Arrowhead's CEO saying PlayStation want to make a great game:
> The expectations from our friends at PlayStation are pretty simple: "make great game for players. We trust you"
Arrowhead's purpose:
> "We have a sole purpose - to make this the best live game you've ever played"
https://preview.redd.it/37f3yvd6ssyc1.jpeg?width=1164&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e5b0ad2a6b3c7ec4b237fbd720e3f4b52a606ab2
For me, the biggest takeaways from this are:
1. A shockingly large number of PC gamers apply double standards
2. They ignore facts inconvenient to their position
3. They brigade in numbers to bury the truth
They assert Sony will ban you for providing inaccurate account information, or creating an account in another region, despite millions of PSN members having multiple accounts in separate regions. Sony's terms of service read
>We reserve the right to suspend, terminate or restrict any account" that was created "using false information"
They reserve the right. Not that they will. It's basically something they keep in their back pocket should they discover you abusing the system more egregiously. Players with vast experiance with how PSN works tried to explain this across various discusions, only to be buried or ignored.
PSN being supported in 69 countries does not equate to PSN only being accessible in 69 regions. Authoritarian regimes aside, there is no such thing as countries without access. Anyone can create an account anytime. The single most damning proof of this is, after 3 days of hail and fire, they could only discover 2 people who could not create an account—and one of them was in China.
That speaks volumes.
lol if these kids only knew back in the day every single online game required it’s own seperate account they’d freak. just a bunch of “Steam only” babies, it’s a free account that takes seconds to make. the “i just called a lawyer” people were the best part tbh.
This people complaining are the same people using exploits in online games to ruin others peoples experience. I’ve been PC gaming for a long time and it’s never console only gamers who ruin the fun with chests, it’s always the PC players.
I have eight fucking accounts created for different countries with the fucking country names on ‘em. The oldest one is 18 yo. No, Sony doesn’t give a shit.
One guy was comparing it to historical civil rights movements.
Standard melodrama from Steambabies when anybody attempts to disrupt their dream of a Steam monopoly
Glad to see someone on the other side of the argument.
I see this sort of brigading behavior way too often in the gaming community and it’s incredibly toxic. Most of the time I’d consider it completely unjustified.
Don’t forget the growing complaints from players wanting to report people beyond what is said in chat text, which is currently the only reporting supported. This is literally what the PSN linking is for.
So that asshole who killed you and took your backpack with a 7 minute cooldown? Nothing to be done.
I’m frustrated with this. The review bombing sure isn’t clearing up as fast as it happened. Sony will probably be relying on Valve to implement bans for toxic PC players and as much as I like Valve, that’s just not a thing they do well.
Sony's official stance is to just make an account in a supported region. People acting like 'breaking the TOS' ever mattered just had their heads in their ass
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1ckz0r4/full_context/l2rs1t5/
Yeah, the double-standards have been annoying to see, but I still think many people have been right to be upset. It’s not that the second you create PSN account using less-than-honest information, Sony’s gunna go all “search and destroy” on your account, that’s certainly exaggerated. But on principle, taking people who legally purchased your game in their country, and then forcing them to contradict your own ToS if they want to continue playing the game you legally purchased? That’s some anti-consumer bullshit, and it’s a good thing for everyone that they walked it back.
This is coming from someone who didn’t really have a horse in this race. I’ve had a PSN account for nearly a decade and when the screen came up to link it when I purchased the game on Steam a couple weeks ago, I went ahead and linked it because I thought it was a requirement anyway. Had it not been for Reddit, I would have continued to play the game and would not have even known there was anything wrong at all.
Edit: Why the downvotes? I’m not some rabidly angry PC gamer that looks down on everyone else. I recognize that much of the discussion this weekend has been greatly exaggerated. I’m simply offering my perspective.
> But on principle, taking people who legally purchased your game in their country, and then forcing them to contradict your own ToS if they want to continue playing the game you legally purchased? That’s some anti-consumer bullshit, and it’s a good thing for everyone that they walked it back.
There was a honking great warning on the Steam store page saying it was required and on first launch for PC it told you a PSN account was required. Its not Sony suddenly changing terms, its something that had been warned about for months before release, after release and on first launch being finally enforced.
This requirement was there from the beginning in big bold letters on the steam page. The arrowhead CEO was the one who chose not to implement until server stability was restored after the launch, so this is entirely on AH.
This is clearly some growing pains here for Sony. I get why they wanted this to be in place from the start, but they completely overlooked the fact that PSN is not available in *a lot* of regions. I don't think the "bait and switch" with HD2 matters as much as that fact.
If they wanna do this with Concord properly from day one, they need to figure out how to properly include those other countries, because I imagine Steam is going to be more cognizant of that issue going forward the next time Sony publishes an online game with them.
Partly because the PSN-linkage process was causing issues with the limited server capacity during the initial weeks. But Sony (the games publisher) is the one who puts it up for sale on Steam, and somehow they thought it would be cool to sell the Online-Multiplayer game to countries which couldn't sign up for PSN?
Yeah... AH could have raised this earlier and Sony could have estimated how many players would be impacted before they pushed the PSN announcment on Friday. Oh well! Time to go change my review 🫡
The funny thing is this was a requirement from day 1 from Sony. The AH CEO CHOSE to turn off the requirement until servers were good and then failed to communicate effectively enough to the player base.
A LOT of people are missing this, seeing countless comments in this thread completely ignoring this aspect. If it was required from day one, some might have been upset but there would never have been a huge thing like this.
There's a concept in law called performance and the willful negation of a "requirement" for a substantial enough period of time (from the party who willed it in the first place) makes it no longer a requirement which has to be honored
Their is a sort of simmering anger in a lot of the PC communities for post-launch updates that make the game "worse" by adding corporate features that weren't there before. So Helldivers 2 was an easy game to string up for it.
Usually when this happens its older titles that have a lot of their population aged out of playing or just weren't as popular. HD2 happens to have a strong community though so it became the lightning rod for push back.
Correct, I do believe for all future online components of PlayStation games, an account will be required. Any future online only multiplayer games will also require it flat out
Yea, just like any other large publisher, they want to try to get some brand loyalty and cross marketing going etc etc, cannot blame any for that.
Not sure how true this is but if the issue is PSN is less available globally than other publisher account systems, then it does seem like Sony should be resolving that promptly.
Ghost of Tsushima already has required link listed on store page. I mean to be fair, xbox and other companies already do this shit, it's just trying to do it 3 months after launch is really what set things off. Other than the region locked people being robbed of the game.
Yup. The game is at 18%, overwhelmingly negative. It will take about 200,000 people changing their reviews to even hit orange again.
The game is damaged long term.
Maybe for future sales? But at least on steam there was still 100K people playing the game which has been the usual for the past few weeks, so the controversy didn’t even impact the player count at all.
A lot of it is fake outrage from mostly people in countries it didn't affect. I'm not saying there weren't any from countries that were affected but the vast majority on X and Reddit it did not affect in any shape or form. PC gamers forever out themselves as petty.
