PlayStation does not deal with indies
In recent days, indie developer Iain Garner had lashed out at Sony PlayStation over the way the company treats independent software houses. Let's go back to talking about the issue because it was Jason Schreier of Bloomberg who made himself heard, who revealed more information about this situation in a recent article. Schreier confirms that Sony has actually shifted most of its investments towards big blockbuster productions, so works from the caliber of Horizon Forbidden West, God of War Ragnarok and many others.This strategy, implemented in recent years, is was certainly decided due to the greater importance of titles such as those just mentioned in the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 line-up. The choice to invest less on independent teams has led to great results, as we could have expected, but could only make more difficult relations between them and PlayStation, ending up in situations where developers feel completely excluded from the company's strategies.
Schreier says that Sony can take weeks, if not months, to answer questions, "if they are lucky enough to have contacts ”. He also remembers that although it is easy to find great blockbuster titles on the PlayStation Store, indie ones are less and less visible, illustrating the problem with a clear example. Iain Garner explains that the company asked him for an insane $ 25,000 to have his game appear on the main page of the store.
This is a particularly curious situation, especially since PlayStation's direct competitors, such as Microsoft and Nintendo, instead have an eye towards independent developers. Both companies, however, hold direct whose purpose is to make players discover these productions, as well as to present a part of their digital stores dedicated to them. For the moment Sony has not made any mention of the subject and will hardly comment, but still stay connected on our pages to not miss updates.
We remind readers that on Amazon you can retrieve great titles for PlayStation 4 such as Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone.
Indies Speak Out About Poor PlayStation Indie Support
Iain Garner is the co-founder of indie publisher Neon Doctrine. He has a lot of things to say in a long Twitter thread about PlayStation, as 'they give developers no ability to manage their games.' Basically, it looks like Ian Garner woke up today and decided to put PlayStation on blast because why not?
Garner is careful never to explicitly name PlayStation, calling it Platform X, but it's clear to what he's talking about, as he says he's referring to the 'very successful console [that] does not have Game Pass', and explicitly later stated it was not Nintendo. Hmm...
Garner begins by stating that developers 'have no ability to manage their games', and that in order to get some type of promotion developers have to 'jump through hoops, beg and plead for any type of promotion.' Of course, that can apparently change if at least $25,000 USD is spent on feature marketing, in addition to the 30% of your earnings that the PlayStation store normally takes. That may be small potatoes for a AAA publisher, but for anyone else that's a massive sum.
Discounts are apparently denied frequently as well, which is something that's been happening for quite a while. Interestingly, Garner loves the actual console, but in terms of how its online services are utilized he has 'no idea how to succeed on this platform and they wont [sic] tell me.' Ouch.
Apparently PlayStation devs get the 'worst deal'.Other developers joined in the discussion as well. Mike Rose of No More Robots said that the reason people don't talk about it more is that developers are worried, but that 'the vast majority of devs are reading that thread, and nodding their heads violently.' Rose has previously commented on aspects like the poor discoverability on the PlayStation store, even for newly launched games. Cristian Botea from Those Awesome Guys also chimed in, saying he 'can mirror [Garner's] frustrations entirely', and that launch support was also nonexistent for him, while other developers echoed the complaints.
If you'd like to check out the full Twitter thread, be sure to go here. For everything else PlayStation, stay tuned to TechRaptor for more details.
What do you think of this news? Do you think Ian Garner burned his bridges? Let us know in the comments!