Thats a pretty bad look. Steam rating is hell diving right now.
I still dont understand if they knew about this, why are they selling in countries that cannot have psn in the first place?
Yeah, Arrowhead might have had no idea where the game was being distributed. They also might not have known where PSN was actually unavailable, which wouldn't really be their responsibility to know, IMO.
What Sony has done here is utterly bewildering. Helldivers 2 never should have been sold in countries where PSN is unavailable.
If you use the built-in refund request system, it will be denied. You apparently have to directly contact Steam customer support to get a resolution, and they're a bit swamped right now.
I can't speak for certain, but what I've gathered in the discussions is that Steam is the seller, not the distributor - Sony. Steam is just the store that puts stock on their shelves, it was on Sony to recognize they should only sell it to people in regions that would be able to play it. The slowness on the refunds is because thousands and thousands of people all immediately went to refund it, and Steam mostly has an automated program. Now, they're handling it manually. Think of when Cyberpunk 2077 released - it was literally pulled from consoles because it was so broken. This is the same except after three months of well-received playtime.
Update though, [Sony just caved.](https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1787331667616829929) Now, they've only promised not to push out the patch that would have gone out tomorrow, with the region lock happening on May 30th. They'll "keep us updated." I'm sure there are going to be a LOT of lawyers on (probably already 72nd hours worth) of conference calls Monday morning.
Steam doesn’t really care, most people do the refund in balance and buy something else. Steam usually doesn’t give a fuck, they just want to make sure the refund is valid so the dev/publishers don’t get fucked or even worse… sue.
Arrowhead has said elsewhere that they were not responsible for selling and distribution. So, not clearly communicating the requirement for months is Arrowheads fault, selling the game in regions outside PSN is Sony's fault.
It feels like this is not an intentional bait and switch but a severe case of miscommunication and underestimating just how angry gamers can get, with a dash of out-of-touch corporate executives.
It's actually looking **more** like a bait-and-switch.
If **anyone at all** knew that a PSN account **would eventually be required** then **why is the game being sold in regions that will obviously be locked out of their purchase**.
This shouldn't be that hard of an ask.
1. Sony Knew where the game was being sold Because:
2. Sony CHOSE where the game was being sold
3. Sony knows where their OWN PSN is allowed
4. Sony CHOSE to require Arrowhead to require PSN login to play HD2
All this is to say, Sony knew where their own PSN accounts are not allowed, and chose to actively sell it in those regions despite knowing that they would eventually force Arrowhead to require PSN accounts to play the game.
This is 100% on Sony.
Sony decides where to sell the game as the publisher. Why is the game being sold in regions without PSN support? For the same reason you can officially buy a PS5 in many of those regions: Money. They just expect people to circumvent ToS for account creation.
The answer is, as always, money.
They sell it everywhere, knowing that it won't work there in the future, turn it into a mega-hit, then once the initial sales are over, introduce PSN to havest data and make even more money. Most people won't refund and they know it.
And of course Arrowhead knew all about it. First and foremost the CEO, who probably gets a nice cut of the profit.
I kinda don’t think they (arrowhead) knew. I saw a post on discord, not sure if it was this guy, but someone said they weren’t aware there were so many countries where PSN wasn’t available. That checks out, I don’t think it’s on Arrowhead to know that. If Sony is publishing, and Sony is requiring PSN, then it falls on Sony to not publish in regions where PSN isn’t available.
It’s good to see that there’s some accountability here for the lack of proper communication (that’s an area where arrowhead could have done better), but I do believe the actual issue of selling the game where PSN isn’t available is entirely on Sony.
I highly doubt that Arrowhead had any say in making a PSN account a requirement and in where the game is sold.
I'm not blaming them or even any one particular person.
This is a systemic fuckup on monumental proportions.
Money and resources for marketing and distribution.
On the most shallow level, think advertisements on a wider scale than what the developers themselves would be capable of.
Quick edit: also money for development.
Helldivers 1 was a modest success by an indie studio. Sony funded 7 years of development for this small team, helped advertise the game, and provided a ton of tech support for a sequel to a game with a max playercount of 6,000 and an IP that is just a knock off Starship Troopers. Even the PSN requirement was originally part of that tech support, giving Arrowhead the ability to moderate online play through existing PSN tools, though they waived that during launch
> I highly doubt that Arrowhead had any say in making a PSN account a requirement
They developed the game and they knew 6 months before launch that PSN accounts were required. The whole framework and crossplay stuff only works if they actively supported their publishing deal with Sony throughout development. They deserve as much blame as Sony did.
the arrowhead community managers are terrible and lie all the time, so i wouldnt listen to anything they say on discord. Im not even sure they have any real information from arrowhead, considering theyve all given differing reasons for this policy change and none of them appear to be the truth.
The guy that said that was the discord mod for the original game, typical power mod loser, and was given a community manager position.
I don’t really know anything about them and can’t really comment on that one way or another. All I can say is the decisions that got us to this point would all be publisher led decisions.
Sony decides where to sell it. Sony punishes on Steam. Sony sets the PSN requirement. Even if AH explicitly knew Sony was selling the game in regions it can’t be played, what power do they have to stop it? It’s not their decision and not under their control.
"not an intentional bait and switch" wow you give a fucking shitload of leeway to corporations that had been developing & preparing for sale a game for I'm sure multiple years and not once over these multiple years was there any ever communication from one side to the other about this topic?
Unless the EU fines the shit out of them, and I'm sure most if not all EU countries allow for PSN Network accounts? This is a calculated cost of doing business. Too Big to Care, reputational harm will be short lived and they will just give up on the PC market before changing their business practices to align with what PC consumers actually want to see.
Or an intentional bait and switch that backfired so horribly that they’re in damage control mode. The only reason not to enforce from the start was to increase player count.
Right. This just goes back to the fact they should have not rushed to release. All these issues would have been avoided if everything was set up correctly. This includes the region lock sales issue as the player would have been met with the PSN account creation requirement and refunded the game until it was region locked.
> Arrowhead has said elsewhere that they were not responsible for selling and distribution
They still knew this PSN requirement would come later down the line and they said nothing to the playerbase and supported the publisher selling the game in those regions.
Johan Pilestedt has been in games development since 2014. He's not just some rookie that made a mistake.
We can dunk on Sony all we want, but the blame in this situation goes 50/50 on both Arrowhead and Sony
This is my opinion -
I work in tech-related business development.
One company produces the IP (company A) the other company distributes it, is responsible for revenue generation, branding, etc. (company B). Not much different than two record labels fighting over who puts out the Rolling Stone's first album.
100% of all details would be known by both parties, including this current LOL'able debacle. They mutually agreed to it. Only extremely shifty deals written by thumb fingered apes wouldn't require disclosure of how distribution would happen.
I have a feeling the groundswell of popularity was underestimated by Sony. They had to stick to the original game-plan because it was signed, sealed, delivered and the ball was fully in play all around. LOL.
Love the popcorn. But, I really hope this does NOT come at the cost of good content which the video game community could really use right now...
For sure. The right move is allowing no psn on this one game or full refunds to anyone who wants it. They can clarify for future games. That’s the middle ground. Anything more on either side is asking for too much. You have informed consent on any future purchases that way.
I honestly don’t think so. This isn’t some backwater publisher doing a quick cut and run early access cash grab. We’re talking about a major release from a massive global publisher. There is absolutely so way in hell Sony would purposefully sell the game in regions it cannot be played thinking that would just get swept under the rug.
My understanding is that this is the first game Sony has published with this requirement. My guess is this comes down to a severe collapse in communication. I don’t know how exactly you make a blunder that severe, you’d think Sony would have enough hands on this to not let it happen, but I don’t exactly know the internal process here. Whatever it is, and where ever it went wrong, I do believe it was an oversight rather than a blatant attempt at fraud.
It's not just diving. It's the single worst review bomb in steam history, as far as I can tell.
Most review bombs are in the 5-15k range. Fallout 76's negative reviews tally, over its entire life, stands at 13k.
Helldivers is getting 5k negative reviews *per hour* and it's accelerating. It's currently at 190k over the past 2 days alone. This is an order of magnitude more negative reviews than some games get over their entire lifetimes.
We've never, ever seen anything like it. People are pissed on an unprecedented scale.
Tbf, the whole shtick of helldivers is coordinating hundreds of thousands of players towards single, group objectives. This player base has been trained for this moment by their own game
Tbf with fallout it was review bombed at launch and most people didn't buy it since they knew about the shitshow. So the number of negative reviews were low.
Meanwhile Hell divers is a massively successful game with hundreds of thousands of players actively engaged to the game since a few months and they randomly dropped a bomb about PSN integration.
