Gameloft has finally confirmed what many fans may have already suspected: Sony blocked cross-save for Disney Dreamlight Valley.
As reported by Comic Book, the official Disney Dreamlight Valley Twitter account shared this response to a fan asking about this very issue:
“Unfortunately, due to platform restrictions, PlayStation doesn’t support cross-platform play.
Therefore, it won’t be possible to synchronize your progress from other platforms/consoles with your PlayStation account progress.”
For fans who may not be aware, Sony has a very clear track record of banning cross-save and cross-progression between their PlayStation consoles, and other platforms, even if said other platforms are PC or mobile.
In 2019, following their acquisition of Bungie, Sony made the call to block the ability to transfer your Destiny 2 character from PlayStation to Xbox.
Most recently, Sony blocked cross save to come to Monster Hunter Rise. In fact, they did not even approve for cross progression from PlayStation 4 to PlayStation 5 and vice versa, forcing PlayStation owners to start over.
Other games they have blocked cross-save and cross-progression on include Microsoft’s Minecraft, Rocket League, and most pertinently, Fortnite.
In the course of the Epic vs Apple case, Epic had revealed that Sony blocked cross-progression for Fortnite on PlayStation. Sony’s senior director of developer relations sent this message to Epic, in response to Epic’s pitch to make this a marketing slam dunk for PlayStation:
“cross-platform play is not a slam dunk no matter the size of the title. As you know, many companies are exploring this idea and not a single one can explain how cross-console play improves the PlayStation business.”
Sony eventually came up with a solution to Epic’s insistence for cross progression that satisfied them; compensation. Sony would track which PlayStation players would play Fortnite to other platforms, such as iPhone, and demand Epic pay them what hypothetical revenue they had lost as a result.
Of course, ultimately Sony took a minority shareholder stake in Fortnite owner Epic Games, making the revenue share issue academic.
But given Sony’s past behavior, that does actively harm their loyal PlayStation fanbase, we should not be surprised that they had not actually changed their stand on the issue. We can, then, expect Sony to continue with this practice on future multiplatform games that would otherwise be able to offer cross save and cross progression across multiple platforms.
Disney Dreamlight Valley does remain on Early Access for now, so we don’t know if it will actually last and be successful enough for this situation to become a significant competition concern. But we can say that PlayStation players already have a lesser experience as a result.
