Indie developers have started to speak out about the lackluster treatment they receive from Sony when it comes to the titles they release on the PlayStation platform. Without naming names, one indie dev praised the Xbox Game Pass when discussing how poorly PlayStation handles indie games. According to the dev — Iain Garner — PlayStation does very little to help indie devs see positive results on what they release through the console. So little, in fact, that Iain can't find a reason to continue publishing through them.
Other indie devs seem to share Iain's sentiment. A new report published by Push Square relays how many of them share his same complaints, as well as the mentality of whether it's even worth it putting the time and energy into making PlayStation ports for their games, as they apparently don't see anywhere near the same success on the console as they do on other gaming systems, like Xbox and PC.
This lack of indie game's success on PlayStation, devs note, stems from Sony neglecting to give the titles effective advertisement. At most, devs will receive a trailer for their game on the official PlayStation YouTube channel, along with a post mentioning the game over on the official PlayStation blog. The effectiveness of the latter eludes developers as Sony doesn't give them any statistics to work with. As for the former, devs typically find their own YouTube channels rake in more viewers for their respective trailers.
To top this off, when compared to systems like the Xbox, PlayStation severely struggles with communication, which is made worse by the fact that indie developers need Sony's permission to carry out any managerial decisions for the games they've published through the PS Store. For instance, it takes a month just for developers to hear back from Sony on how well their games performed on launch, but other platforms will report back in about a day.
Overall, indie developers aren't speaking out to bash PlayStation. Many have spoken of their love for the console and don't want to have to leave it behind. The goal of speaking up is to shine a light on the problems they're facing so that Sony can potentially fix them. Whether the PlayStation manufacturer will do so remains a mystery, but hopefully, it does so, and soon. While indie games don't come with the same production value as AAA titles, they still have an important place among video games that Sony would regret missing out on.
Source: Push Square
