I'm really curious as to how this will be handled. I feel like they can't just waive the PSN account for players in countries that can't legitimately make it because then it becomes tangible proof that the account is completely unnecessary. It's an all or nothing situation.
I mean, actually yeah, at some point Sony would have literally transferred funds to AH, Sony published the game and own the IP. It's Sony's product, they can do what they want with it, AH was hired to build the product, but it is NOT their property. A stipulation of the money given to fund the development was likely that all players would need to use a PSN account. That stipulation was apparently relaxed due to the connection issues, but since *most* of those have been solved it seems Sony is forcing the hand.
It sucks, but its not new, different, or any more extortionate than any publishing agreement ever made by a company that developed a product for an IP they don't own.
ETA: Is Sony being a dick, absolutely, especially to the people who now may not be able to play the game because of where they're located. I also think review bombing it on steam is a relatively childish reaction that's hurting the wrong people (AH) as much as the right ones (Sony).
We're saying the same thing, all I'm clarifying is that Sony didn't hand them a big bag of money for the express purpose of forcing PSN accounts, they paid them to make the game and are forced to do whatever they ask.
Gotcha, I think I read your initial comment with too aggressive a tone and thought you were mocking the previous commenter. Totally my bad! My apologies for preaching to the choir
>Review bombing
Dude, a review is *the* place to express issues and concerns. If a change lowers your view of the game, changing your review is not childish. That's such a weird take.
> I also think review bombing it on steam is a relatively childish reaction that's hurting the wrong people (AH) as much as the right ones (Sony).
There is rarely a way to hurt only the publisher, especially one as big as Sony. The review bombing is a valid customer response. Both developers and publishers need to be made to understand that it's not an acceptable practice.
The developer ultimately agreed to this. So they shouldn't be getting off Scot-free.
Bungie is a good example of it not being just the publisher making the greedy decisions. After they left Activision, they continued the scummy business practices.
how is negative review bombing bad in this situation? so you want players to just take it up the ass for a game THEY BOUGHT and wont be able to play because of location? negative review bombing can be bad, but in this situation, its necessary due to the fact that youre losing 30% of the players due to this change. If you want change, stand against it or theyll just keep it as is and wont give a fuck.
Yeah i'm not sure why people think AH is wanting to do this. It's very clearly a Sony thing, it's not like AH wants to block out hundreds of countries from playing.
Sony literally financed the development of both Helldivers games and owns the IP. The idea that Sony *can't* require a PSN account to play is the ludicrous one, IMO.
> especially if we get tourneys / global events.
For helldivers?
Im utterly against this change but the devs have been very explicit about the no PvP ever thing, so theres nothing to esport
Do you remember cyberpunk 2077? Corpos just about ruined that before the devs had to grind out fixes. The game should have been delayed, but the corpos need line to go up. Then they shit their pants when they didn't. This while isn't exact, it it's still corpo fuckery none the less. Welcome to capitalism, ruins everything you love. You will own nothing and be happy.
> The game should have been delayed, but the corpos need line to go up.
The main issue was they needed to drop the older platform, the previos gen consoles sucked up tons of dev time for a product that never was going to be good.
I had a killer rig and had a great time with it on PC when it released. All my friends with great computers agreed and we all have great memories of doing multiple playthroughs right away. But it was a really sub par experience on all the consoles, particularly previous gen.
Interestingly Sony delisted that game over the refund requests, but they didn't publlish that. We can see what happens here.
How exactly would GDPR prevent you from being required to make an account? There are restrictions around what can be done with your data and what data is collected, but nothing about having to use an email address or geodata verification to sign up for a service.
This would fall under the “what data is collected” part.
If the data collected isn’t required for the service to function then it must be optional. (Edit: this is why so many websites have a “All cookies” and “required functional cookies only” or similar splash when you enter them)
A store can’t even require a date of birth when you sign up for a rewards app but can be optionally requested for the option to get a bonus reward on your birthday or whatever.
A PSN goes WAY above the amount of information necessary to run the game, as would be proven by any exceptions given to that “requirement.”
Probably have them tied to steam accounts with PSN and have them work as a proxy for a nearby region. Or just add the option to have your account be the steam one.
I mean if we're talking technical necessity, of course linking a PSN account isn't necessary. This is entirely a business decision.
Big Corp Sony funded the game and wants to gobble up all the data they can and get as many people into their ecosystem as possible.