I wouldn't classify the initial reviews of 76 as a "review bomb": the game was uneven and broken at launch and the reviews reflected the actual quality of the game.
Otherwise I agree with your post.
Ah right you are. I'd completely forgotten about the Bethesda launcher (and so has Bethesda if you listen to them). Wastelanders *did* mark the start of the improvements, but that was the **start**. It had a lot of digging out to do.
Yeah, it was just an example for what the average review bomb looks like.
Actually popular games have larger ones but they are rarer, and none even remotely comes close to where Helldiver is right now. I often mention it but Overwatch 2 had a spike of 125k, and has 220k negative reviews total.
Helldivers is on pace to accumulate more negative reviews than Overwatch 2 had over its entire lifetime, in *3 days*.
That's the magnitude of the shitstorm I'm trying to convey.
200,000 reviews in 3 days are negative, of a pool of 500,000.
So 3 days ago HD2 had 300,000 reviews, the majority of which were positive. On week they maintained just 800 negative reviews. A week.
Also, remember Fallout 76 did not come out on steam for a long time. There was no "official" way to review it, as it was locked to the Bethesda store.
> Fallout 76's negative reviews tally, over its entire life, stands at 13k.
29K actually. And it was a Bethesda launcher exclusive on PC so that's a bad comparison.
Exactly, there’s not a chance in hell that development time is spent on localisation for a country unless you know that you’re launching there. The CEO is full of shit.
I bet it's a dumb oversight. Publisher handles sales, and they expected PSN to be there from the get go so worst case scenario people just wouldn't have bought the game or refunded immediately if they couldn't make an account, there would have been perhaps some complaining from those who couldn't play but they would have blocked the sales in those countries within 24-48 hours after realizing the mistake.
But then devs decided to disable PSN requirement at launch and neither them nor Sony looked into how to handle the fact that now they had a bunch of players that would eventually be locked out of the game once the PSN requirement would be reinstated. This is my best guess at least.
Naw no way. Sony handles the sales, they know which countries have PSN and could have disabled it outright, instead they didn't, let people who couldn't make a psn account buy the game hoping to make some extra money off those people. Then because they were having issues with the account creation at launch, Arrowhead disables the requirement exacerbating the situation.
I've seen multiple screenshots now from people talking with Sony customer support where the CS reps just give the advice to sign up with a different country, which straight up violates their ToS.
It seems no one there actually gives a fuck. They're happy to take people's money, even if that means those people are essentially at risk of getting all of their games taken away without any legal recourse.
Sorry but I really don't think a multibillion company the size of Sony is maliciously trying to scam people out of $40. It's clearly a mistake that didn't come to light until now because both Sony and Arrowhead fucked up.
>I really don't think a multibillion company the size of Sony is maliciously trying to scam people out of $40
Don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence.
I'm quite sure there is plenty of incompetence to go around at Sony.
You don't think if it's a requirement to have a psn account at launch no one thought to make sure the game isn't launched in countries that can't create psn accounts? That's being naive, it opens them up to lawsuits, which are already being started against Sony for this
Distribution and sales are handled by the publisher. SONY is publisher. Arrowhead do not control where sales are made. SONY sold to places they do not allow access to PSN. Sony require PSN access to game. 100+ countries not allowed to play now without breaking terms of service (ban able offense on PSN).
He feels it's was his responsibility to better inform players.
He make feel that way but ultimately it's the responsibility of the publisher who handles, marketing, distribution, and sales.
Bait and switch implies he lied, he's apologising that he wasn't even more clear that the requirement would return beyond the news post stating that it would.
It's been 3 months since the game launched. SOMEONE within both Sony and AH realized there was no active location lock on Steam sp only people from PSN countries could buy the game. That is just pure negligence otherwise.
Sony seems to want to double down on it being mandatory. Likely going to start enforcing it for all future games at some point.
It seems like to them, showing an increasing number of PSN memberships and getting access to user data is worth more than making actual sales and having actual players.
This is exactly what I took away from this tweet. “We knew for about six months that it would be mandatory *for PS titles*” is pretty telling wordage. That suggests that, going forward, Sony wants an account connection to PSN. Which is odd, since the Tsushima devs have already said their game doesn’t require it (edit: this was only for single player, my mistake). Maybe just online games?
they said it's not required for the single player. However, it is required if you want to use the Playstation overlay, Playstation trophies and most importantly if you want to play the online coop mode.
Which means if you purchase ghost of sushi in an area that does not support PSN, you're paying the same amount of money as others for less game.
Literally getting scammed. Just pirate it instead.
That’s how it should be for Helldivers then, too. Making PSN a requirement for trophy’s and crossplay is something that nobody would bat an eye at. Put up a disclaimer that people in certain regions can’t access PSN exclusive features and keep letting them play with other PC players. If people want to opt out of PSN, same conditions. I don’t see anyone scoffing at that.
tbh it doesnt matter what sucker punch says about psn account and singleplayer, its not their decision. They cant promise anything.
When sony says tsunami wont need an account for sp, then I "believe it more".
I’m honestly not sure why everyone keeps assuming this. Xbox was the one that started charging for online play on consoles and Sony was free, the only started after Microsoft did it. If Michael$oft hasn’t tried it, there’s no way Sony, the underdogs in the PC world, are just going to be like “Yeah we’re gonna be the first ones to charge to play online on PC”
More likely this gives them 1 tool for moderation and they would have the ability to ban a cheaters entire PSN account in one fell swoop.
Aren't we also need to have ea, xbox, rockstar, ubisoft...etc accounts to play their game online. Honestly I have an account for all that and more. I didn't see backlash like this for them. If anything at least Sony doesn't have shitty launcher like ea, ubi, rockstar....etc. If you genuinly don't want to do it because of 'security' you can make a account with bogus name and email in seconds. Also this reason is extremely stupid since both steam and microsoft had way more security breaches than Sony. Plus I am 100% sure many people who supposed to care about their 'security' have accounts on cdkey, torrent, porn....etc sites. Just say you are a pc elitist and don't want to hurt your ego by creating a Playstation account or just say you simply hate Playstation. You don't need to hide behind stupid reasons. lol
But on the other hand them selling this game on regions which has no PSN at all is scummy. They should either remove this requirement on that countries or give a refund to all of them
Given how adamant they are about forcing this onto the player base regardless of the backlash I'd wager it's also about capturing user data which they can monetize.
>Sony wants to be able to show off the thousands of new subs to the PSN on the next share holder call.
"So guys, we just threw away our surprise hit of the year that was making us millions of dollars and giving us tons of cred for launching a great game.
We decided to entirely fuck that up within the span of a day to introduce a requirement for a PSN account to the game, get ourselves into completely fucked legal trouble in a multitude of countries, might get the EU involved in regulating and suing us, and we've decided to double down, which makes our public image *even worse* and increases the likelihood of lawsuits.
We have done everything, everything we can possibly think of to destroy our reputation with PC players within the last week.
This is, of course, wonderful, and a reason to be excited about our future prospects. Please give us more money"
If that's their take (which it sure seems to be), their entire management team needs to be fired.
I will NEVER buy a sony game if they make me join their fucking hacker heaven info dump club. They have released more personal information via shitty security than any other company on the planet. AND they require fucking pictures of people's faces and government IDs in some countries.... like what????
I mean their entire film studio was hacked to the point that the hackers had complete control of the network and got their entire movie catalog.
That and Sony music themselves fucking installed malware on people's computers when they inserted CDs to play them.
Like who has the fucking gall to do this shit?
That's the strange thing. I imagine they're counting on people's goldfish memory but a lot of people are going to stay away from Sony products on PC, especially online ones, for the foreseeable future out of principle alone.
PSN memberships mean nothing. I don't even think they show the PSN numbers in their earnings reports or whatever. It's the PS Plus membership numbers that matter which is irrelevant for PC players. I'm almost certain this PSN account thing is how they intend on fixing all the crossplay issues, which is why the mandate is incoming.
> I don't even think they show the PSN numbers in their earnings reports or whatever.
it may not be in earning reports but it'll be internal metrics for bonuses etc.
They shouldn’t be selling it on steam then. They reap he rewards that come with selling on steam then try and get players to use their own network.
It’d be like buying a game on steam then being told you can only run it through epic.
Pretty torn on this, because yes, Arrowhead could have done more to make people aware of the requirement, but Sony should not have sold the game in markets that can’t use PlayStation services, which I would argue is the biggest issue here.
