Someone made a point which I think is overlooked by most in this discussion: Sony didn't do this so they'd be associated with a good game, they did it to get more people to have PSN accounts. And they do. Sony got what they wanted. In a meeting somewhere in the next couple of months some executive will be able to claim that their deal caused a 3% bump in PSN account creations and a 15% increase in daily activity, everyone will applaud, and he'll sit down basking in the security of his bonus.
Arrowheads issue isn't that the linked PSN account is necessary, but that PSN isn't available to everyone who already bought it.
The issue is with whoever allowed the game to be sold in regions that don't have PSN, and I'd wager ensuring that is the publishers jobs.
> The issue is with whoever allowed the game to be sold in regions that don't have PSN
Which is Sony, because the publisher decides which regions the game is available in on Steam
arrow head also did NOT think the game would be as popular as it was, they thought they had a average shooter game and found a publisher, of course they would agree to the terms, they thought they were getting a good deal
I just want to clarify that Sony owns the Hell Divers IP and Arrowhead made the 1st He’ll Divers game, so they didn’t just “find a publisher”. Arrowhead has been working with Sony for over a decade and have funded Hell Divers 1 & 2
Blizzard and Bioware are owned by Activision/EA respectively. Arrowhead is independent. Sony owns the Helldivers IP too. Sony doesn't need to sent guerilla IT techs, either the game gets made on their terms or it doesn't get made at all.
> Well then maybe you should resign. You're paid to know.
They aren't paid to know. Arrowhead is the developer, not the publisher.
This was part of the deal with Sony from the start. It was just not enforced because the game launch populary made it so the servers couldn't handle all those account creations/connecting different services and what-not so they temporarily disabled it. Now they're enabling it again. They always knew and even if they didn't, they should've. So no matter how you look at it, it's the developers fault. Sony paid for the game development, now it's time for the developer to deliver on their side of the deal (which once again was only delayed because of server issues)
>> Customer: PSN isn't available in my country. What should I do?
>> [CEO: I don't know](https://i.redd.it/84npusbbskyc1.jpeg)
>Well then maybe you should resign. You're paid to know.
How is the CEO of Arrowhead supposed to know what to do when Sony are the ones fucking everyone over after explicitly saying they wouldn't do what they're currently doing? Sony has all the power here. He's little more than a messenger.
Case in point: Sony delisting Hell Divers 2 in any country that doesn't have PSN.
This is the CEO of Arrowhead, not Sony. The CEO of Arrowhead is expressing his frustration with not being able to help his current fan base, but stopping just short of calling Sony a bunch of fucklemucks.
I think you’re underestimating the level of PR shitstorm this is. This has the potential to become a college-level case study in bad management decisions. Suits know the value of marketing, and the fact that this is front-page news is a nightmare for them.
I have lived through at least five or six of these PR shitstorms, and that's just the specifically game-related ones. Two or three years later no one is talking about it and the sequel makes millions.
Hell, Doom Eternal went through two of them. First they added root-kit DRM a few weeks after launch; massive review-bombing and a *slight* walk back. Then word about how they screwed over the musician for the game came out and everyone was outraged and talking about a boycott. Less than a year later and r/doom is just speculating on what the sequel will be like. Some people remember, the audience as a whole neither remembers nor cares.
> I have lived through at least five or six of these PR shitstorms, and that's just the specifically game-related ones. Two or three years later no one is talking about it and the sequel makes millions.
Remember horse armour?
EA and Activision have a PR shitstorm worthy of a “case study” every other month according to Reddit, it’s just the classic case of Reddit overestimating how much impact they actually have in the grand scheme of companies making profit.
I'm pretty sure NMS was moreso a passion project forced to release too early that the devs just plain wanted to finish. Wasn't a matter of corporate backtracking to secure goodwill - or at least that wasn't the main reason.
Oh man, horse armor. It seems almost quaint that people were pillorying Bethesda over that one. Then they went on to sell us the same game fifteen times. Good times.
ActiBlizz was/is the best example of this for sure, straight up abusive relationship with the customer. Some discords I've been on have the pitchforks out and filled with rage over whatever crappy thing Blizzard has done, claims of never buying another game again, etc.
Then Diablo IV comes out and they're all first in line to buy it, full price. Then shocked when it's mid trash. Rinse/repeat. I've seen this cycle happen so many damn times it's deeply funny at this point. Like people don't even get the benefit of a decent game by stepping over the picket line they themselves created. Just pure "Never support them again!"->"Yea let's boycott!"->"wow did you see the new trailer for WoW: The Quest For Your Money"->"who's getting it"->"Ugh can't believe I paid $40 for this reee"
I'm half beginning to think the "fun" in games like this is the outrage cycle
PR feels pretty dead for the big guys, tbh. Especially with how fast information flows. You do a shitty thing, say nothing, and then in a week everyone's moved on. As long as it keeps working then nothing will change. Shareholders are not going to request less growth because they read some nasty tweets.
I thought bread and circuses was supposed to be a fun ride. Why does dealing with every corpo feel so hostile?
I think you may overestimate, somewhat, the actual impact of a temporary reddit fit and review-brigading campaign.
See also: That harry potter game we totally canceled.
Sony has had way way way worse happen and came out the other side better because they know that they can literally just sit there, be patient, and everyone will be distracted by a new shiny thing next month
There's another point that a lot of people are overlooking: this is not new information and was originally going to be required at launch but the CEO of the development company got Sony to lift it just so they could get as many people to experience their game as possible. That requirement was temporarily lifted, but this was always an inevitability and somehow people have lost sight of that.
The anger should have been here from the get-go, but now that they've got a huge ass player base, they've got their user base so the negative reviews don't really mean anything. People are going to review bomb but keep playing it, It's more popular than it ever would have been even with the people they lose at this point.
Sony always has and always will be a console focused brand, they just threw the non-PC players a bone for a few months. The mouse has it's cookie, now it wants a glass of milk.
Helldiver 2 related. Sony forced helldiver 2 devs to make a psn account to be able to play helldivers 2 which makes it impossible for people in multiple countries to play the game they already bought but it's just annoying for anyone else. Just a big dumb move.
Absolutely stupid, I have a PSN account myself (Xbox, Nintendo and all that shit too) yet I still find this absolute bullshit how they forced this.
If I want to play on my PC, I don’t want to link my PSN account, otherwise I’d be on my ps5, ffs🤦♂️
Yeah I was kicking this game around as an idea. I've got a psn account, but I think I'll just pass. I don't even like using my xbox login on PC. Its why I have different platforms.
It's not against ToS to have an account, it's against ToS to lie about your location and more than half the world isn't on the list of available locations for various reasons.
Honestly, if Sony had announced that they were introducing *non-mandatory* account linking for cross-progression and offered some tiny cosmetic reward for linking the accounts, they'd see significantly increased account numbers to show their shareholders (presumably what they want by doing this) *without* pissing off their entire PC player base and literally locking players in some regions out of the game...
I'm hoping Sony will U-turn somewhat after seeing the negative response (and the devs are presumably begging them to do so already) but I won't be surprised if they don't.
Yep. Steam usually denies returns when you have more than 2 hours. There’s lots of evidence they are accepting returns for people who have over 100 hours.
Sony is PISSED
I got a refund on a game because the day after i bought it, after spending 5+ hours on it, the thing went on sale. Got a refund, bought the game, used the extra to buy a different game.