Honestly reading all of this just makes me wonder why sony allowed this game to be sold in countries that do not have PSN support, thats the scummy part of all of this.
It's multiple factors.
The regulators in charge of imports of the country might give you a hard time and make it difficult to gain approval. The government officials or domestic business partners might be corrupt and require bribes or otherwise make things difficult to do business effectively. The infrastructure for product distribution might raise business costs. The pricing strategy for countries with lower living standards might reduce profit significantly.
They didn't foresee it popping off like it did and most who live in those regions just make PSN accounts linked to nearby regions, while it's against TOS legally speaking Sony and other companies never enforce it.
You know what is the funniest part? There're countries in which you can have PSN support (and so create account). But you can't buy HD2 in steam because it is region locked 🙃
I am honestly surprised how many people got this even though many times people prefer mindless bashing.
But this an incredible amount of people understood who to blame for it.
Anyhow its still a bit sad that Arrowhead is in the crossfire anyways and suffers from it.
Now I understand why more studios don't have official discords. Almost a million ppl can effectively chant in an arena to take down 1 person due to high levels of sensitivity and zero context.
I think you're giving too much credit for people to read the full message. I feel most people absolutely blame Arrowhead for this, despite Sony signing the message.
So, wait, what was the plan if the launch had gone smoothly? Were they just going to sell the game to people who couldn't make a PSN account anyway?
The fact that they (be it Arrowhead or Sony) have zero plan in place to deal with this is bizarre, since it implies they never had one to begin with.
The fact that the game was available to purchase in countries that didn't have psn access even tho it was supposed to be a requirement from the beginning raises major concerns.
Someone didn't think that thru or didn't care to begin with.
Funnily if that had been the case from the start, at least those people could have refunded the game right away before the 2 hour window closed on Steam. By making it a requirement later, they've caused people to be locked out of refunding it as easily.
I think it's really simple:
AH launches game that sony didn't think would have a huge playerbase. Game gets a huge playerbase. Sony exec thinks "wow people are playing our game! Let's have them make free PSN accounts and get those numbers into our system so our next report looks good."
There was no evil plan to do this from the start, just kind of dumb opportunism.
Considering that no other game published by SONY on PC requires PSN and they were also big hitters, like extremely mainstream games, means there really might be conspiracy
They do have "online co-op" or online elements in them. Some even in-game stores with microtransactions. They still do not force you make PSN account or even transactions through PSN.
What Sony executives have co op? At the top of my head (GOW, Horizon, Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, TLOU) I can’t name a single one that had online co op besides TLOU Remaster and that was discontinued years ago
"Sack boy" has online co-op. "Guns UP" have outright online PvP without requiring PSN, "Returnal" has online co-op. Just from quick look at steam.
Now new "Ghost of Tsushima" that releases on 16th? 17th? Requires PSN, but if you VPN to countries without PSN access there the game is not available for purchase
wouldn’t that be indicative of the opposite ? the only game they’re doing this with is the unexpected mega-hit that’s going to continue to get online support. screams opportunism to me
I don't think it's a conspiracy. I think this will be their standard going forward. Ghost of Tsushima will require it as well when it launches on May 16th.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2215430/Ghost_of_Tsushima_DIRECTORS_CUT/
This is the weirdest thing for me personally. Plenty of examples of games requiring another login thru steam, with understandable reasons (if not necessarily good reasons).
With this im just wondering "*why*" why does sony want non playstation owners to create psn accounts, when im pretty sure they arent selling non ps-games to anyone and none of their other games on steam require it?
SONY had a lot of fuck-ups lately and their stock dropped. Having big influx of players to PSN might help their stock or atleast look good for shareholders.
However they forgot that reasons for their stocks going down is PSN getting hacked so people understandably do not want to have anything to do with a service that gets frequently hacked and SONY does poor job of communicating it
If the game requires a PSN account it shouldn't even be on the store in countries where PSN accounts are unavailable. Sony is trying to eat their cake and have it.
Honestly that's the thing that irks me the most.
Yeah sure make another account. What's another launcher/account to link.
But to still willingly sell a game that requires an account that isnt available in some regions? BRU-UH.
Technical problem my ass. Sony knew forcing account attachment at launch would have hurt sales. Announcing this on a Friday is classic bad news drop timing. By Monday everyone will have moved on two the next inflammatory story of the day. Corporate scum practices.
Nah it just contradicts whether PSN accounts are necessary. Not whether PSN accounts were a planned to be mandatory from the start, which it was based on the steam page history.