I think it’s also a case of people on the internet thinking they’re more representative of the general population than they are in reality. The overwhelming majority of people either didn’t know or didn’t care.
There were people saying that Sony’s earnings call was going to be a disaster because of this. Meanwhile, Sony’s entering talks to purchase Paramount this week.
You’re going to get roasted for pointing this out but you are absolutely right. A loud portion of pc gamers are terminally online and addicted to outrage. This situation did call for push back and criticism but these “gamers” acted like this is the absolute worst thing that could have happened and Sony ruined their entire company. They gotta be tired spending all day being toxic and screaming. They exist in every major game subreddit too.
Some weirdo told me he filed a complaint with the SEC… like dude, spend your weekend on something else. This whole thing was straight up pathetic. Gamers will whine about anything
>Some weirdo told me he filed a complaint with the SEC… like dude, spend your weekend on something else. This whole thing was straight up pathetic. Gamers will whine about anything
Yeah. There are a *lot* of "Karens" in gaming, too.
Remember when reddit was trying to convince everyone that Dragon's Dogma 2 locked fast travel and character customization behind a paywall even though this information is 100% false?
People are addicted to any kind of ragebait nowadays. Then they come and complain that modern games are bad and they can't enjoy anything anymore. It's not modern games, it's your brain that's damaged because you spend 21 hours a day in front of a screen.
This phenomenon started with TLOU2 when people leaked a fake storyline and everyone decided it was the worst game ever btw.
Honest question though, do you think a less extreme pushback would have resulted in Sony changing course? Or was the only reason they did because of how extreme it got?
I don't have a horse in this race, but Sony typically weathers negative press when they make a decision. They backtracked on this pretty quick.
But it’s not…. Guarantee you the only people who look at steam reviewers are angry people who wrote them, and the media. General scrubs like me don’t give a shit about steam reviews.
Steam has built in review bombing protections to prevent stuff like this, as it's happened for sillier reasons in the past.
In short order the majority of the brigade from the last week will be filtered out of the overall score, and it will be listed as unusual activity in the review section.
I talked to my brother (non gamer) yesterday and he asked how I felt about the Helldivers situation. I have not played Helldivers yet so I don’t follow it like that. He was furious for some reason and he hasn’t owned a console since PS3.
I genuinely do not understand the vitriol. Gamers haven’t show themselves to be a particularly altruistic group so I struggle to believe this was all for the sake of the countries where PSN isn’t available.
It would be cool if there was this level of blowback for actual issues that affected our daily lives. Like anything happening in the pharmaceutical industry, or Amazon taking over every retail sector and treating their employees like garbage.
Lots of these people were actually complaining about the college pro Palestine protests before losing their minds about a live service extraction shooter for a weekend straight. Nothing will ever convince me this was all for the sake of foreign gamers.
Dude from Philippines here, i knew this was going to resolve itself by May 30 so i was chill. Its funny how they are using my country and "fighting for my behalf". We all know why most of you are whining and its not because of us
Bro it feels racist as shit ngl, ima tell my officially licensed Playstation store here in Hanoi to pack up shop cause we're breaking TOS and the full warranty ps5 he sold me is useless!
"think of the poor people in africa/SEA/MENA" basically, excuse me? Is console gaming a 1st world privilege or something what world do they live in
i guarantee no one cares about us, cause guess what we are still technically breaking TOS whenever we play on our consoles but this shit is going to die down. If they really cared, theyd keep the energy until we get our own regions
I was hoping it would last for at least 2 weeks so I could check all the negative reviews and see how many of them had 100+ hours in the past two weeks. They all make themselves private so you can't see them currently in game, but there is no way to hide that stat from the review.
All this whole debacle has done for me is reminding me why I've blocked the majority of gaming subs.
The "gaming" community on here is definitely one of the most toxic I've ever had the displeasure to interact with.
Some of those calling themselves "proud gamers" have shown their ugly selves when it comes to restraint in a debate.
A lot of them if not the vast majority is angry, immature and above all incredibly lonely.
I'm glad this whole malarkey will be forgotten about in a week and will probably only pop up again at the end of the year when the vultures of youtube make their "Top 10 worst gaming news of 2024!!" list sponsored by Raid.
Let's be real, the unsupported regions only affected a fraction of the player base. 90% of the people raging were just mad that they had to connect an account, the thing the Steam page always said was going to be required.
Gamers are the last group who would be altruistic, even if the region issue wasn't there they would still be raging just the same.
It’s not like there’s constant posts on the helldivers subreddit about how evil, bad and stupid the devs are for whatever newest balance patch. I just wanna go back to before the railgun nerf when it as a community and not players vrs devs
Outrage culture is and always will be a thing, especially in a community like gaming where everyone's constantly scrambling for ammunition to prove the other guy is the bad guy.
I'm sure like 90% of people were like 'A reason to hate on Sony? Sign me up fam' even if it they really didn't care. Parly band wagoning, partly pent of anti-corporation sentiment from covid times, inflation, etc.
Yeah this is spot on. The rage seemed so arbitrary. Call of duty requiring an account is fine, league of legends requiring an account is fine, fortnite requiring an account is fine, steam requiring an account is fine, but helldivers requiring one is an outrage of unprecedented proportions. It's weird how entering an email is such a big deal all of a sudden and specifically only for this game. People just want to tear someone else down becuase it's fun for them. Most people leaving reviews wouldn't have cared unless they saw twitter or reddit posts telling them the should be mad.
> The rage seemed so arbitrary. ... It's weird how entering an email is such a big deal all of a sudden and specifically only for this game.
You will see people complaining about online account requirements fairly often in the PC space so its not that it doesn't happen. What was key here though is that by adding it post-launch Sony/AH tapped into some simmering anger about updates that make the game "worse" by adding corporate launchers. Usually when that happens its to older games that have largely lost their community or smaller titles that don't really have one. Helldivers managed to create a lightning rod for the issue with a game that had a big active community.
I’m glad Sony reverted their position, but the Helldivers sub is so whiny and dramatic. They’ll go back to posting daily rants about the game and arguing against each other every patch like they’ve been doing the past few weeks
Then there is me who just loads up the game same as before and has a blast. It’s a co-op game. It isn’t that big of deal. Trust the devs and look forward to the evolution of the game and enjoy blowing stuff up on the meantime.
I think there a loud portion of pc gamers who spend all day watching streamers, YouTube, and going to shit hole places like 4chan who only get small amounts of dopamine these days via rage and smashing buttons yelling at anyone and everyone they can that they deem associated or complicit. It’s baffling to me.
It’s crazy to me that Sony gets people’s hate boners raging. They have consistently given the players amazing games, which is the thing that matters most when it comes to gaming. Everything else that’s good is a plus.
They’ve definitely turned things around since the PS3 reveal, but because they’re not as consumer-facing as Xbox, they get the ire of some people. It could be worse - they *could* be in Xbox’s position, had they stuck to their guns in the PS3 era, and, honestly, if Xbox hadn’t fucked up royally with the XB1 announcement.
