Seraphim Æ: Arcade Edition for Vita, or How Sony Kills Developers

It’s pretty incredible how one can be such a huge fan of a particular thing, while pretty much hating the company who made it. I don’t quite hate Sony, but to be honest, the way they treated the Vita pales in comparison to the way they are treating developers. The Vita is their product after all, so they can set it on fire if they so choose. But they have no right to, on a whim, jeopardize the livelihood of the developers who chose to put games out on their systems. And that is what is happening with Seraphim Æ: Arcade Edition and their developers, Studio Ravenheart.

A HISTORY OF SIMILAR BEHAVIOR

So, this isn’t the first time Sony is shafting developers… or pretty much everyone in the Vita community. Long are the days we experienced in 2014 and 2015, where people could depend on Sony to at least be bothered to maintain the store page up reliably. Sony announced they were closing the Vita store… then they weren’t. They put first-party game servers off-line, and then they put them back up again. Even Vita-centric publications are a thing of the past. We’re currently the only Vita-centric publication regularly putting content out, and it’s a matter of barely breaking even for us most of the time. We need to do anything we can to continue supporting the Vita community, the developers putting games out on the Vita still, and ourselves. Anything from investing in crypto, to sponsorships, and having a grand old time on the betting apps listed here. But a lot of this is self-serving. This isn’t helping Sony directly.

However, game developers putting software on their platform does help Sony. It helps them financially, of course, as a cut of every sale goes to them. But it also helps perpetuate their brand in consumers’ lives. How are they not realizing this? Why are they constantly trying to boycott people who want to do good stuff for them?

SERAPHIM IS THE LATEST VICTIM

If you don’t know what I’m on about, let me pull up this Twitter thread by developer Studio Ravenheart. In it, the developers chronicle their months-long process of porting their game Seraphim Æ: Arcade Edition to the Playstation Vita, only to have a Sony technicality invalidate their submission process.

If you continue reading that thread, it’s absolutely heartbreaking. They have been working on this for literal months, and now not only can they not fulfill their promise to their fans, but they ended up with months of work down the drain. They cannot sell their game, and therefore, they cannot recoup their time investment. Can you imagine going to work for 5 or 6 months and then suddenly realizing you’re not getting paid for any of it?

I’m honestly at a loss. I don’t know what we can do to help Studio Ravenheart at this point, other than raising awareness for their issue in hopes that this might help get Sony off their bums to fix it.

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About Marcos Codas 384 Articles
Lover of portable gaming and horror cinema. Indie filmmaker and game developer. Multimedia producer. Born in Paraguay, raised in Canada. Huge fan of "The Blair Witch Project", and "Sonic 3D Blast". Deputy head at Vita Player and its parent organization, Infinite Frontiers. Like what I do? Donate a coffee: https://www.paypal.me/marcoscodas