Oddworld: Soulstorm director claims that the game’s PlayStation Plus deal did not financially turn out in the studio’s favor

Services like PlayStation Plus, Xbox Live Gold, and Xbox Game Pass normally give devs financial support when it comes to the deals the companies make, but it appears that is not always the case. Oddworld: Soulstorm director Lorne Lanning shared his studio’s 2021 experience with PlayStation Plus back on the Xbox Expansion Pass podcast.

According to Lanning, his studio Oddworld Inhabitants made a deal with PlayStation to be one of the PlayStation Plus titles for January 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Lanning and the team decided to delay Oddworld: Soulstorm until April when the deal would take place. A huge factor that went into making the deal initially was the lack of people who could get access to a PS5. Pushing the game three months back was “devastating” for the studio.

While Lanning did not reveal the amount of money that PlayStation gave Oddworld Inhabitants, he did say that his studio was expecting sales of Oddworld Soulstorm to be between 50,000 to 100,000 — which was less than what the studio’s deal ended up being.

When Oddworld released in April, it became the most downloaded game on the PlayStation 5 with almost 4 million copies being sold through the service — at that point, so many more people were able to obtain a PlayStation 5. Oddworld: Soulstorm was eventually released on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC via the Epic Game Store.