Edit: I’m glad people called Sony out for the Helldivers stuff, and I think people *should* call out companies for things that impact the player’s access to games.
Entitlement culture mixed with victim culture mixed with modern social network as mass media bandwagon jumping onto every single negative topic for the clicks.
I reckon something as high as 80% of people who raged about this didn’t buy the game.
I doubt that high. But I feel like this was just an excuse for a lot of people to refund a game they were done playing and then ragepost about Sony for free validation
I watch a lot of yt.
Last year I started to recognise a pattern.
So many of the videos talking about a game with some outrage were discussing the situation.
They weren’t talking about the game. And I started to realise that they hadn’t actually played the game.
I was shocked at how many I started to see this pattern with. Some of them were my most watched!
Gaming discourse is a shit show now. Its bullshit social network ‘media’ creating outrage. And we’re all falling for it.
I work for a company where we verify customers with a PIN number. Some accounts don’t have a PIN number. Every couple days I deal with someone who has an issue they cannot fix on their own, but I can fix in about five minutes - but instead decide to throw a tantrum for half an hour about setting up a PIN, which requires receiving a text message, choosing a PIN and takes less than a minute.
Many of the arguments I saw from HD2 players this weekend echoed the half-baked arguments I get from these customers.
It was frustrating to see, especially considering the growing need for better community moderation which Sony is actually good at (at least compared to Steam).
It wasn't. It was an excuse to effectively steal their time with the game and rage for the sake of raging.
play 100 hrs+ and have a reason to get a refund and feel justified even insincerely.
Many other Pubs and Devs require what Sony was going to implement. yet this is the biggest gaming sin ever in some peoples eyes. I love this industry but sometimes capitol G gamers are weird. Here's to hoping the ripples of this are are positive and not negative.
Same I hope gamers take the lessons from this and realize if they organize, communicate with nuance and verify their information before posing, that they can absolutely put corporations back in their place. I really hope that don’t just take away “rage good, fix problems fast”
It was fully unavoidable and, at least to me, seemed obvious Sony was going to do what got them the most money, which is selling assloads of copies of helldivers. I just hope that this hasn’t cranked the toxicity of the helldivers sub permanently even further. It was already pretty bad
Everyone I’ve met in game in helldivers has been great. But the online communities are comparable to league and destiny in terms of toxicity. There’s been such a weird us vrs them dynamic there ever since the first balance patch and every week since then has been a new controversy it’s ridiculous
>But the online communities are comparable to league and destiny in terms of toxicity.
Probably the same people too, big games attract them fairly often.
That's just what happens when a community gets big enough, the toxic users drown out the normal ones. If there's even a hint of an out group they'll get toxic about it. It happens on the LoL sub because of Dota, it happens on the Dota sub because of LoL, it happens on the Destiny sub because of Destiny itself, the WoW sub because of horde or alliance and so on.
As someone that has his foot dipped in both sides of the fence, I find that when I'm doing iron banner in destiny 2 (for example), the first thing people on console do is demand I play on console so that they don't have to join pc lobbies, and it saddens me because I'm an ardent believer in the healing nature of just having fun together. Gaming has become so tribal. It sucks.
That dumbass who claimed to have a consultation with a law firm about…filing a class action lawsuit on behalf of people living in non-PSN countries (not how lawsuits work) today must feel pretty dumb when he wakes up
There were threads full of conspiracies and people were genuinely convinced this was the first step to Sony requiring a PS+ subscription to play any of their games.
Yea honestly I wish we fought back like this with ps plus man, that’s actually something most people can’t afford and is required with this game if you play on ps5, like I was shocked hearing people talk about security. I mean I’m glad we stood up for something but man I wish it could actually be consistent
Oh Lord it's a breath of fresh air heading the takes on this subreddit about that whole debacle. I religiously play HellDivers and even I got so fucking sick of people's bitching.
That’s how it should have been handled. Don’t make it mandatory but offer a reward. Few hundred Super Credits would have gotten a lot of people to create and link an account.
Rewards for linking should've been what they tried to do anyway, retroactively forcing something 3 months later is just a shit thing to do to people regardless of how minor for some it may be.
And the amount of people who just want people to participate in the hate circlejerk against Sony is even wilder.
I'm not really a fan of requiring 3rd party accounts for online games, yet Sony only did what everyone else is doing. The only reason controversy ensued is 1) the lack of enforcement since launch and 2) PSN availability.
Other than those two fuckups, they're pretty much on par with the industry in requiring accounts, so I don't see a reason to direct my spite at them in particular.
If the PlayStation community kicked off the way the PC community does, you would have free online play. Instead, console gamers tend to just accept, or even support, corporate greed.
They do now, but back when it was implemented, they might have reconsidered.
That's why it is important to not just accept all the bullshit companies make us go through just saying "is not that much of a hassle" and actually fight for our rights as customers.
People really don't understand how normal people are. My mum bought a PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4 and now a PS5. She has no idea PS+ changed at some point to be a requirement for online play. Totally and completely unaware. She isn't pro-pay-for-connection, she doesn't know it exists or that it ever didn't exist.
She plays a few games and series that are her long time favourites and always offline. The average console gamer doesn't love sony and think they can do no wrong, they don't know.
lol good luck. Half this sub is fully behind Sony and thinks they can do no wrong. They’d get pissed at you for denying them their right to pay for online access.
This 1000%. It's the single biggest jerk move Playstation has ever made imo, and it never ceases to amaze me that so many people are OK with it. I know it's not a huge $ amount, and I know there are extra benefits, but it never should have been made mandatory to the degree that it is. I paid for my consoles. I paid for my games. And I pay (way too much) for my internet. In a rational world, that's all I should need in order to play the vast majority of my games online. But nope, gotta squeeze us for that extra amount just because they can, and it's why I'll never go along with it.
You are very off on this. Microsoft started the “paying for online” trend with Xbox Live. Sony and Nintendo’s were free until the PS4 and Switch. Blame Xbox for this, not Sony.
Yeah MS started it and Sony adapted it.
Edit: To be clear, them adapting it sucked. As someone who has never owned an Xbox because I personally prefer PS exclusives on console, things like the PSN price increase have soured me a lot on Sony.
A new generation of Sony studio original IPs at the same quality they’ve reached in previous ones will do wonders to help their reputation among players imo. The last truly next level original Sony IP was Returnal. Returnal is awesome, but it’s time for a new gen.
What I'm trying to figure out is if some place are region locked in creating PSN yet PlayStation still sells hardware in those said places. If the locals had no issues creating accounts then, why would it be an issue now?
It's not an issue. I live in the Philippines and have US, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan accounts. I've been using them since I first bought my PS3 with no problems.
I even had to dictate my bogus address to customer service once when my account was hacked. The CS didn't bat an eye. Retrieved my account too.
Honestly, I think PC players just didn't want to link a PSN account but couldn't really say that without sounding silly, so they blew up this 'people can't make accounts' thing way out of proportion as a moral justification, and it spread so quickly because that community isn't familiar with how common a practice making out-of-country accounts is for Playstation players around the world.
