The world’s three biggest RAM manufacturers have reportedly been hit with a class action lawsuit alleging they fixed prices and restricted supply, contributing to rising costs for consumers and companies.
As reported by VGC, citing Law360, the lawsuit accuses Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron of coordinating supply decisions around DRAM, the type of memory used in PCs, consoles, phones, servers, and other consumer electronics.
The complaint reportedly claims the companies reduced supply of DDR3 and DDR4 memory while shifting more production towards HBM, a high-bandwidth form of stacked DRAM heavily used in AI datacentres. Demand from AI firms has already been widely cited as one of the main reasons memory and storage costs have been rising sharply across the tech industry.
“The DRAM oligopolists have simultaneously cut production, coordinated a pivot to HBM and exit from DDR3 and DDR4, and otherwise decreased and locked up conventional DRAM supply while prices charged up with mind-blowing scale and rapidity,” the complaint alleges.
The lawsuit also claims consumers have paid higher-than-competitive prices as a result.
“Consumer purchasers of conventional DRAM and devices incorporating it have paid supracompetitive prices and have otherwise suffered the impacts of a distorted market crippled by the behavior of DRAM oligopolists,” the filing reportedly states.
The allegations arrive at a time when component prices are already having a visible impact on the games hardware market. Microsoft recently announced further Xbox console price rises, with VGC reporting that the company blamed increased costs for storage and memory. Valve has also said its Steam Machine pricing had moved beyond its original target, while Sony and Nintendo have both increased hardware prices in recent months.
The lawsuit reportedly argues that Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have an effective grip on the DRAM market, making it difficult for new competitors to step in and increase supply. It claims the cost of building new fabrication plants can run into tens of billions of dollars, while the manufacturing expertise required takes years to develop.
“The practical consequence is that when the three firms restrict supply, no outsider can expand output to undercut them,” the complaint claims.
The companies have faced DRAM price-fixing scrutiny before. In 2005, Samsung agreed to plead guilty and pay a $300 million fine for its role in what the US Department of Justice described as an international conspiracy to fix DRAM prices. Hynix also pleaded guilty and was fined $185 million, while Micron reportedly avoided a fine after working with prosecutors.
The new lawsuit has not proven wrongdoing, and its allegations will now need to be tested in court. But if the complaint progresses, it could put one of the games industry’s biggest current problems under a very bright spotlight: why hardware is becoming more expensive when players are already being asked to pay more for almost everything else.
Authored by
Paul McNally
Paul McNally has been around consoles and computers since his parents bought him a Mattel Intellivision in 1980. He has been a prominent games journalist since the 1990s, spending over a decade as editor of popular print-based video games and computer magazines, including a market-leading PlayStation title. Paul has written high-end gaming content for GamePro, Official Australian PlayStation Magazine, PlayStation Pro, Amiga Action, Mega Action, ST Action, GQ, Loaded, and the The Mirror. He has also hosted panels at retro-gaming conventions and can regularly be found guesting on gaming podcasts and Twitch shows. Believing that the reader deserves actually to enjoy what they are reading is a big part of Paul’s ethos when it comes to gaming journalism, elevating the sites he works on above the norm.