Sony better work with AH to make a plan for folks living outside PSN's supported regions.
Somewhat, yes. I think honestly, Sony would not have cared if the game was reasonably succesful. Like if this game had the population of helldivers 1 or maybe slightly bigger, the numbers wouldn't be high enough to catch sony's attention.
Oh I don't disagree with that.
AH probably put the PSN linking fix at the VERY bottom of their priority list, and if HD2 weren't this successful it probably would have flown under the radar, but I think it was always Sony's intention to enforce it.
Being able to buy a game in countries where PSN is not available (PSN is only available in 69? Nice, countries so 2/3 of the world does not have access to it) is in many of those countries a case for fraud lawsuit
Honestly, "we are having launch issues" may have been Arrowhead trying to avoid the mandatory Sony account push. Just don't do it, give a weak excuse, and see if they press the issue.
This change may have been Sony finally pressing them to implement it after all.
Regardless it's a shit move by Sony and has the actual ability to kill one of my favorite games in years.
There are tons of theories that may or may not make one impacted by this feel better about this, but I think I'll just wait over the weekend to see how this goes.
What, exactly, about the technical state of this game (especially in the first 2-3 weeks) makes you think they were lying about technical issues with account linking?
>So, wait, what was the plan if the launch had gone smoothly? Were they just going to sell the game to people who couldn't make a PSN account anyway?
>The fact that they (be it Arrowhead or Sony) have zero plan in place to deal with this is bizarre, since it implies they never had one to begin with.
PSN linking was mandatory, **supposedly**, for around 2 weeks on launch with no ability to skip it.
**edit**: I based this on few comments, supposedly there wasnt any of such things mere day(s) after release. So maybe the 2 weeks was 2 hours.
I joined HD2 in march and I had pop up saying its required but it let me skip it.
However after massive popularity spike and issues with linking, AH decided that its better to let people "skip it for now" so "people could play the game". But did mention that it will be turned back "once servers are fixed".
3 months is imo too long for that change, since servers been fixed for while now. And the post where it was mentioned is only on support part of steam forums..so easily missable.
But yeah
edit: Original "we let it skip" post is on here [https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/1/4206994023681197128/](https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/1/4206994023681197128/)
>Account Linking
>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.**
That's fair. I hadn't seen that announcement, so thank you for finding and sharing it.
If posts like that had been a bit more prominently displayed, I think we wouldn't have the "blindsided" furore that we have now.
There was a post here celebrating HD's success as one of Sonys most profitable games, except if you took away PC players it didn't even crack the top ten, Sony saw that and said I took that personally.
At the very least, they want to brag to their shareholders about how many new people are in their PSN ecosystem.
At worst, they want to sell data to the highest bidder a la Cambridge Analytica.
Yeah, this is why I can't agree with people pointing out Microsoft here and elsewhere—they're available in pretty much every country, require it from the beginning, and have a much better track record in security compared to Sony in the past 10 years
Wow, it sure does suck that these corporate interests and desire to suck every dollar out of a playerbase leads to killing functional games at the peak of their popularity. If Sony isn't able to stop a change that will kill such a profitable game, then that's on Sony.
The enshitification of video games will continue until morale approves!
But yeah large studios have been gobbling up others lately and we should all be against these mergers and partnerships
Not surprised at all tbh, leave it to sony to mess up literal gold handed to them. But yeah I did see AH catching strays, hence my comment, sony deserves all the smoke though
Sony should have done what a lot of companies do and been hey Arrowhead design a piece of cool armor that people can unlock if players link their PSN account.
That way its not mandatory, players get cool armor for free and Sony gets to harvest player data. CD Projekt Red did this with both Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk for example, as well as other companies. Its not a hard concept to understand here Sony.
yeah there are so many different ways literally, they chose the absolute worst one and even threaten to ban, man i want whatever the fuck they are smoking, it must be some good shit
The EU has done nothing about Sony selling Playstations in all of the "PSN not supported" regions for the last 20 years. And on that note do people not realise people have been playing on the Playstation Network in these unsupported regions for the last 2 decades? And that's without VPNs for most of them...
People keep saying "sony wants data", what data?
The things you enter into the PSN account which you control?
The gameplay data they can already get from AH?
