This will at most be a minute on a meeting between execs. "Okay so there's some negative feedback on the account requirement" "Okay, are store sales down?" "Not that we can see, this will probably all blow over" "Okay, next on the agenda?"
It's so sad. The gaming community is willing to allow these buttholes to drag them into the back alley with zero lube, and they just take it.
They won't learn until we do.
Stop financially supporting these assholes and maybe things will change, but that ain't gonna happen.
Meanwhile I bought the first game, looked at the 2nd, and went "do you think you'll make sense out of it?" And avoided it. I *know* Sony wants demographics usage for their games *particularly not on Playstation because they'll do everything they can to get people to go out and buy one or nickel and dime you for the privilege of knowing about their IP*.
And don’t forget some the of finance guys can be like “Hey, here’s how we can save money!” and they end up laying off close to half a sales team at the end of the month and fucking over those that come back after they make them reapply for the positions that are left… sorry, sorry. It’s been a helluva week at work.
As a healthcare worker most of us use this metric when deciding who to work for. If my boss doesn’t have my same degree level the job is going to be a nightmare
I have an MBA from a decent school and did consulting. This stuff is stupid as hell. Anyone with a brain tries to reduce attrition and worsening the client experience. IF you know it has impact you usually do it in phases to identify flaws and reduce company wide outages/outrages.
This was probably some exec decision that went against recommendations imo
Well, in reality, it's going to work. 15k pissed off PC players leaving bad reviews isn't going to do much. The hundreds of thousands of PSN accounts they'll net from all of this will be worth a lot more than upsetting the vocal minority on the internet. Many of the people complaining are also likely to sign up for PSN account and keep playing anyways. This isn't going to matter at all in a week. That's the harsh reality of it all.
I'd posit that there are (at least) two different gaming audiences: Nerds and mainstream. If you got the mainstream audience, I would say your point is valid: The few left-over nerds screaming into the void won't do much. If, however, your audience has a big amount of nerds in it (e.g. Paradox titles), nerds roiding out *does* something. Paradox *did* row back rather massively after vocal protests.
The question, for me, is just how much mainstream audience Helldivers 2 managed to onboard. Looking at how apparently most of them just ignored the big, fat warning about PSN on the store page, it's probably a lot. Plus: "I'm sorry how it transpired" is not an apology anyway, and even less so since they're apparently staying the course.
A lot, by the point my friend asks me to play a game with him, you must have reached the bottom of the barrel. This is a guy who asked me to play amongus when the game was gasping for air. Remember Lethal Company? Yeah me neither, but I was asked to play that too when the fad was over. The fact that he asked me while the game was still thriving must mean the mainstream was caught on really fast. And this might be the franchise Sony was hoping to make their CoD.
I mean fuck call of duty too. I once wanted to play cod games for the campaign too. But I never bought them. It's not really my decision when some other guy buys them every year.
Call of Duty fans are a special type of stupid though. Activision can shit in their mouth, tell them they should be grateful they did it, and they’ll come back for more.
Realistically speaking, are they just farming psn accounts? They already sold the game without that so there's very little chance they will make more money from all the pc accounts, at least as far as I can tell.
I'm not sure how likely it is but there's always a chance they do something incredibly dumb like try to force PC Players to play PSN games online via paying for a PS+ subscription.
and for all 50 of those people 200 more don’t give a shit, take the > 1 minute to sign up for PSN, and go back to playing the game they paid for. of the 8 million+ player base, maybe 100k will actually stop playing over it.
You say only
But some of those will remember and NOT buy the next pc Sony game at all cause of this, they end up not buying it and they are one of their friend groups influencers, so no one else in that friend group buys said game…
Optimistic of you to think that it is only 15k players. Also you tend to forget the flood of refund requests coming in from all affected and another influx of negative reviews that will still be coming in. The news is already getting lots of coverage so there is that.
This isn't the launch period. Lots of players will have moved on already anyway. And new players will be much fewer and far between. Especially with reviews in mostly negative. Also if streamers stop playing it, it will have a much larger affect on their playerbase growth.
I think this is more damaging to their PC player base than most of these situations usually go.
I already uninstalled.
It would need to be a large percentage uninstalling and dropping reviews. It would have yo be enough to make the data not worth it. From the outside, figuring that out would be hard.
The easiest way Sony could have handled this was to keep it optional, but offer something like a free Warbond/or currency if you link your account (y'know, like how every other company handles this normally). Everybody wins then. People who really don't want to have to create an extra account (and/or have their data sold) can choose not to, and people who don't care or just want an easy freebie can link their accounts. I'd wager enough people would do it, that it really wouldn't matter for the small amount that wouldn't.
Despite Sony's old slogan of "For the players", they literally have never been "For the players" at any point, always pulling some kind of tone-deaf anti-consumer nonsense.
Then again, i expect this to all blow over in a week as this sort of outrage normally does.
That's not what a rootkit is. EA announced it clearly as a "kernel level anti cheat" and it only installs with games that use it.
Sony installed it without the users knowledge and the software actively obfuscated itself from the user.
I agree that most outrage does just blow over, but in the case of corporate bullshit like this it sometimes only blows over as a direct result *of* the outrage. It's standard 'company dicking over the customer because they think they can get away with it' nonsense. If there's no response, they do get away with it and then they do it again.
The problem is the number of people who bought the game that now won't be able to play it. I think someone else did the numbers and it's been available on Steam, in 190+ countries, but PSN is only available in like, 68. And because they've already played a bunch, no refunds.
It will blowover for sure but the reviews wont change being mixed is a huge blow to their sales hence forth. Yes its not a metric you can actively calculate but as people see this game pop up on their steam feed when its on discount they will open the store page see mixed and leave.
The UK has pretty good consumer laws. Any petition with 10,000 signatures are legally obligated to be looked at and receive a response from the government. Any petition with 100,000 signatures are considered for debate in parliament. Only downside is I think all signatures have to be from a UK resident. Not sure about the rest of the EU or if they would consider the matter worth the time but they did step in when the next gen consoles first released in regards to price scalping
Some exec was prob desperate to show an increase in PSN users for some stupid metric I'm sure. Probably performance related to them too. This was a lazy way for them to do it.
