Sony promises to help developers hit by PSN outage

Sony's PlayStation Network problems are hitting developers in the pocketbook, and the company is now promising to make it up to them with some form of compensation. IGN reports that Sony has committed extra promotion to at least one studio.

"Sony will be helping us retain key focus [PSN store promotion] for a few extra weeks as they understand how something like this can affect a small dev studio like ours," said Paddy Murphy, CEO of Open Emotion. The studio was set to launch Mad Blocker Alpha last week. "As it's our first week in the US, I'm sure it will affect sales, but we have to understand that Sony wouldn't take down the entire PSN on a whim. As long as they can give us some marketing assistance when the PSN is back up, we are sure we will be able to recoup our potential losses."

Open Emotion isn't the only studio feeling the pinch. "PSN being out definitely affects our bottom line," said Dylan Cuthbert of Q-Games to Industry Gamers. "But as long as the people who were going to be playing Shooter 2 and other PixelJunk titles will get right back in there playing them when it comes back up we'll be happy and hopefully income won't be dented too much."

Apparently, despite its close relationship with Sony, Q-Games hasn't been told much more than the rest of us. "Sony has contacted us to let us know they are working as hard as they can 24 hours a day to fully correct and secure the breach," he said. "Apart from that we don't know any other information. Fingers crossed they'll get it up and running very soon."

Just how soon is becoming increasingly important, as even more developers could be put out if service isn't restored. Tuesdays mark the PlayStation Store updates in North America, so unless a fix is in place in the next several hours, Sony will have a backlog of two weeks worth of inconvenienced developers to mollify.