PlanetSide 2 has only recently become profitable for SOE

Despite being around for over two years on PC, PlanetSide 2 has only recently become profitable, according to Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley.

Taking to the PlanetSide Reddit in response to a quiet nerf on the drop of free implants and downwardly adjusted power of tier 1 through 3 implants (in an effort to push sales for the new tier 4 implants), Smedley assured players that it wasn't a mere money grab. For those unfamiliar, implants offer players temporary buffs or abilities for characters and require an energy cost to activate.

According to Smedley, the drop rate change was just the first step "in a longer plan to balance the cert economy better so we can make the money we actually had planned on."

"Planetside 2 only recently has turned profitable on an operating basis," Smedley said. "When I say recently, I'm talking about a few months here. Anyone that thinks we're swimming in cash is plain wrong. Don't get me wrong, the plan for any game is to make money.. and we believe in the long term future of the game.. which is why you're seeing the PS4 version going into beta very soon (we'll officially announce it in the next couple of days)."

Smedley went on to say that SOE is in the online game business with PlanetSide 2 for the long term, and that their plan has always been to offer "ALMOST anything that you can buy with Station Cash to be purchased with Certs." As a result of an imbalanced system, Smedley explained that the majority of players have "a ton" of certs. "In every case we erred on the side of giving away too many or making things cost too little so we don't make you grind too hard," he said.

"When I said this change isn't a money grab I was telling the truth," he continued. "It's making us about $200 extra a day TOTAL. Did we think it would make an extra $20k a day and we were just wrong? No. What we thought is we need to rebalance the cert economy so you have to make logical choices about what and when to spend money on. Right now, for the vast majority of things you don't even need to think about it."

Although the changes to the implants were included int he patch notes, Smedley acknowledged that SOE needs to do a better job sharing that information with the players.

"I feel like we've done our best to be transparent when we're doing things to make more money. I think we need to do a better job at it though and we will. I don't see a lot of other companies talking so openly about monetization… but we need to do better," Smedley concluded.

In case you missed it, the full patch notes for the December update (the one that brought the implant changes) can be found here. Looking ahead, SOE plans to launch a closed beta for PlanetSide 2 on PS4 this month. A more formal announcement is coming soon.