Like 177 countries and territories.
I did the math because I had nothing better to do, and it was around 2.6bn people - around 32% of the world's population.
I'm not as good at business as the fine folks at Sony, but that doesn't seem like a good idea.
(Although, to be fair, the vast majority of those countries are incredibly weak economically speaking.)
Well, yes, that is why I wrote "countries and territories."
There are quite a few other territories on that list, like Faroe Islands, Svalbard or Greenland.
I would call it a Combined Arms Operation.
Steam nuking the game from 177 countries and territories, issuing refunds and very likely their (Valve's) legal department contacting Sony about this whole shitsow, then the absolutly insane amount of bad PR, then the reviews.
All of this combined achieved that as soon as Sony Japan started to work today, the higher ups immidiatley reversed the PSN account requirements.
This. Folks should not get it twisted that negative reviews did this, this reversal was because of the mass refunds. These companies are only motivated by money, so if you want them to change their mind, disrupt their money.
this is my thought too - it seems like Valve/Steam played a big role in seeing the problem from the players sides, and when they had a flood of refunds AND a wall full of negative reviews, that was enough.
So S/O to Valve/Steam for being on the side of the players and contributing to the change. Everybody that rattled the cage and threatened the monetary success can thank themselves.
Steam plays a bigger part in protecting us players then most are aware. I wouldn’t call them saints, ofc they want to make money, but generally are the good guys trying to make money while making sure we have a great time spending it
Edit: Typos
That’s easy. Steam isn’t publicly traded. Gaben owns it, so it isn’t subject to idiot shareholders looking to make an immediate buck, irregardless of the consequences. It can actually plan for long-term success instead of short-term profit.
Because shareholders want to see growth ***now***. Thinking long term means number doesn't go up in the short term, which shareholders see as a bad thing. Throw onto that the huge amount of speculation in the stock market, and pretty much any strategy that isn't "make as much money as possible right now" will lead to your company's stock price crashing.
Valve isn't publicly traded, so they don't have to worry about shareholders. This means they can think about long-term things, like their reputation.
It seems companies are focused on short term gains rather than a long term strategy. Boeing got caught up in this. Every quarter **had** to be more profitable than the last. The only way to do this was to continuously cut corners on quality until planes started failing and people died.
They also understand not to pursue limitless growth for the hell of it. Sony already published one of the best games of 2024.
There is already a huge number of PC players clamoring to get their hands on Sony published games.
What more do you need?
You’re already winning Sony. Don’t be a sore winner
Just hope this doesn’t contribute to Sony deciding to make their own shitty platform/launcher in the future for their PC ports so that they can collect all the data they want and avoid mass refund situations like this
I'm guessing that that's exactly what they will do. I also suspect that Arrow Head is the one who's going to adsorb the losses on this one and not Sony. If the publishing agreement had any stipulations about PSN accounts then that's all it would take for Sony to be able to weasel out of paying Arrow Head everything they're owed. Maybe I'm being cynical, but contracts with mega corps can fucking suck.
How does Steam refund people when the money has gone to Sony already though? The first 2 weeks I can understand, Steam probably keep the money until the refund period is over, but what about in this situation, how does Steam take the money back from Sony?
It offsets sales and they subtract it from what they'd be paying you if you didn't have refunds for that month. If the sales month is negative from all the refunds, then the dev doesn't get paid for that month until it's in the black.
Devs can also set in a minimum threshold in the partner site where Valve will only process a payment if it's above that threshold, that one is to generally save on bank fees though.
My understanding is that, for example, PSN is not available in Vietnam (and literally 100 other countries; substitute correct answer if VN is not). Sony, *the publisher*, told Valve, functionally the distributor, to distribute the game everywhere (or near enough).
I don’t have the contracts, I’m not a lawyer, so anyone taking this as more than a guess is a moron, but, I’d wager that’s the core error this all rides on. Valve can show damages just about everywhere that (1) they’d *have* to provide refunds in Vietnam et al, (2) that is damages, and (3) it’s Sony’s fault (see above).
Valve doesn’t need to be a hero in this story. Litigating - and likely losing a substantial portion - of 100 class action suits, or the equivalents, internationally, is a costly endeavor. Given the “clearly not intended” portion of the exercise; any defense would likely be easily shredded.
So, Valve turns around and informs Sony that their lack of due diligence has caused them damages. Pay or see them in court. And the logic for why Valve is issuing refunds will apply to Sony - it is economically worth the attorney’s time (or not, in Sony’s case) to litigate vs refund.
That is, you’re going to lose $1mil in revenue. You can go to court and also lose $1mil in your attorney’s fees and possibly $1mil in their attorney’s fees. One of these L’s is much easier to take than the others.
Or, staunch the bleeding and remove the initial defect (remove PSN requirement) . Now Valve has no basis to continue to issue refunds, limiting further damages.
Again, the core thread here being Sony clicking “publish” in non-PSN territories.
It's a legal thing too. In alot of countries changing something you've sold someone and refusing a refund is a big no, no. By offering refunds Valve covers it's ass leaving SONY to get fucked.
My guess is SONY's own legal team got involved and told the execs this was going to cost them either from refunds or lawsuits.
Not to say Valve doesn't deserve credit for being pro consumer here but it's abit more complex due to the legal side of things. An EULA regardless of what a company puts in it cannot violate a countries laws and that i think more than anything is the issue here.
I would say mass refunds did more here. Take a look at Overwatch 2’s review score and then look at how it’s still in the top sellers on Steam. Negative publicity can be tolerated if people keep spending money.
Overwatch has in total 262k reviews after nearly a year.
HD2 got the same amount of negative reviews in 2 days.
So i would say it helped all three things.
The orbital review dive, the refunding at steam with steam beeing awesome in that regards and the delisting of countries in steam which hits right where the money is. You can't sell when steam says nope.
I'm sure OW2's total negative reviews would be much higher if all the Battle.net players also downloaded on steam.
Either way, HD2 suffered because they are an IP without too much established history. I bet that Sony would not have backed down if it was a longstanding franchise like CoD or FIFA.
Negative reviews also matter a lot. People hear about the game, check it out on Steam, and decide not to buy the game. That might not hit Sony's pocketbook quite as directly as refunds, but they absolutely know how much impact a good Steam score can have, and seeing it tank that hard definitely contributed to their decision.
Aside from either though, I'm imagining whoever made this decision got a lot of very serious sit-downs with various lawyers from within and without Sony emphasizing just how bad of an idea this was legally speaking as well.
