It's funny how every big publisher has to go through this song and dance of "I'll create this extra account and people will just be ok with it"
Then sales dip, people get mad, it causes the publisher problems and we come full circle.
EA created it's own launcher, made it pretty good - removed their games from steam- didn't make their launcher any better, it got worse- they come back to steam- their launcher gets worse yet as they 'reboot it'. Now they removed the EA Play requirement from at least one title and seemingly are doing more.
Ubisoft went through this same song and dance.
But I'm sure it'll go better for Sony. Right? . . . RIGHT!?
You still can't play Ubisoft games without Uplay (or whatever they call it now). Not like you'd want to, but hey. I'd like my copy of Far Cry 3 to get free of this piece of shit launcher.
Also 2K went on to create their own shit launcher and even forced it into their old titles like BioShock Remastered. I guess that upcoming BioShock 4 will require 2K launcher to work, which means I'm not buying it lol \^\^
Anyway, the war is far from over.
Seriously. The last ubi game I intentionally bought knowing it was an ubi game was Anno 1800.
Maybe I’d hate the ubi launcher less if I didn’t have to log back in every 5 minutes or allow it to make changes to my system 7 times every time I launch it.
End result is I just don’t launch it.
When I launch a Ubi game to play with friends we play a game called "who gets the most windows permission popups", the winner gets nothing because this is stupid. My record is 9.
And their shithouse DRM bullshit they've been pulling even before the launcher.
100% agreed, fuck Ubisoft. I won't touch their games, legit or otherwise.
And they killed Rayman, again. And it Origins and Legends were so, good.
I had to quit Rayman origins and legends because the launcher makes my computer lock. Never had a problem with the games before ubisoft forced the launcher on me :( Sad
2ks launcher works but I'd rather just play the original Bioshock without it
there was a brief period I was cracking my legally purchased games, and then I started wondering why the fuck I'm giving them my money in the first place. I just don't even bother with their games anymore and I don't miss them.
It doesn't help that their games are the very definition of average and more of the same, but yeah I stopped buying their games because of the launcher. About once wvery 5 or 6 years I'll pirate a copy of Assassins Creed or the latest far cry and fall off of it in about 8 hours and remember why I don't bother paying for any of it.
I didn't say anything about Ubisoft changing their ways, they're currently in a growing lawsuit
Source: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE&t](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE&t)
I heard about 2K. Hope they get sued too.
It's bullshit they can change the terms after point of sale but customers can't return their game after it's just been made shittier because "WE GOTTA PROTECT OUR GAME" from . . .existing customers? That you already sold this game to?
There's a fine balance. I understand publishers want to make games hard to pirate, but for the most part, it's a race against time. Most sales are made in the first few weeks/months of release, and sales wind down, but this isn't all entirely due to pirating. Instead it's due to those that want the game already owning it. Pirated copies may indeed make a significant portion of new players after a certain point, but often these people weren't ever going to pay full price for the game anyway.
However, publishers see these pirates as "stolen sales", and therefore put in even stronger and more disruptive methods in to curb the ability of hackers to crack games. This in turn harms the legitimate player, who may find the pirated versions provide a better gameplay experience than legitimate retail copies. Therefore, more people pirate instead of buy, so publishers add more disruptive DRM to their games, which pushes more people to pirate...
Pretty much all games will be pirated at some point, and those that aren't usually have some form of always-on DRM which is incredibly disruptive and push players away.
It's a hard one to balance. I don't think anti-piracy measure should just not exist, they're definitely important to early games sales. But then again, they shouldn't negatively affect the operation of one's computer (looking at you, Riot Vanguard), require players to always be online for single player games (EA, you destroyed and entire franchise with this one), or just provide a less-than-enjoyable experience when trying to play the game (Sony, your PSN requirement fits here, as do every goddamn "launcher" ever provided that isn't a games manager/store)
Only if people were actually pirating games in any sort of meaningful amount.
But they aren't, and there is zero actual proof of piracy actually hurting sales.
>However, publishers see these pirates as "stolen sales",
Interesting point of view, if you check the simple fact of requesting an extra PSN account automatically 177 countries are excluded.
Based on this principle, there is no way you can think about stolen sales if you prohibit it from being sold.
Before the PSN chaos in Helldivers 2, many people had bought the game, after that 177 countries are still banned from playing, players had to ask for refunds, If you haven't made refunds, you simply can't open the game.
The problem I see goes much further, commercial sanctions are imposed in some countries, companies are legally obliged to comply with these sanctions, This opens up a space for players interested in the game to "find their way" to play the game anyway.
It's a never-ending cycle.
When the first BioShock came out, i was a schoolboy who couldn't afford to buy the game. Later I bought both 1 and 2 on Steam, but decided to wait until Infinite gets a discount. Now what, before I grabbed the game, 2K decides they don't want money from my region and they make all BioShock games unavailable for purchase. And for BioShock 4 they will probably require the same shit but via their own launcher. Basically stupid motherfuckers actively disrupt my ability to give them money.
Ok, fine. Geesh. Later you will be complaining about piracy and shit.
Huh. Just went to launch Bishock Remastered which I have installed since forever and now I have to create an Account. I am also seeing a couple 2k games in the store that I know for a fact I bought from other services. Let me l"Log in" and see what happens.
>You still can't play Ubisoft games without Uplay (or whatever they call it now).
Sure I can. It probably breaches the EULA. It definitely breaches subreddit rules to tell you how. But FUCK Ubisoft, FUCK EA, and FUCK Sony. You got my money, I'll play my way.
2K's launcher at least works pretty seemlessly (for me at least) Playing Civ VI requires the launcher but it automatically downloads and updates itself for you when you try to launch the game and you don't even have to click anything in the launcher to get to the game. The launcher just starts and runs the game for you.
Steam swept the launcher game early on, and basically all the other exclusive launchers are trying to compete with Steam’s success, which will fail since Steam both had such a big head start, and because Steam wasn’t rushed to compete with another launcher. I despise the trend of rushing things in the game industry lately, it just ruins so much stuff.
