That's a good point. I'll reserve judgment to see how things pick up since Microsoft has stopped requiring that.
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Epic lawsuit shows Sony asks publishers for compensation if MTX / playerbase ratio falls below certain amount compared to the cross-platform revenue
- Thread starter eonden
- Start date
It was a joke, because you clearly didn't know who you were talking about when you wrote your comment. You know the one where you called someone a piece of shit that didn't know anything about games because the old Sony wouldn't do that. When he was part of the old Sony you're referring to and left a couple years ago.
I'm surprised at all this Sony-specific information coming out of a lawsuit between two unrelated companies. Guess it's about proving how fucked up the games market is in general and that Apple isn't that bad but still doesn't seem THAT relevant.
Well, if it helps bring some antitrust trouble to console companies... That whole market is so big on anticompetitive tactics as a default mode of existence. We always consider those exclusive buyouts, loss-leader products, licensing tactics and so on normal but in comparison to the wider economy it's all pretty fucked up. Probably needed this kind of look into it since the late 80s.
Well, if it helps bring some antitrust trouble to console companies... That whole market is so big on anticompetitive tactics as a default mode of existence. We always consider those exclusive buyouts, loss-leader products, licensing tactics and so on normal but in comparison to the wider economy it's all pretty fucked up. Probably needed this kind of look into it since the late 80s.
The problem with this is that it ignores any reason why someone would want to buy something on platform x and play it on platform y. For any reason at all, it comes out of the developer's pocket.
It also fails to show how the percentage played on any system is calculated.
It also fails to show how the percentage played on any system is calculated.
I really don't think you should be labelling him as a "piece of shit" for simply towing the company line in a company email, either.
I mean, that's exactly what happens.
I'm not hugely upset. But Sony actively inhibiting cross saves and cross play sucks.
It sucked when they were against it in principal and it still sucks with this setup.
As if the dev has much control over that. It's clearly enough of a deterrent that plenty of games that would have cross progression and cross play don't.
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I get why they're doing it (and if anyone else is doing the same), they want to try to protect their revenue streams if content is being sold cheaper or more successfully marketed to PS consumers elsewhere, but I don't agree with it. I don't think they'd really be entitled to that money or whatever data they ask for. Pretty awful if this is actually getting in the way of more cross-play games too.
Exactly many people missing this point.
If a company is purposefully building a revenue stream to cut out Sony whilst people play on PSN this policy is fine.
But if consumers are choosing to buy content elsewhere because they find the process of doing it on Sony platforms to be less streamlined than alternatives that's Sonys problem to fix.
Yeah this is where the policy seems wrong to me. If the threshold was crossed it would punish the publisher when it's Sony's fault for not matching their competitors platform features.
People are definitely misunderstanding the issue.
Correcting a misunderstanding doesn't mean someone supports something. It's important to criticize something for what they are actually doing and not something else.
The thinking is that because more people are using Sony's servers.
He's a middle man here, he's not the one making the policy, he's relaying the message as his job was 3rd party relations.
I'm guesstimating so I may be completely wrong on this (only game publisher will really know the truth).
Let's say we have Game A that is a GaaS PS4 exclusive, 100% of the playtime and revenue is on PS4.
They create a Switch port, which goes very well in its first month and attract a good amount of new players, the share is now 90 / 10 for PS4.
Players on Switch are new to the game and spend comparatively more, let's say double what PS4 players are spending, the revenue share is 80 / 20 (it would actually be 81.81% but it makes no real difference so whatever).
Gameplay ratio is 0.9, share ratio is 0.8, difference is 0.8/0.9 = 0.88, still doesn't trigger the revenue share.
I'm not saying it's not possible, but I don't think it's that easy if players have similar spending habits.
It may be a problematic clause if the publishers sees that some platform create bigger revenue per customer (for example mobile players spendign 50% more than console players), but at that point it's easier just no to enable crossplay at all.
It's not something that benefits us (the players) but it doesn't really surprise me that much or make crossplay impossible.
I would still hope it's something Sony and the partners have been working on (or will be worked on) to ensure revenue share is only enabled when the publishers actively promotes another platform and not because of the way players are normally spending their money.
