Developers Can Disable PS4 Share Button

One of the biggest features Sony has talked about in the past few months has been the PlayStation 4’s share button. It allows for the near-instant sharing of videos, content and gameplay with other gamers around the world. However not every title may come equipped ready to share, as we now know that developers can turn it off and on at will.

This came about in an interview with 4Gamer, where President of Sony Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida said that: “There will be parts of a game that the maker does not want people to be able to see,” he said. “For example, on Vita, developers can in certain scenes disable the feature that lets users take a screenshot, and [the Share function] will have a similar mechanism.

“The creator may not want to make video of the final boss sharable, for instance.”

I’m all for giving developers full creative control over their art form. They shouldn’t be limited or hindered by any piece of hardware when crafting games, but this is an odd one. They can halt Boss video sharing all they want, but people can already record games by ripping straight from the video stream, so how does this stop them doing that? If anything people will simply see it as a challenge.

Also, this could hamper the share feature’s uptake with professional streamers. If you’re a Let’s Play streamer, then why would you use the share button when it could cut out at any moment?

What do you guys think of this news?