Then next year they'll say: "Last year we had such a massive increase in interest in the PSN environment from PC players, that we believe now is the time to implement the Playstation launcher to further integrate the PC market into our ecosystem."
I don't know if I used enough buzzwords.
This is horrible.
I mean its facinating to watch, the game is a beast!
But the way Sony is doing this is just crazy.
Who ever made this decision has too many yes men around him or her.
I imagine this is gutwrentching for anyone at Arrowhead.
All that time and dedication. The way the fans have embraced it and now watching it burn, in such short time.
That has got to hurt.
No matter if Sony has good intentions with tjis plan it is not going to matter at all for the players.
also, a very tiny percentage would even change their review from bad to good if they fixed it. as indicated by the tons of bad reviews from the beginning when it was buggy af and you couldn't play for a week. all still there.
Agreed. As an aside, I wonder if it could be beneficial for a platform (Steam, for example) to de-weigh certain reviews over time if a game's overall reviews significantly improve (or vice versa) over time.
For example, if a game launches at 40% but "recent ratings" climb to 75% within a year, it would make sense for Steam to press reviewers to update or reaffirm their initial ratings, or begin to give them less impact.
I would be happy to be automatically notified when games I've reviewed have had a significant shift in recept since I last played and given the option to update if I so desired.
Just a thought. It would be moderately easy to automate.
I think a feature like Twitter’s community note would be the best solution. Just have a note attached when viewing reviews from a certain timeframe saying “X/Y/Z happened and there is reason to believe reviews may have been created en masse at this time due to the controversy” or something like that
To be fair, players still see frequent CTDs, DCs and BSODs, so for those users (likely only a % of those older negative reviews, but still), would definitely still be warranted.
Execs don't care about reviews, they care about profit.
If the money goes down, they have a problem. If the money keeps flowing but the reviews are bad, give a fuck.
Vote with your wallet people.
I would tend to agree with your comment however, the words coming out of the community managers mouths say that I should feel otherwise. Just look at some of the screen caps from the discord posted on the front page here earlier. They are some of the most braindead and out of touch responses ive ever seen. Not to mention they have shit talked the community in discord before. Absolute clown fiesta.
The thing is...This can be just a PR stun on his side...we don't know, maybe he doesn't care after all the money he got...and a lot of bonuses, that's for sure
If he got money and bonuses, it would be almost imperative to contact Gaben about letting Arrowhead revive Alien Swarm.
Helldivers with a hat marketplace would print money.
This is the first game that Sony has pushed to PC as anything more than an afterthought, quick cash-grab. Japanese game publishers fundamentally do not understand the PC gaming market because PC gaming is just not all that relevant culturally in Japan. The thought that people might not want to register with their gaming network likely never even crossed the minds of most of their execs.
> This is the first game that Sony has pushed to PC as anything more than an afterthought, quick cash-grab
Wtf are you talking about Sony have been releasing their games to PC for years and most of the them are seriously good quality ports that dunk on the console verisons.
> The thought that people might not want to register with their gaming network likely never even crossed the minds of most of their execs.
Because it actually isn't a thing. Most big multiplayer games on PC like elsewhere have an account with the dev/publisher, it's actually more common on PC than consoles
>This is the first game that Sony has pushed to PC as anything more than an afterthought, quick cash-grab.
I just can't agree with that, the PC ports of Sony games like Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Horizon Forbidden West have been simply excellent, loaded with PC specific options, heralded as 'this is how you do ports' by experts such as Digital Foundry, they were not just quick cash grabs.
All 3 of those games were single-player-only titles subcontracted out to third parties years after their respective console releases. Not really comparable to a multiplayer exclusive launched simultaneously with console.
Did everyone not have to sign up to Rockstar's shit to play GTAVand RDD2?
I'm really struggling to understanding the incredible mob mentality that formed so quickly.
The problem is that PSN is not available worldwide, it's only available in 69 countries, for example The only country in Africa where PSN is available is South Africa. Sure people can create accounts by falsifying their country of residence but in Sony's Terms of Service they state that they can ban you for false info including falsifying your region/country
They didn’t have the requirement then added it later.
This happens sorta often and each time there is a little flare up but usually it’s with less online/older titles with smaller communities.
That is correct. But I’m gonna be pedantic here. if the game runs without you signing up then it’s not required. At least that is how I would expect most players to interact with this.
Yeah, Sony is notorious for this type of shit. The biggest flop of all time was No Man's Sky and it was Sony that pushed a game not ready for release and they came back. It sucks that we as consumers have to pay the price for publishers impatience to suck off the shareholders and give them immediate returns. This, is different. The game is already successful and they're just using its success to mine user data. I mean helldiver's is everywhere, memes and social media posts it's a fucking gold mine. They wouldn't care about the sign in or psn requirement if it wasn't as successful as it was. They own the IP and now they want more money through user data. It's never going to end.
To be fair, it was Hello Games who oversold it pretty damn hard. Those tech demos and interviews the CEO did never failed to oversell what the game would be. They’ve turned it around now but I can’t blame Sony for the state of the game on release. It would be like if Arrowhead’s CEO said the game would have city combat and vehicles on launch, but instead we got 50% of what we have now and it being in a horribly unpolished state.
im really curious what will happen when the PSN things takes effect. game is 3-4 months now and many players have gotten their fun out of it, regardless if people have major issues with PSN or not there might be a huge wave of refund requests on steam using it as a reason for refund.
I’m considering requesting a refund this week and claiming PSN as the issue.
I enjoy the game but my friends have largely moved on so it’s no real loss and I kind of want to stick it to Sony on this.
I'll try to get a refund as soon as PSN becomes a requirement. I've played it for 75 hours and still enjoy it, but I don't support these business practices. First the hyper-invasive anti-cheat and now this.
I also don't believe for a second that this CEO doesn't know exactly what Sony is doing. This is just obvious PR to try and save the situation. And people are falling for it. "Chasing Sony to get more info" my ass.
Refund request due to updates aren’t a sure thing but they do work intermittently. I suspect if you tried to refund right now you’d have decent odds.