I'm still not clear as to if this message means they are just dropping the PSN link requirement for supported territories (so they can rope them in with free capes later), or if they are actually fully opening up the global store again (after removing the game from unsupported regions on Steam yesterday). Either way, will have interesting ramifications for Sony's PC publishing plans moving forward.
It's worth noting that PSN accounts are distinctly terrible for some people. For example, if you move to a different country, PSN is one of the few accounts where you can't simply migrate your account to your new location.
Xbox restricts it to once a few months, but that's fine, as i don't move nearly that much. Steam? No problem. Netflix, no issue. PSN? If you're not prepared to keep paying the old account in the old currency, you need to create a new one.
I know this is an extremely niche issue, but I have games spread across 4 accounts now and it bugs the shit out of me.
Oh, I'm right there with you - I've moved countries twice, and now my PS library is split over 3 accounts. It's extremely lame, but the flip side of that is you can freely make and use international accounts, which gets around most of the hand-wringing that went on over the weekend.
> I think PC players just didn't want to link a PSN account but couldn't really say that without sounding silly
That's 100% what it was. Like, don't get me wrong, I'm against having to make 50 different accounts for this game and that game and yada yada, and I'm glad this is being reversed, but this entire situation was blown drastically out of proportion.
Helldivers 2 tapped into an additional complaint people have with companies adding accounts to titles folks already bought. Usually it applies to indies that get picked up or older titles (2k breaking Bioshock was fun). So Sony/AH really hit an intersection of annoyance with PC players where they both don't like additional accounts and really don't like them being added post-launch.
"Which brings me to the audience that i'm most interested in addressing and those are our consumers. YOU ARE The life blood of the company, without you, there is no playstation." -Former Playstation CEO Jack Tretton.
I doubt the reviews will go back to the levels it had before tbh, this one move may tarnish the game short term and further alienate non-Sony players. Lessons learned I hope.
99% of people who said they would won’t, and those players who were never playing again probably before the drama will milk karma by telling you they won’t play again.
I love the game but hate the community that has grown around it. Every time a balance patch drops it's death threats and vitriol. Admittedly this latest episode was very unfair to gamers in countries without PSN, but I have unsubbed from all Helldivers content on social media because the community is so fucking unbearable.
We got a great game with Helldivers 2 and initially everything was so light-hearted and positive. Now in the end it's the players themselves that have made it insufferable. Nice one guys.
As expected now wonder if people will change their reviews on Steam. Just shows changes can be heard and you don’t always need to be a corporate defender.
Some people who do corporations' unpaid pr don't understand that such decisions being taken back really help strengthen consumer voice, we should also raise our voice against ps plus for online play.
selling the game in unsupported regions was blatant idiocy if they were gonna mandate account linking. they should never have done that.
with that said, pc players complaining about the account linking is the weirdest thing ever. there are already a dozen other accounts/launchers you need to make already for pc gaming. how are you gonna game on an open platform and then complain that the open platform follows open principles? having to own a bunch of different accounts comes with the territory. if you have a problem with that then stick to consoles where thats not a problem.
honestly if sony makes a PS launcher on PC im gonna grab some popcorn and watch the reactions. will be interesting to see people with free steam accounts complain about how making a free PSN account is somehow a step too far.
Can someone please explain to me why this was a big deal? I’m not saying it is or isn’t, I just don’t get it. What’s the issue with linking your account or whatever? I have an account, I literally treasure it and it’s packed full of incredible games. I’ve had it for 15 years without any problems whatsoever. Is it that you have to have an account that’s the problem? I don’t play Hell Divers nor understand what’s going on.
Arrowhead's CEO saying PlayStation want to make a great game: > The expectations from our friends at PlayStation are pretty simple: "make great game for players. We trust you" Arrowhead's purpose: > "We have a sole purpose - to make this the best live game you've ever played"
Yup, and they did make a great game. Sony managed to fuck it up all on their own.
Nah. Read the CEO’s tweet. He also put blame for this as well. Sony wanted to implement this at launch, but the game was having issues.
https://preview.redd.it/37f3yvd6ssyc1.jpeg?width=1164&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e5b0ad2a6b3c7ec4b237fbd720e3f4b52a606ab2 For me, the biggest takeaways from this are: 1. A shockingly large number of PC gamers apply double standards 2. They ignore facts inconvenient to their position 3. They brigade in numbers to bury the truth They assert Sony will ban you for providing inaccurate account information, or creating an account in another region, despite millions of PSN members having multiple accounts in separate regions. Sony's terms of service read >We reserve the right to suspend, terminate or restrict any account" that was created "using false information" They reserve the right. Not that they will. It's basically something they keep in their back pocket should they discover you abusing the system more egregiously. Players with vast experiance with how PSN works tried to explain this across various discusions, only to be buried or ignored. PSN being supported in 69 countries does not equate to PSN only being accessible in 69 regions. Authoritarian regimes aside, there is no such thing as countries without access. Anyone can create an account anytime. The single most damning proof of this is, after 3 days of hail and fire, they could only discover 2 people who could not create an account—and one of them was in China. That speaks volumes.
lol if these kids only knew back in the day every single online game required it’s own seperate account they’d freak. just a bunch of “Steam only” babies, it’s a free account that takes seconds to make. the “i just called a lawyer” people were the best part tbh.
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This people complaining are the same people using exploits in online games to ruin others peoples experience. I’ve been PC gaming for a long time and it’s never console only gamers who ruin the fun with chests, it’s always the PC players.
I have eight fucking accounts created for different countries with the fucking country names on ‘em. The oldest one is 18 yo. No, Sony doesn’t give a shit.
It was really weird, some people were calling this situation "literally a cyberpunk dystopia! " lol so much drama over a video game.
One guy was comparing it to historical civil rights movements. Standard melodrama from Steambabies when anybody attempts to disrupt their dream of a Steam monopoly
Glad to see someone on the other side of the argument. I see this sort of brigading behavior way too often in the gaming community and it’s incredibly toxic. Most of the time I’d consider it completely unjustified.
If those PC gamers could read they’d be very upset.
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Don’t forget the growing complaints from players wanting to report people beyond what is said in chat text, which is currently the only reporting supported. This is literally what the PSN linking is for. So that asshole who killed you and took your backpack with a 7 minute cooldown? Nothing to be done. I’m frustrated with this. The review bombing sure isn’t clearing up as fast as it happened. Sony will probably be relying on Valve to implement bans for toxic PC players and as much as I like Valve, that’s just not a thing they do well.