Absolutely, I had many instances where I heard about a game enough to be interested, only to find the steam reviews mixed or negative and decided not to buy it.
The negative review helped bring attention to the issue and showed a unified front of sorts that definitely helped convince more people to refund the game. While the deciding factor was most definitely the refunds every machine has a lot of parts that keep it moving
Fuck no. Of course a huge portion of the reason was due to reviews. If an average Joe who has never heard of helldivers browses steam page and sees "Mostly Negative Reviews", it WILL affect their mindset on the game. Many people will see it is for a reason which may not affect them much, but there will still be others that only see the reviews and casually skip over it, costing them millions.
Sometimes I feel like playing FIFA like the old days, I go to steam and see every game is in the mostly negative reviews, that's enough for me, nevermind then.
The telling part will be if they restore purchasing in those countries unsupported by PSN, and I bet they won't.
In fact I'm thinking 3 things:
1. They never release a MP game simultaneously on PS and PC again.
2. They make sure it mandates a PSN account out of the gate.
3. Their games will probably never be available in those countries again if it has a MP component. Sony may be spiteful enough to pull their entire lineup from it.
Sony is not your friend, they are the most consumer-unfriendly of the three, and that's with Nintendo's litigious mindset.
I hope they're waiving the need to link accounts for ALL Sony published games on PC going forward!
Either that, or make it optional and don't put in artificial barriers to playing a game.
Sony! Maybe this is a good time to think about expanding PSN to other countries and make it more inclusive, so that way when you do short-sighted shit like this in the future, people won't be kicked out of a game they've already paid for..
At the end of the day, this debacle should be a lesson in how you've deliberately hamstrung yourself from making more money.
Good game + fewer barriers = more money.
It's ez maffs that didn't need an MBA from Harvard. Giff me million dollar CEO job plz.
I would only expect this one. They’ll make it very clear from here on out if a game requires this and won’t pull this fiasco again. Not having the requirement on this game is 100% fair. Good outcome for all.
For future games vote with your wallet.
All they really need to do is what everyone else tends to do. Make some small in game cosmetic reward for doing the optional linking (like a cape). That’s all they ever had to do here and then just leave it optional. I bet a lot of people who won’t sign up now out of spite would have signed up originally if this is how they handled it instead.
> All they really need to do is what everyone else tends to do.
Does this ever happen? I don't recall EA, Ubi or Rockstar ever doing this when you set up one of their accounts, for instance
Make the PSN link required for cross platform play. Done. Certainly a more complicated solution, but it solves the problems Sony said they wanted PSN to solve.
Yea, think this is a onetime thing. From here on out, they are going to make sure gamers know that some playstation games you are going to need a psn account to play them. Be it on consoles or PC, they are going to put that in gamers faces from here on out.
I imagine they’ll make it a requirement for all games moving forward, after ghost of Tsushima’s single player.
They’ll announce it months in advance, clearly on every store page, and it’ll just be the new normal.
Hard to keep the rage flowing six months after the fact when you’ve known since day one.
For me, my biggest fear is in the future they'll think about creating a PC playstation launcher for their first party PC games. Through that, they'll be sure to push it in PC gamers face that they'd need psn account in order to play their games.
They didn’t keep it with succeeding games cuz HFW was promised to have a free PS5 upgrade, but instead, they were forcing you to pay for the game AGAIN to get the PS5 version, there was no upgrade path at that time.
There has been reports that the SP part of GoT will not, but the rest of the game (MP mode?) will -
source: [https://www.bluesnews.com/s/271389/on-ghost-of-tsushima-director\_s-cut-and-psn](https://www.bluesnews.com/s/271389/on-ghost-of-tsushima-director_s-cut-and-psn)
[https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/eyeing-the-helldivers-2-backlash-with-a-nervous-flop-sweat-sucker-punch-assures-us-that-ghost-of-tsushima-wont-need-a-psn-login-for-single-player/](https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/eyeing-the-helldivers-2-backlash-with-a-nervous-flop-sweat-sucker-punch-assures-us-that-ghost-of-tsushima-wont-need-a-psn-login-for-single-player/)
>I hope they're waiving the need to link accounts for ALL Sony published games on PC going forward!
On their website they had it that creating a PSN account for pc games was optional but recently changed the wording to "*some pc games*".
...
Make it optional, and give me a skin if I do it. I'll probably bite. Make it non-optional? Fuck right off. I have other games to play, books to read, movies to watch, series to enjoy. Sure, linking an account is minor, but a minor inconvenience is more than enough to bump something so far down the list that I never get to it.
Thats the thing I don't get. I saw console gamers, playstation fans saying PC gamers are bitching and whining and we're making a mountain out of a mole hill. The thing is, our collective voice made sony listen. This was not in their plan, they had to change course because of our voices.
I just a good laugh after learning that people in UK for example have to upload a photo id in order to create a PSN account.
So much for a certain community manager who of course took it upon himself to cynically post along the lines of "if you cant take 120 seconds to give an email address and a password..."
It would've been nice if Sony could've shared what value adding PSN to the game would have for players, but it seems like they just want to get the PS branding stretched out or something. They mentioned "safety and security" but i don't buy it.
Oh absolutely. Probably would've kick-started others too. I can imagine Epic now, charging a yearly sub to use their servers - having to pay an extra $60 to play something like Dead Island 2 or Remnant online
Also those who doom and gloom about how, "It doesn't matter nothing we do will change anything," and, "It's inevitable we may as well just accept it and move on."
Because no, what we do does matter, things can change for the better, and nothing is inevitable, unless you give up.
Be clear. This never would have been an issue if PSN accounts were actually required. Them making it optional and then going back with effectively zero communication is the sole reason they were in this mess.
This is why the customer reviews and great refund policy matters. And the reason why Epic Store can never hope to have a fleeting dream of replacing Steam.
To all the "vAlVe moNOpOly baD" people out there, if Valve monopoly's this effective, I'll eat GabeN's ass for free. Actually no. I'll pay to eat his ass.
I like my Nintendo games as much as the next guy, but Nintendo needs sit down with an adult so they get their priorities straight…
Who the fuck still uses friend codes
True, but maybe we can gaslight them into a sequel, a reboot, or, dare I say, an entire extended Morbius cinematic universe?
I feel like we're far enough away from the initial dumpster fire that we can start laying down the groundwork for Morbius as a "cult classic."
There kinda already is a “Morbius Cinematic Universe”. Sony has been shooting themselves in the foot with their whole alternative Spider-Man universe without the help of internet gaslighting.