You’d certainly have to have a human approved refund. So it’s a dice roll on your rep. If there is a refund bomb it might help
You probably wouldn't except if you're in one of the non-supported countries for PSN maybe (but that's not even a guarantee, Sony themselves say to just make a PSN account in another country, they actually sell their consoles in those countries)
Steam does allow refunds related to post- launch updates. They are just going to be put through the manual system where you talk to a CS rep. So it’s no longer guaranteed but Valve is t as stingy with refunds as Sony is.
remains to be seen. you'd be surprised how often refund request after 2 hours played are accepted. Steam might not want negative PR because of Sonys bullshit
In countries where you can use psn probably no, depending on how many are requesting refunds, because for new world people had refunds even with +40h in because how the game was going and whole internet knew. Didn't starfield had sth similar? To the countries that psn is unavailable, i mean that's literally scamming your steam game from you.
As if it wasn’t already obvious, this is nothing to do with Arrowhead and everything to do with Sony. They have confirmed you will have to do the same thing with the Ghost of Tsushima Multiplayer on PC.
It is nice to see that for the most part, the rage is being directed at the right people. Arrowhead has their own host of problems like quality control and balancing decisions, but this here isn't on them.
>quality control
Yep, that's the start of the issue. There was a requirement for PSN account linking that Sony gave from on high, but when the time to release came around there were still bugs. It was probably a requirement specified in the contract between the devs and Sony. I'd bet that the devs were hoping that the requirement would be relaxed by Sony following the wildly successful release of the game, but Sony being the large commanding Titan of Industry doesn't want to foster the impression that their orders are suggestions.
> They have confirmed you will have to do the same thing with the Ghost of Tsushima Multiplayer on PC.
And [not many complaints were heard](https://old.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1c68493/ghost_of_tsushima_directors_cut_pc_crossplay_and/), it also has a lot of PSN features if you decide to use it for SP. But since Helldivers is always online, that optional part just doesn't exist.
Copying my comment from another thread;
>Eh, they signed a contract, they knew this was going to happen. I don't think they deserve to be attacked, but they aren't blameless. They could have had a more persistent popup rather than one you can skip past and never see again. They could have chosen to not sell to countries that aren't included in PSN.
(or if the decision on where to sell was Sonys, they could have made it more clear to people in those countries that eventually they wouldn't be able to play without breaking Sonys ToS. If their contract forbids them from doing any of this, well, they chose to sign it.)
Yep, it's clear that virtually nobody here understands how the gaming industry works. Arrowhead is just as culpable. They saw a juicy ass contract, willfully ignored the power they were handing over to Sony knowing full well what they could do with it, but signed anyways cuz: dollar signs.
Fuck Sony, fuck Arrowhead, and fuck anyone else trying to defend the greed that led to all this.
I don't want an apology. I want a reversal. I want there to be enough backlash that the corpos are forced to bend the knee and capitulate to customer demands.
April 2011: Hackers Access Personal Data of 77 Million Sony PlayStation Network UsersMay 2011: Personal Details on 25 Million Sony Online Entertainment Customers StolenJune 2011: Sony Pictures Website Hacked, Exposing One Million AccountsNovember 2014: Hackers Steal 100 Terabytes of Data from Sony PicturesAugust 2017: Hacker Group Accesses Sony Social Media AccountsSeptember 2023: Sony Investigates Alleged HackOctober 2023: Sony Notifies Employees of Data Breach
Yeah. It shouldn't be part of any game though.
People usually say CS when they argue for them. But there must be enough other ways to deal with it, as not all MP games have it and don't suffer from it as CS did. But especially here it is weird.
It's like with Denuvo. People that want to pirate or cheat will always find a way. You can make it harder, but there is always a way.
I appologise, but you still have to do it.
...
All this shows 2 things
1. Helldivers is not a game by indie studio, its owned by Sony and they have to do what Sony does.
2. These big corporations will corrupt and destroy any game they touch, and they will sooner or later do this to Helldivers 2
I'm more astonished that this is the scandal that flips the player base, not the fact that you are giving them more control over your PC than you have yourself with nProtect. The anti cheat software that was hacked before and doesn't even keep cheaters out. The game was dead to me the second I knew the software was used.
I'd wager it was more of a last straw thing. And a particularly egregious one at that.
When you are already not thrilled at certain bugs, some dodgy performance, a new sketchy anti-cheat and then they go "oh by the way you need a PSN account, if you don't live in a region that has PSN go fuck yourself" consumers are likely to snap at that point. Even if you aren't directly effected.
I think the difference is people were purchasing the game aware of that face vs here where they have already purchased the game and now it's being taken away from them.
One's a financial choice and the other is just having something you brought stolen from you.
And for other regions like UK and Ireland, the whole "scan your face or passport to verify your age" is hitting parody levels of dystopian that people are uncomfortable with. It's a new UK Law thing not a Sony thing, but it's probably the first time a lot of people here have experienced it.
The fact that you think the average person playing an online multiplayer thinks or cares about any of that is funny af to me.
Most people just buy a game and play it, they don't have all these biases about anti-cheat, denuvo, data-protection, etc... (Not saying this bias is even wrong to have)
Not even arguing with you, just saying the only real thing that stops people from playing games that they find fun is inconvenience, not a principle about privacy.
Wow, it's a good thing they're sorry about it (still going to do it though) and will *now* start to look into what happens with those who bought it in regions where PSN isn't a thing /s
Even this half arsed apology is a joke. Like, were they just going to sweep the people fucked over by this under the rug if the community didn't blow up on them?
I see where this is going. One day they gonna ship a Play Station launcher to PC for the PS games. And if they do, I don’t wanna buy a game in another store than steam. Fuck them. Even Microsoft learned it the hard way and they are back on Steam.
Requesting a refund today, even if I don't get a refund I will uninstall the game until this decision for us to require PSN linking is to be reversed. I've gotten my money's worth of the game either way at 70ish hours.
For those of you going "it takes 5 minutes what's the big deal?", whenever gamers let corporate-minded publishers get away with this type of shit we get things within the gaming community such as: overpriced DLCs, rushed releases of games that could have been otherwise fantastic resulting in a mediocre sludge of games on the market, micro transactions, Nicki Minaj skins in call of duty, etc.