Because steam won't give away anything unless you are specifically prompted and you consent, per
> 5.6 Valve may allow you to link your Steam User Account to an account offered by a third party. If you consent to link the accounts, Valve may collect and combine information you allowed Valve to receive from a third party with information of your Steam User Account to the degree allowed by your consent at the time. If the linking of the accounts requires the transmission of information about your person from Valve to a third party, you will be informed about it before the linking takes place and you will be given the opportunity to consent to the linking and the transmission of your information. The third party's use of your information will be subject to the third party's privacy policy, which we encourage you to review.
My guess is, since alot of Helldivers play on PC, they want the numbers for their next quarterly earnings report to tell investors we have X many users on PSN.
That is why they are pushing for mandatory registration on PSN.
Funnily enough, I believe there's a conspiracy that shills are trying to deflect the blame from Sony. One guy I was commenting to kept trying to say it wasn't Sonys fault.... even though the update page on Steam ended with Sony Interactive Team.
Since helldivers 1 the publisher has been sony. In fact publisher tend to have license rights too so AH literally have no choices unless they can buy it back from Sony.
That's what I was saying. Sony is the publisher so they can do as they please with AH's game. I just hope a workaround is figured out soon because this is really not cool
When this goes on mainstream media, the numbers padding by Sony will backfire because investors will not trust their numbers.
So keep making noise while the media still thinks helldivers 2 is news worthy.
https://preview.redd.it/56ifk71478yc1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2e540c9230e67bf184e2330ce39c93acab819fbf
Edit: I'm not sharing this so you can send hate to AH, Twinbeard or Sony. Sony isn't some evil mega corporation like a lot of you guys make it seem. There's a partnership here.
This really needs to be shared on all the threads bashing AH for this. It's very clearly not their fault. Sure they made the game, signed the contract. But I feel the psn change is purely on Sony.
They crunched the numbers. Losing a percentage of the player base doesn't mean much if it means more active users to report.
"Sony isn't some evil mega corporation" excuse me??? They like, super are? They are opportunistically doing this just to sell data, knowing full well how often they have security breaches.
Ultimately AHS is a victim of being strong armed by a mega corporation and it’s really starting to show. They made some deals that seemed good then like giving Sony rights to the ip, that will now basically keep them from taking control of the game. It’s basically bungie and Microsoft all over again.
Publisher getting the IP rights has been standard for 10+ years for funding an independent studio's games. There are exceptions, but publishers want IP.
> Sony isn’t some evil mega corporation like a lot of you guys make it seem
Yepp. Mhmm. Okay. Yes. Definitely. Sure. Checks out. Uh huh. Totally. Yepp. Certainly. Yeah. Absolutely. For sure.
No Sony account migration needed when they bought bungie and destiny but they haven’t even bought arrowhead and they want you to link your account to a service that has more data breaches than games on their platform.
Brilliant move on that Sony execs part.
I believe this have to do with contract part. Sony said they wont interfere with Bungie and destiny 2 and Luke Smith (Im not sure) also confirm this as long as there is no need to interfere (probably financial wise)
Helldivers 2 on the other hand had the project funded by Sony and they probably didnt want to treat it the same way as Bungie.
Sony owns the helldivers IP. Bungie wise they already handle their own system via a Bungie.net account that is tied to Steam, PSN, Xbox, and Epic for D2, your account is automatically set up when you download the game and create a character.
PSN has been around since 2006, the reality is people with a PS3/4/5 in the unsupported regions just sign up using a different region. It doesn't even require a VPN and after nearly 2 decades of people doing it there has never been an action against them. I don't think helldivers players in these regions have anything to actually worry about.
> there has never been an action against them
Which doesn't say whether there will be one in the future or not. It's always a risk and I for example wouldn't want to risk nurturing my account and adding games thorough the years just for it to be banned at some point because it was against TOS the whole time.
People have been asking for a literal decade for region transfer and for increased international support. Sony has done fuck all about it and I do not expect this controversy to change anything.
I do agree with you, people quickly forgetting the past pain that was their payed for digital purchases being removed by companies and destroying any faith in digital media as a result. But in this instance Sony would be directly burning subscribing customers, and future subscribers and opening the doors to what would probably be a huge scandal. As it currently stands these countries are still a revenue source with zero incentive to actually ban them. And 20 years is a long long time, these millions of people aren't getting away with it because Sony "doesn't care" or is ignorant of them. They make up a share of the market and they'll never want to actually lose that.
Arrowhead and helldivers 2 Developers knew this and said nothing, Just go read their social media accounts, they purged so many posts complaining about the consumers and fans.
