To make something successful it’s going to cost money… and a lot of it. Money talks but it gets you to where you need to be, especially in a tough industry like the video game one. When it comes to the various subscription services that have been popping up over the years from several companies, there has always been a competition to get the best games available for them. Speaking of these subscription services, it has been reported that Microsoft and Sony have paid a small fortune to help their services thrive, and that includes spending millions of dollars making sure the Ark series is available on both platforms.
What Microsoft and Sony are paying for is license fees so that the series can be included on PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass, and the finalization of the payment was confirmed last month in an SEC filing by Snail Games and Studio Wildcard, the developer and publisher of the series. This time last year, Snail Games entered an agreement with Sony to make Ark Survival Evolved available for PlayStation 4 as one of the many selections you could choose in the March rollout of games for PlayStation Plus, for the lofty sum of $3.5 million.
The company is already known for its links with Microsoft, with the two companies already agreeing to a three-year licensing contract for the Xbox Game Pass. The schedule was supposed to run out in 2021, but it was successfully extended once again. Back in 2020, it was also confirmed that Microsoft had also agreed to make sure that the upcoming Ark 2 starring Vin Diesel would be an Xbox exclusive as well, which is still set to be the case.
According to Snail Game’s SEC filing, the agreement was changed in June 2020 to extend the Ark 1 Game Pass, with it coming into effect on January 1, 2022. It was also confirmed that Ark 2 would be put on Game Pass for three years as well, with the game set to be released sometime next year.
Snail Games explained, “the company recognized $2.5 million in revenue related to Ark 1 perpetual license for the six months ended June 30, 2022, and deferred $2.3 million related to Ark 2 that is included in the long-term portion of deferred revenue.” Those are some big numbers being agreed on, but it shows the importance of the subscription services at the moment that fees like this are being agreed upon.
It’s quite common knowledge that big companies like Sony and Microsoft like to keep things close to their chests, and especially don’t like to share the specific amounts of money that they pay to secure games, so it makes a nice change to see the figures out in the open for once.