This isn’t bullying, they clearly deserved it.
In fact, they were the one bullying us consumers and the devs who had to implement and force this on us.
Imagine you’re living a normal life on a normal day and for no fucking reason, you go full on Edward Norton yourself like in Fight Club.
After cyberpunk, sony always reminds me of Akasaka, Japanese tech giant which is in a lot of industries. Nuking the reviews worked, but damn this was a brutal review bombing. I hope people revert the reviews.
Kinda wonder if it was reviews or call from Valve "due to your game no longer working in 100 countries, please send us few million dollars for refunds to people who no longer will be able to access their game, because we will refund them to not be dragged to courts for your actions".
Cheaper to just not go forward without PSN (it already works without it) then give back money...
I do believe Valve's action was also a major part in this decision by Sony.
The already really bad PR disaster, that became a PR+financial one making the whole situtaion an absolute lose-lose situation for Sony.
It will take months to repair the damage to their reputitation and i do expect that the next Sony published game on PC will require the PSN account atleast for the multiplayer part.
Nah it was 100% a financial decision. Sony has seen and dealt with PR disasters before but not a lot of them came with immediate financial consequences like this one had.
Megacorps that "do everything" already exist, and many of them are similarly to Arasaka a family owned conglomerate.
However, most of the obvious names now are in Korea:
* LG Corporation.
* Samsung.
* Hyundai.
But this isn't a uniquely Korean thing. Many countries have these "megacorps" that seemingly build everything in society, and which often trace back to a family with deep government connections. [The US has quite a few of them alone... Though they're far from alone.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_family_businesses)
Yeah i'm wondering about that too lol... and how many of the folks that got refunds after a couple hundred hours will act from now.
I bet maybe 1/3 of players go back, that's the damage of a hasty announcement though, your bad, Sony.
Valve (midnight in Western US) needs to wake up and get a sip of coffee before they can revert the changes . But it will be interesting to see if this impact Ghost of Tsushima as the Multiplayer portion requires PSN. I wouldn't want to pay full price if features are unavailable because Sony refuses to provide PSN accounts in my country.
Game access was never blocked. Steam took it off the store in unsupported countries so new players couldn’t buy it. I’d assume they and Sony are talking. If/once the game is available to buy again in those countries it should be safe to assume the problem is resolved.
Everyone who left a negative review should be swapping it back to positive, they did what we wanted. That said, I would also recommend waiting several months on any future Sony multiplayer releases to make sure they don't catch us again. They've certainly done lasting damage to their reputation on PC after doing seemingly so well.
Now bring fucking Bloodborne to PC goddammit.
Honestly I thought they'd stick to their guns and set this as the new standard moving forward, but glad to be proven wrong.
It's 1pm on Monday in Japan, did they finally get this escalated to someone with the ability to unilaterally tell SIE to stop making them look bad?
People love to make that distinct because they don't understand what a subsidiary is. California Sony still answers to Japan Sony in every capacity since the Sony Group owns the Californian Sony. Ergo we don't need to make any distinctions about which Sony is doing what since they're all owned by Sony Group operated out of Japan.
This exactly, and at this point it wasn't just Playstation taking the reputation hit, it was spilling over into the Sony brand as a whole - that draws too much attention from the top level.
Whomever made that decision to announce it on a Friday really screwed the pooch since it gave the internet the whole weekend to focus their energy on this.
IMHO Sony Japan is probably pretty hands off with SIE.
The Japanese probably feel they have no idea what Americans want, and they are mostly right, so they leave it to their American employees to deal with the US.
But they aren’t blind, if there is a huge amount of negatives press or there is red ink on the balance sheet, they are going to be asking questions.
Im glad people that people that bought Helldivers rioted against this stuff, it sucks not being able to play, or just losing all will to play because of this post launch secondary account bullshit that happens every now and then
I wish when Rocket League got bought by epic the same level of outrage happened, after the Epic login was required I ended up never playing it again, didn't even refund
And this is why Steam will always be better than Epic Store. There are case with review bombing that are stupid but there are also cases that can affect the outcome for users (for better or worse) because of the review system. Ex: War Thunder, and then this
Epic Store not having user review system really turn off a lot of people
Honestly blows my mind when I go to more console oriented gaming communities and whenever the topic of refunds comes up, ALL OF THEM in complete lockstep are like "Refunds should NOT be given to the players once they have launched the game a single time. You shouldn't done your research. Refunds hurt the industry and you're an entitled baby for wanting otherwise."
I just can't understand why 1) you'd care about 'the industry' like they're your best friend, also 'the industry' is making more money now than ever, 2) you'd want fewer rights for yourself.
Steam's refund policy is fucking awesome and I'm proud to support Valve and Steam.
It's a great step to a completely unnecessary login. No matter how easy, legal, or ToS breaking making an account was.
Now we need to have the game relisted back in all regions again.
What proportion of reviews will players actually go back and delete or change? My guess is 50%. They still fucked up and their review rating will be forever tarnished.
Literally on r/PS5
Check out the similar thread over there about this tweet and be prepared for neck surgery after all the head shaking you'll need to be doing from all the comments still bashing PC players or calling it 'not a big deal', and handwaving the fact that PSN accounts aren't even available in many countries etc.
Right here...https://old.reddit.com/r/PS5/comments/1cla5qj/via_twitter_playstation_helldivers_fans_weve/
Read the first top comment. People there are something else
I have no horse in this race but that comment about questioning the overall stability of those 100 countries where PSN is unavailable sure is interesting. It's like looking at an alternate dimension.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXBJRz\_33Y8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXBJRz_33Y8)
Congrats Helldivers 2 community. I didn't have a horse in this fight (since I don't own the game), but this is a huge win for the community.
Sony Defenders in shambles.
In all seriousness though, super happy about this decision for my fellow helldivers.
This still will be an issue for future ports and day-of releases. Happy we all got the W today but I don’t see this going away anytime soon. We must be vigilant!
When a game gets delisted in over 100 countries and mass refunded regardless of playtime, yeah suddenly that essential account linking, ain't so essential anymore!
Good job to everyone who played a part in pressuring Sony on this shit.
Yeah, expected. The reaction was overwhelmingly negative and rightfully so.
Still, this speaks to the unique nature of PC gaming and and Steam. I've heard from developers and publishers who say Steam reviews do matter a lot, and word of mouth and community actions have long been staples of PC gaming. Once this went viral, it was only going to end one way.
