According to the Epic president, cross-play support is charged from time to time

Epic President Tim Sweeney announced that in some cases, Sony would receive monetary compensation from publishers to allow crossplay support: “If someone primarily plays on PlayStation but makes payments on iPhone, that could result in a payout,” so Sweeney is in court (Via Theverge.com).

Epic Games had to agree to this requirement in order to enable cross-play on PS4, according to Sweeney in the context of a legal dispute between his company and Apple. Details of the potential amount of the fee are explained below.

As is well known, Sony has long resisted the cross-play theme: this has given rise to titles like Rocket League or Maine Craft First of all, it was not possible to interact with users on the Switch or Xbox. In 2018, Sony’s job ban in Fortnite caused a stir and anger among players. Theverge.com Now reports of interesting internal emails posted as part of the process between Epic Games and Apple.

According to the magazine, Sony could initially shoulder claims for any loss of income. In the months before the decision to use the cross-play ban, Epic Games tried hard to persuade Sony to enable cross-system functionality: “I can’t imagine a scenario in which Epic doesn’t get what we want – the possibility was Passé,” said Joe Kranner, Epic’s Vice President of Business Development. , In a mailing letter to Sony: “Once Fortnite became the biggest game on PlayStation.”

At the time, Kreiner’s suggestion was to announce the decision in favor of cross-play with Sony and allow the PlayStation manufacturer to emerge as a champ. Other suggestions included decorating Epic’s E3 look with PlayStation brand logos or exclusive PS Plus characters. Crane said, “Let’s make it a big win for all of us. Epic isn’t going to change its mind on this topic, so let’s have a deal now.”

Sony’s director of developer relations, Geo Corse, dismissed the idea of ​​supporting cross-play by saying that this job wasn’t a “slam dunk” – regardless of the size of the title: “As you know, a lot of companies understood this idea and none of them could explain how play works. Crossover improves the PlayStation business. ”

However, a document from August 2019 reveals the change in strategy that publishers are apparently paying a fee to Sony to enable crossplay support. Under the name “Cross-platform policy, requirements and process,” the document states that the publisher pays a predetermined percentage of fees in certain cases in order to “compensate for reduced sales” on the part of Sony.

Screenshot – Sony (PS4)

To illustrate this, there is a mathematical example: If cross-platform income, say, $ 1 million in one month and $ 900,000 of that PSN income, the latter is 90%. If your PS4’s uptime is 95 percent, the publisher won’t have to pay Sony any fees (90 divided by 95 results) are around 0.95, which is over 85 percent.

However, if in another month only $ 600,000 of the total $ 1 million in total revenue came from PSN (60%) – and if PS4 game time was still 95 percent, the publisher would have to transfer $ 52,500 to Sony (60 divided by 95 results). About 0.63 – less than 85 percent).

However, Sony’s cross-play fee rule should generally only come into effect if the game generates at least $ 500,000 in PSN over a twelve-month period.

It is unclear whether the rules from 2019 set out in the document will still apply in these amounts and percentages. Sweeney’s statement at least confirms that they are still valid.

Sony also states that Fortnite virtual currency cannot be transferred to or from the PlayStation platform – and there must be a setting that can be used to deactivate all cross-platform interactions, according to Theverge.com.