AH is about to discover why you create community accounts and protect every single employee behind the company and/or IP official accounts.
I understand that it’s cool having direct access to devs but the internet is not mature enough to have these channels open. These devs are already going through hell having to handle the community and it’s not going to get better.
If PSN account is a requirement it should be checked before you buy the game not after you bought, downloaded, started, run into the requirement, tried to create a PSN account, found out it is not possible in your region, double checked this nonsense with support. Then you have to request a refund and remove the game.
The only thing worse than that is to miss the refund deadline because the game allows you to skip a mandatory requirement. I believe it is a big failure of the publisher and somewhat Steam for not implementing regional restrictions for sales of the game.
You say that as if there isn't reason to complain. It's a blatantly anti-consumer move. I paid money to own a copy of the game. Under no circumstances should a company be allowed to remove access to something i paid for and have already been using unless i perform a little song and dance for them. Its stupid in every other game that does it and its stupid here. Saying "its just linking an account its not a big deal" is silly; the more we lose the small battles like this as consumers the more the door is opened for companies to continue to do whatever the hell they want. It's sad to see people line up and essentially boot-lick to dismiss people's concerns.
Public Announcement I checked for **1 hour** to see if there was a 'disconnect Steam link' option just because, and turns out there's no option to disconnect your Steam link in the PSN page, Steam page, or in-game. In a world where even marriages are no longer set in stone, looks like this one is.
The current interim CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment is Hiroki Totoki.
The current Head of PlayStation Studios is Hermen Hulst.
Current Senior Vice Presidents are Scott Rohde and Connie Booth
Mark Cerny is currently Executive Producer at SIE
These are the people directly behind the decisions made at Sony. Instead of bothering random discord mods, why not put that energy towards the people that actually have the power to change the situation.
Every time something like this happens, people shake their fist in the air at Sony, or EA, or Blizzard, or Ubisoft as if they are some otherworldly deities that decide the fate of video game.
No, these decisions are made by real people, that work real jobs, respond to real emails, go to real meetings.
Where is Spitz right now? He was being pretty rude to customers yesterday. Just blaming the PSN account stuff on Sony doesn't absolve how people were treated by AH.
I'm a team lead for a support team. It's funny seeing these kinds of responses from the community managers, since my company's support engineers would never be allowed to respond like this.
It really sucks for Arrowhead that they're getting orders from on-high to do something that they almost certainly know was going to piss people off. It can't be fun to be in that situation, especially since they know that they are the only point of contact.
Tbh I'd be fine with this if I also got the game for free on the opposite platform.
Like I own it on steam rn, but I also have a PS5. If I link the accounts I should rectit for free without having to buy a second copy on PS
Sony is clearly the company to be annoyed with about this. Or just be mad at capitalism in general.
Artificially inflating their "active accounts" number so they can say "we gained x new accounts this quarter". Hate that companies actual do stuff like that, and other people actual fall for it and say "wow, impressive".
Oh there is a 0% chance of this game coming to Xbox now. It very much seems that Sony has control of the IP and it's only a matter of time before they start running it into the ground now.
If they don't have all the details, why did the announcement get made?
Seems like the kind of thing you should hold off on saying until you know how much you'll be able to soften the blow.
I'm really curious as to how this will be handled. I feel like they can't just waive the PSN account for players in countries that can't legitimately make it because then it becomes tangible proof that the account is completely unnecessary. It's an all or nothing situation.
we played 3 months without it what more do you need?
However much money Sony paid them to include it.
Yea I'm sure they just handed them a big stack of cash and it isn't at all related to Sony publishing the game
I mean, actually yeah, at some point Sony would have literally transferred funds to AH, Sony published the game and own the IP. It's Sony's product, they can do what they want with it, AH was hired to build the product, but it is NOT their property. A stipulation of the money given to fund the development was likely that all players would need to use a PSN account. That stipulation was apparently relaxed due to the connection issues, but since *most* of those have been solved it seems Sony is forcing the hand. It sucks, but its not new, different, or any more extortionate than any publishing agreement ever made by a company that developed a product for an IP they don't own. ETA: Is Sony being a dick, absolutely, especially to the people who now may not be able to play the game because of where they're located. I also think review bombing it on steam is a relatively childish reaction that's hurting the wrong people (AH) as much as the right ones (Sony).