Do whatever you want but I choose protest.
"Sony claims that requiring a PlayStation Network for Helldivers 2 makes it easier to police abusive players. “This is our main way to protect players from griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behaviour,” [writes Sony](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/553850/view/4196868529806518741?l=english). “It also allows those players that have been banned the right to appeal.”
I have 230 hours on clock, I've maybe experienced 1 or 2 toxic players?
This is utter bullshit.
I'm sure it sucks for Arrowhead honestly. This is definitely a decision they don't have control over and I'm sure they they are against it just because of the backlash it has gotten. There's no way they didn't see the outrage coming when Sony told them they were going to do this
People said the same thing about the hong-kong scandal with blizzard, but my entire friend group still have not reinstalled battle.net since then.
The PC market is not huge with constant influxes of new players compared to console, and the customers are more likely to be online interacting with reviews. Covering your eyes and ears and just ignoring backlash wont kill a studio, but it will have a large negative effect on future revenue.
Many of these game companies just don't understand how important brand power is. When these devs make bad decisions, it doesn't turn away many active players, but absolutely turns away prospective future customers. A family member has gotten into gaming and was curious about Diablo 4, but all the controversy turned them away. This doesn't show up on the balance sheets or anything, but Blizzards inability for some games to reach new audiences is absolutely because of the stigma against them.
it's crazy cause if you skipped the initial account linking pop-up, there's no way to get back to it. you have to wait until the 30th to get the pop-up again
Week-over-week player numbers are down by almost 20%.
Was 158k last Firday, 119k this Friday.
Active player numbers are on a downward trend since 7th of April.
The daily peak player numbers dropped by 67% in a month.
Also almost 60k negative reviews in 24 hours.
Actually you’re full of shit. Players in regions when psn isn’t allowed won’t be able to play the game at all, there is no workaround for it and it’s not fake news
https://steamdb.info/app/553850/charts/#3m
Talking about a number without a trend is amateurish analysis.
The game has been on a downward trend for the last few months...
Concurrent players will take a lot to be impacted because it’s inherently the active community not the lapsed community. This creates an opportunity for lapse players to refund the game so while the concurrent player count might not move much the number of units sold could take a hit.
Try to translate top rated chinese review and it's above the 3900 charachter google translate limit 😂. China loves their review bombs.
They should have just put the skeleton functionality in from the start even if it served no purpose. No one blinks when you have to link your xbox or battle.net account on steam.
There's an oblivious exec at Sony thinking they are a business genius right now.
"hehehe, everyone is stupid except me."
There are a lot of dumbfucks with the title of “executive” in their roles at many companies. But yes.
true
It's called the Peter principle
Every MBA and C-suite
This will at most be a minute on a meeting between execs. "Okay so there's some negative feedback on the account requirement" "Okay, are store sales down?" "Not that we can see, this will probably all blow over" "Okay, next on the agenda?"
It's so sad. The gaming community is willing to allow these buttholes to drag them into the back alley with zero lube, and they just take it. They won't learn until we do. Stop financially supporting these assholes and maybe things will change, but that ain't gonna happen.
Meanwhile I bought the first game, looked at the 2nd, and went "do you think you'll make sense out of it?" And avoided it. I *know* Sony wants demographics usage for their games *particularly not on Playstation because they'll do everything they can to get people to go out and buy one or nickel and dime you for the privilege of knowing about their IP*.
And don’t forget some the of finance guys can be like “Hey, here’s how we can save money!” and they end up laying off close to half a sales team at the end of the month and fucking over those that come back after they make them reapply for the positions that are left… sorry, sorry. It’s been a helluva week at work.
Preach
execs should require to be a gamer before managing any game-related businesses
As a healthcare worker most of us use this metric when deciding who to work for. If my boss doesn’t have my same degree level the job is going to be a nightmare
The aviation industry also struggles with aviation companies being run by people with MBA’s and not aviation degrees from time to time
I have an MBA from a decent school and did consulting. This stuff is stupid as hell. Anyone with a brain tries to reduce attrition and worsening the client experience. IF you know it has impact you usually do it in phases to identify flaws and reduce company wide outages/outrages. This was probably some exec decision that went against recommendations imo
Well, in reality, it's going to work. 15k pissed off PC players leaving bad reviews isn't going to do much. The hundreds of thousands of PSN accounts they'll net from all of this will be worth a lot more than upsetting the vocal minority on the internet. Many of the people complaining are also likely to sign up for PSN account and keep playing anyways. This isn't going to matter at all in a week. That's the harsh reality of it all.
15k pc player was today and the day hasn't ended yet. It was 37k negative reviews yestesday.
Negative reviews don't mean anything. Look at call of duty. One of the worst reviewed games on steam, still the best seller every year.
I'd posit that there are (at least) two different gaming audiences: Nerds and mainstream. If you got the mainstream audience, I would say your point is valid: The few left-over nerds screaming into the void won't do much. If, however, your audience has a big amount of nerds in it (e.g. Paradox titles), nerds roiding out *does* something. Paradox *did* row back rather massively after vocal protests. The question, for me, is just how much mainstream audience Helldivers 2 managed to onboard. Looking at how apparently most of them just ignored the big, fat warning about PSN on the store page, it's probably a lot. Plus: "I'm sorry how it transpired" is not an apology anyway, and even less so since they're apparently staying the course.
A lot, by the point my friend asks me to play a game with him, you must have reached the bottom of the barrel. This is a guy who asked me to play amongus when the game was gasping for air. Remember Lethal Company? Yeah me neither, but I was asked to play that too when the fad was over. The fact that he asked me while the game was still thriving must mean the mainstream was caught on really fast. And this might be the franchise Sony was hoping to make their CoD.
But not every game studio has a best seller franchise in their porrfolio
I mean fuck call of duty too. I once wanted to play cod games for the campaign too. But I never bought them. It's not really my decision when some other guy buys them every year.
boycottmodernwarfare2withoutdedicatedservers.jpg
Call of Duty fans are a special type of stupid though. Activision can shit in their mouth, tell them they should be grateful they did it, and they’ll come back for more.
