.
Also, let me just get this straight... So would it have better it Sony just didn't participate at all and be a net benefit to the cause than collect and pay the taxes like they are legally obligated in one way or another?
So then shouldn't we be looking at total charitable donations? I'm sure Sony and others have a wide portfolio of charities they donate to globally. It doesn't make sense to single out one single charity and demonize a single company for choosing to not donate for a specific event.
You just keep burying yourself. Now it's Xbox fanboys. Jesus some of you hold a grudge forever.
Sony will likely correct the situation, especially if they hear about it.
Obviously!
There is no need for any critical thinking, $ony is taking 22%. I mean it's right there in the title. People giving this more than 1 second of thought are obviously considering how to shill for their most beloved corporation.
You can spin it however you want. The fact is that everyone except Sony is giving 100% to charity. Is it the shittiest thing in the world? No. But is it objectively worse than everyone else? Yes. If you're going to buy this skin you should purchase it on the other two platforms and not on Sony's.
It blows my mind that people are even defending this in the slightest bit. It's fucking charity. You all care more about a stupid corporation that makes digital toys for you to play with in your spare time than cancer research. All because you probably swore allegiance to their piece of plastic instead of the other guy's plastic.
I am so glad that I play overwatch on xbox and not playstion despite owning both consoles. I insta bought this as soon as it was announced and if I were to find out that part of my $15 wasn't going to charity but on other platforms it would have I'd be furious. Again if you have the choice you should all purchase the skin on any store other than the playstation store.
Sony should match the contributions other store owners have made to ensure the full amount goes to charity. End of story. Anything else, and they add another bullet point to the cartoon villain resume they've been compiling in recent years.
So you are saying that MS is paying taxes on these purchases? How do you know that?
We don't know that everyone else is giving 100% to charity though. In MS case they are donating the purchase price but for the skin in the US that is $14.99 but they collect $16.00 for taxes in my state. That would mean they are only donating $14.99.
That's not what I said at all but thanks for trying. People are just trying to use this as an opportunity bring in their own console war mentality. I agree what they did isn't right, but if you bother to read some of the responses you can see what they did wasn't intentional.
Think a little harder on that
What are you even talking about? What cartoon villain status have they gained notoriety for?
I do charity by donating regularly every year, not for a game skin.
I also feel disappointed to play with platform haters.
The only one I could find was the Call of Duty Endowment, which has the same wording on both PSN and the Xbox store that suggests Activision is donating 100% of the money made AFTER the platform holders take their cut.
This is a different scenario because from just a cursory look at the wording on store pages, it seems Xbox and Battle.net are waiving that cut while PSN isn't.
Lot's of hot takes in here. Sounds like it's a little more complicated than just "Sony am greedy, fuck the consumers and charity", but this thread has ended up being a typical Era thread of outrage, in-fighting and accusations among users. Let's all calm down a bit.
Clearly something has gone wrong here and it's shit, so hopefully Sony can fix it right away. I'm never one to assume ill intent as much as I am error in process, knowing how companies like this operate. It serves no purpose until we know the full story though. Could potentially be a gross oversight on Sony's part that they really need to fix sharpish before this all gets out of hand.
Clearly something has gone wrong here and it's shit, so hopefully Sony can fix it right away. I'm never one to assume ill intent as much as I am error in process, knowing how companies like this operate. It serves no purpose until we know the full story though. Could potentially be a gross oversight on Sony's part that they really need to fix sharpish before this all gets out of hand.
The document is a bit strangely structured, but the idea is that Activision Blizzard has a complicated setup of different companies that exist only to reduce as much as possible the amount of money they have to pay in taxes. It's something like:
Activision Blizzard has various subsidiaries all over the world that make 6 billion dollars.
They send those 6 billion to Activision Netherlands BV, which has sent them 1.6 billion dollars as sales costs (printing, localization, marketing, that kind of stuff).
They send 4.3 billion dollars to Activison Netherlands CV, since they supposedly "don't own" the IPs and are instead "renting them from CV). Activision Netherlands CV makes a really small profit which is taxed.
Activision Netherlands BV sends 1.9 billion dollars to Activision America, which owns the studios that make the actual games.
Through this method, somehow they're able to have 2.3 billion dollars of profit that in some way that I don't know (I mean, if I did know how to do it do you think I'd be posting here?) aren't taxed in any way.
So, yeah. Activision Blizzard is so nice that they have done this scheme in order to not pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes to different countries all over the world which could have gone to stuff like R&D, healthcare, or education.