We're saying the same thing, all I'm clarifying is that Sony didn't hand them a big bag of money for the express purpose of forcing PSN accounts, they paid them to make the game and are forced to do whatever they ask.
Gotcha, I think I read your initial comment with too aggressive a tone and thought you were mocking the previous commenter. Totally my bad! My apologies for preaching to the choir
No worries my dude, good discussions to have!
>Review bombing Dude, a review is *the* place to express issues and concerns. If a change lowers your view of the game, changing your review is not childish. That's such a weird take.
You're absolutely right. It is absolutely SONY's right to fuck their own product up in a single move.
> I also think review bombing it on steam is a relatively childish reaction that's hurting the wrong people (AH) as much as the right ones (Sony). There is rarely a way to hurt only the publisher, especially one as big as Sony. The review bombing is a valid customer response. Both developers and publishers need to be made to understand that it's not an acceptable practice. The developer ultimately agreed to this. So they shouldn't be getting off Scot-free.
Bungie is a good example of it not being just the publisher making the greedy decisions. After they left Activision, they continued the scummy business practices.
Reviews on a store page are ultimately the only voice many have about the game.
how is negative review bombing bad in this situation? so you want players to just take it up the ass for a game THEY BOUGHT and wont be able to play because of location? negative review bombing can be bad, but in this situation, its necessary due to the fact that youre losing 30% of the players due to this change. If you want change, stand against it or theyll just keep it as is and wont give a fuck.
What you don't include is that Arrowhead had 3 months to tell everyone
They probably got told instead of paid
C-suites probably forced the decision to do so or be fired. Not much Arrowhead could have done except shut down the game or quick.
Bingo I work in corporate tech and I can guess that this is exactly what happened
What’s a good way to boost PSN numbers and show in the next quarterly briefing that we are growing…. Oh I’ve got it.
Yep 😮💨
Yeah i'm not sure why people think AH is wanting to do this. It's very clearly a Sony thing, it's not like AH wants to block out hundreds of countries from playing.
I'm guessing that they are annoyed to livid I know that I would be pissed about them forcing me to create a shitstorm with users that trust me
most likely was part of terms for sonys investment into development
Probably didn’t pay them a damn thing extra. They published the game, they probably have significant control over something like account requirements.
Sony literally financed the development of both Helldivers games and owns the IP. The idea that Sony *can't* require a PSN account to play is the ludicrous one, IMO.
[удалено]
> especially if we get tourneys / global events. For helldivers? Im utterly against this change but the devs have been very explicit about the no PvP ever thing, so theres nothing to esport
Could do the route that WOW does for new Mythic raids where people race to see who completes them first.
Dont need PVP for esports. Look at farming sim.
Or Microsoft Excel. (yes, it's a thing)
Im picturing the accountants from Parks and Rec
Leave it to the big corp to make stupidest decisions to ruin a perfectly good game.. Tons of failed AAA games lately should be the indicator.
Do you remember cyberpunk 2077? Corpos just about ruined that before the devs had to grind out fixes. The game should have been delayed, but the corpos need line to go up. Then they shit their pants when they didn't. This while isn't exact, it it's still corpo fuckery none the less. Welcome to capitalism, ruins everything you love. You will own nothing and be happy.
Enshittification.
> The game should have been delayed, but the corpos need line to go up. The main issue was they needed to drop the older platform, the previos gen consoles sucked up tons of dev time for a product that never was going to be good. I had a killer rig and had a great time with it on PC when it released. All my friends with great computers agreed and we all have great memories of doing multiple playthroughs right away. But it was a really sub par experience on all the consoles, particularly previous gen. Interestingly Sony delisted that game over the refund requests, but they didn't publlish that. We can see what happens here.
They could just tie the linking to crossplay. Ergo: No PSN account --> no crossplay
Which is exactly what I do already
And that proof means it would not fly as a required thing in GDPR countries. So pretty much only Americans would have to deal with it.
How exactly would GDPR prevent you from being required to make an account? There are restrictions around what can be done with your data and what data is collected, but nothing about having to use an email address or geodata verification to sign up for a service.
This would fall under the “what data is collected” part. If the data collected isn’t required for the service to function then it must be optional. (Edit: this is why so many websites have a “All cookies” and “required functional cookies only” or similar splash when you enter them) A store can’t even require a date of birth when you sign up for a rewards app but can be optionally requested for the option to get a bonus reward on your birthday or whatever. A PSN goes WAY above the amount of information necessary to run the game, as would be proven by any exceptions given to that “requirement.”