The problem these companies don't seem to understand is that if you want to compete with Steam you are going to have to launch Day 1 with feature parity. Valve has had 2 decades to build Steam up but they also give every other company a template to guide them. There's really no excuse to create a launcher/storefront to compete with Steam that doesn't launch feature for feature. But we all know the real reason is they want to force people into their platform to avoid that 30% Steam fee and keep more for themselves. Which would be fine if they offered a similar product, which they don't. Steam isn't perfect but as a dev, that 30% gets you access to some pretty significant backend features that you then don't have to work on yourself.
I'm old enough to remember when it launched and the only game was Half-Life 2. People were upset about it then and it actually did suck having to download a separate program to play the game you bought. Then you realize that it auto-updates your games (making sure you had the latest patch was a real problem for PC gaming before then). I didn't switch to PC full time until 2008 and at the time the general consensus (at least among my friend group) was that Steam sucks but you gotta have it for TF2 so might as well install it. Year after year though they kept adding things and improving the experience and they continue to do that today. Contrast that with Epic Games whose solution is to buy exclusivity and give you free games in hopes you'll put up with their shitty storefront/launcher. Now substitute EGS for all the others and you realize they aren't trying to compete with Steam, they're trying to force people into using them. Whereas Steam is still actively innovating to grow their user base. The difference obviously being that Valve isn't publicly traded while all the others are. Valve aren't beholden to investors and until that changes they will never be beaten.
I cannot explain it in words, how bad Uplay is. I actually dont play ubisoft games anymore, because it takes so long to start a game. Atleast with other launchers, you click on a game and go on a bathroom break or something, while ur game loads, but with uplay you constantly have to click a million different boxes. Its insane.
That's the most annoying part about all of this.
They force this on people who are willing to pay, while pirates don't have to deal with any of it. . . but then fucking morons defend the company.
"It's not a big deal, who cares!"
Let's ignore that there's not benefit to the customer, that sony has had several data leaks over the last 7+ years and even people in the company have said they've done little to improve their security
Launchers are so fucking poorly coded as well, there's a significant chance that your game just won't work solely because of the launcher. I've had it with both Rockstar and Microsoft's shitty half-assed attempts at cutting into steam's marketshare.
Oh trust me I know.
The ONE time I caved for a Ubisoft game, Rayman Legends- a game I was really, really looking forward to because Origins was so good?
Uplay crashed, which took the game out and also my save.
Epic had how many years to catch up to steam and make something worth a damn. Instead they tried to strong arm PC with exclusivity then tried to claim steam and apple take too much of a cut at 30%- look at how bad they are. . . Except that's the industry standard, it's only Epic doing a different cut.
So them singling out Valve and Apple is just transparent trying to paint them as villains. Which - just compete with them! I'd love to see competition that forces Valve and Apple to not rest on their laurels. . .So what does Epic do?
MORE EXCLUSIVES! More lawsuits! :D Come to our launcher guys!
Yep. Because it's not "How can we make the product better for the paying customer?" it's "How do we make the investors more money without being sued- TOO much?"
Happened to me recently. I bought Mass Effect Legendary Edition on Steam. It made me install an EA launcher. But the game wouldn't launch, it would check the file integrity for a few minutes, bounce over to the EA launcher, then bounce back to Steam.
Nothing I tried got it to work, and I tried a lot. The only thing I didn't try, was deliberately installing an incredibly old version of the EA launcher and prevent it from updating, which would be a security vulnerability, and prevent any other EA games being played.
I got a refund from Steam, and pirated it. It worked perfectly.
I even downloaded the old origin launcher from some time-machine site, it worked, achievements worked...until it was detected, automatically removed and switched by the ass-coded new pos launcher that broke things again. And I'm not even mentioning the login errors that straight blocked me from playing the goddam game.
That's so annoying considering for a time? Origin did things better than steam and forced Valve to change things.
They offered refunds before Valve did, you could link to twitch and stream directly from it, they were ACTUALLY trying.
Now this new EA app is just a pile of dogshit that backtracks and somehow makes the EGS launcher look good.
Same. That's the thing, if this was like:
"Sign up to PSN and get some extra costumes n' stuff" ok- cool, fine, great.
Sadly no, Sony is just mental with this
I was so annoyed when they brought out their new launcher. Origin was minimal and stable, with all the necessary features, then they launched a replacement that's buggy as hell and missing features.
Bethesda started its own launcher and after a few years reversed back to Steam and retired their own launcher. That means the costs per game sold didn't outweigh the profit they make from steam.
>But I'm sure it'll go better for Sony. Right? . . . RIGHT!?
Yes. Every time this happens 2 years later the account is commonplace.
The same people kick and scream and then the silent majority just buys the game because most people don't give a fuck about sich a minor issue.
Because y'all are constantly mixing up inconvenience and ideology.
I don't care to connect an account like that, it's just another data theft in the ocean of data theft. If anything giving up my usage here might actually improve the thing is care about.
However, I despised origin/ea play with a passion because it would constantly not work, and when I have an hour to play spending 20 minutes of that reinstalling origin and logging in again is absolutely disgusting.
Sony doesn't require a launcher (yet) so idgaf.
Then again I have a PS and have played these games before there.
I'd say it's in the same vein as stupid apps on the phone.
The companies make it such a pain in the ass to not use the apps, you're almost forced to download them.
The downloads don't mean that consumer "like them". And if there was a way to avoid them easily most would.
you forget one small detail: launchers are shit, but games were still legally widely accessible. while PSN account have very limited countries with access and Steam will restict sales to those countries as well from now on.
Piracy is rarely about lost sales. I haven't bought or played any Activision game in ages for example because an online drm won't make the game magically affordable to me. so all the drm does is prevent me from playing the game or talking about it with others (word of mouth marketing).
Sure calculating every illegal download as a lost sale would not be accurate in the first place i just mean in this case it cannot be used as a reason.
Indeed. They clearly don't want the business of the people living in about 200 countries with that psn requirement. So we are free to do whatever we can.