Exactly, it's largely a one player game so you don't get the benefit of the cross-play you would in Fortnite.
I wonder if him leaving has anything to do with this stuff. If I was being forced to peddle such ridiculous policies I would leave too. I must admit I did not realise he had left.
Yeah, the differential could increase for a billion different reasons, many of them causes that the publisher wouldn't have anything to do with. There's a big new MTX release on the 5th of the month and the revenue share is 70/30 between PS and XBox. Later in the month some huge streamer starts playing the game on PS and pushes the player ratio to 90/10 PS to XBox. Now the publisher has to pay a fee due to something completely out of their control, the decision of an independent streamer.
In Sony's view that's MTX money that likely would've been purchased on their store as well had there not been cross play.
By agreeing to cross play it doesn't matter which store the customer buys their MTX on, which cuts them out of the equation.
Sony doesn't want to lose out on their potential cut.
And this is why transparency is important.
I definitely have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I dearly love Sony's first party offerings, but on the other I know this isn't behaviour I'm attracted to, would engage with in my local community, or desire to continue perpetuating.
I won't judge them for it, because I know my past is colored with similar tonalities.
On a side note, the level of moderation here is disturbing.
I definitely have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand I dearly love Sony's first party offerings, but on the other I know this isn't behaviour I'm attracted to, would engage with in my local community, or desire to continue perpetuating.
I won't judge them for it, because I know my past is colored with similar tonalities.
On a side note, the level of moderation here is disturbing.
I guess this is it
Not only is it per territory , but you have 5% wiggle room. If a steamer in Spanish language makes a skin a meme on a platform that isn't PlayStation and it causes a surge in spend on Switch or Xbox , then Sony gets a cut of that money, regardless to whether their own sales are affected or not.
It's probably simply easier and cheaper to not agree to these terms and the players are the ones who lose out.
It's another administrative cost a developer or publisher has to absorb , just to track this.
And what happens if the other platform's users in a certain region just happen to spend more than they do on PlayStation? When you flick that switch, the developer has to pay Sony get a cut of that too… once that 5% window exceeded.
Not really.
Consider this scenario for a game. Say PS4 has an established player base of 100K spending 10K on MTX, while iphone has a player base of 10K spending 1K on MTX. Now the game enables cross-progression, and now iphone decides that it want to get more of the players on their platform and to spend on MTX on their platform, so they start running deep discounts on the MTX. Now PS4 players still want to play on PS4, but they decide to do their MTX on iphone (because it is cheaper) resulting in the 100K PS4 players spending only 3K and iphone now having the bulk of MTX of 8K with only 10K players.
This is the hypothetical problem Sony is trying to prevent, and yes, the ratios I used are pretty out there, but remember CFOs, lawyers, accountants and number crunchers have their job in the company to prevent such hypotheticals from happening and they will always err of the side of caution to save their ass.
Actually they wouldn't. If it doesn't find an audience the no one would be playing it so it still would be 15 percent below the percentage of user base. If 10 percent was from PS they wouldn't owe anything even if the playstation version made no money
One obvious takeaway is the cross-play situation regarding Playstation likely won't be improving anytime soon with the contractual obligations to obscene market intelligence desired here.
In true EGS fashion
Honest question, is this policy going to pretty much kill any chance of PSO2 coming to PlayStation in the west? Sega is already in bed with Microsoft regarding that game and this could just be another hurdle that makes it easier for them to just stick with Xbox and PC...
That's not how it works, It's not like if you play on a PS4 you're on 'Sony's server' and if you boot it up on an Xbox you're on Microsoft's server - you're on Epic's server no matter where you play Fortnite.
Okay. That makes sense they would request something like that.
I kind of expect that Microsoft and Nintendo have similar setups for different games.
Everyone here that's surprised this is a thing, I just got to wonder how many of you have actually worked in the business world.....
I kind of expect that Microsoft and Nintendo have similar setups for different games.
Everyone here that's surprised this is a thing, I just got to wonder how many of you have actually worked in the business world.....
That's not what is described in the slide.