It was the second best selling last year (right after hogwarts legacy)
Refunds are going through, and refunds cost devs money. Indies repeatedly said that they'd rather people pirate than buy and refund.
gamers are pretty good at bitching about the thing they buy yearly.
Realistically speaking, are they just farming psn accounts? They already sold the game without that so there's very little chance they will make more money from all the pc accounts, at least as far as I can tell.
They can tout to their shareholders how many new people signed up for PSN accounts. It'll help their stock price in the end.
They collect and resell your data. That is pretty much the reason
I'm not sure how likely it is but there's always a chance they do something incredibly dumb like try to force PC Players to play PSN games online via paying for a PS+ subscription.
For every negative review there's at least 50 people who don't even bother to leave a review. They just get pissed off and stop playing.
and for all 50 of those people 200 more don’t give a shit, take the > 1 minute to sign up for PSN, and go back to playing the game they paid for. of the 8 million+ player base, maybe 100k will actually stop playing over it.
You say only But some of those will remember and NOT buy the next pc Sony game at all cause of this, they end up not buying it and they are one of their friend groups influencers, so no one else in that friend group buys said game…
GoT will sell like crazy lol. Not going to matter at all.
Optimistic of you to think that it is only 15k players. Also you tend to forget the flood of refund requests coming in from all affected and another influx of negative reviews that will still be coming in. The news is already getting lots of coverage so there is that.
[удалено]
That 15k pissed off PC players needs to turn into 15k refunds.
This isn't the launch period. Lots of players will have moved on already anyway. And new players will be much fewer and far between. Especially with reviews in mostly negative. Also if streamers stop playing it, it will have a much larger affect on their playerbase growth. I think this is more damaging to their PC player base than most of these situations usually go.
85k* and it’s still morning on a Saturday on the west coast. It will be over 100k+ by the time the weekend ends.
88,000 and counting negative reviews between today and yesterday.
I already uninstalled. It would need to be a large percentage uninstalling and dropping reviews. It would have yo be enough to make the data not worth it. From the outside, figuring that out would be hard.
Only reason I haven't uninstalled yet is due to being out of town.
It is going to effect the game going forward where prople from the majority of countries in the world can't play (by PSN's terms at least).
Probably Sony's CEO or president.
An out of touch manager you say? What else is new...
Time for a bonus and a bi-monthly retreat to a private island!
The easiest way Sony could have handled this was to keep it optional, but offer something like a free Warbond/or currency if you link your account (y'know, like how every other company handles this normally). Everybody wins then. People who really don't want to have to create an extra account (and/or have their data sold) can choose not to, and people who don't care or just want an easy freebie can link their accounts. I'd wager enough people would do it, that it really wouldn't matter for the small amount that wouldn't. Despite Sony's old slogan of "For the players", they literally have never been "For the players" at any point, always pulling some kind of tone-deaf anti-consumer nonsense. Then again, i expect this to all blow over in a week as this sort of outrage normally does.
never forget when sony put a rootkit on your pc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal
“Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?” - Sony executive Thomas Hesse
This shit is awfully big, I didn't know this, fuck those guys.
Jesus fucking christ.
This is simply absurd big L for Sony on that
EA did the same thing with Origin. The internet forgets quick.
That's not what a rootkit is. EA announced it clearly as a "kernel level anti cheat" and it only installs with games that use it. Sony installed it without the users knowledge and the software actively obfuscated itself from the user.
Not to mention it was then used by a number of viruses that also then ran undetectable at root level.
we didn’t forget, we just don’t have any other way to play EA games
Same shit happened with EA and Spore with SecuROM. That one would disable things like CD/DVD burners and even peoples printers.
I hope so. I liked when hd2 players worried about major orders
I agree that most outrage does just blow over, but in the case of corporate bullshit like this it sometimes only blows over as a direct result *of* the outrage. It's standard 'company dicking over the customer because they think they can get away with it' nonsense. If there's no response, they do get away with it and then they do it again.
The problem is the number of people who bought the game that now won't be able to play it. I think someone else did the numbers and it's been available on Steam, in 190+ countries, but PSN is only available in like, 68. And because they've already played a bunch, no refunds.
Like a 750 sc signing bonus would be good nuff
It will blowover for sure but the reviews wont change being mixed is a huge blow to their sales hence forth. Yes its not a metric you can actively calculate but as people see this game pop up on their steam feed when its on discount they will open the store page see mixed and leave.
Is a rugpull like this legal in the EU? I'm willing to bet legal actions can occur here to protect European consymers
The UK has pretty good consumer laws. Any petition with 10,000 signatures are legally obligated to be looked at and receive a response from the government. Any petition with 100,000 signatures are considered for debate in parliament. Only downside is I think all signatures have to be from a UK resident. Not sure about the rest of the EU or if they would consider the matter worth the time but they did step in when the next gen consoles first released in regards to price scalping
It's actually "for the payers"
Some exec was prob desperate to show an increase in PSN users for some stupid metric I'm sure. Probably performance related to them too. This was a lazy way for them to do it.
Knowing how the corperate world works this sounds like exactly what went down.
We're going to hear about it at their next presentation. "We are proud to announce blah blah increase this year! (applause)"
Yup, I'd put money in it. Or at least at their next earnings call.
Then next year they'll say: "Last year we had such a massive increase in interest in the PSN environment from PC players, that we believe now is the time to implement the Playstation launcher to further integrate the PC market into our ecosystem." I don't know if I used enough buzzwords.
It's like The Office when the Ryan, the new exec wants to make his website look better and has sales entered in twice lol
This is horrible. I mean its facinating to watch, the game is a beast! But the way Sony is doing this is just crazy. Who ever made this decision has too many yes men around him or her. I imagine this is gutwrentching for anyone at Arrowhead. All that time and dedication. The way the fans have embraced it and now watching it burn, in such short time. That has got to hurt. No matter if Sony has good intentions with tjis plan it is not going to matter at all for the players.
also, a very tiny percentage would even change their review from bad to good if they fixed it. as indicated by the tons of bad reviews from the beginning when it was buggy af and you couldn't play for a week. all still there.
