Around this time every month we all start taking bets about which titles will be made available as part of PlayStation Plus' free game lineup. However, it's probably worth sparing a thought for those developers who lose potential sales because people wrongly assume that their products will be given away as part of the subscription.
Upcoming shmup DOGOS is one such game that's due out on 6th September – the same date as we'd expect the new batch of Instant Game Collection goodies to be given away. And that's forced developer OPQM to confirm that it's not part of the roster in case it loses potential sales while people wait for a free version that doesn't currently exist.
"[PlayStation Plus rumours] can have a very negative effect as [subscribers] may think that it doesn't make sense to purchase the game if it will be available for free shortly after its release," content manager Federico Andrade told PSU. "I hope you understand that being an indie studio, there has been lot of effort put behind this game, and something like this can have an impact in our economy."
It's an unfortunate position for smaller studios, as many even snub titles that aren't rumoured to be part of the PlayStation Plus roster in the hope that they'll be given away for free at a later date. It's just another problem that the subscription model currently faces, and it's why Sony should probably be looking to re-invent the service soon.
[source psu.com]
Comments 37
I've gotta say the PS+ monthly rumours articles are my least favourite feature on here. So many comments and all of them the same as the month before (okay not all, but still lots of moaning, negativity and calls for Killzone or Knack!!). Snoreeeeee
Good point really.
Oh yeah, DOGOS looks fantastic, but 'retro', really? (Though I'm not to sure about freeform controls + bullet hell)
I see the problem. However I'm having difficulty in thinking of a way the service could be "reinvented" without alienating thousands of fervent subscribers. I'd be genuinely interested to hear if anyone has ideas.
Increasing the price of PS+ could also have "a very negative effect". Charging $60 for an indie release could also have "a very negative effect". Sony aint care
Sony needs to stop hurting the Indie game developers and give us some AAA games for a change lie seriously the system is 3 years old can they just pput at least 1 game worth playing every month?
@AlejandroMora Hurting? You do realise the developers arnt held at gun point right? And in some cases they are at a great advantage releasing via plus, i.e Rocket League. What hurts devs, as stated in this article, is people holding off on buying games because they think they'll be on this months Plus (or perhaps on Plus down the line).
Axiom Verge comes to mind, I've heard a few people on here say they will wait for it to come to Plus, but the developer said it wouldn't ever show up on the service for this exact reason. (Still, maybe it will one day, who knows?)
There are times where I have held off buying titles because I think they will come to PS Plus at some point but its not many. I would say for indie developers do not launch on the day of PS Plus launches its free titles. Also I would like to see a certain length of time between a game being launched and it being available on PS Plus. I think 8-12 months is reasonable for a game not to become free on PS Plus.
I do think its good Sony are giving away indie titles they get far more exposure than they ever would normally.
For what we pay for PS Plus its an absolute bargain. Even without games I would be happy to pay the full price. We have no need to hire servers etc for games
@NathanUC Dude you just pay the same as the European consumer now i think it is fair. You always get more and better stuff at a reduced price anyway.
@AlejandroMora Well why should they you pay $60 a year. If you get 1 every year you got your money back.....
@NathanUC Cos an "indie" can't be full priced right?
@Joeblogs It's an complete overaction, every month we get this but no one else outside of forum posters talks about it. I follow many YouTube who are regarded as industry pundits, such as Jim Sterling, Kinda Funny and Totalbiscuit and not once has any one of them talked about "Plus been in crisis" it's all stemmed from entitled forum posters because indie games are apparently not worthy of their time, so they would prefer if Sony threw down a sackful of cash to stick GTA V on it instead or laughably Knack. It's not helped either by sites such as this that listens to it's audience too much and takes it's said audience's opinion as some kind of growing revolt without looking outside the bubble and at the bigger picture, which is to most people paying for online is the norm and free games is the big bonus.
Define "shortly after release".
@JoeBlogs id be buzzing if we got atleast one AAA im sick of spending so much money just to play overwatch i feel scammed
Boo Hoo
Get real its dog eat dog out there.
