Sony Online Entertainment has announced Player Studio , a program which will enable players of SOE games to download sample geometry for in-game items, design and create their own items, and submit them for consideration to be sold on the SOE Marketplace.
The program is currently US-only and isn't officially running yet, but players can already begin crafting in-game items from scratch for EverQuest and EverQuest II. Support for Free Realms and Vanguard is on the way, and John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment, announced on twitter that PlanetSide 2 will be joining the lineup post-launch. Smedley also stated that SOE is working on opening the doors to European players, but that it's "very complicated due to tax and legal reasons."
Player Studio could be called SOE's answer to Steam Workshop, except that there's no mention of community voting. According to the press release, "Players will be encouraged to name and create a description for their item, explain how the item fits into the prospective game's ongoing narrative storyline, and submit it to SOE for review and possible inclusion in the SOE Marketplace." If SOE selects an item to be sold on the SOE Marketplace, it will share 40 percent of the item's net revenue with the creator.
More details will be revealed at SOE Live 2012, which runs October 18-21 in Las Vegas, NV.
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