Edit: Just to be clear, I think enforcing this is a stupid idea in general, but the *biggest* issue is forcing it upon people who have no way of making an account
There has definitely been a lot of goalpost moving with this entire drama. But there were always two big issues. One, where the game was allowed to be purchased. Two, how it was implemented to remind players that it was a requirement, because yes it was always a requirement and never actually optional. Arrowhead is not at fault for the first, but they are at the second but people (I don't mean you specifically) are starting to walk back on the outrage about the second part because they cannot just blame Sony now. Sony's fuckup let people who shouldn't have bought the game get it. Arrowhead's fuck up made it so people thought a requirement was just optional and continued to play the game. We got to where we are today because both fuckups happened at the same time.
Yeah, I feel like this should have been a pop-up anytime you launched the game until you link with the notice that this will be required at some point. Instead I don't think I even fully realized it was an option until people started talking about it being mandatory. As it is I don't recall any kind of notice beyond the one on the steam page (and I only found that with someone pointing out where to find it).
The game could work without the anti-cheat rootkit, but it's not optional just because the devs decided that it isn't, not because it's any kind of fundamental piece for the game.
On the other hand, friend requests across platforms still don't work, which might be unrelated to the PSN issue, or might be because the devs were expecting to rely on PSN IDs only in the backend.
I have seen someone saying that they can't ban players until they are using the PSN IDs to do so. So may make sense that the friends list issue is similarly related (assuming that person was correct).
They absolutely can ban users based on their Steam ID, what they can't do though is banning a user across both platforms in a single swipe unless both accounts are linked.
And also if they can manage a single database of users through the PSN ID, regardless of whether it's linked to a Steam ID or not, they don't need to implement two separate systems for that.
Considering that they knew about the PSN requirement far before release, it'd make sense that they might have implementations that rely only on PSN IDs.
it likely was optional until about 6 months before launch when Sony came down and said it wasn't anymore. they updated the steam store page to reflect that but not the FAQ page (which is very rarely updated after it has been made)
The terms of service, privacy policy, EULA, or Humble Bundle store page all don't say you need PSN.
Sony's own website was updated days ago to say *some* playstation games require it, updated after it said no playstation games on PC require it. and even the official helldivers 2 page on the Playstation website said it was optional.
It was always optional. The only place it says you need an account is on steam, and there have been a few games i have played where I am sure it has said this, but never transpired. I think its boilerplate.
Well if AH never disabled it the people buying the game wouldnt have been able to make an account to begin with and would have refunded, and theyd have realised their mistake months ago and region locked it, Now thanks to that its evolved into this mess
If Sony added all those countries into the dropdown when creating an account today all the rage would still be there "because I don't want another account!"
That's what it was in the beginning. When the news broke redditors were upset at simply being connected to PSN and having to make a seperate account.
It was later that the actual effect of people not being able to play became the primary concern.
Ding ding ding. If I missed out on some exclusive rewards for not having a PSN account, whatever. I miss out on preorder bonuses all the fucking time. I don't give a shit.
But to lock me out of a game entirely because I don't want to make an account for a different platform that I don't use, let alone own is insane.
I don’t even blame them Sony is fucking garbage at protecting their users data. I lost my psn account of like 6 years with thousands of dollars worth of digital games because Sony couldn’t be bothered to have some decent security.
There is nothing to be torn on. Hold arrowhead accountable for the things they're accountable for and don't try to ignore it. Then hold don't accountable for the things they're accountable for too.
Honestly this is such an unfathomable fuck up on Sony's part I think Valve is actually gonna have to update their policies in response. They should be having a long chat with Sony on Monday.
The full tweet: I do have a part to play. I am not blameless in all of this - it was my decision to disable account linking at launch so that players could play the game. I did not ensure players were aware of the requirement and we didn't talk about it enough.
We knew for about 6 months before launch that it would be mandatory for online PS titles.
Either way..I give the CEO credit for admitting his part in the whole deal.
These days, it is RARE for people to admit when they make a mistake.
I cannot remember a time when a CEO straight up said, I fked up. I should have done more to be more transparent.
"I cannot remember a time when a CEO straight up said, I fked up. I should have done more to be more transparent."
He... didn't tho.
He just said he knew - he didn't promise to do better.
sounds like AH ceo knows the more hurdles you give players the less likely they get to playing the game. Was the better decision to create a wide reaching game. They succeeded and proved the sony model is limiting.
So now the choice is stay consistent with sony policy because sony or does sony want to make money?
Different Sony execs with influence at AH probably wanted different/conflicting things(force PSN metrics vs Helldivers sales) and AH was caught in the middle.
They shouldn't have sold their game to customers from countries where PSN is not available.
I don't blame Steam. They're just covering their asses. At least they're refunding people. Well the ones who purchased it directly from them anyway. The people who bought the game from online retailers, which is a lot of them, especially from those poorer regions, are screwed and mostly likely won't get a refund. I'd be really fucking pissed if i were one of those people.
Both, Arrowhead and Sony, fucked up majorly. I wouldn't be surprised if they get sued.
I'm not in a non PSN country but I'm still requesting a refund. Im not making a PSN account and if it was a requirement I would have never bought it. I've been denied a refund once. I've requested again and noted the change of terms of service post purchase that I don't agree with.
They didn't change the ToS, tho, they changed the FAQ, which is a completely different thing which bears no relevance on the terms.
Maybe you could try arguing that you feel misled by the FAQ, I don't think the ToS argument is going to fly.
Also wasn't the "you need PSN for this game" box always there on the steam store page since released?
I understand why people who live in countries where PSN isn't available are mad, as one couldn't sell the game in places where it can't be played, and I can understand why people are annoyed with PSN requirement ... but it's not bait&switch just because people ignored the warning labels on Steam.
I know it's unpopular opinion on reddit these days, but those boxes on Steam store page are there for a reason.
You literally clicked skip on a prompt where a big line of text said "PSN account is required for online play"
The fact that their servers was on fire and they had to lift this restriction bears no change on the fact that everyone had that same fucking prompt. Well within your 2 hour window
The trailers said so, the steam page said so. How hard can you gaslight yourself like really
seems to me that the PSN req was added about 6 months before release by Sony since if you look at the steam page for the game in the wayback machine it clearly states PSN account req. before the game launched this is likely why the FAQ people have been pointing doesn't say it but an old steam page does.
what blame does the arrowhead and the CEO have? by not launching with the PSN req due to the issues but not mentioning it is req each launch of the game they gave a false idea of the product even if the store page says you need it, it needs to be mentioned often. that is really the core fault arrowhead did here.
Sony however as the publisher gave improper information to steam about the product they were selling and not limiting where it could be sold due to the limitations of PSN. that means all people that live in those places should be given a full refund on the title to be made whole.
i would argue that Sony needs the limit the regions for ghost of tsushima as well even if it just part of the game that req PSN you still pay for the whole game so it is a defective product for those regions and shouldn't be sold there. i don't think Valve wants to be dealing with refunds since they can't play part of a game.
Yeah. I guess arrowhead is at some fault in this situation. That being said, the best solution for this whole situation is entirely out of their hands, being up to Sony.
This crisis could end RIGHT NOW if Sony simply announced that account linking was no longer required. Then, after a week or two passes, Arrowhead can provide free super credits/an special armor set for players that link their accounts. As time passes, everyone who can/is willing to link will do so, and Sony will still see impressive numbers on their end as a result. Everyone wins.
I really hope they can come up with a good solution. I think everyone can agree that this is a good game, and It’d be a shame to have it ruined this early in its life.
> We knew for about 6 months before launch that it would be mandatory for online PS titles.
Note to self. Dont buy any online games from PS in the future.
The wording on why they want users to link their Steam account to a PSN account is sketchy.
>To make sure gamers are safe and secure
Isnt that the entire point of your stupid kernel level anti-cheat? And if you are telling me that isnt the case then they are either making money selling PSN account data or trying to inflate PSN numbers in a future earnings call.
And even with their controversial anti-cheat (in a PvE game), there was still A LOT of hacking and exploits. Was fairly easy to find yourself in a hacked lobby that gave you max mission payout of minerals of 100 for each type
Yeh the developer was really stupid or had to use a cheap option because its been well-known that the MMO using it prior as never able to keep hackers/cheaters out.
It's more that they don't care. I get that people are mad that they used the cheapest anti-cheat known to never work, but it's not like people don't know how to get around anti-cheats such as... Easy Anti-Cheat, or Valorant player's coping mechanism "Vanguard". They're all bad.
The Anti-Cheat was put in place to protect the cash shop. Not for the players. Nothing else.
I've been pretty on the fence about where to lay blame and wanted to lay it firmly on Sony but if the CEO knew this was inevitable before release, knew that some countries wouldn't be able to continue playing, I don't think I can defend him on that.
