These are not nice sums.
Games do not appear on Playstation Plus and Game Pass for no reason. Developers lose revenue when their games can be downloaded for free from subscription services, and thus are obviously compensated by the platform owners. How much are these compensations we rarely find out, but sometimes we take a rare look behind the scenes.
This time it’s through a public one document by Snail Games – the owner of Ark– developer Studio Wildcard – gossiping about how much both Playstation and Xbox had to pay to include the game in their services. It appeared as a Playstation Plus game from March and five weeks later, for which they had to pay 3.5 million dollars (equivalent to 39.8 million crowns).
Xbox didn’t want to be worse, and according to the document, Snail Games received $ 2.5 million (equivalent to 28.4 million Swedish kronor) for having the game on the service during the first half of 2022. Additionally, Xbox paid them. $ 2.3 million (equivalent to SEK 26 million) for the purpose of Ark 2 will arrive on Game Pass when it is released in 2023. The document also reveals that the game will remain on Game Pass for three years.
