Indies Speak Out About Poor PlayStation Indie Support

Iain Garner, the co-founder of indie studio Neon Doctrine, put PlayStation on blast for their poor indie support, saying developers "have no ability to manage their games"


Published: June 30, 2021 11:41 AM /

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Iain Garner is the co-founder of indie publisher Neon Doctrine. He has a lot of things to say in a long Twitter thread about PlayStation, as "they give developers no ability to manage their games." Basically, it looks like Ian Garner woke up today and decided to put PlayStation on blast because why not? 

Garner is careful never to explicitly name PlayStation, calling it Platform X, but it's clear to what he's talking about, as he says he's referring to the "very successful console [that] does not have Game Pass", and explicitly later stated it was not Nintendo. Hmm...

Garner begins by stating that developers "have no ability to manage their games", and that in order to get some type of promotion developers have to "jump through hoops, beg and plead for any type of promotion." Of course, that can apparently change if at least $25,000 USD is spent on feature marketing, in addition to the 30% of your earnings that the PlayStation store normally takes. That may be small potatoes for a AAA publisher, but for anyone else that's a massive sum.

Discounts are apparently denied frequently as well, which is something that's been happening for quite a while. Interestingly, Garner loves the actual console, but in terms of how its online services are utilized he has "no idea how to succeed on this platform and they wont [sic] tell me." Ouch. 

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Apparently PlayStation devs get the "worst deal".

Other developers joined in the discussion as well. Mike Rose of No More Robots said that the reason people don't talk about it more is that developers are worried, but that "the vast majority of devs are reading that thread, and nodding their heads violently." Rose has previously commented on aspects like the poor discoverability on the PlayStation store, even for newly launched games. Cristian Botea from Those Awesome Guys also chimed in, saying he "can mirror [Garner's] frustrations entirely", and that launch support was also nonexistent for him, while other developers echoed the complaints.

If you'd like to check out the full Twitter thread, be sure to go here. For everything else PlayStation, stay tuned to TechRaptor for more details.

What do you think of this news? Do you think Ian Garner burned his bridges? Let us know in the comments!

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Patrick is a former Staff Writer for TechRaptor and has been gaming on every console he could get since he could hold a controller. He’s been writing for… More about Patrick