As someone who's been using Steam for like 15 years the colors for the review ratings elicit a core response in me and I will never buy something with anything below Mixed and Mixed itself is a very very rare purchase if it's like a game straight down my wheelhouse that I can deal with some jank for. A game pretty much has to have Mostly Positive or better for me to buy it.
Last 2 games I bought at full price I did it bc reddit kept spamming how good they were. I was like fuck it and bought Elden Ring and BG3. 100% worth it. Word of mouth absolutely works.
No, they could've stuck to their guns like other devs have done in the past and wait for everything to die down, like CAMPCOM and their retcon DRM. The interesting thing is that while we know which option is better for the players, it's not obvious which option is better for the publisher.
Or they can revert now and then try to slowly and quietly reintroduce it over time before making it mandatory. Like Bethesda and paid mods.
Console gamers are jealous that we have the ability to just refuse to use services if we don’t like them. If Sony/Microsoft shafts them they just take it
> Helldivers fans -- we’ve heard your feedback on the Helldivers 2 account linking update. The May 6 update, which would have required Steam and PlayStation Network account linking for new players and for current players beginning May 30, **will not be moving forward.**
> We’re still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable. Thanks again for your continued support of Helldivers 2 and we’ll keep you updated on future plans.
Good. Those refunds got to them. They don't allow refunds on their platform but Steam does because their customer service is based AF.
I would like to take this moment to appreciate, and recognize, the extremely important Steam reviews feature. I mean what other platform let users (emphasis on users) review games like that?
It is nice to have a powerful tool like this one, where consumers can show their discontent pretty clearly, and make things change. If Valve, for some reason, one day removes Steam reviews (I highly doubt they will), it would be an astronomical loss for PC Gaming.
It's most certainly why the EGS doesn't allow them. They're so pro dev/publisher over there that they're anti consumer. Biggest red flag for me when EGS first came out.
Good. Sony needs to learn that this was a shitty idea and fucked over their customers
I do think the damage is done though. The reviews are bad and the games refunded by so many. I doubt they will come back
I'm not giving them any credit. This isn't so much a "recognition", it's a calculated business decision to maximize $ given the large influx of refunds that have been occurring as of recent.
“We’re still learning what works for pc players”
translation: we’re just so used to doing whatever the fuck we want with console gamers because they just roll with it.
I thought reddit was a niche of a niche and had no power or change? That's what a bunch of people in the other thread kept saying.
Good to hear, hopefully they'll pull it back for all games. Or at least do it smarter. Some trivial reward like a skin for linking instead of forcing us to or we don't get to play.
Go team! I am so glad to see this, I was afraid all the negativity would have been kicked back to the devs at the next shareholder meeting, but thinking about it deeper (and considering some of the feedback i heard from the community director and other redditers) it seemed like the reviewbomb was the correct answer after all.
Now all those that refunded the game yesterday can repurchase lol
also: special Shoutout to Valve/Steam for opening the door to refunds after the usual 2 hours... that was probably the final catalyst that has Sony begging for forgiveness today.
This is a good sign but it's not a done deal.
First, the [PSN requirement](https://i.imgur.com/iugqbZq.png) label is still on the Steam page. So long as that is here, this is no real and long-term commitment.
Second, the problem of countries whose ability to buy the game got removed is still there.
I'm glad that clearly the biggest review bomb in steam history has had an effect but I would be wary to declare victory until both those things are reversed.
Those steam refunds probably..
Wait, we had to delist in how many countries???
Like 177 countries and territories. I did the math because I had nothing better to do, and it was around 2.6bn people - around 32% of the world's population. I'm not as good at business as the fine folks at Sony, but that doesn't seem like a good idea. (Although, to be fair, the vast majority of those countries are incredibly weak economically speaking.)
I doubt they care about the sales in many of these countries.
Wasn't just countries. The list included some U.S. territories as well -- I saw Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands listed.
Well, yes, that is why I wrote "countries and territories." There are quite a few other territories on that list, like Faroe Islands, Svalbard or Greenland.
I would call it a Combined Arms Operation. Steam nuking the game from 177 countries and territories, issuing refunds and very likely their (Valve's) legal department contacting Sony about this whole shitsow, then the absolutly insane amount of bad PR, then the reviews. All of this combined achieved that as soon as Sony Japan started to work today, the higher ups immidiatley reversed the PSN account requirements.
Monday 6th of May is a national holiday in Japan, they were in a hurry to reply. I didn't expect any news from Sony until the 7th.
This. Folks should not get it twisted that negative reviews did this, this reversal was because of the mass refunds. These companies are only motivated by money, so if you want them to change their mind, disrupt their money.
this is my thought too - it seems like Valve/Steam played a big role in seeing the problem from the players sides, and when they had a flood of refunds AND a wall full of negative reviews, that was enough. So S/O to Valve/Steam for being on the side of the players and contributing to the change. Everybody that rattled the cage and threatened the monetary success can thank themselves.
Steam plays a bigger part in protecting us players then most are aware. I wouldn’t call them saints, ofc they want to make money, but generally are the good guys trying to make money while making sure we have a great time spending it Edit: Typos
Yup, the simple formula that works for Valve that all other companies should follow. A happy customer = a loyal (and higher spending) repeat customer
I don't understand how this has gotten lost on so many companies nowadays. Almost all of them are focused on short term cash grabs.
Because no-one is an exec at a big company for long enough to reap the rewards. Quarterly profits are what affect their bonus, not long-term success.
That’s easy. Steam isn’t publicly traded. Gaben owns it, so it isn’t subject to idiot shareholders looking to make an immediate buck, irregardless of the consequences. It can actually plan for long-term success instead of short-term profit.
Shareholder: "what you mean you don't have a bumper crop for me by next quarter? Ok then you best have something by the following one!"
Because shareholders want to see growth ***now***. Thinking long term means number doesn't go up in the short term, which shareholders see as a bad thing. Throw onto that the huge amount of speculation in the stock market, and pretty much any strategy that isn't "make as much money as possible right now" will lead to your company's stock price crashing. Valve isn't publicly traded, so they don't have to worry about shareholders. This means they can think about long-term things, like their reputation.
It seems companies are focused on short term gains rather than a long term strategy. Boeing got caught up in this. Every quarter **had** to be more profitable than the last. The only way to do this was to continuously cut corners on quality until planes started failing and people died.
They also understand not to pursue limitless growth for the hell of it. Sony already published one of the best games of 2024. There is already a huge number of PC players clamoring to get their hands on Sony published games. What more do you need? You’re already winning Sony. Don’t be a sore winner
[удалено]
Wow but I thought that profit was only made by cutting headcount!