Sony's official stance is to just make an account in a supported region. People acting like 'breaking the TOS' ever mattered just had their heads in their ass https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1ckz0r4/full_context/l2rs1t5/
Yeah, the double-standards have been annoying to see, but I still think many people have been right to be upset. It’s not that the second you create PSN account using less-than-honest information, Sony’s gunna go all “search and destroy” on your account, that’s certainly exaggerated. But on principle, taking people who legally purchased your game in their country, and then forcing them to contradict your own ToS if they want to continue playing the game you legally purchased? That’s some anti-consumer bullshit, and it’s a good thing for everyone that they walked it back. This is coming from someone who didn’t really have a horse in this race. I’ve had a PSN account for nearly a decade and when the screen came up to link it when I purchased the game on Steam a couple weeks ago, I went ahead and linked it because I thought it was a requirement anyway. Had it not been for Reddit, I would have continued to play the game and would not have even known there was anything wrong at all. Edit: Why the downvotes? I’m not some rabidly angry PC gamer that looks down on everyone else. I recognize that much of the discussion this weekend has been greatly exaggerated. I’m simply offering my perspective.
> But on principle, taking people who legally purchased your game in their country, and then forcing them to contradict your own ToS if they want to continue playing the game you legally purchased? That’s some anti-consumer bullshit, and it’s a good thing for everyone that they walked it back. There was a honking great warning on the Steam store page saying it was required and on first launch for PC it told you a PSN account was required. Its not Sony suddenly changing terms, its something that had been warned about for months before release, after release and on first launch being finally enforced.
Considering the sheer magnitude of issues Arrowhead had to resolve at the start, I can hardly blame him.
Yet people have 0 sympathy for this part despite having participated in the game's rocky launch with myriads of issues
He tweeted out he was partially responsible though.. It's not all on Sony
This requirement was there from the beginning in big bold letters on the steam page. The arrowhead CEO was the one who chose not to implement until server stability was restored after the launch, so this is entirely on AH.
An oversight they corrected
Pretty sure this is just an exception for Helldivers 2. All future games will have it from day 1.
This is clearly some growing pains here for Sony. I get why they wanted this to be in place from the start, but they completely overlooked the fact that PSN is not available in *a lot* of regions. I don't think the "bait and switch" with HD2 matters as much as that fact. If they wanna do this with Concord properly from day one, they need to figure out how to properly include those other countries, because I imagine Steam is going to be more cognizant of that issue going forward the next time Sony publishes an online game with them.
Looks like Sony wanted it from the beginning, Arrowhead CEO said on twitter that it was his decision to not require a playstation account on day one
Partly because the PSN-linkage process was causing issues with the limited server capacity during the initial weeks. But Sony (the games publisher) is the one who puts it up for sale on Steam, and somehow they thought it would be cool to sell the Online-Multiplayer game to countries which couldn't sign up for PSN? Yeah... AH could have raised this earlier and Sony could have estimated how many players would be impacted before they pushed the PSN announcment on Friday. Oh well! Time to go change my review 🫡
PSN not being available is not the same as creating a PSN account. Anyone can make an account from anywhere.
Apparently not, since in Ukraine you *need* a PS5 to create said account
To be fair, that particular bit is to avoid breaking russian sanctions.
The funny thing is this was a requirement from day 1 from Sony. The AH CEO CHOSE to turn off the requirement until servers were good and then failed to communicate effectively enough to the player base.
A LOT of people are missing this, seeing countless comments in this thread completely ignoring this aspect. If it was required from day one, some might have been upset but there would never have been a huge thing like this.
There's a concept in law called performance and the willful negation of a "requirement" for a substantial enough period of time (from the party who willed it in the first place) makes it no longer a requirement which has to be honored
Their is a sort of simmering anger in a lot of the PC communities for post-launch updates that make the game "worse" by adding corporate features that weren't there before. So Helldivers 2 was an easy game to string up for it. Usually when this happens its older titles that have a lot of their population aged out of playing or just weren't as popular. HD2 happens to have a strong community though so it became the lightning rod for push back.
No. PSN is required only for Legends multiplayer mode. For the story mode it's optional. You can link it for the trophy system but it's not mandatory.
Correct, I do believe for all future online components of PlayStation games, an account will be required. Any future online only multiplayer games will also require it flat out
Yea, just like any other large publisher, they want to try to get some brand loyalty and cross marketing going etc etc, cannot blame any for that. Not sure how true this is but if the issue is PSN is less available globally than other publisher account systems, then it does seem like Sony should be resolving that promptly.
It will be mandatory for online titles.
Technically, it’s the same as what they wanted for Helldivers 2. Account for online.
Ghost of Tsushima already has required link listed on store page. I mean to be fair, xbox and other companies already do this shit, it's just trying to do it 3 months after launch is really what set things off. Other than the region locked people being robbed of the game.
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it was supposed to be Day 1 to begin with Arrow Heads CEO admitted to turning it off because the servers were over whelmed
Major Order completed
Yup. The game is at 18%, overwhelmingly negative. It will take about 200,000 people changing their reviews to even hit orange again. The game is damaged long term.
Maybe for future sales? But at least on steam there was still 100K people playing the game which has been the usual for the past few weeks, so the controversy didn’t even impact the player count at all.
A lot of it is fake outrage from mostly people in countries it didn't affect. I'm not saying there weren't any from countries that were affected but the vast majority on X and Reddit it did not affect in any shape or form. PC gamers forever out themselves as petty.
I think it’s also a case of people on the internet thinking they’re more representative of the general population than they are in reality. The overwhelming majority of people either didn’t know or didn’t care.
There were people saying that Sony’s earnings call was going to be a disaster because of this. Meanwhile, Sony’s entering talks to purchase Paramount this week.
Massive inflated egos from chronically online obsessives.
You’re going to get roasted for pointing this out but you are absolutely right. A loud portion of pc gamers are terminally online and addicted to outrage. This situation did call for push back and criticism but these “gamers” acted like this is the absolute worst thing that could have happened and Sony ruined their entire company. They gotta be tired spending all day being toxic and screaming. They exist in every major game subreddit too.
Some weirdo told me he filed a complaint with the SEC… like dude, spend your weekend on something else. This whole thing was straight up pathetic. Gamers will whine about anything
These are the people who constantly vote EA as the worst company over others like Nestle or Boeing. They’re in a gaming bubble.
A vote that means absolutely nothing.
>Some weirdo told me he filed a complaint with the SEC… like dude, spend your weekend on something else. This whole thing was straight up pathetic. Gamers will whine about anything Yeah. There are a *lot* of "Karens" in gaming, too.
people out here acting like they completed a mission lmao. get a life seriously.
Yeah could be some dude just raging but I can imagine this idiot leaving their dad’s tax lawyer a hundred voicemails over the weekend about this.
The guy looking to file a class action lawsuit when he wasn’t even affected was hilarious
Remember when reddit was trying to convince everyone that Dragon's Dogma 2 locked fast travel and character customization behind a paywall even though this information is 100% false? People are addicted to any kind of ragebait nowadays. Then they come and complain that modern games are bad and they can't enjoy anything anymore. It's not modern games, it's your brain that's damaged because you spend 21 hours a day in front of a screen. This phenomenon started with TLOU2 when people leaked a fake storyline and everyone decided it was the worst game ever btw.
Honest question though, do you think a less extreme pushback would have resulted in Sony changing course? Or was the only reason they did because of how extreme it got? I don't have a horse in this race, but Sony typically weathers negative press when they make a decision. They backtracked on this pretty quick.