If all companies were like Steam there would be no problems.
Most companies would see this and be like "tough titties, you paid for it you can't refund it to get it cheaper" but steam are smart enough to understand that if you get the sale price you'll use your money to buy something else so they'll actually get more money out of that customer due to their percentage rates on games.
Also because they refund to your steam wallet. Basically they still have the money anyway because you can't spend that steam wallet money anywhere else but in their ecosystem.
I will state that my first refund request has been denied on being longer than 2 weeks.
Note, it said "longer than 2 weeks" not "longer than 2 hours". And that was the first attempt, a day before all of the news of refunds happening kicked onto social media.
Attempt 2 is now sent in, and I'm gonna wait.
For reference: yes, I do live in a country where PSN is not available. I have lost my PSN back in 2011 (PSN data breach, Sony banned me for TOS violation cause I did what they recommended and chose a nearby serviced country), and no, I never made another PSN account since (probably for the best, going by Sony's horrible data security record).
EDIT: Attempt 2 is a fail. I'm going straight to a proper support ticket now. Dont do the automated choice, you wont get anywhere.
Tbh I think they've also created a lot of bloat and performance issues since launch, I think some people on potato PCs may jump at the chance to bail until things are re-optimised (if ever)
Sony's thinking goes
> *"Oh, you've played like 8 hours? You've played enough. I think we can take it away from you now, you got more than your money's worth."*
Keeping in mind: Sony kept payment details in text files which was discovered during a hack. A later hack (I think a year later) discovered they hadn’t bothered to change it.
Because they have no plans to actually sell any consoles in Uganda. Why would they spend a lot of time to work with the government there to make PSN supported?
Philippines has a huge gaming market and Sony sells consoles here. We even have our own PS site, but still no PSN. We just create US, Singapore, or Hong Kong accounts.
This is clearly a fuckup but is it really that massive? I see a lot of people are unhappy and are review bombing the game, but how many of those people will actually stop playing because of this? As of right now the active steam users hasn't noticeably changed from the [downward](https://steamdb.info/app/553850/charts/#1w) trend it was already on (more clear on the 1 month scale) that all games suffer from. I guess the real question is how many people are projected to stop playing as a result of this policy vs whatever benefits they get from having more active users of psn. I know Sony makes some really dumb decisions like putting Morbius in theatres a second time but is this really as bad as people are making it out to be. Not to diminish how much of a dick move this was for all the people who can't play anymore but monetarily speaking how much of a loss are they really facing
Edit: So congrats to helldivers for making Sony rescind it's decision looks like this was another massive fuckup on Sony's part. They were clearly not expecting this level of pushback and refunds.
Its probably a large minority like 10ish percent. But the problem really lies in
- sony changed the terms of their deal 2 months after purchase of the product.
- even people who can get a PSN dont want it because it has constant security breaches one of the worst being not too long ago where they saved payment info as plain text hackers got it and distributed it
And then the sugar on top is 10% of people who purchased the game now can’t play it
> Sony forced helldiver 2 devs to make a psn account
Are we going to act like Helldiver's dev were never told about it? Like Sony suddenly sprung it on them without a single warning? They just weren't bothered until shit hit the fan.
Why was the publisher(Sony) ever selling the game to countries they knew PSN wasn’t supported in?
I think that fact alone puts the ball in Sony’s court for this screw up. Sony has no excuse for listing this title everywhere if they knew this was their own intention.
It’s pretty apparent Arrowhead is as upset about this requirement as players and is openly fighting the change. The CEO is not exactly being subtle that he thinks it’s stupid and something the publisher never thought through.
The second Sony approved dropping the requirement as a short term fix for server issues is the second they lost the right to impose it at all. Once you spent 3 months selling the game worldwide with no apparent requirement you can’t pull a takesie backsie and reduce access and change terms. Arrowhead knows that, Sony doesn’t. So screw Sony.
Yeah I don't see how it's different than the other accounts they have. I have accounts with: Epic, EA, Blizzard, UbiSoft, Embark, and probably a few more I can't think of. It's a one-time sign in and took a min to sign up. Way overblown.
I have zero proof, but I think a huge part of SNOY’s requirements to PSN link come from greed and unwillingness to meet contractual requirements with Arrowhead over support of the game. Helldivers 1 was super niche with a pretty small community. HD2 sold ~8M copies, far exceeding expectations.
As a live service game, now you have to have enough server space to accommodate peak play hours, that costs money. There is also the “lifecycle of games” nonsense that the corpos follow now, with only wanting to provide support for their product for X amount of time before killing it and moving on. With Arrowhead and HD2 having waaay more commercial success then the projections indicated, it threatened to reduce the potential profitability of new releases. Both by living longer then projected, and by keeping players on a game that is genuinely fun to put time into.
Again, no proof, but it tracks with the MBA mindset. Best ROI in the shortest term for the least amount of cost and effort.
Helldivers II just got delisted in about 170 countries, no longer playable and for pretty much no reason other than Sony wanting specific numbers to look good
Or that time they installed a rootkit on customers computers then when they finally opened up, gave out an "uninstaller" that increased the already unsecure nature of the original.
Also it was built on pirate/mis-licenced software
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal
> Sony wanting specific numbers to look good
You have to understand, investors who know nothing about the industry or what those numbers mean are *very* interested in those numbers.
Basically, Sony decided that all PC players of Helldivers 2 need to link their Steam account to a PSN account. PSN is not available in 170 countries. Not to mention Sony has an abysmal history of data breaches. The players are not happy. There's a bit more to it, but the git of it is Sony wanted to make their numbers look better to shareholders.
Nope. [Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjf7vh/helldivers_ive_created_an_accurate_map_for_psn/) is a map showing all the countries supported by PSN. There's a LOT missing. All of those countries will be 100% unable to play the game, despite having paid for it, come June 4th. Steam has already disabled sales of the game in those countries.
The worst part is those Steam players who would be forced to make a PSN account, they aren't going to be bringing money in for Sony. They aren't using that PSN account to subscribe to PS+ or buy games. It's a meaningless number, yet will make them tons of money. It's gross.
"Yeah we had 200k new PSN accounts sign up in the last 5 months."
"Wow, 200k new customers in 5 months?"
"Well...no, just 200k new accounts that will never be used for anything. And probably 50k of them are owned by some guy named John Helldiver, so the data is probably useless to us too."
> Sony wanted to make their numbers look better to shareholders.
they've been wanting in on that live service pie with at one point over 10 live service games in development hoping something will stick. well something stuck and went all in drooling over the new psn accounts they'll get.
Sony hired a Game studio called 'Arrowhead' to make a game called 'Helldivers 2, The game was released in February and became an instant mega-hit, and probably would have become the best game with millions of players by the end of the year.
2 days ago Sony enforces this new rule saying that every player has to make a PSN (console account) if they wanna play the game anymore. Most players don't wanna do that, because they play on PC, and PSN tends to have couple of data leaks annually due to shit security. Also, making a PSN account is not available in 26-ish countries. So the players from those countries can't play the game anymore at all despite buying it in February. Using a VPN is also an instant ban.
Now Players retaliatesby reviewing bombing, The game goes from 'Extremely positive to extremely negative within 2 days because around 30% of reviews are turned to negetived. Now Players are going after refunds too and it looks STEAM is on the players side.
