Contrast dev: PS Plus deal is fair, not a goldmine
In an impromptu Ask Me Anything session on Reddit, Compulsion Games, the Canadian indie studio behind Contrast, explained that while the PS Plus deal is fair for them, it’s also not a goldmine and they will need further support from gamers to develop their next projects.
Basically, every deal is different. However, they’re all based around Sony saying “Well, we think this game is cool and we want to give it away for free. What would it take for you to agree to that?” Maybe some devs get lump sums, maybe others have royalty shares (this is a little uncertain, commercially, though), maybe others do it just for the publicity. It really is pretty varied.
What I will say is that Sony are not dicks about it. The deal is pretty fair, but it isn’t a gold mine. We’ll still need people to buy our game once the PS+ promotion ends, if we’re going to be able to make the next project without selling our souls :) We hope you guys will recommend it to others, if you like it.
Later, they also described their apparently quite positive experience with Sony, explaining how they ended up signing to be on PS Plus:
Exciting, absolutely. Scary as well! But Sony made it a very pleasant experience - I don’t know that we say this enough, but they really are a bunch of wonderful, on the ball people.
I’m glad you’re playing it with your girl - I’ve been waiting until mine finishes her last paper, and then we’re doing the same thing!
It’s a complicated story, but basically Sony approached us. Winding back a year or two, we were talking to all the major console guys, but we weren’t getting any traction. So, we went ahead anyway, and just built the game we wanted to play. When we went to PAX East this year (April), Sony was looking around for projects, and got the ball rolling. When it looked like we could be ready for launch… then it all got very busy, very quickly!
They also mentioned that a patch will be deployed soon to all consoles (it’s already live on PC), fixing many glitches/bugs. As a reminder, Contrast is available for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and PC for about 14.99 $/€; PS Plus users can get the PlayStation 4 version for free this month.
