ooft! The bad press keeps a-coming, and while we can kinda understand this one if we squint, Sony’s going to be guilty in the all-important court of public opinion. According to a report by TechRaptor, the price of indie Souls-like Salt and Sacrifice has significantly increased on the Epic Games Store in a number of different countries – and all because PlayStation was p*ssed that Ska Studios was selling it cheaper than on the ps store.
From what we can infer, Sony has a deal with the game which has resulted in its console exclusive release. The catch is that Ska Studios set the price individually for each country on the Epic Games Store, which meant it was cheaper in some places than others. Co-owner Shane Lynch explained that his company “can’t actually control individual prices on Sony, so some of it had to go up or down” on Epic Games Store because of contractual obligations and a demand for parity.
For the UK, that’s good news – it’s actually gone down from £15.99 to £12.99. But for many other countries, like Brazil, the price has rocketed – we’re talking about an increase from R$37.99 to R$104.90. That’s a 276 per cent jump! It’s a similar story in Turkey, where the title’s gone up from ₺33 to ₺153. This does make the price a bit more consistent across the various different countries, but obviously it doesn’t account for the differences in earnings et al.
As we said at the top of the article, we do understand how this has happened: Ska Studios has evidently signed a deal with Sony and it can’t be seen to be giving other platforms or storefronts a better deal as a result. However, we’d argue that the onus should be on PlayStation to offer better regional pricing flexibility on the PS Store – and, to be honest, in a period dominated by bad press, the company could do without the negative PR, couldn’t Item?
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