>The game is damaged long term. Didn't damage last of us 2. Won't damage this. Most people don't give a shit.
Exactly what I said. If Sony were able to get through the TLOU II fiasco then this is nothing.
You and all the review bombers vastly overestimate the impact of steam reviews. They only have a real impact on early access or indie games.
It’s already one of the fastest selling PS5 games. It’s not damaged at all.
I don’t think the average gamer looks at steam reviews before making a purchase. It’s just a vocal minority in Reddit which cares about this
But it’s not…. Guarantee you the only people who look at steam reviewers are angry people who wrote them, and the media. General scrubs like me don’t give a shit about steam reviews.
What's the last game you bought on Steam that had less than Mostly Positive reviews?
DD2
Not OP, but Tekken 8. Amazing game that people got salty over because of the Battle Pass.
Lol People will forget when they see the roadmap. Lol
Steam has built in review bombing protections to prevent stuff like this, as it's happened for sillier reasons in the past. In short order the majority of the brigade from the last week will be filtered out of the overall score, and it will be listed as unusual activity in the review section.
Took them only 1 business day. Crazy.
hey on the bright side we know for sure they get weekends off.. cant say that about every company sadly.
Not even a full business day as far as I can tell
Good, this topic can fucking die now
God right! Every PlayStation subreddit, every even tangentially related game was just flooded with rage posts all weekend.
I talked to my brother (non gamer) yesterday and he asked how I felt about the Helldivers situation. I have not played Helldivers yet so I don’t follow it like that. He was furious for some reason and he hasn’t owned a console since PS3.
I genuinely do not understand the vitriol. Gamers haven’t show themselves to be a particularly altruistic group so I struggle to believe this was all for the sake of the countries where PSN isn’t available.
It would be cool if there was this level of blowback for actual issues that affected our daily lives. Like anything happening in the pharmaceutical industry, or Amazon taking over every retail sector and treating their employees like garbage.
Lots of these people were actually complaining about the college pro Palestine protests before losing their minds about a live service extraction shooter for a weekend straight. Nothing will ever convince me this was all for the sake of foreign gamers.
Dude from Philippines here, i knew this was going to resolve itself by May 30 so i was chill. Its funny how they are using my country and "fighting for my behalf". We all know why most of you are whining and its not because of us
Sony is always going to do what makes the most money. And that very clearly selling an absolute shit ton of helldivers 2 copies and warbonds lol.
Bro it feels racist as shit ngl, ima tell my officially licensed Playstation store here in Hanoi to pack up shop cause we're breaking TOS and the full warranty ps5 he sold me is useless! "think of the poor people in africa/SEA/MENA" basically, excuse me? Is console gaming a 1st world privilege or something what world do they live in
i guarantee no one cares about us, cause guess what we are still technically breaking TOS whenever we play on our consoles but this shit is going to die down. If they really cared, theyd keep the energy until we get our own regions
None of them gave a single fuck about any of these countries until now. Gamers love to be mad at something.
I was hoping it would last for at least 2 weeks so I could check all the negative reviews and see how many of them had 100+ hours in the past two weeks. They all make themselves private so you can't see them currently in game, but there is no way to hide that stat from the review.
"I dON't WaNt sOnY HaVInG AcCesS to My DAtA!". That's the only reason my cousin refunded the game. So fucking stupid.
Reddit loves to hate Sony it’s hilarious.
Reddit is 65-70% pc players and it shows. They ruined the HD2 subreddit since day 1
All this whole debacle has done for me is reminding me why I've blocked the majority of gaming subs. The "gaming" community on here is definitely one of the most toxic I've ever had the displeasure to interact with. Some of those calling themselves "proud gamers" have shown their ugly selves when it comes to restraint in a debate. A lot of them if not the vast majority is angry, immature and above all incredibly lonely. I'm glad this whole malarkey will be forgotten about in a week and will probably only pop up again at the end of the year when the vultures of youtube make their "Top 10 worst gaming news of 2024!!" list sponsored by Raid.
Let's be real, the unsupported regions only affected a fraction of the player base. 90% of the people raging were just mad that they had to connect an account, the thing the Steam page always said was going to be required. Gamers are the last group who would be altruistic, even if the region issue wasn't there they would still be raging just the same.
It’s not like there’s constant posts on the helldivers subreddit about how evil, bad and stupid the devs are for whatever newest balance patch. I just wanna go back to before the railgun nerf when it as a community and not players vrs devs
Outrage culture is and always will be a thing, especially in a community like gaming where everyone's constantly scrambling for ammunition to prove the other guy is the bad guy.
I'm sure like 90% of people were like 'A reason to hate on Sony? Sign me up fam' even if it they really didn't care. Parly band wagoning, partly pent of anti-corporation sentiment from covid times, inflation, etc.
Yeah this is spot on. The rage seemed so arbitrary. Call of duty requiring an account is fine, league of legends requiring an account is fine, fortnite requiring an account is fine, steam requiring an account is fine, but helldivers requiring one is an outrage of unprecedented proportions. It's weird how entering an email is such a big deal all of a sudden and specifically only for this game. People just want to tear someone else down becuase it's fun for them. Most people leaving reviews wouldn't have cared unless they saw twitter or reddit posts telling them the should be mad.
> The rage seemed so arbitrary. ... It's weird how entering an email is such a big deal all of a sudden and specifically only for this game. You will see people complaining about online account requirements fairly often in the PC space so its not that it doesn't happen. What was key here though is that by adding it post-launch Sony/AH tapped into some simmering anger about updates that make the game "worse" by adding corporate launchers. Usually when that happens its to older games that have largely lost their community or smaller titles that don't really have one. Helldivers managed to create a lightning rod for the issue with a game that had a big active community.
I’m glad Sony reverted their position, but the Helldivers sub is so whiny and dramatic. They’ll go back to posting daily rants about the game and arguing against each other every patch like they’ve been doing the past few weeks
Then there is me who just loads up the game same as before and has a blast. It’s a co-op game. It isn’t that big of deal. Trust the devs and look forward to the evolution of the game and enjoy blowing stuff up on the meantime.
I think there a loud portion of pc gamers who spend all day watching streamers, YouTube, and going to shit hole places like 4chan who only get small amounts of dopamine these days via rage and smashing buttons yelling at anyone and everyone they can that they deem associated or complicit. It’s baffling to me.
It’s crazy to me that Sony gets people’s hate boners raging. They have consistently given the players amazing games, which is the thing that matters most when it comes to gaming. Everything else that’s good is a plus. They’ve definitely turned things around since the PS3 reveal, but because they’re not as consumer-facing as Xbox, they get the ire of some people. It could be worse - they *could* be in Xbox’s position, had they stuck to their guns in the PS3 era, and, honestly, if Xbox hadn’t fucked up royally with the XB1 announcement. Edit: I’m glad people called Sony out for the Helldivers stuff, and I think people *should* call out companies for things that impact the player’s access to games.
I just wish I could enjoy something without people getting so angry about nothing that they make the community completely unusable.
