Today in What Could Possibly Go Wrong: Sony has patented a new feature for the PlayStation that would allow players to simply tap their credit card on the controller to make purchases.

The patent was published last week under the title “Video game controller-driven information transfer,” and involves “techniques [that] pertain to improving video game system performance.”

The improvements in question involve making it easier to spend money. As with all patent documentation, the actual filing is kinda difficult to read, full of boilerplate disclaimers, claimers, and everything in between, and this one seems particularly… well, half-baked, to be honest. There are spelling and grammatical mistakes throughout, the subheadings are crammed up into the preceding paragraphs, and the whole thing gives the impression of having been thrown together in as little time as possible.

Amusingly, the framing is entirely in terms of Sony kindly acceding to the demands and desires of players: “Video game players have found it desirable to store payment method information and account information such as credit account information, bank account information, gift card information, digital wallet identification information, crypto wallet identification information, and associated credentials in their accounts for facilitating and managing video game purchases, video game credits, in-app purchases, and the like.”

Sony, of course, has absolutely no stake in making it as easy as possible to splash out on video game purchases, in-app purchases, and the like. Nope. It’s just doing what its players want!

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