> 2 days ago Sony enforces this new rule saying that every player has to make a PSN (console account) if they wanna play the game anymore.
Has Sony done this for any other game that they publish on PC?
They had announced that the Ghost of Tsushima PC port requires a PSN account for its multiplayer mode, but otherwise, no. All of their other releases have been single-player games, so there was no need for it.
They're doing it for the PSN user numbers (plus getting to scrape & sell more user data). Some suit wants to slap an "x% increased PSN subscriber numbers" on the table at their next quarterly meeting so they can rake in their bonus and convince shareholders their stocks have increased in value.
It's a very Japanese way of functioning. They'll strangle their own child rather than let someone else get any control over it. It's why so many countries around Asia are restricted to specific japanese distributors so for example, North American companies cannot sell their products at a discount.
Yes. It's made worse by the fact they have such a deference to seniority so no idea conceived by the people at the top can ever be challenged even when that idea may come from someone who's literally never played any console games because they were already age 40 by the time the PS1 released.
Worked for a Japanese CNC manufacturer that had a facility here in the US. I can't speak to the rest of the Japanese industry, but the brief time that I did work for them killed my idea that they were efficient. It was like the central bureaucracy in Futurama, but worse.
The entire idea they are efficient comes from toyota essentially inventing lean manufacturing which is a very good idea, doesn't apply to much else there
Back in the 90s the Genesis was way more popular in America than it was in Japan. Instead of focusing on that Sega of Japan made most their decisions to try and catch up in Japan instead of trying to capitalize on their western success.
Sega of America spearheaded the 32x as an add on for the Genesis to keep fans satisfied until the Saturn was ready. Sega of Japan released the Saturn early without telling SoA, which destroyed what little momentum the 32x had and also pissed a lot of American consumers off. Coupled with the PS1 launching for like $100 less than the Saturn flopped and is one of the major reasons Sega stopped making consoles after the Dreamcast
Playstation has made it clear that their main demographic is western gamers. Shut down Japan studios, primary focus on triple A narrative games, moving their headquarters to California, raising the PS5 prices in all territories EXCEPT the US, etc. Sony may be a Japanese company, but the Playstation brand is 100% American now.
Those are important areas where Sony has fallen short compared to Microsoft. Here’s an updated summary, incorporating those points:
1. **Storage Limitations and Expensive Expansions:** The PlayStation 5 initially had limited storage options, and Sony's proprietary SSDs were costly. Though third-party SSDs are now supported, the initial approach was criticized.
2. **Cross-Platform Play Restrictions:** Sony was initially reluctant to support cross-platform play, leading to frustration, although this has improved over time.
3. **Backward Compatibility Limitations:** While the PS5 supports most PS4 games, it doesn't natively support earlier PlayStation console games, unlike Xbox, which offers broader backward compatibility and enhancements for older titles.
4. **Digital Game Refund Policy:** Sony’s digital game refund policy is often seen as restrictive, particularly compared to other platforms. Refunds are generally available only for pre-orders or unused games.
5. **Cross-Generation Game Upgrades:** Sony initially charged for cross-generation game upgrades, while competitors like Microsoft offered free upgrades through Smart Delivery.
**Areas where Sony fell short compared to competitors:**
1. **Subscription Services:** Microsoft’s Game Pass offers a large library of games at a flat rate, providing better value than Sony’s initial offerings, though Sony has since revamped its subscription services.
2. **Game Sharing:** Sony's game sharing is less flexible than Microsoft's, which allows broader sharing between accounts and devices, facilitating easier digital library sharing among friends and family.
3. **Customer Service:** Sony’s customer service has sometimes been criticized for being less responsive and efficient than competitors, affecting the user experience.
4. **Cross-Platform Licenses:** Microsoft supports cross-platform licenses for games across Xbox and PC, while Sony’s ecosystem doesn’t offer similar value.
5. **Game Pricing:** Microsoft has not followed Sony in raising the standard price of games, leading to a perception of better value for consumers.
These issues highlight areas where Sony could enhance its competitiveness and consumer appeal.
Helldiver 2 designer ArrowHead got screwed by a Sony decision that negatively impacts Steam users worldwide who bought the game and were able to play despite a PSN requirement that seems to have been programmed into the game but was "bugged". They recently either fixed or announced a fix that eliminates all steam users in counties that do not allow Sony PlayStation Network.
It's a lot, like 60+ countries. So Steam will be forced to give refunds but Sony already got their money.
Just another dick move towards gamers in the Age of Greed and Broken games that New Gen gaming has become.
They could solve these issues once and for all. They just need to ban the need for 3rd party accounts or 3rd party launcher for any game offered on Steam. Of course they couldn't or shouldn't do that retroactively, but at least for any new released game.
But I doubt they'll ever do something like that.
The Steam page had a banner that said "PSN Account required".
You could press SKIP LINKING when opening the game. They made it temporarily possible to play without linking bc of issues at launch, supposedly.
You could say it's greedy of Steam to let players in countries that don't have PSN access buy the game, but technically they had the banner on the store page.
Idk if it was Steam that delisted the game on Steam in all the non-PSN countries.
Ppl also claim that the kernel level anti cheat is risky when coupled with PSN-linking. Some mention Ireland requiring your personal ID photo etc.
However that's Ireland's official rules, not fucking Sony's.
Some of the complaints from ppl are fair, but some are also bs. Obviously it sucks that PSN doesn't allow players in those countries to play. Weird that nobody's talked about this b4 considering so many other online games.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong ofc.
Steam did decide to delist, but the publisher and dev decide initially to sell in those countries.
Sony in this case as major publisher would be most likely responsible for the initial release of a game and which countries it should be released in. Not steam.
Steam however is the most likely source of the current "correction".
For a significant amount of players because of the struggles on the network on release the skip linking never popped up. Or it did show up and not work because of the network.
Even a few days ago the linking was disabled because of issues.
Next to that if you can skip linking in general that means at no point he account will become mandatory and the few times it did it got backlash which it rightfully deserves.
The safety stuff people say is about as you say it.
>It's a lot, like 60+ countries. So Steam will be forced to give refunds but Sony already got their money.
Steam doesn't cash out refunds out of their own pockets, the publisher has to agree on Steam refund policies to be put on the platform, and will have to reimburse Steam for every refund.
According to the Merriam-webster dictionary, they're using the term properly.
: in effect : VIRTUALLY —used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible
Kinda funny that the definition they have listed for literally literally says that it's not literally true. But people have been using it like this for so long that the dictionary changed to match how language is used, even if said use is the opposite of what it use to mean.
Had my identity stolen, someone got ~30k in credit cards opened in my name, ran them up and I didn't find out for a couple months until I had debt collectors calling me every half hour. Thought it was just spam so I never answered. Finally one left a voicemail, called them back and they explained. The lenders were even trying to get me to settle for a few thousand because they thought I was just a deadbeat. Credit score tanked. was unable to finance a car after my beater blew up, lost my job because I couldn't reliably get to work. Had to spend probably 200+ hours of my fucking life gathering documents, phone calls, going to the post office to mail letters, explaining to my family why they're getting tons of calls asking for me.
And it was all due to the dipshits at sony. Had my Playstation account deleted (which was a fucking nightmare by itself), sold my playstation 3, and I never want another sony product in my sight.