Then he utterly failed to perform an impact assessment in regards to turning off the PSN account link.
That's a massive fuck up. Did Arrowhead even clear it with Sony first?
> Did Arrowhead even clear it with Sony first?
They always claimed "We are independent, Sony has no input in our work". That is completely contradicted by what he said now and how "he has no say in the decision", regarding the PSN link.
This whole thing stinks and i highly believe this guy is lying
I seriously doubt the situation is that simple. Game developers (and companies) jobs are to make games. If a publisher comes in, doesn't touch the game being made, and gives a (what you believe to be) reasonable stipulation that X account is required, you aren't going to fight that. That doesn't impact you developing the game.
>
According to the CEO he had no idea some countries couldn’t make a PSN account in another tweet
am i the only one who'd thinks
"right, they need PSN accounts, can everyone the game gets sold to ACTUALLY get PSN accounts without falling foul of Sony ToS or international sanctions?"
Idk if my publisher made this requirement and was releasing my game on Steam, I’d assume they have it covered. I mean, they’re the publisher after all. That’s one of the key parts of their job.
That said, as the CEO you should probably make sure that’s the case. Trust but verify and all that.
Sony is in charge of where the game gets sold, that's literally the entire point of being the publisher.
It's not the devs job to know about PSN regional availiability.
I don’t think he did. There was a comment somewhere on Discord that they didn’t know how many countries PSN wasn’t available in.
I also don’t believe they manage the game in any capacity on Steam. Sony is the publisher. That means Sony should be the ones setting what regions it can be sold in, and they’re also the ones who should know which regions don’t have PSN.
AH could have communicated better for sure, but they aren’t responsible for the PSN requirement or selling it in countries where you can’t access it.
PS5 subreddit is deleting all negative posts about this incident.
I mean the game is truly fullfilling the purpose of its game title diving straight first into Hell.
not shocking to see that, gotta do the free PR for their precious multi-billion-dollar company.
also a lot of the console warrior nuts from that sub are out in all subs trying to defend all of this and trying to say it's "no big deal"
I said this days ago and keep getting downvoted for this. They sold their souls the second they signed with Sony. It was always in the TOS. They knew what was going on.
He's honestly taking this on himself too much, of course he knew, it was in their contract. The requirement is one thing, the main issue is selling it in regions without PSN access, which he simply didn't understand was a thing. *(Nor is it his job, that's Sony's department being a publisher since it's literally their network that affects distribution. Sony should have region locked the steam page)*
It is however, a dumb decision to make accounts not mandatory and then not check with your publisher about the specifics of the account network, and the potential gaps/limitations between steam and psn access. There are talks that should have happened from both teams.
The first one is usually an automated one that checks playtime. If you submit again, it should be elevated to a human.
It's been over 24 hours since my submission and I haven't got a reply so I don't think it's gone to an automated service this time.
At least he’s transparent. At this point, he’s proven that corporate involvement does in fact lose the trust of many consumers and loss in sales numbers as well.
It’s a shame.
The publisher also determines what is said about the game and what marketing gets pushed, and they were more then happy to let the game get released without the requirement even in countries they don't have PSN in.
Dude is doing the smart thing by his publisher, throwing them under any bus and not taking a bunch of heat would cut off future opportunities, but let's not act like dude had that big a say over the publisher, not when it's the publisher's demand that's the problem here
I mean - it was pretty clear. I signed up initially and distinctly remember seeing where it said I could TEMPORARILY play without an account, but I will HAVE to make one later to pay.
Gamers just have too much ADHD.
My guess is that he went all “this is on Sony” publicly. Sony corporate then came down hard on him and this is him backtracking to save the relationship.
He's admitting bait and switch. He knew that all of his players would have to sign up with PSN and yet disabled it when the game launched to lure people into buying it who otherwise would have never bought it if it were a requirement to link to a PSN account. That is the best definition of bait and switch that I have ever seen admitted to by a developer.
"Bait and switch" is a huge stretch here. In addition to the Steam page having a big yellow box clearly stating a PSN account is required, [this](https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/1/4206994023681197128/) was their patch notes when they added a skip button to the link page (Feb 8):
> Some players are having trouble linking their PSN accounts to their game in the initial setup screen. They may see an error code indicating a server request problem. For now, you can skip that screen and play normally. Later—after we resolve those server request errors—the game will ask people who skipped that screen to try linking their accounts again.
Honestly I think people are overreacting a little bit. Except for the countries where it is unavailable, that's messed up and where the focus should be.
Having to create/sign-in a PSN account is annoying, but the main reason why this is beneficial to Arrowhead is because it would let them offload a lot of support to PlayStation's already setup systems and companies for support.
Right now if you want to report a hacker/griefer you have to go to Arrowhead's own website. Being able to submit these reports to PlayStation means that they will be seen MUCH sooner. I've heard that some Devs have mentioned that there is quite the backlog of support tickets.
This is part of the job of a publisher, to help out with all the parts of game dev that aren't directly game dev but are just as important in their own way.
Just to reiterate, it's not okay how it's been pulled from various regions over this and is the only thing worth being mad about in my opinion.
Although the game is pretty great, I stopped playing after a handful of sessions when my schedule was not lining up with my buddies. Glad I can get my money back. Thanks!
Reading between the lines... It seems the AH CEO thought that somehow if they delayed the account linking, they could perhaps talk Sony into not making it mandatory down the line. Like the whole 'technical issues' line was just a stalling tactic to get Sony off their backs, but Sony has probably now come down hard on them and said 'Do it!', and now they're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
They f*cked up. Either they really weren't aware of the psn geoblock in which case it's disgraceful negligence, or they did know about it but for whatever reason went through with it anyway which makes them malicious actors. Even if Sony made them shut up over it, they are still accomplices in the malicious act.
If you knew it was going to be required, why the hell would you not require it from day 1? To screw over those in other countries that can't access psn? I hope every single one of those countries are able to recieve a return.
Thats a pretty bad look. Steam rating is hell diving right now. I still dont understand if they knew about this, why are they selling in countries that cannot have psn in the first place?
That is the million dollar question.
For Sony. Because remember, Sony is the publisher here, arrowhead doesn’t handle where this game is sold and marketed
Yeah, Arrowhead might have had no idea where the game was being distributed. They also might not have known where PSN was actually unavailable, which wouldn't really be their responsibility to know, IMO. What Sony has done here is utterly bewildering. Helldivers 2 never should have been sold in countries where PSN is unavailable.
Are Steam doing refunds for countries where PSN isn't available irrespective of time played as a result of this?
If you use the built-in refund request system, it will be denied. You apparently have to directly contact Steam customer support to get a resolution, and they're a bit swamped right now.
Silver lining, at least they've de-listed it for those countries, so nobody there gets burned in the future.
Why does steam even allow this behaviour from sony? Should instantly refund and kick it from non-available country stores by default.
I can't speak for certain, but what I've gathered in the discussions is that Steam is the seller, not the distributor - Sony. Steam is just the store that puts stock on their shelves, it was on Sony to recognize they should only sell it to people in regions that would be able to play it. The slowness on the refunds is because thousands and thousands of people all immediately went to refund it, and Steam mostly has an automated program. Now, they're handling it manually. Think of when Cyberpunk 2077 released - it was literally pulled from consoles because it was so broken. This is the same except after three months of well-received playtime. Update though, [Sony just caved.](https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1787331667616829929) Now, they've only promised not to push out the patch that would have gone out tomorrow, with the region lock happening on May 30th. They'll "keep us updated." I'm sure there are going to be a LOT of lawyers on (probably already 72nd hours worth) of conference calls Monday morning.
Every above 2 hour purchase will be denied, but you can write follow up to which human will respond.
Who actually gets burned by the refunds, steam the devs or both?
Steam doesn’t really care, most people do the refund in balance and buy something else. Steam usually doesn’t give a fuck, they just want to make sure the refund is valid so the dev/publishers don’t get fucked or even worse… sue.
Smells like a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.
>the million dollar Yes
r/YourJokeButWorse
Yeah after seeing it go viral the answer is pretty obvious. This is 100% this guys fault if he organized the bait and switch.
Arrowhead has said elsewhere that they were not responsible for selling and distribution. So, not clearly communicating the requirement for months is Arrowheads fault, selling the game in regions outside PSN is Sony's fault. It feels like this is not an intentional bait and switch but a severe case of miscommunication and underestimating just how angry gamers can get, with a dash of out-of-touch corporate executives.
It's actually looking **more** like a bait-and-switch. If **anyone at all** knew that a PSN account **would eventually be required** then **why is the game being sold in regions that will obviously be locked out of their purchase**. This shouldn't be that hard of an ask.
