Epic CEO says PlayStation fee for cross-platform play

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says that Sony has finally allowed cross-platform play on the PlayStation in 2018, but it also charges publishers’ royalties.

This is another revelation in documents related to the ongoing Epic Games / Apple trial, whose trial began on Monday. While both Nintendo and Microsoft were early adopters of cross-console play through Epic Games. Fortnite, Sony consistently excluded Epic and other publishers from enabling it with the PlayStation 4 versions of their games.

Till here FortniteSwell’s popularity in 2018 was not enough to provoke Sony at first. In a senior-level email between Epic and Sony, revealed in the Epic vs. Apple trial and reported by The Verge, Epic was confident that Sony would capitulate because Fortnite Was the most popular game on the PS4 at the time.

Image: via The Verge

Joe Kreiner, executive officer in charge of business development, designed a comprehensive plan with encouragement to Sony, both of which gave it a PR boost to enable cross-play and business relationships of the two companies. But Sony’s director of developer relations at the time was not sure that cross-console play would ever help the PlayStation business.

Finally, at the end of 2018, Sony agreed to give permission Fortnite Players on PlayStation to play with other consoles. But a 2019 email that surfaced in the Epic Games trial sheds light on what happened.

Image: via The Verge

In the email, Sony outlines a pay structure that requires publishers to share revenue with Sony if PlayStation 4’s “gameplay share” is less than 85%. As Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said during testimony, “If someone was playing primarily on PlayStation, but is paying on the iPhone, it could trigger compensation.” According to Sweeney, Epic had to agree to these terms to allow Sony to play cross-platform Fortnite.