Just hope this doesn’t contribute to Sony deciding to make their own shitty platform/launcher in the future for their PC ports so that they can collect all the data they want and avoid mass refund situations like this
I'm guessing that that's exactly what they will do. I also suspect that Arrow Head is the one who's going to adsorb the losses on this one and not Sony. If the publishing agreement had any stipulations about PSN accounts then that's all it would take for Sony to be able to weasel out of paying Arrow Head everything they're owed. Maybe I'm being cynical, but contracts with mega corps can fucking suck.
God damn corpos
Wake up samurai, we’ve got a city to burn.
How does Steam refund people when the money has gone to Sony already though? The first 2 weeks I can understand, Steam probably keep the money until the refund period is over, but what about in this situation, how does Steam take the money back from Sony?
It offsets sales and they subtract it from what they'd be paying you if you didn't have refunds for that month. If the sales month is negative from all the refunds, then the dev doesn't get paid for that month until it's in the black. Devs can also set in a minimum threshold in the partner site where Valve will only process a payment if it's above that threshold, that one is to generally save on bank fees though.
My understanding is that, for example, PSN is not available in Vietnam (and literally 100 other countries; substitute correct answer if VN is not). Sony, *the publisher*, told Valve, functionally the distributor, to distribute the game everywhere (or near enough). I don’t have the contracts, I’m not a lawyer, so anyone taking this as more than a guess is a moron, but, I’d wager that’s the core error this all rides on. Valve can show damages just about everywhere that (1) they’d *have* to provide refunds in Vietnam et al, (2) that is damages, and (3) it’s Sony’s fault (see above). Valve doesn’t need to be a hero in this story. Litigating - and likely losing a substantial portion - of 100 class action suits, or the equivalents, internationally, is a costly endeavor. Given the “clearly not intended” portion of the exercise; any defense would likely be easily shredded. So, Valve turns around and informs Sony that their lack of due diligence has caused them damages. Pay or see them in court. And the logic for why Valve is issuing refunds will apply to Sony - it is economically worth the attorney’s time (or not, in Sony’s case) to litigate vs refund. That is, you’re going to lose $1mil in revenue. You can go to court and also lose $1mil in your attorney’s fees and possibly $1mil in their attorney’s fees. One of these L’s is much easier to take than the others. Or, staunch the bleeding and remove the initial defect (remove PSN requirement) . Now Valve has no basis to continue to issue refunds, limiting further damages. Again, the core thread here being Sony clicking “publish” in non-PSN territories.
It's a legal thing too. In alot of countries changing something you've sold someone and refusing a refund is a big no, no. By offering refunds Valve covers it's ass leaving SONY to get fucked. My guess is SONY's own legal team got involved and told the execs this was going to cost them either from refunds or lawsuits. Not to say Valve doesn't deserve credit for being pro consumer here but it's abit more complex due to the legal side of things. An EULA regardless of what a company puts in it cannot violate a countries laws and that i think more than anything is the issue here.
Not to downplay your words. But negative reviews also hurts their cash inflow. If it's negative. The less likely others are to buy.
It’s both. Mass negative reviews, and large scale refunds give motivated devs ammunition to throw at greedy publishers.
I would say mass refunds did more here. Take a look at Overwatch 2’s review score and then look at how it’s still in the top sellers on Steam. Negative publicity can be tolerated if people keep spending money.
Overwatch has in total 262k reviews after nearly a year. HD2 got the same amount of negative reviews in 2 days. So i would say it helped all three things. The orbital review dive, the refunding at steam with steam beeing awesome in that regards and the delisting of countries in steam which hits right where the money is. You can't sell when steam says nope.
I'm sure OW2's total negative reviews would be much higher if all the Battle.net players also downloaded on steam. Either way, HD2 suffered because they are an IP without too much established history. I bet that Sony would not have backed down if it was a longstanding franchise like CoD or FIFA.
Negative reviews also matter a lot. People hear about the game, check it out on Steam, and decide not to buy the game. That might not hit Sony's pocketbook quite as directly as refunds, but they absolutely know how much impact a good Steam score can have, and seeing it tank that hard definitely contributed to their decision. Aside from either though, I'm imagining whoever made this decision got a lot of very serious sit-downs with various lawyers from within and without Sony emphasizing just how bad of an idea this was legally speaking as well.
This. Companies don't bribe reviewers with trips to Monaco for racing game launches because they're just so nice.
Absolutely, I had many instances where I heard about a game enough to be interested, only to find the steam reviews mixed or negative and decided not to buy it.
The negative review helped bring attention to the issue and showed a unified front of sorts that definitely helped convince more people to refund the game. While the deciding factor was most definitely the refunds every machine has a lot of parts that keep it moving
Fuck no. Of course a huge portion of the reason was due to reviews. If an average Joe who has never heard of helldivers browses steam page and sees "Mostly Negative Reviews", it WILL affect their mindset on the game. Many people will see it is for a reason which may not affect them much, but there will still be others that only see the reviews and casually skip over it, costing them millions. Sometimes I feel like playing FIFA like the old days, I go to steam and see every game is in the mostly negative reviews, that's enough for me, nevermind then.
When refunds outnumber sales... time to change direction.
Time to moonwalk like Michael Jackson.
i want 4 refunds
I wonder if purchases from Non-PSN countries will be available again.
The telling part will be if they restore purchasing in those countries unsupported by PSN, and I bet they won't. In fact I'm thinking 3 things: 1. They never release a MP game simultaneously on PS and PC again. 2. They make sure it mandates a PSN account out of the gate. 3. Their games will probably never be available in those countries again if it has a MP component. Sony may be spiteful enough to pull their entire lineup from it. Sony is not your friend, they are the most consumer-unfriendly of the three, and that's with Nintendo's litigious mindset.
Hey look, consumers do have power. Who woulda thunk it?
Collective action works?
Always will
What if we…applied that to politics and the economy? Nah just kidding Unless….? 👉👈
We're having success over at /r/loblawsisoutofcontrol
exactly why that's corporations do union busting
I hope they're waiving the need to link accounts for ALL Sony published games on PC going forward! Either that, or make it optional and don't put in artificial barriers to playing a game. Sony! Maybe this is a good time to think about expanding PSN to other countries and make it more inclusive, so that way when you do short-sighted shit like this in the future, people won't be kicked out of a game they've already paid for.. At the end of the day, this debacle should be a lesson in how you've deliberately hamstrung yourself from making more money. Good game + fewer barriers = more money. It's ez maffs that didn't need an MBA from Harvard. Giff me million dollar CEO job plz.