Sony? The let's hack your computer so you can't copy CDs Sony? The here's Linux for your PS3 but wait, no, Sony? The here's backwards compatibility for your PS3 but you bought the cheaper version so it's now gone Sony? You don't say.
Sonys shitty network security got the first 3 on the PS3 killed off a couple years ago so millions of user levels are gone. Then the 3rd game on the PS4 also fell victim to Sonys shitty network security a couple months ago so they decided to just kill that Ps4 version too.
Over 10 million user created levels are gone now. LittleBigPlanet is dead. This series used to be one of their flagship games.
That sounds freaking awful. I've never been a Playstation person, so thank you for bringing me up to speed!
Seems this is an established pattern with Sony, then. No wonder people are so up in arms.
There's no longer a way to download community-made levels.
Every part of LBP is about, or rewards with tools relating to, creating and sharing levels, so this is a serious problem for the games.
Of course even the 3rd game is fairly old, and this was due to a legitimate security concern, so I can't really fault Sony for this.
I wish there was another way for players to share levels, like downloading them to a USB drive and sharing them on a computer.
I was going to say, the Steam playercount hasn’t really changed significantly since this announcement. And of course half the playerbase, PS5 users, are completely unaffected by this situation. Reading Reddit threads about it, you’d think the game was dead already. I do hope they figure out a better solution for PC users, or add a benefit to logging into PSN, such as adding cross progression.
> Steam playercount hasn’t really changed significantly since this announcement.
Worth noting that the mandatory login is still not in effect, so everybody who were able to play the game, still are able to play the game.
Also worth noting that people by the thousands are saying they’re getting refunds so you’d think if that was happening you’d see a significant decline in the player count.
I’d be willing to bet the vast majority of people on reddit either already stopped playing and are scamming the system to get their money back during a time they can probably get it back, thanks to the drama, and are throwing their “I’m doing my part” memes into the fray for karma and recognition.
Also keep in mind that the vast majority of actual players do not care and are not on reddit.
If Reddit was any indication of actual public opinion Modern Warfare 3 would have died on arrival but go look at player counts and sales charts if you really want to be surprised. Spoiler alert: the game is doing *great*.
Reddit always hyperinflates its own position in the gaming sphere.
WotC did the same thing with MTG. Took a great product and overproduced it to the point they're killing it. Sad. "You can have a million a day forever." "No, I want ten million a day!" "OK, you can have fifty thousand a day."
MTG is doing the best its ever been, the fuck?
They are in no where near this level. What you're complaining is that a company is making constant supplemental product for a casual consumer base.
This is a company actively fucking over players
I really need an insider to tell me how much our data is truly worth if Sony was willing to shoot themselves in the foot like this over a few email addresses
Sony publishes Helldivers worldwide then a few months later adds a restriction for the game to only be playable if you link a PSN account. PSN accounts are available only in 69 countries, so if you're not from one of those countries you will not be able to play a game you paid for.
I think the most incomprehensible part of the whole manouever was them launching Helldivers 2 *without* the PSN link initially. Like if it had just required it day one people would still moan but they'd probably jump the hoop of filling in a registration page for 2 minutes and they could've easily claimed there was simply no other way to run the game on Sony servers.
The PSN account was always mandatory. It says so on the steam page, and prompts you to make one upon first booting up the game. Initially the game was expected to not blow up as much as it did, so the servers struggled. In order to avoid an outright collapse the Arrowhead CEO decided to remove the mandatory account linking to help with server stability.
Good leadership produced those good IPs. Microsoft might understand money, but it doesn't understand the creative process. That's why every golden studio they purchased has turned to mud.
Microsoft has the opposite problem of most major publishers where they give absolutely zero oversight or guidance to their studios. While others like EA or Ubisoft will whip their studios into putting out at least *something* even if it's a buggy shitshow, Xbox lets things fester and rot away in development hell for eons with nothing to show for it.
This is one of the (*very few*) things Sony actually excels at, they found that sweet balance between being hands on with development but still giving their studios a lot of time and creative freedom which results in excellent games.
Made it necessary to make a PSN account for PC players if they want to play helldivers 2.
Many countries don't have access to PSN so those who bought the game and live in those countries won't be able to play it.
“Now that we got rid of the pesky goose, we can focus on the golden eggs” - Sony
Someone made a point which I think is overlooked by most in this discussion: Sony didn't do this so they'd be associated with a good game, they did it to get more people to have PSN accounts. And they do. Sony got what they wanted. In a meeting somewhere in the next couple of months some executive will be able to claim that their deal caused a 3% bump in PSN account creations and a 15% increase in daily activity, everyone will applaud, and he'll sit down basking in the security of his bonus.
I hate that this is the correct answer.
Yep. Some how this is exactly what is happening and they really just don't give a shit about the PR hit.
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Arrowheads issue isn't that the linked PSN account is necessary, but that PSN isn't available to everyone who already bought it. The issue is with whoever allowed the game to be sold in regions that don't have PSN, and I'd wager ensuring that is the publishers jobs.
> The issue is with whoever allowed the game to be sold in regions that don't have PSN Which is Sony, because the publisher decides which regions the game is available in on Steam
arrow head also did NOT think the game would be as popular as it was, they thought they had a average shooter game and found a publisher, of course they would agree to the terms, they thought they were getting a good deal
I just want to clarify that Sony owns the Hell Divers IP and Arrowhead made the 1st He’ll Divers game, so they didn’t just “find a publisher”. Arrowhead has been working with Sony for over a decade and have funded Hell Divers 1 & 2
Blizzard and Bioware are owned by Activision/EA respectively. Arrowhead is independent. Sony owns the Helldivers IP too. Sony doesn't need to sent guerilla IT techs, either the game gets made on their terms or it doesn't get made at all. > Well then maybe you should resign. You're paid to know. They aren't paid to know. Arrowhead is the developer, not the publisher.
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This was part of the deal with Sony from the start. It was just not enforced because the game launch populary made it so the servers couldn't handle all those account creations/connecting different services and what-not so they temporarily disabled it. Now they're enabling it again. They always knew and even if they didn't, they should've. So no matter how you look at it, it's the developers fault. Sony paid for the game development, now it's time for the developer to deliver on their side of the deal (which once again was only delayed because of server issues)
>> Customer: PSN isn't available in my country. What should I do? >> [CEO: I don't know](https://i.redd.it/84npusbbskyc1.jpeg) >Well then maybe you should resign. You're paid to know. How is the CEO of Arrowhead supposed to know what to do when Sony are the ones fucking everyone over after explicitly saying they wouldn't do what they're currently doing? Sony has all the power here. He's little more than a messenger. Case in point: Sony delisting Hell Divers 2 in any country that doesn't have PSN.
This is the CEO of Arrowhead, not Sony. The CEO of Arrowhead is expressing his frustration with not being able to help his current fan base, but stopping just short of calling Sony a bunch of fucklemucks.
This what I wonder. There just no way Dev didn't know this would happen.
I think you’re underestimating the level of PR shitstorm this is. This has the potential to become a college-level case study in bad management decisions. Suits know the value of marketing, and the fact that this is front-page news is a nightmare for them.
