Sony defends PlanetSide 2's “pop-up” offers

PlanetSide 2 players recently noticed a lot of “pop-up” notifications while playing the game, which offered them to buy its premium membership.

The notifications appeared in the lower right corner of the screen. Players complained that they were getting them several times an hour, and that it was easy to accept them by mistake by pushing the wrong key.

In a post to PlanetSide 2’s forums, the game’s creative director Matthew Higby explained that players were getting far more of these notifications because of two special offers that ran simultaneously and a server issue that reset who should receive notifications. Higby made clear that players will not get nearly as many notifications normally, and that SOE disabled the system while it adjusts it “in order to reduce impact and prevent distraction from gameplay as much as possible.”

However, Higby explained these notification will continue to appear (less often), and that increasing awareness of membership and marketplace offerings is better than other ways to support PlanetSide 2.

“As a free-to-play game, our servers are kept running by the support of a relatively small percentage of the player-base, and initiatives like this are critical to us being able to grow the percentage of players who are helping support the game,” he said. “The alternatives are to either cut back on the development resources, or add more and more items for our existing supporters to purchase to make up the difference.”

For more on PlanetSide 2, check out our previous coverage.