To my knowledge the first high-profile instance of this was when Sony updated the PS3 to remove Linux support, which resulted in a successful class-action in the US. [0]
The way class action is done in the US it only makes sense for the law firms.
I have stacks of class action letters and in almost every case I get exactly zero...
I was pleasantly surprised when I got around $250 CAD from a Lenovo class action suit. I bought one of their consumer laptops that had a piece of crapware on it. It was big news when it happened. Otherwise, I normally get maybe $20 for the class actions that I sign up for.
Your area requires lawyers to solicit class members to sign up for class actions? Lucky! Around here you'll just be grouped into the class action without asking for consent. If you're lucky they'll mail you a notice about the suit on a postcard and let you "opt out" by locating a non-editable PDF of a form buried somewhere on their site, printing it & filling it in by hand, and sending it to their headquarters by certified mail at your own expense. (If you're less lucky you get to write up your own free-form opt-out letter and hope it meets their standards.) If you don't do this then you lose the ability to sue as an individual, or to refrain from being (ab)used to bully the defendant (and enrich the lawyers) in the event that you don't agree with the basis for the suit.
Consumers who don't want products to have features disappear. The main thing class action suites accomplish is punishing the offender so that potential offenders in the future think twice.
>I don't have much sympathy for the people abusing the system
I disagree with the premise that it's unethical to use a product I purchase and own from a for-profit company for a use that turned out not to be profitable for it. Note that it wasn't much of a hack; Sony sold consoles with the option to install another operating system from its menu [0].
Since the move was so unprofitable to it, Sony should not have offered the option to users in the first place. But since it happened, executives at Sony then just decided that it made business sense for Sony to disable the option in a firmware update.
I just don't understand the framing where it's as if Sony did a favor for its customers who then "took advantage," when Sony just miscalculated a business policy to serve its own self-interest.
[0] https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/sony-settles-over-insta...
Sony's removal of OtherOS wasn't just deceptive and an abuse of customers' trust, it was conspiracy to commit customs and tax fraud.
Also, while I bought my PS3 to learn parallel programming, I found that it wasn't that great for it. The CBE was really unintuitive, there was only framebuffer access to the GPU-RSX chipset, and with just 256MB RAM, $600 would have been better put towards a dual core CPU and any discrete GPU if you wanted a functional Linux computer.