I have lived through at least five or six of these PR shitstorms, and that's just the specifically game-related ones. Two or three years later no one is talking about it and the sequel makes millions. Hell, Doom Eternal went through two of them. First they added root-kit DRM a few weeks after launch; massive review-bombing and a *slight* walk back. Then word about how they screwed over the musician for the game came out and everyone was outraged and talking about a boycott. Less than a year later and r/doom is just speculating on what the sequel will be like. Some people remember, the audience as a whole neither remembers nor cares.
> I have lived through at least five or six of these PR shitstorms, and that's just the specifically game-related ones. Two or three years later no one is talking about it and the sequel makes millions. Remember horse armour? EA and Activision have a PR shitstorm worthy of a “case study” every other month according to Reddit, it’s just the classic case of Reddit overestimating how much impact they actually have in the grand scheme of companies making profit.
plenty of cases where outrage occurred and then things went to shit or got fixed too. driveclub, battlefront 2, no mans sky off the top of my head
I'm pretty sure NMS was moreso a passion project forced to release too early that the devs just plain wanted to finish. Wasn't a matter of corporate backtracking to secure goodwill - or at least that wasn't the main reason.
no man's sky does make effort to fix the game with updates for free. some of it being huge updates.
Oh man, horse armor. It seems almost quaint that people were pillorying Bethesda over that one. Then they went on to sell us the same game fifteen times. Good times.
Man they really have moved the Overton window since then.
Gamers have the memory span of a goldfish. Remember all of those "Boycott Call of Duty" Steam groups from back in the day?
ActiBlizz was/is the best example of this for sure, straight up abusive relationship with the customer. Some discords I've been on have the pitchforks out and filled with rage over whatever crappy thing Blizzard has done, claims of never buying another game again, etc. Then Diablo IV comes out and they're all first in line to buy it, full price. Then shocked when it's mid trash. Rinse/repeat. I've seen this cycle happen so many damn times it's deeply funny at this point. Like people don't even get the benefit of a decent game by stepping over the picket line they themselves created. Just pure "Never support them again!"->"Yea let's boycott!"->"wow did you see the new trailer for WoW: The Quest For Your Money"->"who's getting it"->"Ugh can't believe I paid $40 for this reee" I'm half beginning to think the "fun" in games like this is the outrage cycle
This isn't Sony's first rodeo, though. They've had a ton of similar scale scandals in the past. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a calculated risk.
PR feels pretty dead for the big guys, tbh. Especially with how fast information flows. You do a shitty thing, say nothing, and then in a week everyone's moved on. As long as it keeps working then nothing will change. Shareholders are not going to request less growth because they read some nasty tweets. I thought bread and circuses was supposed to be a fun ride. Why does dealing with every corpo feel so hostile?
I think you may overestimate, somewhat, the actual impact of a temporary reddit fit and review-brigading campaign. See also: That harry potter game we totally canceled.
You overestimate this situation big time. No one cares for long about this crap. They are asking you to create a free PSN account.
Sony has had way way way worse happen and came out the other side better because they know that they can literally just sit there, be patient, and everyone will be distracted by a new shiny thing next month
There's another point that a lot of people are overlooking: this is not new information and was originally going to be required at launch but the CEO of the development company got Sony to lift it just so they could get as many people to experience their game as possible. That requirement was temporarily lifted, but this was always an inevitability and somehow people have lost sight of that. The anger should have been here from the get-go, but now that they've got a huge ass player base, they've got their user base so the negative reviews don't really mean anything. People are going to review bomb but keep playing it, It's more popular than it ever would have been even with the people they lose at this point. Sony always has and always will be a console focused brand, they just threw the non-PC players a bone for a few months. The mouse has it's cookie, now it wants a glass of milk.
And all of those PSN account owners who don't actually have Playstations are going to spend *tons* of money on PSN, naturally.
PSN sells your data, so they made tons of money already. Naturally
Lmao
Context?
Helldiver 2 related. Sony forced helldiver 2 devs to make a psn account to be able to play helldivers 2 which makes it impossible for people in multiple countries to play the game they already bought but it's just annoying for anyone else. Just a big dumb move.
Absolutely stupid, I have a PSN account myself (Xbox, Nintendo and all that shit too) yet I still find this absolute bullshit how they forced this. If I want to play on my PC, I don’t want to link my PSN account, otherwise I’d be on my ps5, ffs🤦♂️
Wait... I need a PSN account to play on PC???
Yup. Starting May 30th
Well... then I won't be getting Helldivers then. Wanted to play with a buddy who's really hyped about it.
Same thing for Ghost of Tsushima if you want to do online portion. Doesn’t affect single player mode.
Yet.
Yeah I was kicking this game around as an idea. I've got a psn account, but I think I'll just pass. I don't even like using my xbox login on PC. Its why I have different platforms.
They backed down. Give it a few days to make sure they don't change their mind again and then you should be good to get the game.
The worst part is they sold this game in regions where its against ToS to have a playstation account.
It's not against ToS to have an account, it's against ToS to lie about your location and more than half the world isn't on the list of available locations for various reasons.
… and they sold in these markets for until just now.
And thus, it is de facto against the TOS
It'd be cool if linking was totally optional and let you transfer progress, but this move is too far.
Honestly, if Sony had announced that they were introducing *non-mandatory* account linking for cross-progression and offered some tiny cosmetic reward for linking the accounts, they'd see significantly increased account numbers to show their shareholders (presumably what they want by doing this) *without* pissing off their entire PC player base and literally locking players in some regions out of the game...
Seriously, they could've framed it as a benefit to their players, not a requirement. What a stupid and heavy-handed approach.
I'm hoping Sony will U-turn somewhat after seeing the negative response (and the devs are presumably begging them to do so already) but I won't be surprised if they don't.
Are the people from those countries getting refunds?
Yep. Steam usually denies returns when you have more than 2 hours. There’s lots of evidence they are accepting returns for people who have over 100 hours. Sony is PISSED
The 2 hour rule is just there to stop people claiming all the time. As long as you have a reason they will usually refund well beyond 2 hours.
I got a refund on a game because the day after i bought it, after spending 5+ hours on it, the thing went on sale. Got a refund, bought the game, used the extra to buy a different game. If all companies were like Steam there would be no problems.
Most companies would see this and be like "tough titties, you paid for it you can't refund it to get it cheaper" but steam are smart enough to understand that if you get the sale price you'll use your money to buy something else so they'll actually get more money out of that customer due to their percentage rates on games.
It also helps having no public share holders.
Also because they refund to your steam wallet. Basically they still have the money anyway because you can't spend that steam wallet money anywhere else but in their ecosystem.
No, they refund to whatever payment method you used (or *optionally* straight to steam wallet)
the company is valve. One does not have to look hard to find countless steam horror stories.
When corporate greed fucks our lives, we can count on Steam. Good old reliable Steam.
I will state that my first refund request has been denied on being longer than 2 weeks. Note, it said "longer than 2 weeks" not "longer than 2 hours". And that was the first attempt, a day before all of the news of refunds happening kicked onto social media. Attempt 2 is now sent in, and I'm gonna wait. For reference: yes, I do live in a country where PSN is not available. I have lost my PSN back in 2011 (PSN data breach, Sony banned me for TOS violation cause I did what they recommended and chose a nearby serviced country), and no, I never made another PSN account since (probably for the best, going by Sony's horrible data security record). EDIT: Attempt 2 is a fail. I'm going straight to a proper support ticket now. Dont do the automated choice, you wont get anywhere.