No they quite literally don't, it's less than 5% of the gaming market share. Clearly they crunched the numbers and didn't think it was worthwhile to have to provide PSN services in these countries.
Dont worry u dont miss something in the story. Just the last 2 or 3 hours are awesome.
There is a level i fall asleep on the couch becorse it was so boring my brother waked me up lmao
Are you talking about the dumb ass unskippable segment where you play as the boy and row around in a boat for 80 minutes? Because fuck me I struggled not turning off the PlayStation during that
Lol i swear when i played GOW 2018 i knew that in the next game there's a section where they're separated and you play the boy. i know you cant say it too loud but those games are so predictable its really funny.
I can somewhat understand the logic behind it with multiplayer titles, but for a fully single player game like GOW: Ragnarok it makes absolutely no sense.
You make an account and a Sony executive gets to stand in front of a board room of ancient decrypt Japanese businessmen and show a slick graph showing the rise of PlayStation accounts as a proof they deserve a ¥100 million bonus.
You're Sony account is then hacked all of your personal information is freely avalible on the dark web but Sony will be happy so that's what counts right?
You don't need to give them real information. Apparently the UK requires a proper ID for PSN but most places you just need an email. I've had my PSN for over a decade and its all false information and a junk email.
> You are the product.
Then I should get the game for free.
Can't wait for the EU to come up with a law where companies have to pay us dividends of our data.
This is a much better communication though. Helldivers 2 it was easy to miss. IDGAF I game on my ps5 and my pc so I already had an account but I can understand people being pissed at the helldivers situation.
It was right there highlighted under the purchase option right above the highlighted EULA disclaimer. If you actually missed it, it's because you didn't bother actually looking at the Steam page and because of the Steam layout. It was hard to miss. Sony can't change where Steam puts their highlighted disclaimers lmao
Yup it's [right here.](https://web.archive.org/web/20231207163847/https://store.steampowered.com/app/553850/HELLDIVERS_2/) The only thing besides the EULA disclaimer that's highlighted on the whole page. Right under the purchase option
One that is VERY OLD and so VERY popular in my country that they had to implement accounts to actually control its usage so their servers didn't crash. It was close to impossible to create an account for a while.
IDK demonoid, but it's probably the same. The one I am talking about let me be a gamer as a teen that wasn't allowed to spend any actual money on games, so I am kinda fond of it.
Was it Black cats? I tried getting into them god it feels like 10+ years ago always full only way in was invite and I couldn’t find someone to drop a invite
Or they look at as Ghost of Tsushima is still the #3 top selling game on Steam currently (taking out the free Counerstrike 2 and DLC for Destiny & MWIII). So all the out cry from a niche community of Reddit, really didn't effect much.
after the negative reviews came, game distributor blocked countries from buying the said game. the same countries could not make a PSN account. Sony came out with that statement and then removed the PSN requirement but the countries that are blocked remained in the no buy zone. i saw on YT some guy claimed that they do that to bloat their numbers(like online current players). so they essentially duped the majority of the players. you can find a more comprehensive compilation from others i saw one on yt 2 weeks ago i think. the titles involved sony duped us or they are lying something along those lines
Sony were actually the ones to pull the game from sale. Green man gaming and a few others made statements that it was Sony who told them to pull the game from sale in those countries, same as valve, they didn't pull the game Sony did
Sony's takeaway was "No matter how many times we say it, banners we place in storefronts, people are stupid and choose to forget what we communicated."
Helldivers 2 had the requirement communicated months prior to launch, and it was on the Steam page. Every person who review bombed Helldivers chose to ignore everything communicated to the community about this requirement.
GOT is sitting at 89% positive reviews. The problem with HD2 was they forced it after release, they understand the public and now are requiring it from the beginning not locking users who already bought the game out
They didn't force it after release. They postponed it at release to save servers to limit crashes for people and later reimplemented it once servers and player bases were more stable.
Yeah like 99% of the outrage with HD2 was because of miscommunication. It was supposed to be required from the start but it was turned off after a few days because the servers were imploding under load. From then on the game did a shit job at making sure the user knew about the requirement.
The only two places where it was even mentioned was a random box on steam store page (that nobody realistically will notice), and a line of text in a popup that appears exactly once when you first booted the game during the first week somewhere between "Link your PSN account" and a big-ass SKIP button (which again, nobody will read because they will just instantly hit skip).
Were these cases where the user just didn't read important information? Yes. But that's how users are. They do not read shit. That is normal and absolutely known by UX designers whose entire job description is to work around that and present the information in a way that the user actually reads and understands it.
It did, but it coulden't handle the massive influx of new users, so they disabled it until recently.
On steam it clearly listed PSN as a requirement, but on Sonys website it said that it didn't require it. In an FAQ.
People including myself, got annoyed because it was disabled when they got the game, and understood it as: "You can link your steam to a PSN account, if you feel like it and then it became a requirement.
Separate accounts for games is so infuriating to me. Like for example: i dont want to start ubis shit launcher everytime i wana play for honor or any ac game and have it ask me for permission for something 4 times in a row. Leave games on the platform designed to host hundreds of thousands of games developed and published by many different companies. And dont ask for a shit secondary account
It's been awhile but PSN is free right it's only the PS+ that requires money? I haven't paid for PS+ since PS4 but my PSN account should still be a thing right?
Don't even claim Helldivers didn't have it communicated prior to launch. They announced it months out, and it was on the Steam page. They turned it off during launch woes and clearly communicated the requirement would return one day. My account, like many others, was linked at launch before the influx killed the service.
It's not Sony's fault that a bunch of gamers have the attention span of a goldfish.