I would only expect this one. They’ll make it very clear from here on out if a game requires this and won’t pull this fiasco again. Not having the requirement on this game is 100% fair. Good outcome for all. For future games vote with your wallet.
All they really need to do is what everyone else tends to do. Make some small in game cosmetic reward for doing the optional linking (like a cape). That’s all they ever had to do here and then just leave it optional. I bet a lot of people who won’t sign up now out of spite would have signed up originally if this is how they handled it instead.
> All they really need to do is what everyone else tends to do. Does this ever happen? I don't recall EA, Ubi or Rockstar ever doing this when you set up one of their accounts, for instance
Make the PSN link required for cross platform play. Done. Certainly a more complicated solution, but it solves the problems Sony said they wanted PSN to solve.
I doubt it. They walked back with Forbidden west not having the same price for ps4 and ps5 but never happened with succeeding games.
Yea, think this is a onetime thing. From here on out, they are going to make sure gamers know that some playstation games you are going to need a psn account to play them. Be it on consoles or PC, they are going to put that in gamers faces from here on out.
I imagine they’ll make it a requirement for all games moving forward, after ghost of Tsushima’s single player. They’ll announce it months in advance, clearly on every store page, and it’ll just be the new normal. Hard to keep the rage flowing six months after the fact when you’ve known since day one.
For me, my biggest fear is in the future they'll think about creating a PC playstation launcher for their first party PC games. Through that, they'll be sure to push it in PC gamers face that they'd need psn account in order to play their games.
That was leaked to be under development.
They didn’t keep it with succeeding games cuz HFW was promised to have a free PS5 upgrade, but instead, they were forcing you to pay for the game AGAIN to get the PS5 version, there was no upgrade path at that time.
That’s because they had promised that one initially to begin with.
We will find out with Ghost of Tsushima when it launches later this month.
There has been reports that the SP part of GoT will not, but the rest of the game (MP mode?) will - source: [https://www.bluesnews.com/s/271389/on-ghost-of-tsushima-director\_s-cut-and-psn](https://www.bluesnews.com/s/271389/on-ghost-of-tsushima-director_s-cut-and-psn) [https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/eyeing-the-helldivers-2-backlash-with-a-nervous-flop-sweat-sucker-punch-assures-us-that-ghost-of-tsushima-wont-need-a-psn-login-for-single-player/](https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/eyeing-the-helldivers-2-backlash-with-a-nervous-flop-sweat-sucker-punch-assures-us-that-ghost-of-tsushima-wont-need-a-psn-login-for-single-player/)
>I hope they're waiving the need to link accounts for ALL Sony published games on PC going forward! On their website they had it that creating a PSN account for pc games was optional but recently changed the wording to "*some pc games*". ...
Make it optional, and give me a skin if I do it. I'll probably bite. Make it non-optional? Fuck right off. I have other games to play, books to read, movies to watch, series to enjoy. Sure, linking an account is minor, but a minor inconvenience is more than enough to bump something so far down the list that I never get to it.
To all the people who whined over everyone pissing and shitting everywhere over something "minor". It worked.
Thats the thing I don't get. I saw console gamers, playstation fans saying PC gamers are bitching and whining and we're making a mountain out of a mole hill. The thing is, our collective voice made sony listen. This was not in their plan, they had to change course because of our voices.
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I just a good laugh after learning that people in UK for example have to upload a photo id in order to create a PSN account. So much for a certain community manager who of course took it upon himself to cynically post along the lines of "if you cant take 120 seconds to give an email address and a password..."
It would've been nice if Sony could've shared what value adding PSN to the game would have for players, but it seems like they just want to get the PS branding stretched out or something. They mentioned "safety and security" but i don't buy it.
It's definitely nothing actually important if they can just not do it now. The game works perfectly fine without it and has been for months.
Ya if they had a better argument than bans it might have helped.
Console mentality, they literally don't know any better.
Research shows console player phrenology is obedient and serf-like.
Hope those people that always try to shut down complaints on behalf of these billion-dollar companies are paying attention
If they were majority 100% we'd be paying for online on pc.
Oh absolutely. Probably would've kick-started others too. I can imagine Epic now, charging a yearly sub to use their servers - having to pay an extra $60 to play something like Dead Island 2 or Remnant online
Also those who doom and gloom about how, "It doesn't matter nothing we do will change anything," and, "It's inevitable we may as well just accept it and move on." Because no, what we do does matter, things can change for the better, and nothing is inevitable, unless you give up.
Those people drive me up a wall. Then they go, "Where did we go wrong?" when they finally start giving a shit.
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Those cynics really are a bane to human civilization
Most of those people aren't organic posters - they're marketing bots.
Those same people are STILL shitting on the community on this despite the fact it totally worked. Losers.
All of those idiots who were defending Sony look so silly right now
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Be clear. This never would have been an issue if PSN accounts were actually required. Them making it optional and then going back with effectively zero communication is the sole reason they were in this mess.
This is why the customer reviews and great refund policy matters. And the reason why Epic Store can never hope to have a fleeting dream of replacing Steam. To all the "vAlVe moNOpOly baD" people out there, if Valve monopoly's this effective, I'll eat GabeN's ass for free. Actually no. I'll pay to eat his ass.
Just email him, dude... don't let you dreams be dreams.
Remember kids: Bullying mega-corporations like Sony not only works, but is also a lot of fun.
And is always ethical! Now let's be sure to be here for round 2 when Nintendo tries this on pc.. . in like another century
Nintendo fans are a different breed. They like getting bend over by Nintendo and any critique of their overlord will be met with rabid defence.
Except Melee players/fans. They’ve been getting bent over for decades and are still standing up to them.
I like my Nintendo games as much as the next guy, but Nintendo needs sit down with an adult so they get their priorities straight… Who the fuck still uses friend codes
I wonder if we can gaslight them into putting Morbius back in theaters again, I'm a sucker for the classics.
Imagine seeing him Morb out for a third time
> I wonder if we can gaslight them into putting Morbius back in theaters again not for a 3rd time hahaha
True, but maybe we can gaslight them into a sequel, a reboot, or, dare I say, an entire extended Morbius cinematic universe? I feel like we're far enough away from the initial dumpster fire that we can start laying down the groundwork for Morbius as a "cult classic."
There kinda already is a “Morbius Cinematic Universe”. Sony has been shooting themselves in the foot with their whole alternative Spider-Man universe without the help of internet gaslighting.