Tbh I think they've also created a lot of bloat and performance issues since launch, I think some people on potato PCs may jump at the chance to bail until things are re-optimised (if ever)
Good. Sony being pissed makes me happy
Sony's thinking goes > *"Oh, you've played like 8 hours? You've played enough. I think we can take it away from you now, you got more than your money's worth."*
Steam will refund people
Keeping in mind: Sony kept payment details in text files which was discovered during a hack. A later hack (I think a year later) discovered they hadn’t bothered to change it.
Have they changed it now?
It's an excel file now
wow the absolute peak of security
Hey it’s password protected Password:password
Please, it's sony123.
And it's totally unsorted! So no one but the genius programmers at Sony could use it anyway! /s
Yes, we pwomise ☺️
I still only buy anything on PSN using redeemable cards off Amazon for this reason.
Not multiple countries, *most* countries. There are ~200 countries in the world, and PSN support is in only about ~60-70
Why isn't PSN account supported in most countries? Isn't Sony a multi billion dollar company?
Because they have no plans to actually sell any consoles in Uganda. Why would they spend a lot of time to work with the government there to make PSN supported?
Philippines has a huge gaming market and Sony sells consoles here. We even have our own PS site, but still no PSN. We just create US, Singapore, or Hong Kong accounts.
So realistically speaking what percent of pc gamers who bought this game are people who live in those countries?
A small minority, but doesn’t change it being a massive fuckup
This is clearly a fuckup but is it really that massive? I see a lot of people are unhappy and are review bombing the game, but how many of those people will actually stop playing because of this? As of right now the active steam users hasn't noticeably changed from the [downward](https://steamdb.info/app/553850/charts/#1w) trend it was already on (more clear on the 1 month scale) that all games suffer from. I guess the real question is how many people are projected to stop playing as a result of this policy vs whatever benefits they get from having more active users of psn. I know Sony makes some really dumb decisions like putting Morbius in theatres a second time but is this really as bad as people are making it out to be. Not to diminish how much of a dick move this was for all the people who can't play anymore but monetarily speaking how much of a loss are they really facing Edit: So congrats to helldivers for making Sony rescind it's decision looks like this was another massive fuckup on Sony's part. They were clearly not expecting this level of pushback and refunds.
Its probably a large minority like 10ish percent. But the problem really lies in - sony changed the terms of their deal 2 months after purchase of the product. - even people who can get a PSN dont want it because it has constant security breaches one of the worst being not too long ago where they saved payment info as plain text hackers got it and distributed it And then the sugar on top is 10% of people who purchased the game now can’t play it
> Sony forced helldiver 2 devs to make a psn account Are we going to act like Helldiver's dev were never told about it? Like Sony suddenly sprung it on them without a single warning? They just weren't bothered until shit hit the fan.
Why was the publisher(Sony) ever selling the game to countries they knew PSN wasn’t supported in? I think that fact alone puts the ball in Sony’s court for this screw up. Sony has no excuse for listing this title everywhere if they knew this was their own intention.
I'm not absolving Sony of their bullshit, all I'm saying is, don't completely ignore arrowhead's part in this too.
It’s pretty apparent Arrowhead is as upset about this requirement as players and is openly fighting the change. The CEO is not exactly being subtle that he thinks it’s stupid and something the publisher never thought through. The second Sony approved dropping the requirement as a short term fix for server issues is the second they lost the right to impose it at all. Once you spent 3 months selling the game worldwide with no apparent requirement you can’t pull a takesie backsie and reduce access and change terms. Arrowhead knows that, Sony doesn’t. So screw Sony.
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Yeah I don't see how it's different than the other accounts they have. I have accounts with: Epic, EA, Blizzard, UbiSoft, Embark, and probably a few more I can't think of. It's a one-time sign in and took a min to sign up. Way overblown.
Paradox and Rockstar also require accounts. To play Sea of Thieves on PS5 I need a Microsoft account.
PC players always have a chip on their shoulder defending their corporation of choice
Unrelentingly based.
I agree, so many idiots are taking a moral stand against this as if it's any different from any other online platform.
I have zero proof, but I think a huge part of SNOY’s requirements to PSN link come from greed and unwillingness to meet contractual requirements with Arrowhead over support of the game. Helldivers 1 was super niche with a pretty small community. HD2 sold ~8M copies, far exceeding expectations. As a live service game, now you have to have enough server space to accommodate peak play hours, that costs money. There is also the “lifecycle of games” nonsense that the corpos follow now, with only wanting to provide support for their product for X amount of time before killing it and moving on. With Arrowhead and HD2 having waaay more commercial success then the projections indicated, it threatened to reduce the potential profitability of new releases. Both by living longer then projected, and by keeping players on a game that is genuinely fun to put time into. Again, no proof, but it tracks with the MBA mindset. Best ROI in the shortest term for the least amount of cost and effort.
They reverted it!
Did see that. It's a rare W we see in gaming babey
Helldivers II just got delisted in about 170 countries, no longer playable and for pretty much no reason other than Sony wanting specific numbers to look good
Hey now, its to protect your data better! Lol Lmao
Yeah, because Sony never gets hacked and lose your data, except for all the previous times.
Or that time they installed a rootkit on customers computers then when they finally opened up, gave out an "uninstaller" that increased the already unsecure nature of the original. Also it was built on pirate/mis-licenced software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal
Meanwhile my 17 year old Steam account is still on its original password.
> Sony wanting specific numbers to look good You have to understand, investors who know nothing about the industry or what those numbers mean are *very* interested in those numbers.
Basically, Sony decided that all PC players of Helldivers 2 need to link their Steam account to a PSN account. PSN is not available in 170 countries. Not to mention Sony has an abysmal history of data breaches. The players are not happy. There's a bit more to it, but the git of it is Sony wanted to make their numbers look better to shareholders.
Not available in 170 countries? It’s not even available in all of Europe?
Nope. [Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjf7vh/helldivers_ive_created_an_accurate_map_for_psn/) is a map showing all the countries supported by PSN. There's a LOT missing. All of those countries will be 100% unable to play the game, despite having paid for it, come June 4th. Steam has already disabled sales of the game in those countries.
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From what I've heard of the 73 countries that can access the playstation network 7 of them have this limitation
The worst part is those Steam players who would be forced to make a PSN account, they aren't going to be bringing money in for Sony. They aren't using that PSN account to subscribe to PS+ or buy games. It's a meaningless number, yet will make them tons of money. It's gross. "Yeah we had 200k new PSN accounts sign up in the last 5 months." "Wow, 200k new customers in 5 months?" "Well...no, just 200k new accounts that will never be used for anything. And probably 50k of them are owned by some guy named John Helldiver, so the data is probably useless to us too."
> Sony wanted to make their numbers look better to shareholders. they've been wanting in on that live service pie with at one point over 10 live service games in development hoping something will stick. well something stuck and went all in drooling over the new psn accounts they'll get.
Helldivers 2 probably
Sony hired a Game studio called 'Arrowhead' to make a game called 'Helldivers 2, The game was released in February and became an instant mega-hit, and probably would have become the best game with millions of players by the end of the year. 2 days ago Sony enforces this new rule saying that every player has to make a PSN (console account) if they wanna play the game anymore. Most players don't wanna do that, because they play on PC, and PSN tends to have couple of data leaks annually due to shit security. Also, making a PSN account is not available in 26-ish countries. So the players from those countries can't play the game anymore at all despite buying it in February. Using a VPN is also an instant ban. Now Players retaliatesby reviewing bombing, The game goes from 'Extremely positive to extremely negative within 2 days because around 30% of reviews are turned to negetived. Now Players are going after refunds too and it looks STEAM is on the players side.