If your game is good it will sell.
If it is full of bugs it will sell
if you cry and expect to be treated with kid gloves people will avoid it
They/he should be thankful his Independent Game was mentioned Electronic Arts pay top bunce to advertise their products..... Eh Push Square... joking. I want my Folders and free games now.
@adf86 @JoeBlogs Its not in crisis, but I personally have bought less indie games in the last year than the previous few years as they are more likely to feature in the psplus games.
@Bhattiboy "if your game is good it will sell"
Vanquish.
Blur.
Binary Domain.
Beyond Good and Evil.
Mirror's Edge.
Child of Eden.
Sleeping Dogs.
A games' quality is no guarantee of success.
@Bhattiboy That's an incredibly blinkered view of the games industry and capitalism as a whole, I'm afraid. Sadly, it's also a very common point of view.
If a game is released the same day as the monthly free games, how will that hurt sales? People know what's going to be free so they will either get it for free (and devs will get whatever commission) or buy it if they want to.
@Mergatro1d I came to this realisation while writing it as well, but I think we forget because we know the industry inside out that lesser "educated" people may just think: "Ah, I saw this was free on IGN, so I'm not buying it until it's available for free."
What doesn't help the indie studios is how tardy Sony are at announcing the games in the first place. This time next week we will have the new set of games available to download and still no clue as to what games will be available.
This is pretty shoddy for a company that takes lots of subs from us and are meant to be a big multi-national. Surely they know some of the games they will be launching already.
@get2sammyb yes, I take your point. It must be tough for indie devs when people aren't willing to take a punt in case it becomes free next month. I guess it's that tricky balance between the exposure digital platforms can give and the readiness for people to spend their readies.
@get2sammyb PS thanks for the inference that us forum posters know the industry inside out. The only thing I know inside out are my pants but that's only because the Mrs is away and they're not going to wash themselves.
Pure nonsense...what's the next step, complaining that indie games are reviewed and criticized if they are just bad? I'm sure that does actual damage compared to just assumptions that they might go free at some point.
The era of indies is no more and indie devs do not like to look at facts. People no longer treat indie games as a "uh, drop of creativity, I'll just buy because it seems interesting and different" kind of thing, not like before when people threw their wallets at indie devs that simply said they were making something unique without actually backing all that up. Now people are more selective, indies have more exposure thus more media attention resulting in reviews for quite a number of the important ones which also "help" customers in making the decision of buying or walking past a product that does not suit their needs or interests (behavior which obviously does not help developers at all).
Several years ago, indies were in heaven and everyone was purchasing all the random c*** games because everything looked so unique and wonderful just to discover that 99.9% of them were terrible and more than half not even worth a few minutes of anyone's time. Nowadays all that has changes, indies are no longer a "thing" they are just more games which the regular people simply compare with multi billion $ companies that make games which cost 300 million each.
Everyone already knows or should know that the game development industry is very competitive, stressful and hard, almost all projects get canned in the concept phase, most of the rest get shut in the switch to actual production, a lot of what goes further is killed off after getting some kind of actual game up and running, a good number of what actually advances through multiple stages of development might run out of funds or simply cease development due to an unsatisfactory product and only very few actually see the light of day.
Game development is hard and it's almost an impossible task to make PC/PS/Xbox games and it's growing harder to make a living with every single day especially for indies. Sure there are indie behemoths which made their devs rich beyond belief like Minecraft, but those kind of scenarios are so rare they're like myths and are rarer than indie games which actually get released from Steam early access (which is a good representation of almost all indie games that are anything from abysmal to the next hit) as a final release with EVERYTHING the devs set out to include from day one (you can count these games on two hands ever since Greenlight was launched).
In a perfect world, everyone would be successful at what they do and they'd have more than enough money they could ever spend, but we do not live in a perfect world and you need to face the consequences of your decisions. Indie devs going for big games could easily switch to mobile development and make some decent money with way less effort, but it's easier to just go full speed ahead, never look around and think about what your're doing, then to complain that things aren't going how you expected. I pity the situation of devs who have it very rough and can't get a lucky break, but they should know full well what they signed up for at the start of their game development road.