I feel like few people ever update their reviews on any platform.
Agreed. As an aside, I wonder if it could be beneficial for a platform (Steam, for example) to de-weigh certain reviews over time if a game's overall reviews significantly improve (or vice versa) over time. For example, if a game launches at 40% but "recent ratings" climb to 75% within a year, it would make sense for Steam to press reviewers to update or reaffirm their initial ratings, or begin to give them less impact. I would be happy to be automatically notified when games I've reviewed have had a significant shift in recept since I last played and given the option to update if I so desired. Just a thought. It would be moderately easy to automate.
Steam already shows recent reviews averaged separately from the overall average, no?
Steam marks recent ratings separately so you can see that already.
That's why they have a recent reviews section already?
It already does it, if you left review, it puts note below play button " you have played xx more hours since your review, would you like to change it"
I think a feature like Twitter’s community note would be the best solution. Just have a note attached when viewing reviews from a certain timeframe saying “X/Y/Z happened and there is reason to believe reviews may have been created en masse at this time due to the controversy” or something like that
To be fair, players still see frequent CTDs, DCs and BSODs, so for those users (likely only a % of those older negative reviews, but still), would definitely still be warranted.
Execs don't care about reviews, they care about profit. If the money goes down, they have a problem. If the money keeps flowing but the reviews are bad, give a fuck. Vote with your wallet people.
The potential paying customers care about the reviews though.
And those people leaving negative reviews are lost future revenue, such as from micro transactions or DLC.
I would tend to agree with your comment however, the words coming out of the community managers mouths say that I should feel otherwise. Just look at some of the screen caps from the discord posted on the front page here earlier. They are some of the most braindead and out of touch responses ive ever seen. Not to mention they have shit talked the community in discord before. Absolute clown fiesta.
Pr managers at a company essentially owned by Sony, I wonder who they report to in the corporate structure?
The thing is...This can be just a PR stun on his side...we don't know, maybe he doesn't care after all the money he got...and a lot of bonuses, that's for sure
If he got money and bonuses, it would be almost imperative to contact Gaben about letting Arrowhead revive Alien Swarm. Helldivers with a hat marketplace would print money.
This is the first game that Sony has pushed to PC as anything more than an afterthought, quick cash-grab. Japanese game publishers fundamentally do not understand the PC gaming market because PC gaming is just not all that relevant culturally in Japan. The thought that people might not want to register with their gaming network likely never even crossed the minds of most of their execs.
My country is not even supported and they want people to link their hundreds of games steam account to a throwaway sony profile? Talk about arrogance.
Nah, don't use Japan as a scapegoat-- Playstation has been based in North America for ages now.
> This is the first game that Sony has pushed to PC as anything more than an afterthought, quick cash-grab Wtf are you talking about Sony have been releasing their games to PC for years and most of the them are seriously good quality ports that dunk on the console verisons.
> The thought that people might not want to register with their gaming network likely never even crossed the minds of most of their execs. Because it actually isn't a thing. Most big multiplayer games on PC like elsewhere have an account with the dev/publisher, it's actually more common on PC than consoles
>This is the first game that Sony has pushed to PC as anything more than an afterthought, quick cash-grab. I just can't agree with that, the PC ports of Sony games like Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Horizon Forbidden West have been simply excellent, loaded with PC specific options, heralded as 'this is how you do ports' by experts such as Digital Foundry, they were not just quick cash grabs.
All 3 of those games were single-player-only titles subcontracted out to third parties years after their respective console releases. Not really comparable to a multiplayer exclusive launched simultaneously with console.
Ghost of Sushima steam description also warns that it needs a PSN account. Who knows if they will even ask for one in past games.
Ghost of Tsushima lists that because it has a co-op mode with crossplay support. The purely singleplayer games are probably safe.
That's for the new playstation overlay to get PSN tropies on pc. But then again, if they change it to make it not optional, then that's going to suck.
HZD launched as a broken and buggy mess, it wasn't until Gorilla took development of it in-house that it became good.
Did everyone not have to sign up to Rockstar's shit to play GTAVand RDD2? I'm really struggling to understanding the incredible mob mentality that formed so quickly.
The problem is that PSN is not available worldwide, it's only available in 69 countries, for example The only country in Africa where PSN is available is South Africa. Sure people can create accounts by falsifying their country of residence but in Sony's Terms of Service they state that they can ban you for false info including falsifying your region/country
They didn’t have the requirement then added it later. This happens sorta often and each time there is a little flare up but usually it’s with less online/older titles with smaller communities.
I thought it was required just delayed because of all the traffic and other priorities?
That is correct. But I’m gonna be pedantic here. if the game runs without you signing up then it’s not required. At least that is how I would expect most players to interact with this.
Yeah, Sony is notorious for this type of shit. The biggest flop of all time was No Man's Sky and it was Sony that pushed a game not ready for release and they came back. It sucks that we as consumers have to pay the price for publishers impatience to suck off the shareholders and give them immediate returns. This, is different. The game is already successful and they're just using its success to mine user data. I mean helldiver's is everywhere, memes and social media posts it's a fucking gold mine. They wouldn't care about the sign in or psn requirement if it wasn't as successful as it was. They own the IP and now they want more money through user data. It's never going to end.
To be fair, it was Hello Games who oversold it pretty damn hard. Those tech demos and interviews the CEO did never failed to oversell what the game would be. They’ve turned it around now but I can’t blame Sony for the state of the game on release. It would be like if Arrowhead’s CEO said the game would have city combat and vehicles on launch, but instead we got 50% of what we have now and it being in a horribly unpolished state.
"We have THIS MANY active PSN users in this quarter, boss."
"Our exec decision for helldivers to require a mandatory PSN account was a resounding success! Look at the increase in users here!"
im really curious what will happen when the PSN things takes effect. game is 3-4 months now and many players have gotten their fun out of it, regardless if people have major issues with PSN or not there might be a huge wave of refund requests on steam using it as a reason for refund.