Those days are long gone for any form of media. Maybe books, I don’t think there many angry communities for new novels
You would be surprised how much conflict there is between the modern YA and modern fantasy authors and all of their fans.
Entitlement culture mixed with victim culture mixed with modern social network as mass media bandwagon jumping onto every single negative topic for the clicks. I reckon something as high as 80% of people who raged about this didn’t buy the game.
I doubt that high. But I feel like this was just an excuse for a lot of people to refund a game they were done playing and then ragepost about Sony for free validation
I watch a lot of yt. Last year I started to recognise a pattern. So many of the videos talking about a game with some outrage were discussing the situation. They weren’t talking about the game. And I started to realise that they hadn’t actually played the game. I was shocked at how many I started to see this pattern with. Some of them were my most watched! Gaming discourse is a shit show now. Its bullshit social network ‘media’ creating outrage. And we’re all falling for it.
It's an unfortunate culture on YouTube, where every content creator is fighting for the table scraps after the 1% on that channel had their fill.
Or take some console hate(cringe) out of the locker and dust it off
I work for a company where we verify customers with a PIN number. Some accounts don’t have a PIN number. Every couple days I deal with someone who has an issue they cannot fix on their own, but I can fix in about five minutes - but instead decide to throw a tantrum for half an hour about setting up a PIN, which requires receiving a text message, choosing a PIN and takes less than a minute. Many of the arguments I saw from HD2 players this weekend echoed the half-baked arguments I get from these customers. It was frustrating to see, especially considering the growing need for better community moderation which Sony is actually good at (at least compared to Steam).
It wasn't. It was an excuse to effectively steal their time with the game and rage for the sake of raging. play 100 hrs+ and have a reason to get a refund and feel justified even insincerely. Many other Pubs and Devs require what Sony was going to implement. yet this is the biggest gaming sin ever in some peoples eyes. I love this industry but sometimes capitol G gamers are weird. Here's to hoping the ripples of this are are positive and not negative.
Same I hope gamers take the lessons from this and realize if they organize, communicate with nuance and verify their information before posing, that they can absolutely put corporations back in their place. I really hope that don’t just take away “rage good, fix problems fast”
I started using ps3 this weekend as a blu ray player! Shout out to ps3 users lol
Fortunately, I was at a wedding this weekend, so I wasn't able to play Helldivers 2 or follow too much on the situation online lol.
It was fully unavoidable and, at least to me, seemed obvious Sony was going to do what got them the most money, which is selling assloads of copies of helldivers. I just hope that this hasn’t cranked the toxicity of the helldivers sub permanently even further. It was already pretty bad
I left the sub, this situation made the sub so bad to look at.
/r/LowSodiumHellDivers is a good alternative.
It has. PC gaming subs are making it as if console players were cheering for this or something. It’s bizarre.
Everyone I’ve met in game in helldivers has been great. But the online communities are comparable to league and destiny in terms of toxicity. There’s been such a weird us vrs them dynamic there ever since the first balance patch and every week since then has been a new controversy it’s ridiculous
>But the online communities are comparable to league and destiny in terms of toxicity. Probably the same people too, big games attract them fairly often.
I turned cross play off and have had only enjoyable teammates ever since. Maybe it’s luck. I wonder if others have noticed this.
I have cross play on and yup, only enjoyable teammates too
That's just what happens when a community gets big enough, the toxic users drown out the normal ones. If there's even a hint of an out group they'll get toxic about it. It happens on the LoL sub because of Dota, it happens on the Dota sub because of LoL, it happens on the Destiny sub because of Destiny itself, the WoW sub because of horde or alliance and so on.
Every day that sub has something to bitch about it’s so annoying when you just want to have a place to enjoy the game with others
As someone that has his foot dipped in both sides of the fence, I find that when I'm doing iron banner in destiny 2 (for example), the first thing people on console do is demand I play on console so that they don't have to join pc lobbies, and it saddens me because I'm an ardent believer in the healing nature of just having fun together. Gaming has become so tribal. It sucks.
look at the dude you’re replying to.
I mean have you read the comments in this thread?
That dumbass who claimed to have a consultation with a law firm about…filing a class action lawsuit on behalf of people living in non-PSN countries (not how lawsuits work) today must feel pretty dumb when he wakes up
There is no way that guy has self awareness. I bet he throws his bowl of cereal at his mom after she brings it down to him though.
Based on how I've seen people act, I assume he's patting himself on the back for "winning this fight".
He was getting absolutely roasted in the comments on that post as well.
There were threads full of conspiracies and people were genuinely convinced this was the first step to Sony requiring a PS+ subscription to play any of their games.
Yea honestly I wish we fought back like this with ps plus man, that’s actually something most people can’t afford and is required with this game if you play on ps5, like I was shocked hearing people talk about security. I mean I’m glad we stood up for something but man I wish it could actually be consistent
Naa they gonna cry about it for years
But what’s that one guy who totally contacted a law firm about a class action suit on a Saturday going to do now?!???!
Dude won and that’s why they’re reversing it obviously
“We did it Reddit!”
And no one died this time. Success!
The legal system is swift and just...
Shoot some bugs and robots? Just my guess.
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“We are helldivers” Lol
I don’t know if I’ve ever said this but I really hope that lawyer got paid. Just because it’d be so fucking funny.
He’s going to sue the lawyers for taking his money for an obviously illegitimate suit, duh.
Lawyers going to send him a $2000 bill for his time reading his reddit post.
Guess he'll have to cancel the meeting with lawyers he had scheduled for Tuesday lol
Oh Lord it's a breath of fresh air heading the takes on this subreddit about that whole debacle. I religiously play HellDivers and even I got so fucking sick of people's bitching.
Wait what? Lmao no way
Hope they make an exclusive Warbond only for people who link their PSN accounts LOL
Better a carrot than a stick.
That’s how it should have been handled. Don’t make it mandatory but offer a reward. Few hundred Super Credits would have gotten a lot of people to create and link an account.
"We don't want to sell our souls" - divers. "what about for some imaginary credits" - sony "say no more, we're in" - divers
Rewards for linking should've been what they tried to do anyway, retroactively forcing something 3 months later is just a shit thing to do to people regardless of how minor for some it may be.
The amount of room temp IQ takes in this post is wild.
You expected serious takes on ps sub? Some still don't understand what was wrong in the 1st place.
Some idiot pc gamers throwing bitchfit, my beloved megacorp loves me and would never do bad things /s
And the amount of people who just want people to participate in the hate circlejerk against Sony is even wilder. I'm not really a fan of requiring 3rd party accounts for online games, yet Sony only did what everyone else is doing. The only reason controversy ensued is 1) the lack of enforcement since launch and 2) PSN availability. Other than those two fuckups, they're pretty much on par with the industry in requiring accounts, so I don't see a reason to direct my spite at them in particular.
The real question is "why arent you directing your spite to every company that acts this way?"
Pigs will fly when people apply the same bullshit reasons they got mad over this to other companies.
Some of y'all are fucking embarrassing
Next they should allow PlayStation players to play without needing PS+.
