The gaming industry is currently at a crossroads when it comes to gamer choice. For many years, there were no alternative options. But the creation of Web3 technology has opened up a new world. The past few weeks have highlighted the major disconnect between the legacy platforms and the gamers and developers that have historically been reliant on them.
After four exhausting years of desktop gamers googling “Ghost of Tsushima PC”, the wait was finally over. Ghost of Tsushima was finally released on Steam, a continued push from Sony to bring their biggest titles over to PC gamers. Developed by Sucker Punch Productions and first released on PlayStation in 2020, Ghost of Tsushima became a phenomenon, breaking records as one of Sony's fastest-selling games ever. The open-world action adventure game centered around Jin Sakai, a Samurai on a quest to protect Tsushima Island from Mongol invaders. The game became a certified hit and is currently being developed into a feature film. Its long awaited debut on Steam should have been a glorious one. Except it wasn’t.
Negative reviews infiltrated the Steam store, nothing to do with the game itself. The rage centered around Sony’s policy: in order to play the full game with multiplayer mode, Sony required players to link a PlayStation account… even if players didn’t have a PlayStation console. And not to mention, the creation of a PlayStation account is impossible in 177 countries. Steam has been autorefunding every purchase, leaving hundreds of thousands of players throughout the world devastated and prohibited from playing a game due to arbitrary corporate rules. “We're PC players for a reason, we don't need a PSN account” said one gamer. “I won't give it a positive review until Sony does something for those 180 countries” said another.
The frustration has been boiling. Prior to this, Sony announced that all Helldivers 2 PC players would be required to link their PlayStation and Steam accounts in order to “protect players” and “[Uphold] the values of safety and security.” A curious demand by a corporate behemoth, unleashed onto the massive Helldiver2 community. We’re talking about a community full of soldiers fighting for intergalactic freedom. Obviously that wasn’t about to happen.
Of course, their fanbase objected. Others faced the geographical hurdle of living in a region where it’s impossible to link their Steam account to Sony. Rumors started circulating that Playstation was trying to inflate numbers and trying to collect data from Steam players. Players worldwide who invested their time and money into the franchise would suddenly lose access because of a corporate-level policy change. The outcry began, and Sony doubled down, pulling the game from those regions entirely. Players bombarded the game with negative reviews. More articles flooded the internet. And, Sony reversed course.
Stellar Blade (another Sony game) was also in the news for the alleged censorship of a previously released “Uncensored” game. The RPG’s hero, Eve, is on a mission to save all of humanity from the Naytiba. But the original version advertised is different from the current version. Some players believe that Sony forced developers to modify the game to modify in-game assets after players purchased the game.
“What people don’t understand is that it’s not about the suits themselves, it’s about the censorship. Stellar Blade was supposed to make a point, and it has failed miserably at it” said one X user. Since then, Shift Up, the developer of the game, has come out denying the accusations, stating, “This is the final product that we want to show as the intended result." Despite this clarification, not everyone is buying it – further illuminating the growing distrust and belief that big platforms have total influence over everything: from country-wide games ban down to the lace on Eve’s tights.
And gamers aren’t the only victim here. Their influence extends to game studios, where one internal memo has the power to wipe out entire teams. We watched as Microsoft’s Xbox announced the closing of three studios: Arkane Austin (Redfall) Tango Gameworks (Hi-Fi Rush) and Alpha Dog Games (Mighty Doom). The next day, the head of Xbox Game Studios held a town hall declaring, “We need smaller games that give us prestige and awards.” Headlines called out the absurdity of the situation: “Microsoft says it needs games like Hi-Fi Rush the day after killing its studio” wrote The Verge.
We’ve seen time and time again that the entire gaming industry is beholden to these major platforms who care about one thing: money. The future of gaming hangs by a delicate thread that a handful of multi-billion dollar companies have total control of.
The gaming industry is long overdue for a shift. And that’s why we built HyperPlay.
We’re tired of this narrative, tired of seeing players taken advantage of and good developers fired for the sake of a balance sheet. The future of gaming empowers the community. It doesn’t create roadblocks for the sake of a corporate agenda.
So, we reinvented what a game platform from the future should look like. Sure, we have Web3 games on our platform, but people need freedom to make their own choices. So, with that in mind, we integrated Epic’s entire game store. And Gog’s entire game store. And we didn’t stop there. You can access our entire catalog on Windows, MacOs, Linux, and even SteamDeck. Oh, and our application to allow you to play your Windows games on MacOS. And for web3 gamers: HyperPlay allows players to carry their MetaMask or WalletConnect wallet overlaid on top of every desktop game.
Gaming is the ultimate connector – bringing people together all around the world. And that fun shouldn’t be at the whims of a few corporations who don’t care about you. We can do better.
Join us.
