While we are happy that Sony is now slowly rolling out PS4 cross-play support for a few games, developers are not feeling the same love as we are. Sony began enabling the feature between PS4 and other consoles like the Switch and Xbox One in 2018 and so far the feature supports two games, Fortnite and Rocket League.
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However, those are the only two games to support the feature as of now and developers are feeling a little bleak and calling out Sony for “playing favourites” when it comes to which games the feature supports.
Sony’s Shawn Layden expressed his feelings on cross-play earlier this week saying that PlayStation is “open for business” when it comes to cross-play adding that “all it takes is for publishers and developers who wish to permission it” and that developer work with their PlayStation account manager to get the feature enabled.
However, outside of the already-enabled games, developers believe that Sony is not playing ball. Following Shawn Layden’s remarks, the CEO of Chucklefish Games took to ResetEra’s forums to express his grief his team had when it came to working with Sony to try and get the feature enabled for their latest game, Wargroove.
The title already supports cross-play across Xbox One, PC and Switch but when the team requested PS4 support from Sony, they were told it was “not going to happen”. According to the developers, all they would need to do is simply toggle a switch and have it working but Sony denied their request after “many requests were made before and leading up to launch”.
Chucklefish is not the only developer experiencing issues. Stew Chisam, CEO of Hi-Rez Studios took to Twitter to complain about the same thing and telling Sony to “stop playing favourites”. He noted that his team has been experiencing the same problems with Smite, Paladins and Realm Royale and all they need to do is enable it after Sony allows them to.
Hey @Sony @PlayStation. It’s time to stop playing favorites and tear down the crossplay/progression wall for everyone. We have @SMITEGame, @PaladinsGame, @RealmRoyale ready to go when you are. https://t.co/KNDetpXPf5
— HiRezStew (@schisam) February 8, 2019
It seems that while Sony’s publicity stunt of announcing cross-play worked, they have failed to follow through with the feature and are clearly not dedicated to enabling all developers to use the system. Sony’s “open for business” approach for cross-play is less promising for most developers out there unless you are famous it seems.