Oddworld creator says PS Plus was ‘devastating’ to Soulstorm sales

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Oddworld: Soulstorm was an early success on the PlayStation 5. That was due in part to Sony’s deal that gave the game to PlayStation Plus subscribers on PS5 at no additional cost. But it was likely also because new PS5 owners were ravenous for new content in April 2021. But while that deal enabled developer Oddworld Inhabitants to finish the game with some guaranteed money, studio founder Lorne Lanning told Xbox Expansion Podcast host Luke Lohr that he also sees some downsides.

“It’s kind of a double-edged sword. [With Oddworld: Soulstorm] we — out of necessity to get the project done, and we were hitting a number of late technical debt issues and talent issues. The games industry is emerging fast. Huge companies are [paying developers] fortunes. So it’s harder to retain and harder to contract companies. And Sony was like, ‘hey, why don’t we do a deal.’ And the way we were working out the intention of doing the deal was that we would be free for a month on [PlayStation Plus].”

But Lanning and his team were expecting to launch Soulstorm in January of 2021. By that time, they didn’t expect many people to have PlayStation 5s. And the way that the Sony deal worked is that players would only get the PS5 version of the game at no additional cost through PS Plus. So Lanning was expecting around 10% to 20% of a few million new PS5 owners to get Soulstorm through their Sony subscription. The calculus of that deal changed quickly, though.

“Covid just completely kicked us in the gut,” said Lanning. “Every studio we were working with is going into lockdown, and everyone’s working from home. So no one could hand the