Not to sound like that guy, but the only way id give DOGOS a shot is if it were on psplus...
For those who stuck up for PlayStation store plus and Independent game developers I applaud you. good for you.
The er spokesman for DOGOS is kinda disrespecting what P.S.+ is about
Either Sony were planning to have them as part of the P.S.+ package and pulled out because of last months "put your own words here"
And we now have an upset Federico Andrade
Guaranteed if Sony offered him sum coin he leap at it . just like ubisoft with Microsoft
Dont diss my P.S.+ I can I pay 4 it
@Flaming_Kaiser The price increase bothered myself and many others in NA because we were already unhappy with the service. Back in the PS3 days, I wouldn't have bothered the price increase one bit. If it weren't for automatic gamesave backups, I would have quit PS+ when i switched to PS4.
@adf86 Apparently not https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2016/08/gamers_demanding_a_no_mans_sky_refund_arent_happy_with_sony . This would have been a much better release had Sony priced it like other indie titles.
the solution is easy... make PS+ only about AAA games..
@DarthHater spot on Sir
Imma play Dark Chronicles UVUVYCTXUHIV another 1 for ur list
Segabluesky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs4gLkawe4U ...A sing along.
If only Psplus would start to give old AAA for free instead of tons of indie....
Ha ha ha, most casual gamers don't have a clue what all the indie guff is on PSN, there's so much rubbish for every good game on there its a real shame. PS Plus rumours, what a load of crap.
I personally don't care about 90% or more of the free games. And seeing as Canada is getting a price hike how about drop them entirely, lower the price and offer more frequent quality discounts.
@DarthHater The fact a game could be on plus does affect its sales. We have comments every month along the lines if 'I will wait for it on psplus' 'looks like psplus material' 'its all indies on psplus'. So it does affect purchasing decisions. The developer is right to point this out.
"Several years ago, indies were in heaven and everyone was purchasing all the random c*** games because everything looked so unique and wonderful just to discover that 99.9% of them were terrible"
I think you've been burnt by the green light programme and kickstarter. There are tons of great indie games, just wait until they are finished before you buy / play them. The exact same can be said of AAA alpha / beta tests, just stay away they do not help and take up your own limited gaming time.
I think this is a serious problem. There have been at least ten thousand indie games (give or take) that I've been interested in and I ask for opinions online. The response is always the same: "just wait a couple months and it'll be free."
I finally decided recently to stop waiting. I'd rather show support and pay for what interests me. However, I'm sure many people will just hold out, and with most Sony gamers having PS+, that is a LOT of potential sales lost.
@Tsurii Nope, you're ignorant if you think any considerable amount of persons that pay for PS Plus... pay attention to rumours + care about the trash on ps plus + bother to buy indie games that'd be 2 dollars on a cellphone + do not pre order or buy a game because it (doesn't?) end up on ps plus. Whoa, talk about warped. Seriously, they're is no such thing as bad publicity especially when you're a (tiny?) Indie studio apparently desperate to garner interest. No bad thing, keep the nonsense flowing.
The solution is pretty simple. A game can either be free on PS+
A. On release day
B. After a set time (maybe one year, for instance)
Nobody wants to buy a game not knowing if it'll be free in a couple months. But if you know you'll have to wait at least a certain length of time, it makes your purchasing decision much easier.
Well its just not the rumors that could hurt indie game sales. A lot of people could be holding off on purchasing them knowing full well that PS Plus tends to give away good indie games for free eventually more so than AAA games. It's a trend of the PS Plus service, so I can't blame the consumers.
Back in ps3 days I have seen comments in the official blog that were like "This year I will buy only FIFA, the other games I want will be released in plus sooner or later." I guess nowadays we have the same with Indies.
@Flaming_Kaiser Always get more stuff? It's been the same games for several months, with exception of End War being give to EUR, because Retro Grade had been given already to that Region.
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