This is an interesting solution to a genuine problem - all the more interesting because it's a solution Epic was seemingly willing to go along with, and a problem that's in many ways a microcosm of the whole debate that Epic's battle with Apple has kicked up into the mainstream consciousness.īasically, Sony provides a platform - PlayStation - that consists of hardware devices that are sold to users, but also a ton of software and services, from the console OS and APIs through various developer support programs all the way to user-facing services like PlayStation Network. What Sony's rule actually says isn't that cross-play games must all pay an extra royalty rather, it's that if a situation arises where there's an F2P-style cross-play game that's being played extensively on PlayStation, but generating most of its revenue on another platform, Sony wants an extra cut to make up for the shortfall in its revenues. Discussion of cross-play policies tends to get pretty heated as a result, making it unsurprising that the idea of Sony slapping developers with an extra royalty to enable the function is not making the company into the toast of the Internet right now.Ĭross-play, for all that it's great for gamers, creates a pipeline whereby the wrong company can end up profiting from the success of a gameĪs is often the case, though, the detail of the arrangement is a lot more nuanced and sensible than the straw-man version currently being pilloried across social media. It's only been a few days, but the court case between Epic and Apple has already provided a treasure trove of insider information on a host of different topics, from Fortnite's revenues, to Tim Cook's confusion over who Tim Sweeney actually was, to the extremely ill-advised nature of running formal court proceedings over poorly configured live-streaming software.Īmongst it all, though, perhaps the most interesting piece of information is the one that's generated the most heated outrage - the reveal that Sony's reluctant decision to allow cross-play came with a price tag in the form of an additional royalty charged to cross-play games that are played disproportionately on PlayStation.Ĭross-play is something of a sacred cow for a lot of gamers, and for good reason platform holders may not be overly enthused about losing some of the word of mouth marketing they used to gain from "buy an Xbox / PlayStation so we can play this together" type conversations, but the quality of life gains for players are pretty enormous - not least because the reality for many of them is that buying a whole different console just to be able to play something with a friend is a ridiculous and unaffordable extravagance.
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