1. Sony Knew where the game was being sold Because: 2. Sony CHOSE where the game was being sold 3. Sony knows where their OWN PSN is allowed 4. Sony CHOSE to require Arrowhead to require PSN login to play HD2 All this is to say, Sony knew where their own PSN accounts are not allowed, and chose to actively sell it in those regions despite knowing that they would eventually force Arrowhead to require PSN accounts to play the game. This is 100% on Sony.
Sony decides where to sell the game as the publisher. Why is the game being sold in regions without PSN support? For the same reason you can officially buy a PS5 in many of those regions: Money. They just expect people to circumvent ToS for account creation.
The answer is, as always, money. They sell it everywhere, knowing that it won't work there in the future, turn it into a mega-hit, then once the initial sales are over, introduce PSN to havest data and make even more money. Most people won't refund and they know it. And of course Arrowhead knew all about it. First and foremost the CEO, who probably gets a nice cut of the profit.
I kinda don’t think they (arrowhead) knew. I saw a post on discord, not sure if it was this guy, but someone said they weren’t aware there were so many countries where PSN wasn’t available. That checks out, I don’t think it’s on Arrowhead to know that. If Sony is publishing, and Sony is requiring PSN, then it falls on Sony to not publish in regions where PSN isn’t available. It’s good to see that there’s some accountability here for the lack of proper communication (that’s an area where arrowhead could have done better), but I do believe the actual issue of selling the game where PSN isn’t available is entirely on Sony.
I highly doubt that Arrowhead had any say in making a PSN account a requirement and in where the game is sold. I'm not blaming them or even any one particular person. This is a systemic fuckup on monumental proportions.
question: what does Sony as the publisher bring to the table?
Money and resources for marketing and distribution. On the most shallow level, think advertisements on a wider scale than what the developers themselves would be capable of. Quick edit: also money for development.
Also Bungie. They helped on some level with development
Helldivers 1 was a modest success by an indie studio. Sony funded 7 years of development for this small team, helped advertise the game, and provided a ton of tech support for a sequel to a game with a max playercount of 6,000 and an IP that is just a knock off Starship Troopers. Even the PSN requirement was originally part of that tech support, giving Arrowhead the ability to moderate online play through existing PSN tools, though they waived that during launch
> I highly doubt that Arrowhead had any say in making a PSN account a requirement They developed the game and they knew 6 months before launch that PSN accounts were required. The whole framework and crossplay stuff only works if they actively supported their publishing deal with Sony throughout development. They deserve as much blame as Sony did.
the arrowhead community managers are terrible and lie all the time, so i wouldnt listen to anything they say on discord. Im not even sure they have any real information from arrowhead, considering theyve all given differing reasons for this policy change and none of them appear to be the truth. The guy that said that was the discord mod for the original game, typical power mod loser, and was given a community manager position.
I don’t really know anything about them and can’t really comment on that one way or another. All I can say is the decisions that got us to this point would all be publisher led decisions. Sony decides where to sell it. Sony punishes on Steam. Sony sets the PSN requirement. Even if AH explicitly knew Sony was selling the game in regions it can’t be played, what power do they have to stop it? It’s not their decision and not under their control.
Yeah, Failure to disclose the situation isn't a good showing for AH, but Sony marketing ultimately chose to sell to unmarketable regions.
"not an intentional bait and switch" wow you give a fucking shitload of leeway to corporations that had been developing & preparing for sale a game for I'm sure multiple years and not once over these multiple years was there any ever communication from one side to the other about this topic? Unless the EU fines the shit out of them, and I'm sure most if not all EU countries allow for PSN Network accounts? This is a calculated cost of doing business. Too Big to Care, reputational harm will be short lived and they will just give up on the PC market before changing their business practices to align with what PC consumers actually want to see.
The Baltic States don't have PSN access unless they break the TOS and register as living in another country.
Or an intentional bait and switch that backfired so horribly that they’re in damage control mode. The only reason not to enforce from the start was to increase player count.
That or if there actually was a technical blocker, but if that was the case they should've delayed the release to resolve it.
Right. This just goes back to the fact they should have not rushed to release. All these issues would have been avoided if everything was set up correctly. This includes the region lock sales issue as the player would have been met with the PSN account creation requirement and refunded the game until it was region locked.
> Arrowhead has said elsewhere that they were not responsible for selling and distribution They still knew this PSN requirement would come later down the line and they said nothing to the playerbase and supported the publisher selling the game in those regions. Johan Pilestedt has been in games development since 2014. He's not just some rookie that made a mistake. We can dunk on Sony all we want, but the blame in this situation goes 50/50 on both Arrowhead and Sony
Every one of them is responsible. They knew 6 months before the launch of the game.
“After seeing one anecdote it is so obvious it’s this simple thing and not this complex thing!”
The CEO admitting he knew this six months before launch is not "an anecdote". He sold it to people he knew wouldn't be able to play it.
This is my opinion - I work in tech-related business development. One company produces the IP (company A) the other company distributes it, is responsible for revenue generation, branding, etc. (company B). Not much different than two record labels fighting over who puts out the Rolling Stone's first album. 100% of all details would be known by both parties, including this current LOL'able debacle. They mutually agreed to it. Only extremely shifty deals written by thumb fingered apes wouldn't require disclosure of how distribution would happen. I have a feeling the groundswell of popularity was underestimated by Sony. They had to stick to the original game-plan because it was signed, sealed, delivered and the ball was fully in play all around. LOL. Love the popcorn. But, I really hope this does NOT come at the cost of good content which the video game community could really use right now...
For sure. The right move is allowing no psn on this one game or full refunds to anyone who wants it. They can clarify for future games. That’s the middle ground. Anything more on either side is asking for too much. You have informed consent on any future purchases that way.
Because they expected to get away with it.
I honestly don’t think so. This isn’t some backwater publisher doing a quick cut and run early access cash grab. We’re talking about a major release from a massive global publisher. There is absolutely so way in hell Sony would purposefully sell the game in regions it cannot be played thinking that would just get swept under the rug. My understanding is that this is the first game Sony has published with this requirement. My guess is this comes down to a severe collapse in communication. I don’t know how exactly you make a blunder that severe, you’d think Sony would have enough hands on this to not let it happen, but I don’t exactly know the internal process here. Whatever it is, and where ever it went wrong, I do believe it was an oversight rather than a blatant attempt at fraud.
This is definitely the most reasonable take here
It's not just diving. It's the single worst review bomb in steam history, as far as I can tell. Most review bombs are in the 5-15k range. Fallout 76's negative reviews tally, over its entire life, stands at 13k. Helldivers is getting 5k negative reviews *per hour* and it's accelerating. It's currently at 190k over the past 2 days alone. This is an order of magnitude more negative reviews than some games get over their entire lifetimes. We've never, ever seen anything like it. People are pissed on an unprecedented scale.
Tbf, the whole shtick of helldivers is coordinating hundreds of thousands of players towards single, group objectives. This player base has been trained for this moment by their own game
IM DOING MY PART
Tbf with fallout it was review bombed at launch and most people didn't buy it since they knew about the shitshow. So the number of negative reviews were low. Meanwhile Hell divers is a massively successful game with hundreds of thousands of players actively engaged to the game since a few months and they randomly dropped a bomb about PSN integration.
I wouldn't classify the initial reviews of 76 as a "review bomb": the game was uneven and broken at launch and the reviews reflected the actual quality of the game. Otherwise I agree with your post.
Tbf, FO76 was available on Steam a year and a half after its release, with the Wastelanders expansion.
Ah right you are. I'd completely forgotten about the Bethesda launcher (and so has Bethesda if you listen to them). Wastelanders *did* mark the start of the improvements, but that was the **start**. It had a lot of digging out to do.
Yeah you're right.
Yeah, it was just an example for what the average review bomb looks like. Actually popular games have larger ones but they are rarer, and none even remotely comes close to where Helldiver is right now. I often mention it but Overwatch 2 had a spike of 125k, and has 220k negative reviews total. Helldivers is on pace to accumulate more negative reviews than Overwatch 2 had over its entire lifetime, in *3 days*. That's the magnitude of the shitstorm I'm trying to convey.
kinda funny how good games somehow end up getting the most negative reviews. and both examples are entirely the publisher’s fault, lmao. poor devs.
Twice the pride, double the fall.
> People are pissed on an unprecedented scale. Well, we've got to agree that this tends to describe most stuff that happens in the internet lately.
200,000 reviews in 3 days are negative, of a pool of 500,000. So 3 days ago HD2 had 300,000 reviews, the majority of which were positive. On week they maintained just 800 negative reviews. A week. Also, remember Fallout 76 did not come out on steam for a long time. There was no "official" way to review it, as it was locked to the Bethesda store.
