Oddworld: Soulstorm being a free game on PlayStation Plus was "devastating" for sales according to its creator.
Lorne Lanning, founder of Oddworld Inhabitants, said the game was downloaded close to four million times through PS Plus, significantly more than the studio's expectations of 50 to 100,000.
Speaking on the Xbox Expansion Pass podcast, spotted by Video Games Chronicle, Lanning said there was nothing malicious about the deal on Sony's end but circumstances made it "a double-edged sword".
Soulstorm was free to download in April 2021, the same month it launched, and while Sony has never made clear how it comes to this agreement with developers, it's understood that a one-off payment is made.
Lanning explained that Oddworld Inhabitants and its partner developers were already struggling when they were approached by Sony. "We were hitting a number of legacy, technical, debt issues, and talent issues" he said.
The developer needed more money to finish the game and didn't expect launch sales on PlayStation 5 to earn more than what Sony offered, because in January, when the game was due to launch, there was still a severe shortage of consoles.
"We were supposed to deliver in January. So at that time there wasn't going to be any game machines. We were like, 'how many could we possibly sell?'," Lanning continued. "We needed the money to complete the project and we thought we did a pretty good deal. In January there's no way we'll sell more than this."
The COVID-19 pandemic pushed Soulstorm back three months, however, and by this point more PS5s were in the wild. Therefore, despite Sony essentially funding the final portion of development, Lanning said the four million downloads were "devastating".
“Because it slipped to April, we had the highest downloaded game on PS5 and it was, I think, approaching… close to four million units or something like that for free because they were all subscriptions," he said. "So for us, it was devastating”.
Of course, there's no evidence to suggest that Oddworld Inhabitants actually lost out on potentially millions of sales. A benefit of PS Plus games is being able to try out games you wouldn't normally consider buying yourself, so many of Soulstorm's downloads may not have necessarily translated into sales.
That's not to say all studios consider PS Plus a problem for their eventual sales, as the developers of games like Rocket League and Fall Guys have commented on the importance of the service for establishing their games.
In our 7/10 review, IGN said: "Oddworld: Soulstorm is an excellent remake of a delightfully weird '90s platformer with tons of charm, challenge... and annoying bugs."