Sony put the kibosh on cross-console play, says Ark: Survival Evolved dev

If you're a developer hoping to someday release a game with cross-console online play, things still aren't looking good on the PlayStation 4 front.

As with Minecraft and Rocket League, it seems that Sony won’t allow Ark: Survival Evolved to open up and feature cross-platform play between the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. 

Taking to Twitter ahead of the early access game’s full August 29 release, Wildcard co-founder Jeremy Stieglitz noted that the development team has cross-play between PlayStation 4 and Xbox One systems working internally, but that Sony “won’t allow it” in the public release of the game. 

The exchange, first picked up by Eurogamer, is in line with similar policies that struck down other potentially cross-platform multiplayer games earlier this year. While the developers themselves are often for breaking down online barriers, Sony’s Jim Ryan has previously explained the practice would (in the case of Minecraft) violate the moral “contract” formed between the console-maker and its players. 

"Minecraft - the demographic playing that, you know as well as I do, it's all ages but it's also very young," Ryan told Eurogamer this past June. "We have a contract with the people who go online with us, that we look after them and they are within the PlayStation curated universe. Exposing what in many cases are children to external influences we have no ability to manage or look after, it's something we have to think about very carefully."