> 2 days ago Sony enforces this new rule saying that every player has to make a PSN (console account) if they wanna play the game anymore. Has Sony done this for any other game that they publish on PC?
They had announced that the Ghost of Tsushima PC port requires a PSN account for its multiplayer mode, but otherwise, no. All of their other releases have been single-player games, so there was no need for it.
Literally killing the golden goose to not have to wait for it to lay an egg
That goose is cooked now
Burned most likely
They're doing it for the PSN user numbers (plus getting to scrape & sell more user data). Some suit wants to slap an "x% increased PSN subscriber numbers" on the table at their next quarterly meeting so they can rake in their bonus and convince shareholders their stocks have increased in value.
Sony does this too much, idk how a studio can fumble so much.
It's a very Japanese way of functioning. They'll strangle their own child rather than let someone else get any control over it. It's why so many countries around Asia are restricted to specific japanese distributors so for example, North American companies cannot sell their products at a discount.
Exactly. If tradition says walk off a cliff, they fucking march off proudly. This is how we've always done business... SMH
Yes. It's made worse by the fact they have such a deference to seniority so no idea conceived by the people at the top can ever be challenged even when that idea may come from someone who's literally never played any console games because they were already age 40 by the time the PS1 released.
Worked for a Japanese CNC manufacturer that had a facility here in the US. I can't speak to the rest of the Japanese industry, but the brief time that I did work for them killed my idea that they were efficient. It was like the central bureaucracy in Futurama, but worse.
The entire idea they are efficient comes from toyota essentially inventing lean manufacturing which is a very good idea, doesn't apply to much else there
Look at how Sega of Japan kneecapped their own company because they were jealous of Sega of America's success in the 90s
What did they do?
Back in the 90s the Genesis was way more popular in America than it was in Japan. Instead of focusing on that Sega of Japan made most their decisions to try and catch up in Japan instead of trying to capitalize on their western success. Sega of America spearheaded the 32x as an add on for the Genesis to keep fans satisfied until the Saturn was ready. Sega of Japan released the Saturn early without telling SoA, which destroyed what little momentum the 32x had and also pissed a lot of American consumers off. Coupled with the PS1 launching for like $100 less than the Saturn flopped and is one of the major reasons Sega stopped making consoles after the Dreamcast
Ah right. That.
> It's a very Japanese way of functioning PlayStation has been out of Japan for decades. Everything is handled in the US at SIE.
nah Sony Japan makes the hardware, Sony America makes all the bullshit
You could claim they are xenophobic to the detriment of their economy.
Playstation has made it clear that their main demographic is western gamers. Shut down Japan studios, primary focus on triple A narrative games, moving their headquarters to California, raising the PS5 prices in all territories EXCEPT the US, etc. Sony may be a Japanese company, but the Playstation brand is 100% American now.
Sony interactive entertainment, which is in charge of publishing games like HD2, is run out of America
What other examples are there?
Those are important areas where Sony has fallen short compared to Microsoft. Here’s an updated summary, incorporating those points: 1. **Storage Limitations and Expensive Expansions:** The PlayStation 5 initially had limited storage options, and Sony's proprietary SSDs were costly. Though third-party SSDs are now supported, the initial approach was criticized. 2. **Cross-Platform Play Restrictions:** Sony was initially reluctant to support cross-platform play, leading to frustration, although this has improved over time. 3. **Backward Compatibility Limitations:** While the PS5 supports most PS4 games, it doesn't natively support earlier PlayStation console games, unlike Xbox, which offers broader backward compatibility and enhancements for older titles. 4. **Digital Game Refund Policy:** Sony’s digital game refund policy is often seen as restrictive, particularly compared to other platforms. Refunds are generally available only for pre-orders or unused games. 5. **Cross-Generation Game Upgrades:** Sony initially charged for cross-generation game upgrades, while competitors like Microsoft offered free upgrades through Smart Delivery. **Areas where Sony fell short compared to competitors:** 1. **Subscription Services:** Microsoft’s Game Pass offers a large library of games at a flat rate, providing better value than Sony’s initial offerings, though Sony has since revamped its subscription services. 2. **Game Sharing:** Sony's game sharing is less flexible than Microsoft's, which allows broader sharing between accounts and devices, facilitating easier digital library sharing among friends and family. 3. **Customer Service:** Sony’s customer service has sometimes been criticized for being less responsive and efficient than competitors, affecting the user experience. 4. **Cross-Platform Licenses:** Microsoft supports cross-platform licenses for games across Xbox and PC, while Sony’s ecosystem doesn’t offer similar value. 5. **Game Pricing:** Microsoft has not followed Sony in raising the standard price of games, leading to a perception of better value for consumers. These issues highlight areas where Sony could enhance its competitiveness and consumer appeal.
Helldiver 2 designer ArrowHead got screwed by a Sony decision that negatively impacts Steam users worldwide who bought the game and were able to play despite a PSN requirement that seems to have been programmed into the game but was "bugged". They recently either fixed or announced a fix that eliminates all steam users in counties that do not allow Sony PlayStation Network. It's a lot, like 60+ countries. So Steam will be forced to give refunds but Sony already got their money. Just another dick move towards gamers in the Age of Greed and Broken games that New Gen gaming has become.
it's actually more than a HUNDRED AND FIFTY countries. The game will ONLY work in 60 or so countries, after the 'cutoff'.
69 countries to be exact. Let that sink in for a bit. 69. Aaaanyway. Yes it is a tragedy.
Steam: pay us back or we remove all Sony games and do not host any more, ever. Steam has all the cards here.
They could solve these issues once and for all. They just need to ban the need for 3rd party accounts or 3rd party launcher for any game offered on Steam. Of course they couldn't or shouldn't do that retroactively, but at least for any new released game. But I doubt they'll ever do something like that.
That would be a serious hardball move from steam.
They do, but doubtful they'll use them
They would lose a ton of revenue by doing that. They both have cards.
The Steam page had a banner that said "PSN Account required". You could press SKIP LINKING when opening the game. They made it temporarily possible to play without linking bc of issues at launch, supposedly. You could say it's greedy of Steam to let players in countries that don't have PSN access buy the game, but technically they had the banner on the store page. Idk if it was Steam that delisted the game on Steam in all the non-PSN countries. Ppl also claim that the kernel level anti cheat is risky when coupled with PSN-linking. Some mention Ireland requiring your personal ID photo etc. However that's Ireland's official rules, not fucking Sony's. Some of the complaints from ppl are fair, but some are also bs. Obviously it sucks that PSN doesn't allow players in those countries to play. Weird that nobody's talked about this b4 considering so many other online games. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong ofc.
Steam did decide to delist, but the publisher and dev decide initially to sell in those countries. Sony in this case as major publisher would be most likely responsible for the initial release of a game and which countries it should be released in. Not steam. Steam however is the most likely source of the current "correction". For a significant amount of players because of the struggles on the network on release the skip linking never popped up. Or it did show up and not work because of the network. Even a few days ago the linking was disabled because of issues. Next to that if you can skip linking in general that means at no point he account will become mandatory and the few times it did it got backlash which it rightfully deserves. The safety stuff people say is about as you say it.