PSN revenue share: 5% of total revenue
PS4 gameplay share: 10% of total gameplay
Penalty ratio: 0.05 / 0.10 = 50%
50% < 85% == True
Therefore, the publisher must pay the penalty.
The fact its already on Playstation outside of the west and not here probably just means Microsoft paid for it to be that way. Because it wasn't going to come here anyway till Microsoft foot the bill for it.
What your describing is ant-competitive practices. Sony didn't wish to compete on mircotransaction prices so they abused their position as market leader to dissuade such situations from occurring.
Pretty greedy from Sony's part. Basically flexing their "market leader" muscle here. I don't think this is anti-consumer since the consumers aren't really impacted, but it does feel anti-competitive, at least. But this is a complicated business dealing and I guess the lawsuits will show if they are in violation of antitrust laws or not.
Correct. Frankly, the idea that having a more accurate picture means we're defending anything is farcical.
That "problem" is literally you describing a functioning competitive market without price fixing. Which yes Sony is trying to actively stop
We are all Ace Attorneys here.
About the topic, not surprised. The amount of these type of contracts and conditions that must be around between any combination of companies... Glad we get to see some of them :D
Since I am no expert in the actual law in such matters, I will take your word for it.
I'm sure someone here will 'well, actually..' you about the PS2 being the best era for gaming ever. They're nothing if not predictable.
Consumers are impacted , this policy is surely a policy that is riddled with difficulties for many developers/publishers and as a result , consumers get a worse experience : in this case , no cross platform play or purchases.
Do they though? Considering Fortnite is an example, Fortnite players are certainly not affected, just Epic.
Ehm, so if I read this correctly and ignore the majority of reactionary replies, this is somewhat to what Apple has been doing with external "IAPs" for apps hosted on the iOS Store? But instead of forcing devs to provide IAPs through the app so Apple can always take their cut or block the apps outright, Sony says that all MTX purchases done outside of PSN that falls under a certain ratio compared to the actual gaming done on PSN will be liable for surcharges?
If that's the case, couldn't fucking care less. Companies such as Epic already earn obscene amounts of money on MTX purchases from endusers, so if Sony, as a corpo, wants to tap into that for infrastructure costs, hookers and blow or whatever, that's capitalism for you.
I doubt this has a noticeable impact on gamers nor on small game companies, since I expect the big players to be the ones to have these types of revenue streams set up outside of PSN/Live.
If that's the case, couldn't fucking care less. Companies such as Epic already earn obscene amounts of money on MTX purchases from endusers, so if Sony, as a corpo, wants to tap into that for infrastructure costs, hookers and blow or whatever, that's capitalism for you.
I doubt this has a noticeable impact on gamers nor on small game companies, since I expect the big players to be the ones to have these types of revenue streams set up outside of PSN/Live.
Not really a "problem", since I have no skin in the game, but I understand what Sony is trying to do whether I agree with it or not.
It's not.
It's literally sony saying if you earn more money on this game on another ecosystem relative to how many people play it there vs here, you owe us money. It has an impact on gamers because companies aren't interested in putting features in that might COST them money through no fault of their own. This is almost surely why many games that could easily add crossplay still have not.
Why are we pretending that Epic got strong armed into anything here? They have the hottest product in gaming. They saw money to be made and agreed not to compete because it would bring them more of it.
And the games that have chosen not to engage cross play because of these policies and the financial implications to them?
This isn't about epic, it's about literally any developer that entered this agreement with Sony.
What games are those? Legitimately asking, I don't know. If we have examples, then yes, this affects consumers, but it seems to be speculative right now.
In your hypothetical the games publisher gets punished by Sony because Apple decided they wanted to do a sale.
Doesn't seem fair in this case..
Don't publishers/devs decide on sales and sale prices for their stuff though?
Sure, doesn't explain you're response considering I never asked for someone to explain the obvious to me. Also not sure how anyone can fence sit and not outright disagree with it considering its literally an attempt to price fix
I mean, this DOES sound like a monopolistic practice even more than what Epic is in court for regarding Apple.
Like wow. And the worst thing this is probably only the tip of the iceberg on a series of shady practices my practically all platform holders.