Iain Garner – the co-founder of Neon – Doctrine started a twitter thread about Platform X where he criticized the Platforms for their bias against Indie developers and their poor backend services.
About the Thread
Garner obviously did not name the Platform but said the following to describe the platform – “… it's the operator of a very successful console and does not have Games Pass!”. At this point, it was pretty clear that Garner was talking about Sony and specifically, it’s PlayStation department.
OK. I am mad enough to burn some bridges. Because honestly, what's the point of a bridge that I am not allowed to cross.
So here is a thread about Platform X. I will not be defining Platform X but it's the operator of a very successful console and does not have Games Pass! pic.twitter.com/OJ2ZJz9BNy
— Iain Garner (@NeonIain) June 30, 2021
Garner stated that Sony practically gives no attention to small Indie developers like him. He also accused Sony of apparently taking $25,000 from the developers to get featured on their store. He wrote this : “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….”
He said that Sony is super successful at hardware but their backend process is straight out of the 2000s. We definitely advise you to read the whole thread just to get a glimpse of how Sony is misbehaving with the developers.
It seemed like Garner was frustrated with Sony and all of it’s malpractices and hence decided to vent to his audience.
The Support
After this thread went viral, many other indie developers stepped up and shared their experiences on Twitter too and they were just as bad as Iain’s.
Matthew White, the CEO of Whitehorn Games posted this tweet :
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
White went on to say email communications with the platform are returned in months rather than days or weeks, the process of obtaining sales reports is unnecessarily time consuming and outdated, and it has no marketing, analytics, or advertising assessment tools for developers.
Ragnar Tørnquist retweeted Iain’s original post and said that “This thread mirrors out experience exactly”
This thread mirrors our experiences exactly. Draugen has been out for over a year on consoles. When was the last time it was discounted or featured in a sale? And it’s definitely not for a lack of trying. It’s disheartening. https://t.co/c3uUz3VDzV
— Ragnar Tørnquist (@ragso) June 30, 2021
Jay Tholen, the developer of HypnoSpace Outlaw even took names and accused Sony directly. He retweeted Iain’s tweet and said – “ yeah playstation sucks for indie devs. “
yeah playstation sucks for indie devs. we've sold like trash on there compared the other big consoles. also we make more sales on itch alone than we do on PS I'm pretty sure.
(mike, i'll delete this if you want lol) https://t.co/l9Oz41oo5a
— Jay Tholen
Conclusion
As of right now, there is a lot of heat being thrown at Sony. All the Indie developers are angry and they have a valid reason to be. Mike Rose – the founder of HypnoSpace Outlaw said – “The reason you don't see more threads like it, is because devs are too worried to say it publicly. But trust me when I say that the vast majority of devs are reading that thread, and nodding their heads violently”.
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