Spider-Man has been tied up in licensing hell for ages. Sony owns the film rights for the character, and the PlayStation 4-exclusive Spider-Man game hinted that those rights might go a bit further - and that speculation was exacerbated by the fact that Spider-Man will appear in the upcoming Avengers game exclusively on PlayStation.
"It comes back to the relationship with PlayStation and Marvel," Crystal Dynamics co-head Scot Amos tells Comic Book. In a somewhat roundabout quote, Amos says that "When it comes down to choices of where and what Spider-Man can be, that's a relationship question that PlayStation absolutely has the rights to, that as you guys know, with Sony's ownership there, and Marvel with Sony saying, 'Hey, this is something we can do. This is something we can do on this platform.'"
Sony certainly does not exercise exclusive rights to the Spider-Man character when it comes to games - the character appeared in every version of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, and was part of the roster in the Switch-exclusive Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3.
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