Based on their responses, it appears that Sony is already taking some actions to improve its communication and partnerships with its smaller publishing partners. Akupara Games CEO David Logan says that both Akupara’s account manager and head of PlayStation creators Greg Rice reached out to his company personally following the publication of our original article.
“They were obviously crushed at the news, and it was clear that the account managers at Sony had been working hard for a long time to push through a lot of the ideas the indie developers flagged in our initial discussions,” he says. “After the articles, that seemed to give a huge boost to initiatives they had already been planning, because rapidly after Sony started rolling out a bunch of big changes.”
What were those big changes? Logan, who says he’s “always had a solid communication frequency” with Akupara’s account manager, tells me that his issues with Sony support response times have drastically improved, for one. While previously he had complained of having a support ticket open for nine months, he says now response times are down to an average of about five days, with most responses coming within 24 to 48 hours. Meanwhile, others we spoke to who had previously struggled with Sony’s communication, like Whitethorn Digital CEO Matthew White, says that the issue has improved across the board.