Elon Musk famously is a huge video-game fan. But gaming companies apparently aren’t fans of what Musk is doing with X, the social network formerly called Twitter.
Sony said it is removing support for Elon Musk’s X/Twitter from its PlayStation game consoles, effective next week. The company announced the change in a notice posted Monday on its website.
“As of November 13, 2023, integration with X (formerly known as Twitter) will no longer function on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 consoles,” the message on Sony’s website reads. “This includes the ability to view any content published on X on PS5/PS4, and the ability to post and view content, trophies and other gameplay-related activities on X directly from PS5/PS4 (or link an X account to do so).”
Reps for Sony Interactive Entertainment didn’t respond to a request for comment about why PlayStation is cutting off X. But Musk’s move to charge companies for access to X’s application programming interface (API) appears to be the most likely reason.
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Sony’s announcement about disabling X/Twitter on PS consoles comes after Microsoft’s Xbox cut off the ability to share content to X in April. In addition, Blizzard’s “World of Warcraft” dropped in-game Twitter integration in February 2023.
Twitter announced in February 2023 that it would begin charging developers a monthly fee to let their apps access its API — with Musk claiming that the social network’s “free API is being abused right now by bot scammers & opinion manipulators.” The company said it would charge developers a monthly API access fee starting at $100/month for basic access; for larger enterprises, pricing will reportedly start at $42,000/month and as much as $210,000/month. That came after the company in January 2023, without warning, made a change that disabled Twitter access for multiple third-party apps like Tweetbot and Twitterrific.
Musk closed his $44 billion debt-laden takeover of Twitter in October 2022, after Twitter sued him to complete the deal at the agreed-on terms. The company, since rechristened X Corp., is now worth $19 billion, according to a notice sent last month to employees eligible for stock grants.
