Sony is holding players’ Epic Games Fortnite accounts hostage if they ever log in on PS4.
Sony’s Playstation 4 has been a huge success for this generation, which has allowed them to enjoy market control in a way other manufacturers such as Nintendo and Microsoft have not. Recently, however, they took it way too far.
Notably, Playstation remains the only platform to have extremely limited cross-platform support, while even Nintendo, a notoriously conservative company in regards to online play, has begun to shift towards more open multiplayer. Minecraft washed over the entire videogame industry a few years ago, and is cross-platform on pretty much everything it has been released for – except Playstation. One cannot help but think that rather than stand apart, Sony is making the Playstation be left behind, despite their supposed defense about it being ‘for the kids’.
However, regardless of how you feel about cross-platform support, Sony’s new idea is impossible to rationalize.
Epic Games’ Fortnite is currently the single most popular videogame in existence – at least by some metrics. It is a free-to-play online ‘Battle Royale’ style game, for which players must create an Epic Games account that stores all their progress. This allows players to log into the same, single account on all available platforms, and still have all of their customizations and unlocks. It’s a beautiful system that gives players the flexibility to play however, wherever they want.
But for Sony, that’s just not alright.
If a player logs into their Fortnite account on the Playstation 4, the account is then, without warning, locked to that platform. It can still be used on PC and smartphones, but if a player were to then try to log in on either their Xbox or Switch, they are greeted with a message like this one:
The Fortnite account is associated with a platform which does not allow it to operate on Switch. Neither the Fortnite website nor Epic Customer Service are able to change this. To play Fortnite on Switch, please create a new account.
Take a moment to enjoy the absolute absurdity of the situation here.
Sony has locked player accounts that they do not own, nor have any direct affiliation with, to their platform, without even providing any warning, much less any way to unlock the account.
This shouldn’t be legal, and moreover, this shouldn’t be possible. My only guess is that Epic Games must have made a serious mistake when reading the legal material they signed when having their game put on Sony’s platform, because Sony wouldn’t be able to do this on their own. This is something Epic Games must have had to implement due to Sony’s demand. You can tell from this very long-winded and matter-of-fact message that they know people won’t be happy about this, and more importantly, that they wish they could change the situation.
This very ransomware-esque behavior feels more appropriate for a mafia or something. It’s completely unbelievable that Sony even considered trying this, particularly after the recently growing push-back from consumers about scummy practices which pale in comparison to this. Understandably, there is a huge outrage, to which Sony’s only response is something which doesn’t even deserve the menial title of platitude:
We’re always open to hearing what the PlayStation community is interested in to enhance their gaming experience.
With … more than 80 million monthly active users on PlayStation Network, we’ve built a huge community of gamers who can play together on Fortnite and all online titles.
We also offer Fortnite cross-play support with PC, Mac, iOS, and Android devices, expanding the opportunity for Fortnite fans on PS4 to play with even more gamers on other platforms.
We have nothing further to add beyond this at this point.
This is little more than a fancy way of saying ‘Deal with it’, and has only served to put more fuel on the fire. As a reminder; Fortnite is currently the single most popular online multiplayer videogame in existence, and Sony is, without warning, taking hostage player accounts which contain items gained through hundreds of hours of gameplay and/or purchased with real money. Most players couldn’t have even dreamed this could happen, but it’s a reality which millions of fans now face.
Hopefully Sony will back down, or – perhaps even better – Fortnite will be pulled entirely from the platform. They need to learn that this is unacceptable, market control or not, and the deeper we can make the cut, the harder it will be for them to forget. However this turns out, we can expect quite a show.
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