Sony is reportedly requiring developers to include time-limited game trials for any PS Plus Premium games that are priced at $34 or more. This new policy has ostensibly been enacted in order to ensure value for the upcoming PS Plus Premium subscription service that has been touted by Sony as the only tier (the other tiers being Essential and Extra) to explicitly include time-limited game trials so that customers can try select games.
What do the PS Plus Premium game trials entail?
According to a report by Game Developer, this mandate for time-limited game trials was apparently sent to developers through Sony’s developer portal. Luckily for some of them, this new requirement doesn’t seem to be retroactive and PlayStation VR games have been excluded from the new policy. However, developers who have future releases slated for the latest PlayStation consoles will likely need to set aside time and money to ensure that they have a time-limited game trial that complies with the new mandate.
As to the specific requirements for these game trials for the PS Plus Premium tier, they reportedly need to be at least two hours long in length, must be available within three months after a game is launched on the PlayStation Store, and available to PS Plus Premium members for at least 12 months. Developers may, with Sony’s approval, release custom game demos instead of game trials, and are allowed to have free weekends, game trials, and custom demos so long as all PlayStation owners have access to them.
It’s unclear whether developers will be compensated in any way for this extra work, and it may lead some to consider a price point below the $34 threshold for their game to avoid the need for making the trial. Games that are shorter in length and made by a smaller studio will likely be impacted more by this mandate compared to large AAA studios with ample resources.
PS Plus Premium members will of course generally benefit from this rumored new policy. That said, this does brush up against the principle that all demos should be free, including game trials which are technically not the same as traditional demos but are still used by consumers to try out a game before deciding to purchase it. The fact that these time-limited trials are locked behind the PS Plus Premium paywall still rubs some consumers the wrong way.
In other news, Insomniac’s PS5 games have already received patches with VRR support, and Sony has apparently formed a new team dedicated to game preservation.