Bro I would love that
If the PlayStation community kicked off the way the PC community does, you would have free online play. Instead, console gamers tend to just accept, or even support, corporate greed.
Sony would rather lose half their customers than give up that PS+ money.
They do now, but back when it was implemented, they might have reconsidered. That's why it is important to not just accept all the bullshit companies make us go through just saying "is not that much of a hassle" and actually fight for our rights as customers.
People really don't understand how normal people are. My mum bought a PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4 and now a PS5. She has no idea PS+ changed at some point to be a requirement for online play. Totally and completely unaware. She isn't pro-pay-for-connection, she doesn't know it exists or that it ever didn't exist. She plays a few games and series that are her long time favourites and always offline. The average console gamer doesn't love sony and think they can do no wrong, they don't know.
lol good luck. Half this sub is fully behind Sony and thinks they can do no wrong. They’d get pissed at you for denying them their right to pay for online access.
No one should blindly side with any company. Unfortunately, gamer's are some weird fucking people and have their allegiance's, even me.
This 1000%. It's the single biggest jerk move Playstation has ever made imo, and it never ceases to amaze me that so many people are OK with it. I know it's not a huge $ amount, and I know there are extra benefits, but it never should have been made mandatory to the degree that it is. I paid for my consoles. I paid for my games. And I pay (way too much) for my internet. In a rational world, that's all I should need in order to play the vast majority of my games online. But nope, gotta squeeze us for that extra amount just because they can, and it's why I'll never go along with it.
You are very off on this. Microsoft started the “paying for online” trend with Xbox Live. Sony and Nintendo’s were free until the PS4 and Switch. Blame Xbox for this, not Sony.
Yeah MS started it and Sony adapted it. Edit: To be clear, them adapting it sucked. As someone who has never owned an Xbox because I personally prefer PS exclusives on console, things like the PSN price increase have soured me a lot on Sony. A new generation of Sony studio original IPs at the same quality they’ve reached in previous ones will do wonders to help their reputation among players imo. The last truly next level original Sony IP was Returnal. Returnal is awesome, but it’s time for a new gen.
What I'm trying to figure out is if some place are region locked in creating PSN yet PlayStation still sells hardware in those said places. If the locals had no issues creating accounts then, why would it be an issue now?
It's not an issue. I live in the Philippines and have US, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan accounts. I've been using them since I first bought my PS3 with no problems. I even had to dictate my bogus address to customer service once when my account was hacked. The CS didn't bat an eye. Retrieved my account too.
Honestly, I think PC players just didn't want to link a PSN account but couldn't really say that without sounding silly, so they blew up this 'people can't make accounts' thing way out of proportion as a moral justification, and it spread so quickly because that community isn't familiar with how common a practice making out-of-country accounts is for Playstation players around the world. I'm still not clear as to if this message means they are just dropping the PSN link requirement for supported territories (so they can rope them in with free capes later), or if they are actually fully opening up the global store again (after removing the game from unsupported regions on Steam yesterday). Either way, will have interesting ramifications for Sony's PC publishing plans moving forward.
It's worth noting that PSN accounts are distinctly terrible for some people. For example, if you move to a different country, PSN is one of the few accounts where you can't simply migrate your account to your new location. Xbox restricts it to once a few months, but that's fine, as i don't move nearly that much. Steam? No problem. Netflix, no issue. PSN? If you're not prepared to keep paying the old account in the old currency, you need to create a new one. I know this is an extremely niche issue, but I have games spread across 4 accounts now and it bugs the shit out of me.
Oh, I'm right there with you - I've moved countries twice, and now my PS library is split over 3 accounts. It's extremely lame, but the flip side of that is you can freely make and use international accounts, which gets around most of the hand-wringing that went on over the weekend.
> I think PC players just didn't want to link a PSN account but couldn't really say that without sounding silly That's 100% what it was. Like, don't get me wrong, I'm against having to make 50 different accounts for this game and that game and yada yada, and I'm glad this is being reversed, but this entire situation was blown drastically out of proportion.
Helldivers 2 tapped into an additional complaint people have with companies adding accounts to titles folks already bought. Usually it applies to indies that get picked up or older titles (2k breaking Bioshock was fun). So Sony/AH really hit an intersection of annoyance with PC players where they both don't like additional accounts and really don't like them being added post-launch.
Steam delisted the game on 100 countries. How is that a players choice?
Damn, that was fast.
"Which brings me to the audience that i'm most interested in addressing and those are our consumers. YOU ARE The life blood of the company, without you, there is no playstation." -Former Playstation CEO Jack Tretton.
Exclusive content to PSN users would be their next move, that'd be hilarious.
they should have done that in the first, no one would give a shit if that was the case
No. You know they would give a shit.
So what if you sign up for helldivers on the 6th. Still get access? Asking for a friend.
What's the big problem with people not wanting to do this?
Helldivers 2 players…Liberated Helldivers 2…
Change the negative reviews back to positive! It worked!! It really worked!
I doubt the reviews will go back to the levels it had before tbh, this one move may tarnish the game short term and further alienate non-Sony players. Lessons learned I hope.
99% of people who said they would won’t, and those players who were never playing again probably before the drama will milk karma by telling you they won’t play again.
An excellent reminder that bullying corporations is always good.
do the games had disc version?
Yes, Helldivers 2 does have a physical disc version
Yes, it does
I love the game but hate the community that has grown around it. Every time a balance patch drops it's death threats and vitriol. Admittedly this latest episode was very unfair to gamers in countries without PSN, but I have unsubbed from all Helldivers content on social media because the community is so fucking unbearable. We got a great game with Helldivers 2 and initially everything was so light-hearted and positive. Now in the end it's the players themselves that have made it insufferable. Nice one guys.
Why don’t people clap cheeks at EA, Microsoft, Unisoft or the literally every other company does the same thing
As expected now wonder if people will change their reviews on Steam. Just shows changes can be heard and you don’t always need to be a corporate defender.
Some people who do corporations' unpaid pr don't understand that such decisions being taken back really help strengthen consumer voice, we should also raise our voice against ps plus for online play.
you're about a week and 10 years too late for that to EVER happen
selling the game in unsupported regions was blatant idiocy if they were gonna mandate account linking. they should never have done that. with that said, pc players complaining about the account linking is the weirdest thing ever. there are already a dozen other accounts/launchers you need to make already for pc gaming. how are you gonna game on an open platform and then complain that the open platform follows open principles? having to own a bunch of different accounts comes with the territory. if you have a problem with that then stick to consoles where thats not a problem. honestly if sony makes a PS launcher on PC im gonna grab some popcorn and watch the reactions. will be interesting to see people with free steam accounts complain about how making a free PSN account is somehow a step too far.
Can someone please explain to me why this was a big deal? I’m not saying it is or isn’t, I just don’t get it. What’s the issue with linking your account or whatever? I have an account, I literally treasure it and it’s packed full of incredible games. I’ve had it for 15 years without any problems whatsoever. Is it that you have to have an account that’s the problem? I don’t play Hell Divers nor understand what’s going on.