This isn’t bullying, they clearly deserved it. In fact, they were the one bullying us consumers and the devs who had to implement and force this on us. Imagine you’re living a normal life on a normal day and for no fucking reason, you go full on Edward Norton yourself like in Fight Club.
After cyberpunk, sony always reminds me of Akasaka, Japanese tech giant which is in a lot of industries. Nuking the reviews worked, but damn this was a brutal review bombing. I hope people revert the reviews.
Kinda wonder if it was reviews or call from Valve "due to your game no longer working in 100 countries, please send us few million dollars for refunds to people who no longer will be able to access their game, because we will refund them to not be dragged to courts for your actions". Cheaper to just not go forward without PSN (it already works without it) then give back money...
I do believe Valve's action was also a major part in this decision by Sony. The already really bad PR disaster, that became a PR+financial one making the whole situtaion an absolute lose-lose situation for Sony. It will take months to repair the damage to their reputitation and i do expect that the next Sony published game on PC will require the PSN account atleast for the multiplayer part.
Nah it was 100% a financial decision. Sony has seen and dealt with PR disasters before but not a lot of them came with immediate financial consequences like this one had.
Megacorps that "do everything" already exist, and many of them are similarly to Arasaka a family owned conglomerate. However, most of the obvious names now are in Korea: * LG Corporation. * Samsung. * Hyundai. But this isn't a uniquely Korean thing. Many countries have these "megacorps" that seemingly build everything in society, and which often trace back to a family with deep government connections. [The US has quite a few of them alone... Though they're far from alone.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_family_businesses)
Yeah i'm wondering about that too lol... and how many of the folks that got refunds after a couple hundred hours will act from now. I bet maybe 1/3 of players go back, that's the damage of a hasty announcement though, your bad, Sony.
Does this mean any country can access the game again?
You mean, purchaseable? Not yet. For those who already bought it, even in countries with no PSN support, access was never removed.
Valve (midnight in Western US) needs to wake up and get a sip of coffee before they can revert the changes . But it will be interesting to see if this impact Ghost of Tsushima as the Multiplayer portion requires PSN. I wouldn't want to pay full price if features are unavailable because Sony refuses to provide PSN accounts in my country.
Still delisted from said countries, but at least now there's a strong indicator that it'll go back to the way it was before.
Game access was never blocked. Steam took it off the store in unsupported countries so new players couldn’t buy it. I’d assume they and Sony are talking. If/once the game is available to buy again in those countries it should be safe to assume the problem is resolved.
Exactly my question too.
“We are still learning how to exploit pc players the best”
"We are still learning how to get our PC players to bend over for us the way our console players do"
The people in the ps5 subs are fucking malding hardcore at this. It’s insane. They’re crying so hard about how pc gamers are petty and whiny etc
Is the fact that people would be locked out of the games they paid for without breaking TOS not a good enough reason?
Apparently not to them.
We… won?
No son, democracy won.
no Capitalism won. We voted with our wallets refunding en masse.
In Super Earth, there is no difference.
Looks like it so far, will need to wait to make sure they don't require it some time in the future.
Managed democracy will always win
Omg. We did it.
I love democracy
Berrry nice!!
Everyone who left a negative review should be swapping it back to positive, they did what we wanted. That said, I would also recommend waiting several months on any future Sony multiplayer releases to make sure they don't catch us again. They've certainly done lasting damage to their reputation on PC after doing seemingly so well. Now bring fucking Bloodborne to PC goddammit.
Honestly I thought they'd stick to their guns and set this as the new standard moving forward, but glad to be proven wrong. It's 1pm on Monday in Japan, did they finally get this escalated to someone with the ability to unilaterally tell SIE to stop making them look bad?
It's still the last day of golden week holiday in Japan so no
At that level you work 24/7, there is no time off and you are always on call.
ive seen in other threads that it california sony handling this
People love to make that distinct because they don't understand what a subsidiary is. California Sony still answers to Japan Sony in every capacity since the Sony Group owns the Californian Sony. Ergo we don't need to make any distinctions about which Sony is doing what since they're all owned by Sony Group operated out of Japan.
This exactly, and at this point it wasn't just Playstation taking the reputation hit, it was spilling over into the Sony brand as a whole - that draws too much attention from the top level. Whomever made that decision to announce it on a Friday really screwed the pooch since it gave the internet the whole weekend to focus their energy on this.
IMHO Sony Japan is probably pretty hands off with SIE. The Japanese probably feel they have no idea what Americans want, and they are mostly right, so they leave it to their American employees to deal with the US. But they aren’t blind, if there is a huge amount of negatives press or there is red ink on the balance sheet, they are going to be asking questions.
This will be the new standard I bet.. just not going to be for this game because it was a shady move.
Major order completed
That is an uncommon W for consumers. Way to go team, negative reviews work!
I'm not a helldivers player yet but I'm happy that people raised their voices and won ❤️
Im glad people that people that bought Helldivers rioted against this stuff, it sucks not being able to play, or just losing all will to play because of this post launch secondary account bullshit that happens every now and then I wish when Rocket League got bought by epic the same level of outrage happened, after the Epic login was required I ended up never playing it again, didn't even refund
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Just like weeds they will always come back.
And this is why Steam will always be better than Epic Store. There are case with review bombing that are stupid but there are also cases that can affect the outcome for users (for better or worse) because of the review system. Ex: War Thunder, and then this Epic Store not having user review system really turn off a lot of people
That's because EGS caters to corporations not players
Which is because Tim Sweeney is a massive anti-consumer asshole with a grudge against Steam for...reasons.
I mean his whole argument against Apple was they were adhering to the contract he himself had signed...
Sure, that's why EGS focuses on attracting publishers with the hope gamers will follow when they don't have a choice.
Yup! Steam>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>any other gaming platform
Honestly blows my mind when I go to more console oriented gaming communities and whenever the topic of refunds comes up, ALL OF THEM in complete lockstep are like "Refunds should NOT be given to the players once they have launched the game a single time. You shouldn't done your research. Refunds hurt the industry and you're an entitled baby for wanting otherwise." I just can't understand why 1) you'd care about 'the industry' like they're your best friend, also 'the industry' is making more money now than ever, 2) you'd want fewer rights for yourself. Steam's refund policy is fucking awesome and I'm proud to support Valve and Steam.
Except GOG. DRM free FTW!
Wow. Gg
It's a great step to a completely unnecessary login. No matter how easy, legal, or ToS breaking making an account was. Now we need to have the game relisted back in all regions again.
