It’s often been said lately that the main reason that Playstation doesn’t want crossplay to become a thing is because of money, and unfortunately we now appear to have actual proof that that’s the case. According to a recently leaked legal document, if devs want Playstation crossplay, they have to pay up.
According to the leak, which was put on the ResetEra forums, the payment would be necessary to make up for the loss in revenue through not having the games exclusively on Playstation 4, where all of the revenue from the game would be going to Playstation.
While it doesn’t require developers to pay if the revenue share is over 85 percent, once the revenue share dips below that number then developers will have to pay proportionally. This system is apparently deliberately intended to keep studios from making use of crossplay.
Originally, Sony’s excuse for why they didn’t support crossplay was because “Games play best on Playstation 4.” However these days, where crossplay is becoming more prominent than ever in a new console generation, more devs may have to make a hard choice.
While Playstation 4 crossplay isn’t a big deal for many developers, since their games either don’t have multiplayer or are content with having different multiplayer servers for each console, it can be a pain for developers who want to implement Playstation crossplay but aren’t successful enough to pay Sony for the privilege.
For instance, Psyonix Studios, the company behind the wildly popular Rocket League game, apparently makes enough money to have Rocket League playable not only on pretty much every platform with crossplay, but to have enough money to pay Sony for it.
With all of this in mind, it might be a while before we can get unrestricted Playstation crossplay, especially if Playstation doesn’t change its policies regarding it. And as long as it has dominance over the video game market due to game choice, that may be a very long way away.
