Oddworld: Soulstorm lost millions of dollars thanks to PS Plus

The developers of a game that was temporarily offered for free speaks out on the mountains of money that was lost in the process.

The Oddworld series, comprising of 8 games since 1997, is considered rather odd.

The premise largely follows Abe, an alien slave, as he undertakes a quest to defends his planetary homeland Oddworld's ecosystem from industrial slavers.
The series is critically acclaimed, with over 100 industry awards and over 2 million digital copies sold in the franchise.

Due to internal issues with the series' developer combined with the shortage of PlayStation 5s, the developer decided to enter into an one-off agreement with Sony where they would earn a one-time payment in exchange for the game being free for a month exclusively for PlayStation Plus subscribers.
The game ended up being downloaded freely 4 million times, greatly exceeded the developer's expectations of 100,000 and indicating they may have been much better off selling units normally.

Because consoles usually sell as a loss, premium subscriptions that cost a monthly fee is a key avenue to recoup initial losses.
By offering newer games for subscribers such as Oddworld: Soulstorm, PlayStation hopes to retain and attract new subscriptions.

Free games that are offered from these subscriptions are usually older or smaller games who want to get discovered.

These developers will enter into a contract with PlayStation, subsequently negotiating a one-time payment that will hopefully cover the amount of times their game is downloaded for free.
Because the developer of Oddworld: Soulstorm severely discounted the amount of times their game was downloaded, they lost out on a lot of dollars.

Thank you so much for reading! Please consider subscribing if you enjoy stories like this delivered directly to you every Tuesday and Friday morning!

Any and all feedback is valid and welcome.