Sony is currently at the forefront of a variety of major IP, and the company is not hesitating to take full advantage of that position. But in the past, this mainstream success has come at the expense of alienating indie game developers, with many complaining about Sony's treatment of them. And more recently, Sony seems to be trying to fix those relationships.
As early as July, a report explored Sony's lack of attention to independent game developers, saying that Sony's development tools for developers were too complex and cumbersome, the development process was quite unclear, and the communication channels with Sony were very bad. In addition, the report claims that Sony provides so few ads that indie developers see no reason to work with Sony.
Recently, a document titled "Global Partner Survey Results 2021" was sent to several of Sony's partner publishers and developers, and the brief document didn't directly mention the complaints from the previous report, but it identified three target areas for improvement based on the findings, which directly correspond to the questions posed by independent developers on social media and in articles. Combined with Sony's cautious approach in marketing Tchia and Kona: Bridge of Spirits, this suggests that change is imminent.
In the article, Sony promises to reduce the complexity of independent developers in a number of ways, including improving communication channels, providing partners with sufficient decision-making details, and clarifying who publishers should raise concerns with. The company is also committed to enabling all active publishing and development partners to obtain better game sales, engagement, and promotional analysis. Finally, Sony claims to be modernizing its development toolset, with priority goals to improve its ticketing system, documentation and customer service efforts for partner issues.
Some indie game creators agree that Sony now seems to be taking their concerns more seriously.