| Hi everyone, it's Jason.The video-game industry has a new villain of the week: Sony Corp.'s PlayStation platform. Several independent video game developers spoke out against the frustrating treatment they've received from Sony, essentially claiming that the Japanese tech giant fails to properly support smaller game developers.
These developers say their contacts at Sony can sometimes take weeks or months to respond to queries—if they're lucky enough to have contacts at all. And while massive blockbusters receive prominent display on the digital PlayStation Store, indie games are difficult for players to discover.
Marketing is more important than ever for game developers, with an increasingly large number of titles being released every year vying for players' attention. For developers who have possibly poured their life savings into creating a game, a single store promotion can make the difference between success and failure. That's why developers are risking torching their relationships with Sony to publicly complain.
The relationship between smaller studios and Sony is in stark contrast to rivals Microsoft Corp. and Nintendo Co., both of which have shown more of a willingness to support and work with indies, the developers say. Sony didn't respond to a request for comment.
About a half-dozen people took to Twitter, using their real names, this week, and several others spoke anonymously to gaming press outlets. The backlash led to thousands of posts on social media as well as gaming forums on sites like Reddit and ResetEra. Some of the developers who aired their grievances said they hoped the public pressure would lead Sony to change its policies. The outcry began when Taiwan-based indie developer Iain Garner wrote on Twitter Wednesday that he was frustrated with "Platform X," which he later confirmed to Bloomberg was PlayStation. "In order to get promotion you must jump through hoops, beg and plead," he wrote. "I have no idea how to succeed on this platform and they won't tell me." In an interview, Garner said he felt compelled to share his experience following a PlayStation video seminar that day in which the company encouraged attendees to pay $25,000 for front-page promotion on the store. "It felt like a seminar you'd run if you knew that everyone who heard what you had to say was going to be pissed off." Other indie developers shared charts showing that only fractions of their games' sales were on PlayStation. One factor, they said, was that other platforms are more flexible about allowing games to go on sale. Garner said that on Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's Switch, he can sell games at a discount every few weeks without much effort, whereas PlayStation doesn't offer that option. As Bloomberg reported in April, Sony's strategy in recent years has been to prioritize the biggest blockbusters and sometimes that comes at the expense of smaller teams. For Sony, the strategy has been working financially, but it may cost the company developers that produce smaller games fans like too. Offering a choice of indie games can help bolster the lineups for systems like the PlayStation 5 in the months between tentpole releases. It can also lead to goodwill from fans and developers. Matthew White, who runs a small video game publisher called Whitethorn Games, said in an interview that it sometimes takes a very long time to get responses to simple questions. "The staff seem like they're run ragged by the number of indies they have to represent," he said. During the last console generation, Sony positioned the PlayStation 4 as the market leader in part thanks to its wooing of indies off rival competitors and smartphones. Now, with the PlayStation 5 sold out nearly a year after its launch, the company appears to have shifted priorities. —Jason Schreier | 
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