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Forums - Sony - How much Sony pays Indies to be free on PS+ and more

Mike_L on 12 May 2014
The Fury said:
Guaranteed income can be hard to pass up, regardless of where it comes from. You could put your game on PS Store, Steam and Xbox Live and wait for the money to come in to pay for it's development, or Sony just pay you 500k, paying for development and let extra non-PS+ sales and steam/Xbox Live sales bring in a profit.

Especially if those that do download it, may recommend it.


Exactly. Many developers have highlighted the value of the boost in visibility that PS Plus offers. http://www.vg247.com/2013/12/17/ps-plus-is-strong-platform-for-introducing-indies-to-new-audiences/

Furthermore giving your game away for "free" with PS Plus can be a great decision financially. Besides the payment from Sony it allows the developer to sell additional content to a much bigger customer base such as the $9 Outlast: Whistleblower DLC.



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Richard_Feynman on 12 May 2014
QuintonMcLeod said:
Can Sony even afford to be giving random indie devs half a million dollars just to port their games over to their systems? If this is true, then it's going to be awfully difficult for Sony to recover from their losses.

Sony has seperate divisions. The vidoegame division is profitable. PS+ is profitable. The other month BIOSHOCK INFINITE (caps on purpose) was free on PS+. They are clearly willing to spend a lot of money. It mayb be a "random indie dev" to you, but you hardly know the ins-and-outs of the Indie scene do you? The guy who made Minecraft was also just a "random indie dev" a little while ago.

(I am not insinuating at all that their game will be even a fraction as big as Minecraft)

Sony's scouts are obviously aware of much more than you are. And in this case so am I. I've seen the steam early access sales. I've seen the competition awards. And I've seen the Beta reviews by big sites like Eurogamer praising the hell out of it.

But all of this ON TOPIC stuff aside, you are trolling Sony here and this is not the place to do it.



Richard_Feynman on 12 May 2014
Mike_L said:

Furthermore giving your game away for "free" with PS Plus can be a great decision financially. 


Absolutely. 

A minimum amount guaranteed (and this amount is considered a success it's own right). Exposure. Brand association with Sony/PS+. Even after the month the sales could still increase substantially if the game became very popular. Then there are also other platforms that it releases on like PC. It increases the esteem of the devs a lot.



The Fury on 12 May 2014
Mike_L said:

Furthermore giving your game away for "free" with PS Plus can be a great decision financially. Besides the payment from Sony it allows the developer to sell additional content to a much bigger customer base such as the $9 Outlast: Whistleblower DLC.

An excellent point with the DLC. People may be more willing to part with extra money for the DLC if they didn't spend it on the game to begin with. 



Hmm, pie.

QuintonMcLeod on 12 May 2014
Richard_Feynman said:
QuintonMcLeod said:
Can Sony even afford to be giving random indie devs half a million dollars just to port their games over to their systems? If this is true, then it's going to be awfully difficult for Sony to recover from their losses.

Sony has seperate divisions. The vidoegame division is profitable. PS+ is profitable. The other month BIOSHOCK INFINITE (caps on purpose) was free on PS+. They are clearly willing to spend a lot of money. It mayb be a "random indie dev" to you, but you hardly know the ins-and-outs of the Indie scene do you? The guy who made Minecraft was also just a "random indie dev" a little while ago.

(I am not insinuating at all that their game will be even a fraction as big as Minecraft)

Sony's scouts are obviously aware of much more than you are. And in this case so am I. I've seen the steam early access sales. I've seen the competition awards. And I've seen the Beta reviews by big sites like Eurogamer praising the hell out of it.

But all of this ON TOPIC stuff aside, you are trolling Sony here and this is not the place to do it.

I'm not trying to put down or underestimate the value of indie developers. I'm pointing out that Sony, as a company, cannot afford to money-hat uncertain projects. The Playstation division is only profitable by just a few million. It's certainly not enough to help Sony as a whole - which is losing billions upon billions of dollars each year. If anything, the tiny profits gained from the Playstation division need to go toward helping Sony as a whole, don't you think?



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bananaking21 on 12 May 2014
Richard_Feynman said:

I'm willing to prove it to one person. I nominate JoeTheBro since everyone knows who is in real life now and he therefore has credibility.What I can prove to him is that I'm most certainly personal friends with the devs. In that case there is no way to prove the actual amount of money of course. I don't want to get my friends into trouble.