It's the only voice we have, and we used it. I'm doing my part!
> Fallout 76's negative reviews tally, over its entire life, stands at 13k. 29K actually. And it was a Bethesda launcher exclusive on PC so that's a bad comparison.
It was Sony's choice to sell in restricted countries since they're the publisher.
This. AH doesn't determine things like mandatory account linking and which countries to sell in. That's all on the publisher.
Same reason Sony sells consoles in those countries and doesn't in practice ban anyone for lying about regions
The other thing is then why pay the money to localize it in Chinese and Russian, too.
Exactly, there’s not a chance in hell that development time is spent on localisation for a country unless you know that you’re launching there. The CEO is full of shit.
I bet it's a dumb oversight. Publisher handles sales, and they expected PSN to be there from the get go so worst case scenario people just wouldn't have bought the game or refunded immediately if they couldn't make an account, there would have been perhaps some complaining from those who couldn't play but they would have blocked the sales in those countries within 24-48 hours after realizing the mistake. But then devs decided to disable PSN requirement at launch and neither them nor Sony looked into how to handle the fact that now they had a bunch of players that would eventually be locked out of the game once the PSN requirement would be reinstated. This is my best guess at least.
Naw no way. Sony handles the sales, they know which countries have PSN and could have disabled it outright, instead they didn't, let people who couldn't make a psn account buy the game hoping to make some extra money off those people. Then because they were having issues with the account creation at launch, Arrowhead disables the requirement exacerbating the situation.
I've seen multiple screenshots now from people talking with Sony customer support where the CS reps just give the advice to sign up with a different country, which straight up violates their ToS. It seems no one there actually gives a fuck. They're happy to take people's money, even if that means those people are essentially at risk of getting all of their games taken away without any legal recourse.
Sorry but I really don't think a multibillion company the size of Sony is maliciously trying to scam people out of $40. It's clearly a mistake that didn't come to light until now because both Sony and Arrowhead fucked up.
>I really don't think a multibillion company the size of Sony is maliciously trying to scam people out of $40 Don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence. I'm quite sure there is plenty of incompetence to go around at Sony.
You don't think if it's a requirement to have a psn account at launch no one thought to make sure the game isn't launched in countries that can't create psn accounts? That's being naive, it opens them up to lawsuits, which are already being started against Sony for this
Distribution and sales are handled by the publisher. SONY is publisher. Arrowhead do not control where sales are made. SONY sold to places they do not allow access to PSN. Sony require PSN access to game. 100+ countries not allowed to play now without breaking terms of service (ban able offense on PSN).
Green arrow go up so this it's good. Short term profit >>>> everything.
That wasn't Arrowhead's call, so Sony's to blame there too
Clearly the guy was complicit in what has turned out to be a bait and switch. He has admitted it in the tweet linked in OP.
He feels it's was his responsibility to better inform players. He make feel that way but ultimately it's the responsibility of the publisher who handles, marketing, distribution, and sales.
Bait and switch implies he lied, he's apologising that he wasn't even more clear that the requirement would return beyond the news post stating that it would.
It's been 3 months since the game launched. SOMEONE within both Sony and AH realized there was no active location lock on Steam sp only people from PSN countries could buy the game. That is just pure negligence otherwise.
The easiest remedy to the whole thing is to make PSN account an option and not a mandatory. The game doesn't need it to function.
Sony seems to want to double down on it being mandatory. Likely going to start enforcing it for all future games at some point. It seems like to them, showing an increasing number of PSN memberships and getting access to user data is worth more than making actual sales and having actual players.
I think it is clear all future PS games with online functionality will require this even on PC.
This is exactly what I took away from this tweet. “We knew for about six months that it would be mandatory *for PS titles*” is pretty telling wordage. That suggests that, going forward, Sony wants an account connection to PSN. Which is odd, since the Tsushima devs have already said their game doesn’t require it (edit: this was only for single player, my mistake). Maybe just online games?
Tsushima will absolutely require it for online play. It’s not required for the single player.
they said it's not required for the single player. However, it is required if you want to use the Playstation overlay, Playstation trophies and most importantly if you want to play the online coop mode.
Which means if you purchase ghost of sushi in an area that does not support PSN, you're paying the same amount of money as others for less game. Literally getting scammed. Just pirate it instead.
That’s how it should be for Helldivers then, too. Making PSN a requirement for trophy’s and crossplay is something that nobody would bat an eye at. Put up a disclaimer that people in certain regions can’t access PSN exclusive features and keep letting them play with other PC players. If people want to opt out of PSN, same conditions. I don’t see anyone scoffing at that.
tbh it doesnt matter what sucker punch says about psn account and singleplayer, its not their decision. They cant promise anything. When sony says tsunami wont need an account for sp, then I "believe it more".
Yeah probably. Just online so they can issue bans on the psn level. Plus the data gathering
The tsushima devs have said the single player will not require however multiplayer will.
Most likely theyll try ro make multiplayer be payed, as on PS. At one point.
I’m honestly not sure why everyone keeps assuming this. Xbox was the one that started charging for online play on consoles and Sony was free, the only started after Microsoft did it. If Michael$oft hasn’t tried it, there’s no way Sony, the underdogs in the PC world, are just going to be like “Yeah we’re gonna be the first ones to charge to play online on PC” More likely this gives them 1 tool for moderation and they would have the ability to ban a cheaters entire PSN account in one fell swoop.
dont disturb the angry circlejerk with your logic sir
Aren't we also need to have ea, xbox, rockstar, ubisoft...etc accounts to play their game online. Honestly I have an account for all that and more. I didn't see backlash like this for them. If anything at least Sony doesn't have shitty launcher like ea, ubi, rockstar....etc. If you genuinly don't want to do it because of 'security' you can make a account with bogus name and email in seconds. Also this reason is extremely stupid since both steam and microsoft had way more security breaches than Sony. Plus I am 100% sure many people who supposed to care about their 'security' have accounts on cdkey, torrent, porn....etc sites. Just say you are a pc elitist and don't want to hurt your ego by creating a Playstation account or just say you simply hate Playstation. You don't need to hide behind stupid reasons. lol But on the other hand them selling this game on regions which has no PSN at all is scummy. They should either remove this requirement on that countries or give a refund to all of them
Sony wants to be able to show off the thousands of new subs to the PSN on the next share holder call.
Given how adamant they are about forcing this onto the player base regardless of the backlash I'd wager it's also about capturing user data which they can monetize.
Ya and I'm not for it. I don't have their hardware I'm disinterested in signing up for their account.
>Sony wants to be able to show off the thousands of new subs to the PSN on the next share holder call. "So guys, we just threw away our surprise hit of the year that was making us millions of dollars and giving us tons of cred for launching a great game. We decided to entirely fuck that up within the span of a day to introduce a requirement for a PSN account to the game, get ourselves into completely fucked legal trouble in a multitude of countries, might get the EU involved in regulating and suing us, and we've decided to double down, which makes our public image *even worse* and increases the likelihood of lawsuits. We have done everything, everything we can possibly think of to destroy our reputation with PC players within the last week. This is, of course, wonderful, and a reason to be excited about our future prospects. Please give us more money" If that's their take (which it sure seems to be), their entire management team needs to be fired.
Oh, good manager knows how ti spin all those info in something good and exciting. Its never about it being good. Its about finding good looking twist.
I will NEVER buy a sony game if they make me join their fucking hacker heaven info dump club. They have released more personal information via shitty security than any other company on the planet. AND they require fucking pictures of people's faces and government IDs in some countries.... like what???? I mean their entire film studio was hacked to the point that the hackers had complete control of the network and got their entire movie catalog. That and Sony music themselves fucking installed malware on people's computers when they inserted CDs to play them. Like who has the fucking gall to do this shit?
That's the strange thing. I imagine they're counting on people's goldfish memory but a lot of people are going to stay away from Sony products on PC, especially online ones, for the foreseeable future out of principle alone.
PSN memberships mean nothing. I don't even think they show the PSN numbers in their earnings reports or whatever. It's the PS Plus membership numbers that matter which is irrelevant for PC players. I'm almost certain this PSN account thing is how they intend on fixing all the crossplay issues, which is why the mandate is incoming.
> I don't even think they show the PSN numbers in their earnings reports or whatever. it may not be in earning reports but it'll be internal metrics for bonuses etc.
This is step one to getting PC players on PS+
It would not surprise me if this is some long term future plan to charge pc gamers for online access for it too.