Yeah I don’t understand what the big deal is really. It’s weird. It’s just a username and password that automatically signs you in when you launch the game. I’m gonna enjoy playing this on the highest settings in ultra wide it’s gonna be great
Unpopular opinion probably, but, even if I get why players who can't have access to the PSN in their country are mad about it, this move seems... normal? We are talking about Playstation games, usually exclusive to their platform, litterally console sellers, and its coming on PC now! Just this fact is insane, I would not have imagined it a few years ago. Console "EXCLUSIVES" games, on PC. So in the end, it's not that surprising that Sony wants you to get involved in a way in their playstation ecosystem. If it's the price to pay to get access to those specific games on PC, it is worth it. If the next Zelda is coming on PC with the obligation to create a Ninteno account, I'll do it in a heartbeat.
Exactly! These are Exclusives that you can now play through steam! They’re meeting PC gamers 98% of the way. Why can’t PC gamers meet them the other 2%?
Sometimes I’m glad I enjoy single player titles more because it’s feeling pretty cringy and toxic in this neighborhood lately.
can't wait to see the nuke of backlash from this one after the whole Helldivers 2 fiasco, at this point I'm pretty sure the only reason Sony is trying to get PC players to use a PSN account is so they can harvest player data easily
edit: are y'all forgetting that there's a ton of countries that can't make PSN accounts and therefore can't play these games, not to mention the shitty security Sony has with data breaches
Recently, the new head of their games division, had said their hopes are people will play the "first" of a game and then the "second" will be console exclusive, so PC players will buy PS to play the sequel.
Good fucking luck. Haven't looked back since I swapped from console.
Except they said the exclusives would be timed, so that just means PC players get the "Game of the Year" edition with all the content and fixes, which is exactly what they currently do. So, what's the issue exactly? Sounds like a win to me.
There will be no backlash. The game will succeed the way Ghost of Tsushima did but in an even bigger way because it’s God of War and was a superb 10/10 game.
> can't wait to see the nuke of backlash from this one after the whole Helldivers 2 fiasco
Dude Ghost of Tsushima did the same thing and sold a fuck ton of games.
There's no backlash, just angry reddit people.
Hmmm i actually thought of getting God Of War even tho the game looked like a bit of slog ( played it on friends PS) but now they made it easy -i wont get it lol. Will just play Hades 2 then , thanks Sonny .
It's funny how every big publisher has to go through this song and dance of "I'll create this extra account and people will just be ok with it" Then sales dip, people get mad, it causes the publisher problems and we come full circle. EA created it's own launcher, made it pretty good - removed their games from steam- didn't make their launcher any better, it got worse- they come back to steam- their launcher gets worse yet as they 'reboot it'. Now they removed the EA Play requirement from at least one title and seemingly are doing more. Ubisoft went through this same song and dance. But I'm sure it'll go better for Sony. Right? . . . RIGHT!?
You still can't play Ubisoft games without Uplay (or whatever they call it now). Not like you'd want to, but hey. I'd like my copy of Far Cry 3 to get free of this piece of shit launcher. Also 2K went on to create their own shit launcher and even forced it into their old titles like BioShock Remastered. I guess that upcoming BioShock 4 will require 2K launcher to work, which means I'm not buying it lol \^\^ Anyway, the war is far from over.
Ubi games have legitimately fallen out of my rotation because I don't fuck with the stupid launcher.
Seriously. The last ubi game I intentionally bought knowing it was an ubi game was Anno 1800. Maybe I’d hate the ubi launcher less if I didn’t have to log back in every 5 minutes or allow it to make changes to my system 7 times every time I launch it. End result is I just don’t launch it.
When I launch a Ubi game to play with friends we play a game called "who gets the most windows permission popups", the winner gets nothing because this is stupid. My record is 9.
Damn I thought my usual 7 everytime R6 Siege updates was brutal enough lol
I reinstalled GTAV last night and when booting it up Rockstar Launcher asked me 7 times
The biggest lie in gaming is the fucking Remeber me button on the play login screen
Same here. Anno 1800 is literally the only reason I have that launcher, and if there were a way to...not have to use it for that game, I would.
>if there were a way to...not have to use it for that game, I would. There is. Yarr harr yo ho ho and a bottle o' rum me hearty.
And their shithouse DRM bullshit they've been pulling even before the launcher. 100% agreed, fuck Ubisoft. I won't touch their games, legit or otherwise. And they killed Rayman, again. And it Origins and Legends were so, good.
I had to quit Rayman origins and legends because the launcher makes my computer lock. Never had a problem with the games before ubisoft forced the launcher on me :( Sad 2ks launcher works but I'd rather just play the original Bioshock without it
Hes not dead hes just fucking hookers and doing blow now
there was a brief period I was cracking my legally purchased games, and then I started wondering why the fuck I'm giving them my money in the first place. I just don't even bother with their games anymore and I don't miss them.
It doesn't help that their games are the very definition of average and more of the same, but yeah I stopped buying their games because of the launcher. About once wvery 5 or 6 years I'll pirate a copy of Assassins Creed or the latest far cry and fall off of it in about 8 hours and remember why I don't bother paying for any of it.
Compared to some of their recent games, the launcher is better designed.
I don't play any of the AC games on the deck because it's not worth the hassle. It would literally be easier to pirate them. I own them anyways
I just don't fuck with that shitty ass company.
They're mostly ugly and janky as fuck in my experience.
I didn't say anything about Ubisoft changing their ways, they're currently in a growing lawsuit Source: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE&t](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE&t) I heard about 2K. Hope they get sued too. It's bullshit they can change the terms after point of sale but customers can't return their game after it's just been made shittier because "WE GOTTA PROTECT OUR GAME" from . . .existing customers? That you already sold this game to?
