Sony Entertainment Online president John Smedley isn’t happy with the remarks some users have accused the company of becoming, most notably “money grubbing jerks.” This partly came about after the recent news that SOE was considering changing their subscription model to one where users would pay $14.99/month and receive access to all SOE titles on the PC. This subsequently received some backlash onto Planetside 2’s subreddit, which Smedley addressed in a subsequent post on the subreddit.
According to Smedley, “I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that’s just not how we think. Most people I know in the games business are in it because there is literally nothing else they want to do ever. From the time I was in high school I knew that’s what I wanted to do. The same is true for a lot of people here at SOE and around the industry.”
He continued by saying, “Obviously one of our goals as a corporation is most certainly profit. And yes, when you guys buy our stuff it makes us happy. But money has nothing to do with why it makes us happy. We’re happy because you guys bought something we (or one of our other players made).
I believe a lot of this rhetoric is the result of us not being transparent enough, so we’re going to change that. I want us to start explaining the “why” in the decisions we make.. [sic] particularly the financial ones. The changes we originally proposed would not have made us more money than the previous plan. Even if some people cancelled, though to be honest we thought our plan was pretty darn awesome and you would love it.”
He finished by saying, “We believe if we make great games, we’ll make money.”
- This article was updated on March 8th, 2018
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