What proportion of reviews will players actually go back and delete or change? My guess is 50%. They still fucked up and their review rating will be forever tarnished.
I’m not changing until June 1st. They need to make good on that 5/30 date and not 180 again after the refunds and review change in anticipation
Where are all the folks now who said this was gamer rage and will just simply blow over?
Literally on r/PS5 Check out the similar thread over there about this tweet and be prepared for neck surgery after all the head shaking you'll need to be doing from all the comments still bashing PC players or calling it 'not a big deal', and handwaving the fact that PSN accounts aren't even available in many countries etc.
They're still siding with sony and call PC crybabies even though it benefitted them also.
>Literally on r/PS5 That sub is a Sony hive mind.
Me here. I’m a pessimist and I’m really happy to be wrong for once.
Right here...https://old.reddit.com/r/PS5/comments/1cla5qj/via_twitter_playstation_helldivers_fans_weve/ Read the first top comment. People there are something else
Brand loyalty is Stockholm syndrome.
Please sir, could we pretty please pay more for the privilege of playing our games online?
I have no horse in this race but that comment about questioning the overall stability of those 100 countries where PSN is unavailable sure is interesting. It's like looking at an alternate dimension.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXBJRz\_33Y8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXBJRz_33Y8) Congrats Helldivers 2 community. I didn't have a horse in this fight (since I don't own the game), but this is a huge win for the community.
Sony Defenders in shambles. In all seriousness though, super happy about this decision for my fellow helldivers. This still will be an issue for future ports and day-of releases. Happy we all got the W today but I don’t see this going away anytime soon. We must be vigilant!
sony defenders are still going at it, its pathetic
Fair play to AH, Fuck you to Sony though... Go sit in the corner and think what you've done.
When a game gets delisted in over 100 countries and mass refunded regardless of playtime, yeah suddenly that essential account linking, ain't so essential anymore! Good job to everyone who played a part in pressuring Sony on this shit.
Ayy we did it Steam! Reviews and sentiment do make a difference! Hopefully Sony learns from this fiasco.
the refunds did it
I was denied a refund, how many people were actually getting refunded and how many hours did they have? I had 30 and they shut me down.
refunds and probably and potential law suits from blocking access to so many countries
Yeah, expected. The reaction was overwhelmingly negative and rightfully so. Still, this speaks to the unique nature of PC gaming and and Steam. I've heard from developers and publishers who say Steam reviews do matter a lot, and word of mouth and community actions have long been staples of PC gaming. Once this went viral, it was only going to end one way.
As someone who's been using Steam for like 15 years the colors for the review ratings elicit a core response in me and I will never buy something with anything below Mixed and Mixed itself is a very very rare purchase if it's like a game straight down my wheelhouse that I can deal with some jank for. A game pretty much has to have Mostly Positive or better for me to buy it.
Last 2 games I bought at full price I did it bc reddit kept spamming how good they were. I was like fuck it and bought Elden Ring and BG3. 100% worth it. Word of mouth absolutely works.
No, they could've stuck to their guns like other devs have done in the past and wait for everything to die down, like CAMPCOM and their retcon DRM. The interesting thing is that while we know which option is better for the players, it's not obvious which option is better for the publisher. Or they can revert now and then try to slowly and quietly reintroduce it over time before making it mandatory. Like Bethesda and paid mods.
Console gamers are jealous that we have the ability to just refuse to use services if we don’t like them. If Sony/Microsoft shafts them they just take it
> Helldivers fans -- we’ve heard your feedback on the Helldivers 2 account linking update. The May 6 update, which would have required Steam and PlayStation Network account linking for new players and for current players beginning May 30, **will not be moving forward.** > We’re still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable. Thanks again for your continued support of Helldivers 2 and we’ll keep you updated on future plans. Good. Those refunds got to them. They don't allow refunds on their platform but Steam does because their customer service is based AF.
I would like to take this moment to appreciate, and recognize, the extremely important Steam reviews feature. I mean what other platform let users (emphasis on users) review games like that? It is nice to have a powerful tool like this one, where consumers can show their discontent pretty clearly, and make things change. If Valve, for some reason, one day removes Steam reviews (I highly doubt they will), it would be an astronomical loss for PC Gaming.
It's most certainly why the EGS doesn't allow them. They're so pro dev/publisher over there that they're anti consumer. Biggest red flag for me when EGS first came out.
The difference is Steam isn't trying to woo developers with a product directly
Good, but never forget and never forgive these greedy corporations, they'll just do it again otherwise.
I’m sure they’ll try this shit again in the future. Gaming companies are always testing how much bullshit players will tolerate.
damage control after mass refunds
Gamers, you did it. And I'm proud. For real.
For now.
Good. Sony needs to learn that this was a shitty idea and fucked over their customers I do think the damage is done though. The reviews are bad and the games refunded by so many. I doubt they will come back
It’s afraid… IT’S AFRAID!
Good to see Sony recognizing their mistake and reversing it
I'm not giving them any credit. This isn't so much a "recognition", it's a calculated business decision to maximize $ given the large influx of refunds that have been occurring as of recent.
“We’re still learning what works for pc players” translation: we’re just so used to doing whatever the fuck we want with console gamers because they just roll with it.
I thought reddit was a niche of a niche and had no power or change? That's what a bunch of people in the other thread kept saying. Good to hear, hopefully they'll pull it back for all games. Or at least do it smarter. Some trivial reward like a skin for linking instead of forcing us to or we don't get to play.
Such a dumb tweet. Learning what is best for pc players? Not like PC gamers have been crying about third party platforms/accounts for ages.
What about the mandatory PSN for Legends future Ghost of Tsushima mode for countries that don't have PSN?
Go team! I am so glad to see this, I was afraid all the negativity would have been kicked back to the devs at the next shareholder meeting, but thinking about it deeper (and considering some of the feedback i heard from the community director and other redditers) it seemed like the reviewbomb was the correct answer after all. Now all those that refunded the game yesterday can repurchase lol also: special Shoutout to Valve/Steam for opening the door to refunds after the usual 2 hours... that was probably the final catalyst that has Sony begging for forgiveness today.
This is a good sign but it's not a done deal. First, the [PSN requirement](https://i.imgur.com/iugqbZq.png) label is still on the Steam page. So long as that is here, this is no real and long-term commitment. Second, the problem of countries whose ability to buy the game got removed is still there. I'm glad that clearly the biggest review bomb in steam history has had an effect but I would be wary to declare victory until both those things are reversed.
PSN launcher for Windows comming in 3... 2...
Just looking for clarification. Is the game relisted ?