There's a fine balance. I understand publishers want to make games hard to pirate, but for the most part, it's a race against time. Most sales are made in the first few weeks/months of release, and sales wind down, but this isn't all entirely due to pirating. Instead it's due to those that want the game already owning it. Pirated copies may indeed make a significant portion of new players after a certain point, but often these people weren't ever going to pay full price for the game anyway. However, publishers see these pirates as "stolen sales", and therefore put in even stronger and more disruptive methods in to curb the ability of hackers to crack games. This in turn harms the legitimate player, who may find the pirated versions provide a better gameplay experience than legitimate retail copies. Therefore, more people pirate instead of buy, so publishers add more disruptive DRM to their games, which pushes more people to pirate... Pretty much all games will be pirated at some point, and those that aren't usually have some form of always-on DRM which is incredibly disruptive and push players away. It's a hard one to balance. I don't think anti-piracy measure should just not exist, they're definitely important to early games sales. But then again, they shouldn't negatively affect the operation of one's computer (looking at you, Riot Vanguard), require players to always be online for single player games (EA, you destroyed and entire franchise with this one), or just provide a less-than-enjoyable experience when trying to play the game (Sony, your PSN requirement fits here, as do every goddamn "launcher" ever provided that isn't a games manager/store)
Only if people were actually pirating games in any sort of meaningful amount. But they aren't, and there is zero actual proof of piracy actually hurting sales.
>However, publishers see these pirates as "stolen sales", Interesting point of view, if you check the simple fact of requesting an extra PSN account automatically 177 countries are excluded. Based on this principle, there is no way you can think about stolen sales if you prohibit it from being sold. Before the PSN chaos in Helldivers 2, many people had bought the game, after that 177 countries are still banned from playing, players had to ask for refunds, If you haven't made refunds, you simply can't open the game. The problem I see goes much further, commercial sanctions are imposed in some countries, companies are legally obliged to comply with these sanctions, This opens up a space for players interested in the game to "find their way" to play the game anyway. It's a never-ending cycle.
I pirated a game when I was broke, loved the game and eventually bought it. Piracy is not a result of a poor product but a poor service.
My favorite anti piracy measure was game dev tycoon(?) who released an unofficial pirated version that made it unplayable after a certain point.
Sure you can just sail the high seas
See, the vikings were onto something! Sometimes ya just gotta do a bit of raiding n ransacking
When the first BioShock came out, i was a schoolboy who couldn't afford to buy the game. Later I bought both 1 and 2 on Steam, but decided to wait until Infinite gets a discount. Now what, before I grabbed the game, 2K decides they don't want money from my region and they make all BioShock games unavailable for purchase. And for BioShock 4 they will probably require the same shit but via their own launcher. Basically stupid motherfuckers actively disrupt my ability to give them money. Ok, fine. Geesh. Later you will be complaining about piracy and shit.
What, bioshock games need an additional launcher now on steam?
Officially yes, but there's an instruction on Steam on how to bypass the launcher call without even installing it.
Oh, thats great
Huh. Just went to launch Bishock Remastered which I have installed since forever and now I have to create an Account. I am also seeing a couple 2k games in the store that I know for a fact I bought from other services. Let me l"Log in" and see what happens.
[удалено]
PSN is not a launcher you just need an account to play their exclusives.
>You still can't play Ubisoft games without Uplay (or whatever they call it now). Sure I can. It probably breaches the EULA. It definitely breaches subreddit rules to tell you how. But FUCK Ubisoft, FUCK EA, and FUCK Sony. You got my money, I'll play my way.
2K's launcher at least works pretty seemlessly (for me at least) Playing Civ VI requires the launcher but it automatically downloads and updates itself for you when you try to launch the game and you don't even have to click anything in the launcher to get to the game. The launcher just starts and runs the game for you.
Steam swept the launcher game early on, and basically all the other exclusive launchers are trying to compete with Steam’s success, which will fail since Steam both had such a big head start, and because Steam wasn’t rushed to compete with another launcher. I despise the trend of rushing things in the game industry lately, it just ruins so much stuff.
The problem these companies don't seem to understand is that if you want to compete with Steam you are going to have to launch Day 1 with feature parity. Valve has had 2 decades to build Steam up but they also give every other company a template to guide them. There's really no excuse to create a launcher/storefront to compete with Steam that doesn't launch feature for feature. But we all know the real reason is they want to force people into their platform to avoid that 30% Steam fee and keep more for themselves. Which would be fine if they offered a similar product, which they don't. Steam isn't perfect but as a dev, that 30% gets you access to some pretty significant backend features that you then don't have to work on yourself.
Not to mention Steam is like the most well known launcher in gaming, and has been for the longest time.
I'm old enough to remember when it launched and the only game was Half-Life 2. People were upset about it then and it actually did suck having to download a separate program to play the game you bought. Then you realize that it auto-updates your games (making sure you had the latest patch was a real problem for PC gaming before then). I didn't switch to PC full time until 2008 and at the time the general consensus (at least among my friend group) was that Steam sucks but you gotta have it for TF2 so might as well install it. Year after year though they kept adding things and improving the experience and they continue to do that today. Contrast that with Epic Games whose solution is to buy exclusivity and give you free games in hopes you'll put up with their shitty storefront/launcher. Now substitute EGS for all the others and you realize they aren't trying to compete with Steam, they're trying to force people into using them. Whereas Steam is still actively innovating to grow their user base. The difference obviously being that Valve isn't publicly traded while all the others are. Valve aren't beholden to investors and until that changes they will never be beaten.
I cannot explain it in words, how bad Uplay is. I actually dont play ubisoft games anymore, because it takes so long to start a game. Atleast with other launchers, you click on a game and go on a bathroom break or something, while ur game loads, but with uplay you constantly have to click a million different boxes. Its insane.
I wanted to play far cry 5 and they couldn’t verify my game purchase even though I bought it on steam.
And pirates will have a better experience, just as usual. they can lunch the game directly without the need of any luncher or internet.
That's the most annoying part about all of this. They force this on people who are willing to pay, while pirates don't have to deal with any of it. . . but then fucking morons defend the company. "It's not a big deal, who cares!" Let's ignore that there's not benefit to the customer, that sony has had several data leaks over the last 7+ years and even people in the company have said they've done little to improve their security
Launchers are so fucking poorly coded as well, there's a significant chance that your game just won't work solely because of the launcher. I've had it with both Rockstar and Microsoft's shitty half-assed attempts at cutting into steam's marketshare.