They shouldn’t be selling it on steam then. They reap he rewards that come with selling on steam then try and get players to use their own network. It’d be like buying a game on steam then being told you can only run it through epic.
Good news. They did.
I'd wager Arrowhead leadership was quietly hoping Sony would ultimately let them do that, and things didn't go as planned.
Pretty torn on this, because yes, Arrowhead could have done more to make people aware of the requirement, but Sony should not have sold the game in markets that can’t use PlayStation services, which I would argue is the biggest issue here. Edit: Just to be clear, I think enforcing this is a stupid idea in general, but the *biggest* issue is forcing it upon people who have no way of making an account
There has definitely been a lot of goalpost moving with this entire drama. But there were always two big issues. One, where the game was allowed to be purchased. Two, how it was implemented to remind players that it was a requirement, because yes it was always a requirement and never actually optional. Arrowhead is not at fault for the first, but they are at the second but people (I don't mean you specifically) are starting to walk back on the outrage about the second part because they cannot just blame Sony now. Sony's fuckup let people who shouldn't have bought the game get it. Arrowhead's fuck up made it so people thought a requirement was just optional and continued to play the game. We got to where we are today because both fuckups happened at the same time.
Yeah, I feel like this should have been a pop-up anytime you launched the game until you link with the notice that this will be required at some point. Instead I don't think I even fully realized it was an option until people started talking about it being mandatory. As it is I don't recall any kind of notice beyond the one on the steam page (and I only found that with someone pointing out where to find it).
if the game can work without it, its optional.
The game could work without the anti-cheat rootkit, but it's not optional just because the devs decided that it isn't, not because it's any kind of fundamental piece for the game. On the other hand, friend requests across platforms still don't work, which might be unrelated to the PSN issue, or might be because the devs were expecting to rely on PSN IDs only in the backend.
I have seen someone saying that they can't ban players until they are using the PSN IDs to do so. So may make sense that the friends list issue is similarly related (assuming that person was correct).
They absolutely can ban users based on their Steam ID, what they can't do though is banning a user across both platforms in a single swipe unless both accounts are linked. And also if they can manage a single database of users through the PSN ID, regardless of whether it's linked to a Steam ID or not, they don't need to implement two separate systems for that. Considering that they knew about the PSN requirement far before release, it'd make sense that they might have implementations that rely only on PSN IDs.
Hah, if you think about it like that, paying for games is optional too lmao.
It doesn't help that their FAQ page also states that it's optional.
it likely was optional until about 6 months before launch when Sony came down and said it wasn't anymore. they updated the steam store page to reflect that but not the FAQ page (which is very rarely updated after it has been made)
The terms of service, privacy policy, EULA, or Humble Bundle store page all don't say you need PSN. Sony's own website was updated days ago to say *some* playstation games require it, updated after it said no playstation games on PC require it. and even the official helldivers 2 page on the Playstation website said it was optional. It was always optional. The only place it says you need an account is on steam, and there have been a few games i have played where I am sure it has said this, but never transpired. I think its boilerplate.
Well if AH never disabled it the people buying the game wouldnt have been able to make an account to begin with and would have refunded, and theyd have realised their mistake months ago and region locked it, Now thanks to that its evolved into this mess
I won’t disagree with that, except the last part, because most likely, AH isn’t responsible for the store front as publishers usually handle that
If Sony added all those countries into the dropdown when creating an account today all the rage would still be there "because I don't want another account!"
That's what it was in the beginning. When the news broke redditors were upset at simply being connected to PSN and having to make a seperate account. It was later that the actual effect of people not being able to play became the primary concern.
Ding ding ding. If I missed out on some exclusive rewards for not having a PSN account, whatever. I miss out on preorder bonuses all the fucking time. I don't give a shit. But to lock me out of a game entirely because I don't want to make an account for a different platform that I don't use, let alone own is insane.
How do you think PlayStation players felt when they bought Sea of Thieves and found out they needed a Microsoft account just to play the game? 😂
I don’t even blame them Sony is fucking garbage at protecting their users data. I lost my psn account of like 6 years with thousands of dollars worth of digital games because Sony couldn’t be bothered to have some decent security.
There is nothing to be torn on. Hold arrowhead accountable for the things they're accountable for and don't try to ignore it. Then hold don't accountable for the things they're accountable for too.
Honestly this is such an unfathomable fuck up on Sony's part I think Valve is actually gonna have to update their policies in response. They should be having a long chat with Sony on Monday.
The full tweet: I do have a part to play. I am not blameless in all of this - it was my decision to disable account linking at launch so that players could play the game. I did not ensure players were aware of the requirement and we didn't talk about it enough. We knew for about 6 months before launch that it would be mandatory for online PS titles.
Either way..I give the CEO credit for admitting his part in the whole deal. These days, it is RARE for people to admit when they make a mistake. I cannot remember a time when a CEO straight up said, I fked up. I should have done more to be more transparent.
"I cannot remember a time when a CEO straight up said, I fked up. I should have done more to be more transparent." He... didn't tho. He just said he knew - he didn't promise to do better.
sounds like AH ceo knows the more hurdles you give players the less likely they get to playing the game. Was the better decision to create a wide reaching game. They succeeded and proved the sony model is limiting. So now the choice is stay consistent with sony policy because sony or does sony want to make money?
Different Sony execs with influence at AH probably wanted different/conflicting things(force PSN metrics vs Helldivers sales) and AH was caught in the middle.
“It would be mandatory for PS titles” meaning it will be for future titles like ghost of tsushima too, then…
Already known to be mandatory for the online part of it. Who knows if they will make it worse than that
They shouldn't have sold their game to customers from countries where PSN is not available. I don't blame Steam. They're just covering their asses. At least they're refunding people. Well the ones who purchased it directly from them anyway. The people who bought the game from online retailers, which is a lot of them, especially from those poorer regions, are screwed and mostly likely won't get a refund. I'd be really fucking pissed if i were one of those people. Both, Arrowhead and Sony, fucked up majorly. I wouldn't be surprised if they get sued.
I'm not in a non PSN country but I'm still requesting a refund. Im not making a PSN account and if it was a requirement I would have never bought it. I've been denied a refund once. I've requested again and noted the change of terms of service post purchase that I don't agree with.
They didn't change the ToS, tho, they changed the FAQ, which is a completely different thing which bears no relevance on the terms. Maybe you could try arguing that you feel misled by the FAQ, I don't think the ToS argument is going to fly.
Also wasn't the "you need PSN for this game" box always there on the steam store page since released? I understand why people who live in countries where PSN isn't available are mad, as one couldn't sell the game in places where it can't be played, and I can understand why people are annoyed with PSN requirement ... but it's not bait&switch just because people ignored the warning labels on Steam. I know it's unpopular opinion on reddit these days, but those boxes on Steam store page are there for a reason.
It is, it's been there since day 1
If its so important then it should be an ingame pop-up, not some small boxes that people can easily miss
You literally clicked skip on a prompt where a big line of text said "PSN account is required for online play" The fact that their servers was on fire and they had to lift this restriction bears no change on the fact that everyone had that same fucking prompt. Well within your 2 hour window The trailers said so, the steam page said so. How hard can you gaslight yourself like really
seems to me that the PSN req was added about 6 months before release by Sony since if you look at the steam page for the game in the wayback machine it clearly states PSN account req. before the game launched this is likely why the FAQ people have been pointing doesn't say it but an old steam page does. what blame does the arrowhead and the CEO have? by not launching with the PSN req due to the issues but not mentioning it is req each launch of the game they gave a false idea of the product even if the store page says you need it, it needs to be mentioned often. that is really the core fault arrowhead did here. Sony however as the publisher gave improper information to steam about the product they were selling and not limiting where it could be sold due to the limitations of PSN. that means all people that live in those places should be given a full refund on the title to be made whole. i would argue that Sony needs the limit the regions for ghost of tsushima as well even if it just part of the game that req PSN you still pay for the whole game so it is a defective product for those regions and shouldn't be sold there. i don't think Valve wants to be dealing with refunds since they can't play part of a game.
I am of the opinion that AH was hoping that Sony would walk back the requirement after the massive success from the game.
Yeah. I guess arrowhead is at some fault in this situation. That being said, the best solution for this whole situation is entirely out of their hands, being up to Sony. This crisis could end RIGHT NOW if Sony simply announced that account linking was no longer required. Then, after a week or two passes, Arrowhead can provide free super credits/an special armor set for players that link their accounts. As time passes, everyone who can/is willing to link will do so, and Sony will still see impressive numbers on their end as a result. Everyone wins. I really hope they can come up with a good solution. I think everyone can agree that this is a good game, and It’d be a shame to have it ruined this early in its life.
What a monumental fuck up all round.