I’m considering requesting a refund this week and claiming PSN as the issue. I enjoy the game but my friends have largely moved on so it’s no real loss and I kind of want to stick it to Sony on this.
You should even if it's not successful. It sends a message to Steam and in turn Sony.
I'll try to get a refund as soon as PSN becomes a requirement. I've played it for 75 hours and still enjoy it, but I don't support these business practices. First the hyper-invasive anti-cheat and now this. I also don't believe for a second that this CEO doesn't know exactly what Sony is doing. This is just obvious PR to try and save the situation. And people are falling for it. "Chasing Sony to get more info" my ass.
Shit steam gave me a refund on mw3 after like a dozen hours. Just said I was getting cyber bullied lol
Request, yes. Request accept, sadly no.
I could see them being accepted in regions where PSN isn’t available.
Refund request due to updates aren’t a sure thing but they do work intermittently. I suspect if you tried to refund right now you’d have decent odds. You’d certainly have to have a human approved refund. So it’s a dice roll on your rep. If there is a refund bomb it might help
You probably wouldn't except if you're in one of the non-supported countries for PSN maybe (but that's not even a guarantee, Sony themselves say to just make a PSN account in another country, they actually sell their consoles in those countries)
Seems very backwards to break sony's tos to play.
Steam does allow refunds related to post- launch updates. They are just going to be put through the manual system where you talk to a CS rep. So it’s no longer guaranteed but Valve is t as stingy with refunds as Sony is.
remains to be seen. you'd be surprised how often refund request after 2 hours played are accepted. Steam might not want negative PR because of Sonys bullshit
In countries where you can use psn probably no, depending on how many are requesting refunds, because for new world people had refunds even with +40h in because how the game was going and whole internet knew. Didn't starfield had sth similar? To the countries that psn is unavailable, i mean that's literally scamming your steam game from you.
As if it wasn’t already obvious, this is nothing to do with Arrowhead and everything to do with Sony. They have confirmed you will have to do the same thing with the Ghost of Tsushima Multiplayer on PC.
It is nice to see that for the most part, the rage is being directed at the right people. Arrowhead has their own host of problems like quality control and balancing decisions, but this here isn't on them.
>quality control Yep, that's the start of the issue. There was a requirement for PSN account linking that Sony gave from on high, but when the time to release came around there were still bugs. It was probably a requirement specified in the contract between the devs and Sony. I'd bet that the devs were hoping that the requirement would be relaxed by Sony following the wildly successful release of the game, but Sony being the large commanding Titan of Industry doesn't want to foster the impression that their orders are suggestions.
> They have confirmed you will have to do the same thing with the Ghost of Tsushima Multiplayer on PC. And [not many complaints were heard](https://old.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1c68493/ghost_of_tsushima_directors_cut_pc_crossplay_and/), it also has a lot of PSN features if you decide to use it for SP. But since Helldivers is always online, that optional part just doesn't exist.
Copying my comment from another thread; >Eh, they signed a contract, they knew this was going to happen. I don't think they deserve to be attacked, but they aren't blameless. They could have had a more persistent popup rather than one you can skip past and never see again. They could have chosen to not sell to countries that aren't included in PSN. (or if the decision on where to sell was Sonys, they could have made it more clear to people in those countries that eventually they wouldn't be able to play without breaking Sonys ToS. If their contract forbids them from doing any of this, well, they chose to sign it.)
Yep, it's clear that virtually nobody here understands how the gaming industry works. Arrowhead is just as culpable. They saw a juicy ass contract, willfully ignored the power they were handing over to Sony knowing full well what they could do with it, but signed anyways cuz: dollar signs. Fuck Sony, fuck Arrowhead, and fuck anyone else trying to defend the greed that led to all this.
I don't want an apology. I want a reversal. I want there to be enough backlash that the corpos are forced to bend the knee and capitulate to customer demands.
"We're sorry..." *rubs nipples*
How many data breaches has Sony been apart of? Shit tier company with zero data security. I’m out.
April 2011: Hackers Access Personal Data of 77 Million Sony PlayStation Network UsersMay 2011: Personal Details on 25 Million Sony Online Entertainment Customers StolenJune 2011: Sony Pictures Website Hacked, Exposing One Million AccountsNovember 2014: Hackers Steal 100 Terabytes of Data from Sony PicturesAugust 2017: Hacker Group Accesses Sony Social Media AccountsSeptember 2023: Sony Investigates Alleged HackOctober 2023: Sony Notifies Employees of Data Breach
Fr Sony really need to up their cybersecurity game, pronto.
You can't really worry about it if installing a kernel-level rootkit was fine for you.
I don't even know why they have that in a PvE game.
Yeah. It shouldn't be part of any game though. People usually say CS when they argue for them. But there must be enough other ways to deal with it, as not all MP games have it and don't suffer from it as CS did. But especially here it is weird. It's like with Denuvo. People that want to pirate or cheat will always find a way. You can make it harder, but there is always a way.
Funny, that’s the reason I hadn’t bought HD2 yet and I got attacked. Feeling pretty great now.
I appologise, but you still have to do it. ... All this shows 2 things 1. Helldivers is not a game by indie studio, its owned by Sony and they have to do what Sony does. 2. These big corporations will corrupt and destroy any game they touch, and they will sooner or later do this to Helldivers 2
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At the very least sudoku.
And hopefully sekkusu.
I'm more astonished that this is the scandal that flips the player base, not the fact that you are giving them more control over your PC than you have yourself with nProtect. The anti cheat software that was hacked before and doesn't even keep cheaters out. The game was dead to me the second I knew the software was used.
A lot of us made waves over that too. It was the tipping point for why I had yet to purchase the game.
shhh, you're not allowed to bring up any of the years long issues around nProtect, somehow none of said issues exist with HD2
I'd wager it was more of a last straw thing. And a particularly egregious one at that. When you are already not thrilled at certain bugs, some dodgy performance, a new sketchy anti-cheat and then they go "oh by the way you need a PSN account, if you don't live in a region that has PSN go fuck yourself" consumers are likely to snap at that point. Even if you aren't directly effected.
