Sony is currently sitting on top of a variety of major IPs, and the company isn't hesitating to make the most of this position. In the past, this mainstream success has come at the cost of alienating indie developers, many of whom have complained about Sony's treatment of them. Recently, Sony appears to be trying to repair these damaged relationships.
Back in July, a report explored the ways Sony was making life hard for indie developers--a list that included providing developers with overly complex tools and forms, unclear processes, and very poor lines of communication. Furthermore, the report claimed that Sony was providing so little advertising effort that the indie developer who published it could no longer see a reason to work with Sony at all.
More recently, a document entitled “2021 Global Partner Survey Results” has been sent out to several of Sony’s partner publishers and developers as a follow-up to a survey that had been conducted previously. This short document doesn't directly mention the complaints from the summer, but it does identify three target areas for improvement based on survey results--areas that directly correspond to the issues brought up by indie developers over social media and in articles. Combined with the care Sony has taken with marketing Tchia and Kena: Bridge of Spirits, this suggests that change is coming.
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In the document, Sony pledges to reduce complexity for indie developers through a number of ways, including improving communication channels, giving enough detail for partners to make decisions, and clarifying who publishers should take concerns to. The company also pledges to give all active publishing and developing partners access to better game sales, engagement, and promotion analytics on top of better discoverability. With luck, this will address the issue of smaller indie games not selling on PS4. Finally, Sony claims that it will make modernizing its toolset and improving its ticketing systems, documentation, and customer service efforts for partner issues a priority goal.
Reportedly, Sony is already working to improve its communication and partnerships with some of its smaller publishing partners. Not only did the Sony State of Play branding give equal attention to indie games this year, but Akupara Games CEO David Logan also says that Akupara’s account manager and head of PlayStation creators Greg Rice reached out to him personally. Afterward, David Logan stated that his issues with Sony's previously-sluggish response times had drastically reduced. Several other indie creators agreed that Sony now seemed to be taking their concerns more seriously.
Source: IGN