A new Death Stranding Game Pass PC tease has fans scratching their heads because the IP is owned by Sony Interactive Entertainment. To reiterate, the tease came from Game Pass PC so the game isn’t headed to Xbox (at least not right now, anyway) but considering Sony owns the IP, copyright, and trademark, fans are curious to know what kind of a deal has been struck here.
Death Stranding Game Pass announcement may come at Gamescom 2022
Found it pic.twitter.com/xlHwrqz0qD
— NV (@naven0m) August 16, 2022
As can be seen in the Twitter exchange above, the tease came in form of a new profile pic uploaded by the official Game Pass PC account (the Xbox Game Pass account has no such tease). A user identified the pic as an in-game screenshot from Death Stranding, and here we are.
Worth noting that the PC version of Death Stranding is published by 505 Games but, again, the IP is owned by Sony so this isn’t the same deal as MLB The Show games, which are owned by MLB. But then, there’s this…
Sony owns Death Stranding IP, copyright, and trademark. This is from the Steam version. pic.twitter.com/oomP8S4iaL
— Grubb (@JeffGrubb) April 15, 2022
In the tweet above dating back to April, journalist and insider Jeff Grubb screenshot text from Death Stranding’s Steam version that implies that Sony fully owns the IP. However, I interpret “Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc./Kojima Productions Co.” as some form of joint ownership and/or an agreement that Kojima Productions can publish the game on non-rival platforms, which PC version of Game Pass isn’t.
Kojima recently teased an appearance at Gamescom 2022, where his friend Geoff Keighley will be hosting an event. We’ll find out what’s going on in due course.
In other news, PlayStation Store’s “Games Under 20” promotion kicks off today, and Overwatch 2 is getting cross-progression support.