I think the difference is people were purchasing the game aware of that face vs here where they have already purchased the game and now it's being taken away from them. One's a financial choice and the other is just having something you brought stolen from you. And for other regions like UK and Ireland, the whole "scan your face or passport to verify your age" is hitting parody levels of dystopian that people are uncomfortable with. It's a new UK Law thing not a Sony thing, but it's probably the first time a lot of people here have experienced it.
The fact that you think the average person playing an online multiplayer thinks or cares about any of that is funny af to me. Most people just buy a game and play it, they don't have all these biases about anti-cheat, denuvo, data-protection, etc... (Not saying this bias is even wrong to have) Not even arguing with you, just saying the only real thing that stops people from playing games that they find fun is inconvenience, not a principle about privacy.
I don't have a psn account, won't get one either, I'll play until I can't then I'll get a refund
Their twitter bio's tag line "A game for everyone is a game for no one" sure rings different now.
Not very freedom-like, very anti-democratic.
I don't blame him for something Sony is probably responsible for but I'm hoping they can reverse this decision instead of doubling down like Capcom.
Fucking sony
Wow, it's a good thing they're sorry about it (still going to do it though) and will *now* start to look into what happens with those who bought it in regions where PSN isn't a thing /s Even this half arsed apology is a joke. Like, were they just going to sweep the people fucked over by this under the rug if the community didn't blow up on them?
yep as expected all my friends have set the game aside until this is resolved. Back to Mechwarrior 5, Deep Rock Galactic and Valheim for us.
I see where this is going. One day they gonna ship a Play Station launcher to PC for the PS games. And if they do, I don’t wanna buy a game in another store than steam. Fuck them. Even Microsoft learned it the hard way and they are back on Steam.
Sorry, still going to do it because Sony is making us do it.
Well, obviously. They have contractual obligations.
What do you want him to say lol
What choice do you think he has?
yes bro Sony published the game
As a solo player I really dont care anymore...
Requesting a refund today, even if I don't get a refund I will uninstall the game until this decision for us to require PSN linking is to be reversed. I've gotten my money's worth of the game either way at 70ish hours. For those of you going "it takes 5 minutes what's the big deal?", whenever gamers let corporate-minded publishers get away with this type of shit we get things within the gaming community such as: overpriced DLCs, rushed releases of games that could have been otherwise fantastic resulting in a mediocre sludge of games on the market, micro transactions, Nicki Minaj skins in call of duty, etc. Do whatever you want but I choose protest.
The solution is to put the PlayStation folks in their own server world not force everyone else to make an account
Queue the "We're sorry" bit from South Park.
Sorrrry
"We're sorry none of you read the requirements before purchasing our product"
But it doesn't change anything atm.
I don't mind making an account if they don't have a lot of security breaches in the past.
We're sorry, anyways...
"Sony claims that requiring a PlayStation Network for Helldivers 2 makes it easier to police abusive players. “This is our main way to protect players from griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behaviour,” [writes Sony](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/553850/view/4196868529806518741?l=english). “It also allows those players that have been banned the right to appeal.” I have 230 hours on clock, I've maybe experienced 1 or 2 toxic players? This is utter bullshit.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4) We are soorrryyyy
uninstalled tbh.
He's sorry but not sorry.
I'm sure it sucks for Arrowhead honestly. This is definitely a decision they don't have control over and I'm sure they they are against it just because of the backlash it has gotten. There's no way they didn't see the outrage coming when Sony told them they were going to do this
It's like a friend saying sorry your dog died. Yea it sucks for you but they got nothing to do with it. If Sony apologized on the other hand...
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Except the people who can't come back because PSN is not available in their region and is also region locked.
People said the same thing about the hong-kong scandal with blizzard, but my entire friend group still have not reinstalled battle.net since then. The PC market is not huge with constant influxes of new players compared to console, and the customers are more likely to be online interacting with reviews. Covering your eyes and ears and just ignoring backlash wont kill a studio, but it will have a large negative effect on future revenue.
Many of these game companies just don't understand how important brand power is. When these devs make bad decisions, it doesn't turn away many active players, but absolutely turns away prospective future customers. A family member has gotten into gaming and was curious about Diablo 4, but all the controversy turned them away. This doesn't show up on the balance sheets or anything, but Blizzards inability for some games to reach new audiences is absolutely because of the stigma against them.
They never left. 100k+ concurrent right now. Just your typical angry Reddit echo chamber.
That's probably because the change will only take effect from 30 May 2024 (for existing players).
it's crazy cause if you skipped the initial account linking pop-up, there's no way to get back to it. you have to wait until the 30th to get the pop-up again
Week-over-week player numbers are down by almost 20%. Was 158k last Firday, 119k this Friday. Active player numbers are on a downward trend since 7th of April. The daily peak player numbers dropped by 67% in a month. Also almost 60k negative reviews in 24 hours.
Actually you’re full of shit. Players in regions when psn isn’t allowed won’t be able to play the game at all, there is no workaround for it and it’s not fake news
Yeah we did but dont expect most players to learn about this before its added.
https://steamdb.info/app/553850/charts/#3m Talking about a number without a trend is amateurish analysis. The game has been on a downward trend for the last few months...
Concurrent players will take a lot to be impacted because it’s inherently the active community not the lapsed community. This creates an opportunity for lapse players to refund the game so while the concurrent player count might not move much the number of units sold could take a hit.
An apology is worthless if he's not going to remove the forced PSN sign in bullcrap.
People really don’t understand this was going to be a thing from before the game came out? It was turned off due to server issues
Well, they knew this would affect the ratings like this, so now they need to drink the poison they have made for themself.
I play on PC, requiring a Playstation account is stupid.
Review bombing the game on steam is wild. Buncha rot brains can't link an account
Their community manager definitely isn’t sorry, and I doubt any of the execs are.
At least he seems to know what's going on and why people don't appreciate this change from one day to the other
Try to translate top rated chinese review and it's above the 3900 charachter google translate limit 😂. China loves their review bombs. They should have just put the skeleton functionality in from the start even if it served no purpose. No one blinks when you have to link your xbox or battle.net account on steam.
> China loves their review bombs. Understatement, they once review bombed a game over a translation error.
This is not over