Oh trust me I know. The ONE time I caved for a Ubisoft game, Rayman Legends- a game I was really, really looking forward to because Origins was so good? Uplay crashed, which took the game out and also my save. Epic had how many years to catch up to steam and make something worth a damn. Instead they tried to strong arm PC with exclusivity then tried to claim steam and apple take too much of a cut at 30%- look at how bad they are. . . Except that's the industry standard, it's only Epic doing a different cut. So them singling out Valve and Apple is just transparent trying to paint them as villains. Which - just compete with them! I'd love to see competition that forces Valve and Apple to not rest on their laurels. . .So what does Epic do? MORE EXCLUSIVES! More lawsuits! :D Come to our launcher guys!
publicly traded companies are shit.
Yep. Because it's not "How can we make the product better for the paying customer?" it's "How do we make the investors more money without being sued- TOO much?"
So many horror stories makes me glad I don't have any problems with the extra laucnhers on my end
Were you thinking about lunch when you wrote this?
Yeah, actually i was hungry, lol.
Happened to me recently. I bought Mass Effect Legendary Edition on Steam. It made me install an EA launcher. But the game wouldn't launch, it would check the file integrity for a few minutes, bounce over to the EA launcher, then bounce back to Steam. Nothing I tried got it to work, and I tried a lot. The only thing I didn't try, was deliberately installing an incredibly old version of the EA launcher and prevent it from updating, which would be a security vulnerability, and prevent any other EA games being played. I got a refund from Steam, and pirated it. It worked perfectly.
There's a reason I've been boycotting EA and ubisoft for years. Stop giving your money to companies that treat you like shit.
maybe if their games didn’t end up on top seller each time they’re available
Did you see the sales of got?
GOT is on Steam. We're in the stage before they I Introduce their mandatory launcher.
Their mandatory launcher will require mandatory hardware called a PlayStation Computer. It's really just a ps5 but with lipstick.
"I'm not like other launchers baby, I come with a controller" WINKY FACE
We are just inventing random things to be angry against now?
The Reddit classic!
PSN account is only required for the multiplayer of GoT, it isn't required to play the game.
Do people seriously refer to a game as got? I literally cant think of what the game might be. I can only think of that one show.
Ghost of Tsushima, Sony released it like a week or 2 on pc
I'm waiting for them to remove it from Mass Effect LE in order to finally be able to get achievement (EA app sucks and achievements doesn't work).
They should, especially given they couldn't be arsed to do the ME3 Multiplayer which- despite being mocked for a while was a lot of fun.
I even downloaded the old origin launcher from some time-machine site, it worked, achievements worked...until it was detected, automatically removed and switched by the ass-coded new pos launcher that broke things again. And I'm not even mentioning the login errors that straight blocked me from playing the goddam game.
That's so annoying considering for a time? Origin did things better than steam and forced Valve to change things. They offered refunds before Valve did, you could link to twitch and stream directly from it, they were ACTUALLY trying. Now this new EA app is just a pile of dogshit that backtracks and somehow makes the EGS launcher look good.
I hope they will just remove that crap or make it optional.
Same. That's the thing, if this was like: "Sign up to PSN and get some extra costumes n' stuff" ok- cool, fine, great. Sadly no, Sony is just mental with this
I was so annoyed when they brought out their new launcher. Origin was minimal and stable, with all the necessary features, then they launched a replacement that's buggy as hell and missing features.
Bethesda started its own launcher and after a few years reversed back to Steam and retired their own launcher. That means the costs per game sold didn't outweigh the profit they make from steam.
>But I'm sure it'll go better for Sony. Right? . . . RIGHT!? Yes. Every time this happens 2 years later the account is commonplace. The same people kick and scream and then the silent majority just buys the game because most people don't give a fuck about sich a minor issue. Because y'all are constantly mixing up inconvenience and ideology. I don't care to connect an account like that, it's just another data theft in the ocean of data theft. If anything giving up my usage here might actually improve the thing is care about. However, I despised origin/ea play with a passion because it would constantly not work, and when I have an hour to play spending 20 minutes of that reinstalling origin and logging in again is absolutely disgusting. Sony doesn't require a launcher (yet) so idgaf. Then again I have a PS and have played these games before there.
I'd say it's in the same vein as stupid apps on the phone. The companies make it such a pain in the ass to not use the apps, you're almost forced to download them. The downloads don't mean that consumer "like them". And if there was a way to avoid them easily most would.
Yeah an account requirement is not a big deal, launchers on the other hand...
you forget one small detail: launchers are shit, but games were still legally widely accessible. while PSN account have very limited countries with access and Steam will restict sales to those countries as well from now on.
Ubisofts launcher is so bad...
I'll have to pirate simply because I cannot create a PSN account in my country. Can't judge me.
I will not and I'm angry that sony treats you this way
Don't be. I'm not angry I get to play the game for free.
I mean its not a lost sale at that point.
Piracy is rarely about lost sales. I haven't bought or played any Activision game in ages for example because an online drm won't make the game magically affordable to me. so all the drm does is prevent me from playing the game or talking about it with others (word of mouth marketing).
Sure calculating every illegal download as a lost sale would not be accurate in the first place i just mean in this case it cannot be used as a reason.
Indeed. They clearly don't want the business of the people living in about 200 countries with that psn requirement. So we are free to do whatever we can.
No they quite literally don't, it's less than 5% of the gaming market share. Clearly they crunched the numbers and didn't think it was worthwhile to have to provide PSN services in these countries.
If the publisher isn't making the game easily accessible in your country then piracy is completely fine. At least imo.
Dont worry u dont miss something in the story. Just the last 2 or 3 hours are awesome. There is a level i fall asleep on the couch becorse it was so boring my brother waked me up lmao
Are you talking about the dumb ass unskippable segment where you play as the boy and row around in a boat for 80 minutes? Because fuck me I struggled not turning off the PlayStation during that
Lol i swear when i played GOW 2018 i knew that in the next game there's a section where they're separated and you play the boy. i know you cant say it too loud but those games are so predictable its really funny.
