The saga surrounding the drama Sony created with locking out Fortnite (Free) crossplay is slowly going from “like the Lord of the Rings movies" to “like the extended edition of Lord of the Rings." The supreme cliffsnotes effectively amounts to Fortnite was released on the Nintendo Switch during E3, and people quickly discovered that if you’ve ever played Fortnite on a PS4 your Epic account was permanently locked and could never be used on the Switch. The internet exploded, as any way you slice this it’s certified B.S., and of course, Sony being Sony basically responded, “Deal with it." Not long after, an ex-Sony exec offered the obvious motivation behind these decisions: Money. In the time since then, anger has still been brewing, although it seems most people have come to grips with the fact that this is just Sony being Sony and nothing is going to change… Until this morning.
Per a report from Eurogamer out of Gamelab in Spain, Shawn Layden, president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America, had this to say about the crossplay drama:
“We’re hearing it. We’re looking at a lot of the possibilities. You can imagine that the circumstances around that affect a lot more than just one game. I’m confident we’ll get to a solution which will be understood and accepted by our gaming community, while at the same time supporting our business."
It’s an interesting situation, as Sony definitely cannot just allow crossplay for one game without causing heaps of drama as Sony has blocked this sort of crossplay for everyone. If they reverse course because of Fortnite, they’re going to have loads of unhappy developers looking for the same treatment. I personally think the most reasonable outcome here is that Sony creates some sort of mechanism for you to have a one-time unlock of your Epic account so if you inadvertently tied it to your PS4, you can undo that to play freely on the Switch, Xbox, PC, and all other platforms.
…But, I guess we’ll see what happens on the next episode of As the Fortnite World Turns.
[via Eurogamer]