So this whole situation is the equivalent of stealing your car and leaving a 5€ note in the parking slot so you can take a bus back home.
So your argument is that MS decided to donate what they paid in taxes to Blizzard in two regions, but are paying their taxes normally everywhere else? (As they state on their website)
A big corporation is being scummy? Why I never..
It's the same with all of them, always.
But Sony deserves the shit getting flung their way.
It's the same with all of them, always.
But Sony deserves the shit getting flung their way.
Sony deserves to get crapped on for this but LOL at people using this as an excuse to praise competing corporations
Probably not until it's worked out and if not to buy it somewhere else.
The thread title needs to be changed ASAP....
"MS donates to a charity"
I mean most of the purchase still goes to the cause, and if you play on PS4, it is what it is. If you feel strongly, maybe wait just to see if there's a statement or policy change before the fundraising window ends. It's still better to do it than not.
If not buying this skin from Sony's store means not donating to charity then... no? I mean, a large portion of the payment is still going to charity and you likely wouldn't have donated anyway.
If you do have the game on another platform, you should be able to buy it and redeem it on that platform because it saves to your battle.net account if I'm not mistaken. I don't know for certain though
Yes, no other company. There are three companies that it can apply to and two of them aren't doing it It's not that complicated. You're ignoring that they're collecting more than just tax revenue as well in most areas, as per a dozen posts in this thread.
There's nothing made up about the legal wording difference. Two of them state all money is going to the charity, one explicitly points out that it does not.
Why? shouldn't any money going to cancer research be considered a good thing?
Sure, it's good that money are going to charity. Did I say it wasn't?
the wording on the Xbox store page is as follows:
"Blizzard Entertainment will donate 100% of the pruchase price for your purchase of the Pink Mercy skin on Xbox to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation."
Whereas the wording on the playstation store page is:
"Blizzard Entertainment will donate 100% of the proceeds that it receives from Sony PlayStation for your purchase of the Pink Mercy skin to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation."
If it turns out that 100% of the purchase price on Xbox does not go to charity but rather to cover taxes then my stance will change. In that case Xbox's description would be at least somewhat misleading, and Sony's would be at the very least upfront and transparent.
My stance has been and still is right now that if Sony is giving less per skin purchase to charity than the other platforms then that's not right.
Console war ammo. Many have made it clear that their expectations are a moving target.
First they were outraged that Sony "was taking a cut", which turned out to be false because it's VAT taxes taking a cut, so now they have shifted their expectations and they are now angry that Sony is making sure the taxes are paid one way or another as they are legally required to do and aren't eating the costs. Despite the fact that what they are doing still provides and avenue for more money to go to charity and they aren't profiting off it.
Except when it's more than vat or in other countries, and that no matter how you want to slice it they're not giving your full amount to charity and the other two involved companies are. There's no way to spin that.
My fifteen bucks to Ms or to blizz is fifteen bucks to charity. My Sony fifteen is not. End of discussion, the reason is irrelevant because it applies to all three.
My whole point is that you don't know. I don't know where you are from but in the US taxes are NOT included in purchase price.
And the wording on the danish MS page is:
From May 8 to 21, Blizzard Entertainment donates 100% of the revenue when you buy a Pink Mercy skin for Xbox to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
And they're stating loud and clear in the top of the page that the price includes VAT.
Again I ask, to say what exactly? "After considering feedback from the public, we've decided to change our decision to steal from Cancer patients"?
But in the XBO case purchase price would be 14.99 and we are paying 16.00 so they are also collecting taxes. It seems like there is something else going on especially with the descriptions basically being cut and past across the different regions. The outrage is understandable if we knew what was really going on but we really need to get a statement from Blizzard/Sony.
You literally don't know this. The legalese is different, doesn't mean the outcome is.
You are being intellectually dishonest. There is no proof in here as to how each of the taxes and charges breakdown. Taxes are complicated and in certain areas local charges are applied.
And while Microsoft may have opted to eat that cost, it's copletely ridiculous to suggest what Sony is doing is "scummy". Also it's not 1 for 1 in pricing. The same amount of money is going to charity from the Sony one per purchase, it is just that there is an extra tax charge on top. Regardless of where you buy the skin, the same amount is going to charity.
The original outrage was an implication that Sony is profiting from this charity event. Which is PATENTLY FALSE
We don't know that it is, and we don't know that it isn't. That's the point of the thread. We are pointing out the discrepancy and saying someone at Sony and/or Blizzard should clarify at the very least, and if Sony is in fact taking a cut, then they should not do that.
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