It recently came to light that a pitch for a Days Gone sequel by developer SIE Bend Studio was turned down by Sony, and since then, reports and comments from the game’s own developers have made it clear that the game’s lukewarm critical reception upon launch was one of the primary reasons for sequel not being greenlit. That said, John Garvin, creative director of Days Gone – who left Bend Studio shortly after the game came out – has strong opinions in terms of sales as well.
Speaking to God of War and Twisted Metal creator David Jaffe in a recent interview, Garvin suggested that engagement with a game following discounted purchases or downloads via free periods or giveaways are not the same as buying a game at full price, and that the lack of support for the game and the developers may have been partially responsible for Days Gone 2 not being given the go ahead by Sony.
“If you love a game, buy it at ****ing full price,” Garvin said (via VGC). “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen gamers say ‘yeah, I got that on sale, I got it through PS Plus, whatever.'”
“Don’t complain if a game doesn’t get a sequel if it wasn’t supported at launch,” he added. “It’s like, God of War got whatever number millions of sales at launch and, you know, Days Gone didn’t. [I’m] just speaking for me personally as a developer, I don’t work for Sony, I don’t know what the numbers are.
“I can tell you that when we were doing [Syphon Filter] Dark Mirror [on PSP], we got so ****ed on Dark Mirror because piracy was a thing and Sony wasn’t really caught up on what piracy was doing to sales. And we would show them torrents, a torrent site had 200,000 copies of Dark Mirror being downloaded. If I remember it right, the numbers could be wrong, but regardless, I was pissed about it then, I was like ‘this is money out of my pocket’.
“So I think the uptick in engagement with the game is not as important as, did you buy the game at full price? Because if you did, then that’s supporting the developers directly.”
Days Gone is available on PS4, and launches for PC on May 18.