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Developers say Sony is ‘playing favorites’ with PS4 cross-play support

Developers say Sony is ‘playing favorites’ with PS4 cross-play support

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Wargroove and Paladins developers say that Sony won’t enable the feature for their games

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Wargroove

After months of dragging its feet, Sony finally started enabling cross-play between the PlayStation 4 and other consoles like the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One late last year with Fortnite, followed by Rocket League in January. But those two games remain the only titles with cross-console play, and some developers are calling out Sony for “playing favorites” with which games it is and isn’t allowing to have the feature, via Kotaku.

For its part, Sony’s Shawn Layden claimed in an interview with Game Informer this week that the company is “open for business” when it comes to cross-console multiplayer, adding that “All it takes is for publishers and developers who wish to permission it,” and that interested developers should work with their PlayStation account manager to get the ball rolling.

Outside of ‘Rocket League’ andFornite,’ change doesn’t quite seem to be happening

But outside of Rocket League and Fornite (two of the largest and most visible games in the world) that change doesn’t quite seem to be happening. Following Layden’s remarks, the CEO of Chucklefish Games took to ResetEra’s forums to comment that his team had encountered issues with Sony for the recently released Wargroove, which already supports Xbox One, PC, and Switch cross-play. The team apparently “made many requests for crossplay (both through our account manager and directly with higher ups) all the way up until release month [but] were told in no uncertain terms that it was not going to happen.” According to Chucklefish, enabling cross-play would only require them to “*literally* toggle a switch and have it working.”

Stew Chisam, the CEO of Hi-Rez studio, took to Twitter with similar complaints today, asking Sony to “stop playing favorites” and noting that his team has Smite, Paladins, and Realm Royale ready for cross-play for whenever Sony will allow them. (Smite just launched cross-play today for all platforms except for the PlayStation 4.)

Sony had infamously been resistant to the idea of cross-console play for most of last year, when the issue started to come to a head after incidents like Fortnite accidentally enabling support, and problems where Sony’s refusal to play with others completely blocked progression between PS4 accounts for players who wanted to also play on a Switch (something that Epic is only now addressing).

And despite the company’s “open for business” promise, it seems that for less prominent developers, enabling cross-play for the PlayStation 4 is still going to be a challenge for now.