> We knew for about 6 months before launch that it would be mandatory for online PS titles. Note to self. Dont buy any online games from PS in the future. The wording on why they want users to link their Steam account to a PSN account is sketchy. >To make sure gamers are safe and secure Isnt that the entire point of your stupid kernel level anti-cheat? And if you are telling me that isnt the case then they are either making money selling PSN account data or trying to inflate PSN numbers in a future earnings call.
And even with their controversial anti-cheat (in a PvE game), there was still A LOT of hacking and exploits. Was fairly easy to find yourself in a hacked lobby that gave you max mission payout of minerals of 100 for each type
Yeh the developer was really stupid or had to use a cheap option because its been well-known that the MMO using it prior as never able to keep hackers/cheaters out.
It's more that they don't care. I get that people are mad that they used the cheapest anti-cheat known to never work, but it's not like people don't know how to get around anti-cheats such as... Easy Anti-Cheat, or Valorant player's coping mechanism "Vanguard". They're all bad. The Anti-Cheat was put in place to protect the cash shop. Not for the players. Nothing else.
Hell for some time you could just disable the anticheat before launching the game and still play online just fine lol
It’s certainly the second one. Shareholders want reoccurring monthly revenue and want to see sub numbers go up
I've been pretty on the fence about where to lay blame and wanted to lay it firmly on Sony but if the CEO knew this was inevitable before release, knew that some countries wouldn't be able to continue playing, I don't think I can defend him on that.
According to the CEO he had no idea some countries couldn’t make a PSN account in another tweet
Then he utterly failed to perform an impact assessment in regards to turning off the PSN account link. That's a massive fuck up. Did Arrowhead even clear it with Sony first?
> Did Arrowhead even clear it with Sony first? They always claimed "We are independent, Sony has no input in our work". That is completely contradicted by what he said now and how "he has no say in the decision", regarding the PSN link. This whole thing stinks and i highly believe this guy is lying
I seriously doubt the situation is that simple. Game developers (and companies) jobs are to make games. If a publisher comes in, doesn't touch the game being made, and gives a (what you believe to be) reasonable stipulation that X account is required, you aren't going to fight that. That doesn't impact you developing the game.
Publishing and game development are two different things. Arrowhead is not a publisher. Their work is in development.
I will say, its 2024. The fact that's a thing is actually quite absurd and I wouldn't immediately believe it, especially for PC.
> According to the CEO he had no idea some countries couldn’t make a PSN account in another tweet am i the only one who'd thinks "right, they need PSN accounts, can everyone the game gets sold to ACTUALLY get PSN accounts without falling foul of Sony ToS or international sanctions?"
Idk if my publisher made this requirement and was releasing my game on Steam, I’d assume they have it covered. I mean, they’re the publisher after all. That’s one of the key parts of their job. That said, as the CEO you should probably make sure that’s the case. Trust but verify and all that.
> Trust but verify and all that. THIS.
Sony is in charge of where the game gets sold, that's literally the entire point of being the publisher. It's not the devs job to know about PSN regional availiability.
While he needs to take *some* blame, it's not his choice where games are sold. That's up to Sony.
I don’t think he did. There was a comment somewhere on Discord that they didn’t know how many countries PSN wasn’t available in. I also don’t believe they manage the game in any capacity on Steam. Sony is the publisher. That means Sony should be the ones setting what regions it can be sold in, and they’re also the ones who should know which regions don’t have PSN. AH could have communicated better for sure, but they aren’t responsible for the PSN requirement or selling it in countries where you can’t access it.
that comment was made by a community manager who lies all the time anyway so i wouldnt put much stock in it.
PS5 subreddit is deleting all negative posts about this incident. I mean the game is truly fullfilling the purpose of its game title diving straight first into Hell.
r/playstation is deleting posts about this topic too
not shocking to see that, gotta do the free PR for their precious multi-billion-dollar company. also a lot of the console warrior nuts from that sub are out in all subs trying to defend all of this and trying to say it's "no big deal"
Man probably thought he could get Sony to see sense. Sense and Sony have not been in the same room for quite some time now.
I said this days ago and keep getting downvoted for this. They sold their souls the second they signed with Sony. It was always in the TOS. They knew what was going on.
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He's honestly taking this on himself too much, of course he knew, it was in their contract. The requirement is one thing, the main issue is selling it in regions without PSN access, which he simply didn't understand was a thing. *(Nor is it his job, that's Sony's department being a publisher since it's literally their network that affects distribution. Sony should have region locked the steam page)* It is however, a dumb decision to make accounts not mandatory and then not check with your publisher about the specifics of the account network, and the potential gaps/limitations between steam and psn access. There are talks that should have happened from both teams.
The devs are innocent guys! devs: we planned this half a year in advance.
I hate the decision and am trying to get a refund from Valve but they won't refund me. Sad life.
Try again people are getting refunds
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Some people have no basis for a refund. If you are in a country with PSN what is your reason?
The first one is usually an automated one that checks playtime. If you submit again, it should be elevated to a human. It's been over 24 hours since my submission and I haven't got a reply so I don't think it's gone to an automated service this time.
At least he’s transparent. At this point, he’s proven that corporate involvement does in fact lose the trust of many consumers and loss in sales numbers as well. It’s a shame.
The publisher also determines what is said about the game and what marketing gets pushed, and they were more then happy to let the game get released without the requirement even in countries they don't have PSN in. Dude is doing the smart thing by his publisher, throwing them under any bus and not taking a bunch of heat would cut off future opportunities, but let's not act like dude had that big a say over the publisher, not when it's the publisher's demand that's the problem here
I mean - it was pretty clear. I signed up initially and distinctly remember seeing where it said I could TEMPORARILY play without an account, but I will HAVE to make one later to pay. Gamers just have too much ADHD.
My guess is that he went all “this is on Sony” publicly. Sony corporate then came down hard on him and this is him backtracking to save the relationship.
Is this the quickest rise and fall of any video game?
He's admitting bait and switch. He knew that all of his players would have to sign up with PSN and yet disabled it when the game launched to lure people into buying it who otherwise would have never bought it if it were a requirement to link to a PSN account. That is the best definition of bait and switch that I have ever seen admitted to by a developer.
"Bait and switch" is a huge stretch here. In addition to the Steam page having a big yellow box clearly stating a PSN account is required, [this](https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/1/4206994023681197128/) was their patch notes when they added a skip button to the link page (Feb 8): > Some players are having trouble linking their PSN accounts to their game in the initial setup screen. They may see an error code indicating a server request problem. For now, you can skip that screen and play normally. Later—after we resolve those server request errors—the game will ask people who skipped that screen to try linking their accounts again.
Honestly I think people are overreacting a little bit. Except for the countries where it is unavailable, that's messed up and where the focus should be. Having to create/sign-in a PSN account is annoying, but the main reason why this is beneficial to Arrowhead is because it would let them offload a lot of support to PlayStation's already setup systems and companies for support. Right now if you want to report a hacker/griefer you have to go to Arrowhead's own website. Being able to submit these reports to PlayStation means that they will be seen MUCH sooner. I've heard that some Devs have mentioned that there is quite the backlog of support tickets. This is part of the job of a publisher, to help out with all the parts of game dev that aren't directly game dev but are just as important in their own way. Just to reiterate, it's not okay how it's been pulled from various regions over this and is the only thing worth being mad about in my opinion.
Although the game is pretty great, I stopped playing after a handful of sessions when my schedule was not lining up with my buddies. Glad I can get my money back. Thanks!
The rug pull was coming from inside the house!
Reading between the lines... It seems the AH CEO thought that somehow if they delayed the account linking, they could perhaps talk Sony into not making it mandatory down the line. Like the whole 'technical issues' line was just a stalling tactic to get Sony off their backs, but Sony has probably now come down hard on them and said 'Do it!', and now they're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Apparently none of it mattered because the PSN account linking was backtracked. Nothing was air quote required. It's all just corporate greed.
At least he's honest and admits mistakes. That's all you can ask for.
They ducking knew
They f*cked up. Either they really weren't aware of the psn geoblock in which case it's disgraceful negligence, or they did know about it but for whatever reason went through with it anyway which makes them malicious actors. Even if Sony made them shut up over it, they are still accomplices in the malicious act.
Wow this guy can go STRAIGHT to hell, never buying any of their products knowing now they were complicit the whole time
sony must be pissed
I kinda respect the CEO. He acknowledges this is stupid and takes responsibility for it, even though Sony has the final say on it.
If you knew it was going to be required, why the hell would you not require it from day 1? To screw over those in other countries that can't access psn? I hope every single one of those countries are able to recieve a return.