With regards to the underlined. It costs roughly $150k per year to keep the studio running. Keep in mind the incredible risk that the person who owns the studio undertakes. That's literally his entire life's money gone if the game fails. But it hasn't. They've already made up all the dev costs from Steam early access. They've won numerous Indie-dev competitions, and now Sony thinks their game could be a smash hit. They've already been approached to do a movie spin-off based on their game (a really big movie). They are succeeding big time in the Indie scene. 

So if you were to assume that the above is factually correct, then $500k isn't very much.

Furthermore, there are a spectrum of different Indie type games. Some Indie games have more man hours put into them than what was considered AAA just 8 or 10 years ago. JoeTheBro's game is a 1 man operation. 

But since you say it's such a ridiculous claim, how much do you think Sony offers for a big Indie title to be free on PS+ for a month on launch?

since its not your studio, how about you let it go since what you were told was probably told in confidence, and even if it wasnt, it isnt your place to tell us all these things. 



Mike_L on 12 May 2014

I think the game is Rust. If so I'm really looking forward to PS Plus in June. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq6peV44L10



Turkish on 12 May 2014
Richard_Feynman said:
Turkish said:


You are talking nonsense. Sony isnt gonna decide 13 months in advance what will be June 2015s PS+ offering.

Also 5-700,000 dollars for 1 month PS+? This game you talking about must be graphically intense. Most indie games dont even take 200k to make, their revenues hardly ever reach 1 million dollar. Are you sure you are not trolling?


I'm willing to prove it to one person. I nominate JoeTheBro since everyone knows who is in real life now and he therefore has credibility.

What I can prove to him is that I'm most certainly personal friends with the devs. In that case there is no way to prove the actual amount of money of course. I don't want to get my friends into trouble.

With regards to the underlined. It costs roughly $150k per year to keep the studio running. Keep in mind the incredible risk that the person who owns the studio undertakes. That's literally his entire life's money gone if the game fails. But it hasn't. They've already made up all the dev costs from Steam early access. They've won numerous Indie-dev competitions, and now Sony thinks their game could be a smash hit. They've already been approached to do a movie spin-off based on their game (a really big movie). They are succeeding big time in the Indie scene. 

So if you were to assume that the above is factually correct, then $500k isn't very much.

Furthermore, there are a spectrum of different Indie type games. Some Indie games have more man hours put into them than what was considered AAA just 8 or 10 years ago. JoeTheBro's game is a 1 man operation. 

But since you say it's such a ridiculous claim, how much do you think Sony offers for a big Indie title to be free on PS+ for a month on launch?


Hope JoeTheBro can vouch for you man, like to believe you



veritaz on 12 May 2014
QuintonMcLeod said:

(I am not insinuating at all that their game will be even a fraction as big as Minecraft)

Sony's scouts are obviously aware of much more than you are. And in this case so am I. I've seen the steam early access sales. I've seen the competition awards. And I've seen the Beta reviews by big sites like Eurogamer praising the hell out of it.

But all of this ON TOPIC stuff aside, you are trolling Sony here and this is not the place to do it.

I'm not trying to put down or underestimate the value of indie developers. I'm pointing out that Sony, as a company, cannot afford to money-hat uncertain projects. The Playstation division is only profitable by just a few million. It's certainly not enough to help Sony as a whole - which is losing billions upon billions of dollars each year. If anything, the tiny profits gained from the Playstation division need to go toward helping Sony as a whole, don't you think?


You seem to point that out a lot, it's hard to miss. Nintendo hasn't posted a profit in a while either while doing just games and being much smaller than Sony. 



fps_d0minat0r on 12 May 2014

At first I thought it was too much, but if you calculate it and assume AAA games get twice as much money, the total cost over the year is comparable to the development costs of a flagship AAA game. And since more PS+ subscriptions are sold than games, they must be making a nice profit on top.

I dont think the AAA game would cost considerably more than indies because at the end of the day, big publishers would still get more from Sony's PS+ scheme for old games and it would serve the purpose of promoting sequels as well, so I wouldnt be surprised if there are cases where publishers agree to give it away at very low cost. Who knows... theres probably reverse auctions going on between publishers and Sony just to be on PS+.