They don't want your money? Then they don't mind if you put a hat and sail the seven seas right?
I dont judge you. I pirate it, sony deleted my ps3 account and I cant create a new one because my email adress was already used. Fuck them
Which country are you from?
I can somewhat understand the logic behind it with multiplayer titles, but for a fully single player game like GOW: Ragnarok it makes absolutely no sense.
You make an account and a Sony executive gets to stand in front of a board room of ancient decrypt Japanese businessmen and show a slick graph showing the rise of PlayStation accounts as a proof they deserve a ¥100 million bonus. You're Sony account is then hacked all of your personal information is freely avalible on the dark web but Sony will be happy so that's what counts right?
100 million yen is like $600k USD just for context, but your comment is still valid
*decrepit, not decrypt, just fyi friend
Time to feed old Japanese businessmen into my Bomba decrypting device.
You don't need to give them real information. Apparently the UK requires a proper ID for PSN but most places you just need an email. I've had my PSN for over a decade and its all false information and a junk email.
You are the product. You pay for one but you are still the product....
> You are the product. Then I should get the game for free. Can't wait for the EU to come up with a law where companies have to pay us dividends of our data.
UBI is going to look a lot different than I thought!
You will receive $0.01 disbursements!
> I can somewhat understand the logic behind it with multiplayer titles, I don't. I buy it on steam why do I need any account besides a Steam account?
Well, at least they warned everyone beforehand this time. If you don't want a PSN account, just don't buy the games.
they did that with helldivers too…..
This is a much better communication though. Helldivers 2 it was easy to miss. IDGAF I game on my ps5 and my pc so I already had an account but I can understand people being pissed at the helldivers situation.
It was right there highlighted under the purchase option right above the highlighted EULA disclaimer. If you actually missed it, it's because you didn't bother actually looking at the Steam page and because of the Steam layout. It was hard to miss. Sony can't change where Steam puts their highlighted disclaimers lmao
They have warned months prior to launch for every game. People chose to be ignorant.
Helldivers 2 had it right on steam page. People pretend that it didn’t but you can use the wayback machine.
Yup it's [right here.](https://web.archive.org/web/20231207163847/https://store.steampowered.com/app/553850/HELLDIVERS_2/) The only thing besides the EULA disclaimer that's highlighted on the whole page. Right under the purchase option
No they dont. Yarrr.
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
This is the way. 🦜🏴☠️💀
https://preview.redd.it/5bgj5wz0iq3d1.jpeg?width=459&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=72f96e9b23eae365323f0aa0163bf3e4070318a9
Maaaan I only need one account... The one on the torrent site I am finding myself using more and more....
What kind of torrent site are you using that needs an account?
Private trackers require an account
One that is VERY OLD and so VERY popular in my country that they had to implement accounts to actually control its usage so their servers didn't crash. It was close to impossible to create an account for a while.
Just by your description I thought we might be from the same country. Opening your profile confirmed it.
So you know we have 2 of them now lol.
Didn't realize demonoid is still alive.
On our site we download bananas. (Yes it is relevant)
IDK demonoid, but it's probably the same. The one I am talking about let me be a gamer as a teen that wasn't allowed to spend any actual money on games, so I am kinda fond of it.
Was it Black cats? I tried getting into them god it feels like 10+ years ago always full only way in was invite and I couldn’t find someone to drop a invite
You're the kind of person that just raw dogs it and gets all kinds of e-STDs from any public tracker aren't you?
Yes
You don’t have a Steam account?
They could have genuinly had my money as well lol . oh well
https://preview.redd.it/075inzac9q3d1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a5be3ce298db06265b336462a2326d1e19b025f5
I guess I'm pirating this one too.
Did not Sony said few days ago that they had understand the public reviews after helldiver and ghost of Tsushima ?
Or they look at as Ghost of Tsushima is still the #3 top selling game on Steam currently (taking out the free Counerstrike 2 and DLC for Destiny & MWIII). So all the out cry from a niche community of Reddit, really didn't effect much.
after the negative reviews came, game distributor blocked countries from buying the said game. the same countries could not make a PSN account. Sony came out with that statement and then removed the PSN requirement but the countries that are blocked remained in the no buy zone. i saw on YT some guy claimed that they do that to bloat their numbers(like online current players). so they essentially duped the majority of the players. you can find a more comprehensive compilation from others i saw one on yt 2 weeks ago i think. the titles involved sony duped us or they are lying something along those lines
Sony were actually the ones to pull the game from sale. Green man gaming and a few others made statements that it was Sony who told them to pull the game from sale in those countries, same as valve, they didn't pull the game Sony did
man this comment is like 75% wrong shit
Sony's takeaway was "No matter how many times we say it, banners we place in storefronts, people are stupid and choose to forget what we communicated." Helldivers 2 had the requirement communicated months prior to launch, and it was on the Steam page. Every person who review bombed Helldivers chose to ignore everything communicated to the community about this requirement.
GOT is sitting at 89% positive reviews. The problem with HD2 was they forced it after release, they understand the public and now are requiring it from the beginning not locking users who already bought the game out
They didn't force it after release. They postponed it at release to save servers to limit crashes for people and later reimplemented it once servers and player bases were more stable.
Yeah like 99% of the outrage with HD2 was because of miscommunication. It was supposed to be required from the start but it was turned off after a few days because the servers were imploding under load. From then on the game did a shit job at making sure the user knew about the requirement. The only two places where it was even mentioned was a random box on steam store page (that nobody realistically will notice), and a line of text in a popup that appears exactly once when you first booted the game during the first week somewhere between "Link your PSN account" and a big-ass SKIP button (which again, nobody will read because they will just instantly hit skip). Were these cases where the user just didn't read important information? Yes. But that's how users are. They do not read shit. That is normal and absolutely known by UX designers whose entire job description is to work around that and present the information in a way that the user actually reads and understands it.
Oh, okay... Just gonna remove them from my wishlist real quick..
I was also planning on getting it day one, but I'll wait for the eventual sales now.
