Indie devs are criticizing Sony for being unfriendly towards them and generally being a hurdle when it comes to bringing their games to the PlayStation ecosystem.
In a Twitter chain that was started by Lain Garner, co-founder of Neon Doctrine, the developer alleged that Sony has been generally unfriendly when it comes to indie developers trying to publish and marketing games on their platforms. While the developer didn’t mention Sony by name, he was pretty clear with a later tweet that it was not Nintendo but Sony who was in his crosshair.
Platform X gives developers no ability to manage their games. In order to get promotion you must jump through hoops, beg and plead for any level of promotion. And a blog is not as good as they think it is.
If Platform X doesn't like your game, no fanfare no feature no love.
— Iain Garner (@NeonIain) June 30, 2021
In this thread, he explained through multiple tweets how much of a hassle it is to get an indie game on the PlayStation platforms. There is a hurdle at every level of the product cycle from the publishing of the game to its launch marketing and promotion. The developer also claims that Sony requires an invite to offer a discount at launch and it is not given to every developer, which means that some games will launch at an expensive price due to no discount on the PlayStation ecosystem compared to its competitors.
Oh for 3 and 4 you need to go through an account manager, when asked how to get an account manager, we were told
"I'm not sure, they are assigned by resources"
And as we now know, there's no way to know what resource level you have been assigned.
— Iain Garner (@NeonIain) June 30, 2021
Oh but don't worry. There is a way to guarantee you get featured! All you need to do is spend a VERY reasonable minimum of 25,000 USD to get featuring. Oh and then 30% of your subsequent earnings….
Bargain!
— Iain Garner (@NeonIain) June 30, 2021
This Twitter thread set a chain of reactions from various indie devs. It also highlights the stark difference between Sony in the current times to how they were friendly to the indie developers during the start of the PlayStation 4 generation. They were marketing their “PlayStation love Indies” slogan back then but with time, it appears that their focus had shifted to other things.
As someone who also publishes games on said Platform X, I can mirror @NeonIain's frustrations entirely.
Backend is a mighty maze that'll take you a while to figure out and you'll never quite figure it out.
Launch support? Haha, good luck.
— Cristian Climbs the Valley Peaks (@summoningpixels) June 30, 2021
Another indie developer highlighted the sales difference between PlayStation, Nintendo, and Microsoft ecosystem. It appears that Microsoft’s strategy is paying off well for them and it’s the second most successful platform, at least for White Thorn Games.
Alright, I'm gonna unfortunately throw my hat in here as well. We **love** our Platform X friends, and I'm former Platform X employee myself, but we cannot move the needle on the platform.
Less than 3% of sales as a company are on PX. https://t.co/WjOTx43OLr pic.twitter.com/yXMsr9srYw
— Matthew White (@matthewmwhite) June 30, 2021
It will be interesting to see what comes out of this discussion. In the case of Microsoft, they have their ID@Xbox program which supports indie games. Nintendo also hosts an indie partner showcase that highlights the major indie games coming to their platform. Sony occasionally shows indies during their major events like the State of Play but they have usually reserved PlayStation Blog for announcing major indie games.
