In-Game Store and Cross-Progression

Best Practices

Header and Prompt Language

In Paladins, the header on the crystal purchasing popup page says “Purchase Crystals” on most platforms, but is overridden on Switch to say “Crystals Purchase”. Rogue Company worked around this entirely by just having the section of the store labeled “Rogue Bucks” without any direct language regarding purchasing.

Even when using premium in-game currency, one must be careful about the prompts. For example, in Rogue Company, when prompting players to purchase the Battle Pass, it says “Unlock Premium” rather than “Buy Premium” or “Purchase Premium”, because Nintendo seems to believe that “Unlock” is a softer term than “Buy” or ”Purchase”. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Relevant Cert Requirements: Switch Prompting for Purchases

Price Display

Rather than attempt to format (beautify) price displays, it is recommended that we display the price exactly as is presented. For instance, do not attempt to use the numeric value and append the currency code. This has led to price display inconsistencies due to rounding errors. It is also important that the font be capable of displaying currency symbols for all regions where the product is priced.

Relevant Cert Requirements: Switch Price Display

Long Description

Hi-Rez’s version of UE4 concatenates the TaxMessage onto the offer’s LongDescription which can then just be displayed in its entirety on the final purchase page.

The LongDescription returned for PlayStation will include the (up to) 8000 character message. To accommodate the character requirements, it is permissible (and probably desirable) for this message to be displayed in a scroll box.

Relevant Cert Requirements: PlayStation Long Description, Switch VAT and Taxes Included

Tax Message

Also, we show the TaxMessage separately in the main Store page, because we show prices on that main screen. One work around that can be used is to not show the price on a panel, such as Rogue Company’s offering in their Rogues tab which says “View Offer” that takes players to the purchase screen which displays the full LongDescription.

Relevant Cert Requirements: Switch VAT and Taxes Included

Displaying the PlayStation Store Banner Overlay

When designing your store, make sure to allocate enough space for the PlayStation Store overlay to display without occluding any important information. This can be anchored in one of four corners (NE, SE, NW, SW).

Relevant Cert Requirements: Show PlayStation Store Overlay

Vouchers

DLC purchases eligible for cross-progression should be tied to a consumable voucher that the player must redeem to gain access to their goods. After purchase, and during login, we should check for any unredeemed vouchers in the player’s inventory. If an unredeemed voucher is detected in the player’s inventory, they should be prompted to go through the voucher redemption flow. This is a compulsory flow, where players must redeem all vouchers in their inventory, and are then presented with their goods. This flow should also support the redemption of multiple vouchers simultaneously.

Relevant Cert Requirements: PlayStation Cross-progression

Premium In-Game Currency

When displaying the available premium in-game currency (Gems, Crystals, Crowns, Rogue Bucks, etc.) it should be the summation of the earned unrestricted currency (“sweat” and “free” currency earned from things like Daily Login rewards) and any restricted currency that’s available for the current platform. See Portal Use Rulesets.

Relevant Cert Requirements: PlayStation Cross-Progression, Xbox Cross-Progression

Empty Store

When we fail to fetch the offers from the PlayStation or just get an empty set of offers returned, tell the Online Subsystem to display a system error message, which it will do by calling sceMsgDialogOpen() with SCE_MSG_DIALOG_SYSMSG_TYPE_TRC_EMPTY_STORE specified to the argument param.sysMsgParam.sysMsgType

Cert Requirements

PlayStation

Long Description: Sony requires your game to display up to 8000 characters in some portion of the flow for real money purchases.

Show PlayStation Store Overlay: Whenever a player can initiate a real money purchase that will route them to the PlayStation Store, we are required to display the PlayStation Store banner overlay.

Cross-progression: Sony will not allow anything purchased with real money to transfer to other platforms, including skins and other in-game items that are purchased with real money. Further, they will not allow you to use premium in-game currency purchased on other platforms with real money on PlayStation, nor will they allow you to use premium in-game currency purchased on their platform on other platforms.

Xbox

Cross-progression: Microsoft will not allow you to use premium in-game currency purchased on other platforms with real money on Xbox.

Switch

Prompting for Purchases: Nintendo says “The game should not include wording that prompts the user to make a purchase.” This includes purchasing items with the premium in-game currency.

VAT and Taxes Included: Nintendo requires that you append “VAT and Taxes Included” when players can see the price of any Real Money Offer.

Price Display: Price displays are expected to display the currency symbol, price format, and exact price amount as delivered from the Nintendo store.