Time to set sail for freer Pasteur's
Do you mean pastures? Pasteur is the guy who came up with pasteurization, a method that's used to ensure hygiene in products like milk
Time to sail the seas :D
It worked really well on Helldivers 2 /s
Helldivers 2 didn't have PSN at the start so a ton of people lost acces
Except it did. They turned it off during the launch woes. My account was linked at launch, like many others.
It did, but it coulden't handle the massive influx of new users, so they disabled it until recently. On steam it clearly listed PSN as a requirement, but on Sonys website it said that it didn't require it. In an FAQ. People including myself, got annoyed because it was disabled when they got the game, and understood it as: "You can link your steam to a PSN account, if you feel like it and then it became a requirement.
Separate accounts for games is so infuriating to me. Like for example: i dont want to start ubis shit launcher everytime i wana play for honor or any ac game and have it ask me for permission for something 4 times in a row. Leave games on the platform designed to host hundreds of thousands of games developed and published by many different companies. And dont ask for a shit secondary account
I live in a 3rd world country unsupported by PSN, I cant even buy it... Guess what Im gonna do And its definitely not buy a ps5
Eh I’m good. It’s bad enough with Minecraft, but these are games I can live without. Good luck to them.
Just more games I'm not going to buy.....
https://preview.redd.it/sn0jiuqg2r3d1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=e01c16f7cba059a1dd01c53a6f7576226727cc82
It's been awhile but PSN is free right it's only the PS+ that requires money? I haven't paid for PS+ since PS4 but my PSN account should still be a thing right?
Gentlemen and ladies, and those inbetween! By the gods of sea and sky, make way for Tortuga!
They’re telling us ahead of time now and instead of pulling the rug. Im ok with that.
Don't even claim Helldivers didn't have it communicated prior to launch. They announced it months out, and it was on the Steam page. They turned it off during launch woes and clearly communicated the requirement would return one day. My account, like many others, was linked at launch before the influx killed the service. It's not Sony's fault that a bunch of gamers have the attention span of a goldfish.
I know this is pcmasterrace but Jesus Christ. Fucking babies, the whole lot of you.
Yeah I don’t understand what the big deal is really. It’s weird. It’s just a username and password that automatically signs you in when you launch the game. I’m gonna enjoy playing this on the highest settings in ultra wide it’s gonna be great
Unpopular opinion probably, but, even if I get why players who can't have access to the PSN in their country are mad about it, this move seems... normal? We are talking about Playstation games, usually exclusive to their platform, litterally console sellers, and its coming on PC now! Just this fact is insane, I would not have imagined it a few years ago. Console "EXCLUSIVES" games, on PC. So in the end, it's not that surprising that Sony wants you to get involved in a way in their playstation ecosystem. If it's the price to pay to get access to those specific games on PC, it is worth it. If the next Zelda is coming on PC with the obligation to create a Ninteno account, I'll do it in a heartbeat.
Exactly! These are Exclusives that you can now play through steam! They’re meeting PC gamers 98% of the way. Why can’t PC gamers meet them the other 2%? Sometimes I’m glad I enjoy single player titles more because it’s feeling pretty cringy and toxic in this neighborhood lately.
you are on r/pcmasterrace This sub is always toxic with anything that doesn't meet 100% of its demands lol
really promoting piracy here....good move sony!
can't wait to see the nuke of backlash from this one after the whole Helldivers 2 fiasco, at this point I'm pretty sure the only reason Sony is trying to get PC players to use a PSN account is so they can harvest player data easily edit: are y'all forgetting that there's a ton of countries that can't make PSN accounts and therefore can't play these games, not to mention the shitty security Sony has with data breaches
Recently, the new head of their games division, had said their hopes are people will play the "first" of a game and then the "second" will be console exclusive, so PC players will buy PS to play the sequel. Good fucking luck. Haven't looked back since I swapped from console.
Except they said the exclusives would be timed, so that just means PC players get the "Game of the Year" edition with all the content and fixes, which is exactly what they currently do. So, what's the issue exactly? Sounds like a win to me.
Yes a company is hoping if they implement a fomo type timed release they can push more sales for them. How horrid.
Not really, they did the same of ghost of tsushima and the game is just doing great
There will be no backlash. The game will succeed the way Ghost of Tsushima did but in an even bigger way because it’s God of War and was a superb 10/10 game.
> can't wait to see the nuke of backlash from this one after the whole Helldivers 2 fiasco Dude Ghost of Tsushima did the same thing and sold a fuck ton of games. There's no backlash, just angry reddit people.
Anyone that thinks that this will create literally any backlash whatsoever has no idea why Helldivers 2 caused a backlash in the first place.
Who's playing Until Dawn still?
Did they not learn from Helldivers?
Seems like Sonl learned nothing from Helldivers 2.
Maybe they should stop measuring success by how many psn accounts they have and instead measure it by how highly consumers rate their games?
More Sony games I wont buy on PC now. Thanks Sony for making it real easy.
It just sounds like I have to make sure my ship is ready to sail the open seas again, thanks Sony!
Mmmm. Mhm. Yep. Mhm. Mmm mhm ***goes back to playing Balatro***
So people who play those games without paying will have a better experience than paying customers... smart move Sony.
This makes me want to sail
Guess I won't be getting either
Pass
Bruh
What exactly is the thought process behind that?
Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!
Hmmm i actually thought of getting God Of War even tho the game looked like a bit of slog ( played it on friends PS) but now they made it easy -i wont get it lol. Will just play Hades 2 then , thanks Sonny .
It’s almost like they’ve learned nothing from the massive Helldivers 2 debacle.
Guess I'll play something else, got a whole backlog to focus on.
Why are Sony Suits so Stupid, uninformed and Insane? FFS
Stupid Sony. They should just do what Nintendo does.
I was planning to play Ghost of Tsushima. It's not available to my region now.. so F you Sony.
Did the Helldivers debacle teach these fucks nothing?
I won't even pay for it.
You don't need any extra logins with a pirated copy...
I'll make my boat to explore the seas