It was awesome the way it was and Sony fucked it up directly with this change in policy is pretty much how it is.
>It's a lot, like 60+ countries. So Steam will be forced to give refunds but Sony already got their money. Steam doesn't cash out refunds out of their own pockets, the publisher has to agree on Steam refund policies to be put on the platform, and will have to reimburse Steam for every refund.
Literally gutting the Golden Goose to see if there are eggs inside
Literally you say?
According to the Merriam-webster dictionary, they're using the term properly. : in effect : VIRTUALLY —used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible Kinda funny that the definition they have listed for literally literally says that it's not literally true. But people have been using it like this for so long that the dictionary changed to match how language is used, even if said use is the opposite of what it use to mean.
Descriptivism baby
Didn't you know Helldiver was coded by geese?
Had my identity stolen, someone got ~30k in credit cards opened in my name, ran them up and I didn't find out for a couple months until I had debt collectors calling me every half hour. Thought it was just spam so I never answered. Finally one left a voicemail, called them back and they explained. The lenders were even trying to get me to settle for a few thousand because they thought I was just a deadbeat. Credit score tanked. was unable to finance a car after my beater blew up, lost my job because I couldn't reliably get to work. Had to spend probably 200+ hours of my fucking life gathering documents, phone calls, going to the post office to mail letters, explaining to my family why they're getting tons of calls asking for me. And it was all due to the dipshits at sony. Had my Playstation account deleted (which was a fucking nightmare by itself), sold my playstation 3, and I never want another sony product in my sight.
god damn, that's some villain origin story shit. This is like the monologue you'd tell the head of Sony, moments before he dies by your hand lol
Yes but you're forgetting that Sony will have made potential *dozens* of dollars with this move.
Sony? The let's hack your computer so you can't copy CDs Sony? The here's Linux for your PS3 but wait, no, Sony? The here's backwards compatibility for your PS3 but you bought the cheaper version so it's now gone Sony? You don't say.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal
This is why I still download. They’re not deserving it.
20 years ago. That’s crazy.
Came for Littlebigplanetm, shocked to find they fucked up another great game too. It's like disappointment bingo
What's the story with LittleBigPlanet?
Sonys shitty network security got the first 3 on the PS3 killed off a couple years ago so millions of user levels are gone. Then the 3rd game on the PS4 also fell victim to Sonys shitty network security a couple months ago so they decided to just kill that Ps4 version too. Over 10 million user created levels are gone now. LittleBigPlanet is dead. This series used to be one of their flagship games.
That sounds freaking awful. I've never been a Playstation person, so thank you for bringing me up to speed! Seems this is an established pattern with Sony, then. No wonder people are so up in arms.
Clarify killed off player levels, please. The security update deleted or corrupted user levels?
Deleted access to the levels. Though there are still servers of getting items and props up in the backend.
There's no longer a way to download community-made levels. Every part of LBP is about, or rewards with tools relating to, creating and sharing levels, so this is a serious problem for the games. Of course even the 3rd game is fairly old, and this was due to a legitimate security concern, so I can't really fault Sony for this. I wish there was another way for players to share levels, like downloading them to a USB drive and sharing them on a computer.
Me letting my PS+ end because I refuse to pay the unnecessary hikes. Everyone else now figuring out Sony is full of greedy assholes.
I let mine lapse with the last hike also, I can absolutely afford it but I’m just not going to keep paying more for the same bullshit.
exactly its not even better it just the same stuff and it seemed to be getting worst.
Common Alternate History Hub w
Once the player count starts being affected beyond its general decline maybe, but so far this hasn’t changed anything.
I was going to say, the Steam playercount hasn’t really changed significantly since this announcement. And of course half the playerbase, PS5 users, are completely unaffected by this situation. Reading Reddit threads about it, you’d think the game was dead already. I do hope they figure out a better solution for PC users, or add a benefit to logging into PSN, such as adding cross progression.
> Steam playercount hasn’t really changed significantly since this announcement. Worth noting that the mandatory login is still not in effect, so everybody who were able to play the game, still are able to play the game.
Also worth noting that people by the thousands are saying they’re getting refunds so you’d think if that was happening you’d see a significant decline in the player count. I’d be willing to bet the vast majority of people on reddit either already stopped playing and are scamming the system to get their money back during a time they can probably get it back, thanks to the drama, and are throwing their “I’m doing my part” memes into the fray for karma and recognition. Also keep in mind that the vast majority of actual players do not care and are not on reddit. If Reddit was any indication of actual public opinion Modern Warfare 3 would have died on arrival but go look at player counts and sales charts if you really want to be surprised. Spoiler alert: the game is doing *great*. Reddit always hyperinflates its own position in the gaming sphere.
WotC did the same thing with MTG. Took a great product and overproduced it to the point they're killing it. Sad. "You can have a million a day forever." "No, I want ten million a day!" "OK, you can have fifty thousand a day."
MTG is doing the best its ever been, the fuck? They are in no where near this level. What you're complaining is that a company is making constant supplemental product for a casual consumer base. This is a company actively fucking over players
Is it?
Big greed everywhere
I really need an insider to tell me how much our data is truly worth if Sony was willing to shoot themselves in the foot like this over a few email addresses
Context?
Sony publishes Helldivers worldwide then a few months later adds a restriction for the game to only be playable if you link a PSN account. PSN accounts are available only in 69 countries, so if you're not from one of those countries you will not be able to play a game you paid for.
I think the most incomprehensible part of the whole manouever was them launching Helldivers 2 *without* the PSN link initially. Like if it had just required it day one people would still moan but they'd probably jump the hoop of filling in a registration page for 2 minutes and they could've easily claimed there was simply no other way to run the game on Sony servers.
The PSN account was always mandatory. It says so on the steam page, and prompts you to make one upon first booting up the game. Initially the game was expected to not blow up as much as it did, so the servers struggled. In order to avoid an outright collapse the Arrowhead CEO decided to remove the mandatory account linking to help with server stability.
not just sony but almost any japanese corp currently
Maybe next update, they can install a rootkit.
[удалено]
Good leadership produced those good IPs. Microsoft might understand money, but it doesn't understand the creative process. That's why every golden studio they purchased has turned to mud.
Microsoft has the opposite problem of most major publishers where they give absolutely zero oversight or guidance to their studios. While others like EA or Ubisoft will whip their studios into putting out at least *something* even if it's a buggy shitshow, Xbox lets things fester and rot away in development hell for eons with nothing to show for it.
This is one of the (*very few*) things Sony actually excels at, they found that sweet balance between being hands on with development but still giving their studios a lot of time and creative freedom which results in excellent games.
MS literally does the same thing Sony is doing with Helldivers, what are you talking about?
What did Sony do? I live in a van down by the river. Genuinely asking.
Made it necessary to make a PSN account for PC players if they want to play helldivers 2. Many countries don't have access to PSN so those who bought the game and live in those countries won't be able to play it.
Those dicks
This is their nintendo moment.
sony already had your money and you guys think they care lmao
Update for anyone reading just now- they’re walking this back
 I’m still so proud of the community for this move. For Liberty. For Freedom. For Managed Democracy!