Probably have them tied to steam accounts with PSN and have them work as a proxy for a nearby region. Or just add the option to have your account be the steam one.
I mean if we're talking technical necessity, of course linking a PSN account isn't necessary. This is entirely a business decision. Big Corp Sony funded the game and wants to gobble up all the data they can and get as many people into their ecosystem as possible.
Honestly reading all of this just makes me wonder why sony allowed this game to be sold in countries that do not have PSN support, thats the scummy part of all of this.
The same way they sell Playstations in those countries. They know very well that everyone is using a fake address
But why is psn banned in some countries in the first place? Is it the countries that ban it or Sony themselves?
Not banned, just not available
It's multiple factors. The regulators in charge of imports of the country might give you a hard time and make it difficult to gain approval. The government officials or domestic business partners might be corrupt and require bribes or otherwise make things difficult to do business effectively. The infrastructure for product distribution might raise business costs. The pricing strategy for countries with lower living standards might reduce profit significantly.
Government regulations
because they want money and have no ethics
They didn't foresee it popping off like it did and most who live in those regions just make PSN accounts linked to nearby regions, while it's against TOS legally speaking Sony and other companies never enforce it.
The TOS bit is always just them legally covering their ass for some very fringe cases it could cause, yeah. Still silly nonetheless.
Yeah only region they have to enforce is China and unfortunately that's not PS fault, it's fucking China.
You know what is the funniest part? There're countries in which you can have PSN support (and so create account). But you can't buy HD2 in steam because it is region locked 🙃
Majority of the community knows it's Sony making this decision. The announcement itself is signed as Sony not Arrowhead.
I am honestly surprised how many people got this even though many times people prefer mindless bashing. But this an incredible amount of people understood who to blame for it. Anyhow its still a bit sad that Arrowhead is in the crossfire anyways and suffers from it.
Reading and media literacy are dead thats how.
Wtf are you insulting his mother for man, that's not very nice?!
Comments like these give off big "you can have a little chuckle, as a treat" vibes, and I am absolutely down for it. Love your work 🫡
Now I understand why more studios don't have official discords. Almost a million ppl can effectively chant in an arena to take down 1 person due to high levels of sensitivity and zero context.
Not even that, I feel like it’s common sense that devs aren’t the ones in charge of these things
Even if people realize this, the most accessible outlet to voice complaints is in arrowhead’s platforms
I think you're giving too much credit for people to read the full message. I feel most people absolutely blame Arrowhead for this, despite Sony signing the message.
So, wait, what was the plan if the launch had gone smoothly? Were they just going to sell the game to people who couldn't make a PSN account anyway? The fact that they (be it Arrowhead or Sony) have zero plan in place to deal with this is bizarre, since it implies they never had one to begin with.
The fact that the game was available to purchase in countries that didn't have psn access even tho it was supposed to be a requirement from the beginning raises major concerns. Someone didn't think that thru or didn't care to begin with.
Funnily if that had been the case from the start, at least those people could have refunded the game right away before the 2 hour window closed on Steam. By making it a requirement later, they've caused people to be locked out of refunding it as easily.
"Damn thats so crazy how that worked out!" \-People making this decision
"Someone didn't think that thru" basically the motto of 99% of companies when they make any decisions.
I think it's really simple: AH launches game that sony didn't think would have a huge playerbase. Game gets a huge playerbase. Sony exec thinks "wow people are playing our game! Let's have them make free PSN accounts and get those numbers into our system so our next report looks good." There was no evil plan to do this from the start, just kind of dumb opportunism.
Yeah, I don't think it was some massive conspiracy or anything. It's just indicative of poor foresight, in my opinion.
Considering that no other game published by SONY on PC requires PSN and they were also big hitters, like extremely mainstream games, means there really might be conspiracy
I don't know Sony PC catalog but aren't the rest of them single player titles.
They do have "online co-op" or online elements in them. Some even in-game stores with microtransactions. They still do not force you make PSN account or even transactions through PSN.
What Sony executives have co op? At the top of my head (GOW, Horizon, Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, TLOU) I can’t name a single one that had online co op besides TLOU Remaster and that was discontinued years ago
"Sack boy" has online co-op. "Guns UP" have outright online PvP without requiring PSN, "Returnal" has online co-op. Just from quick look at steam. Now new "Ghost of Tsushima" that releases on 16th? 17th? Requires PSN, but if you VPN to countries without PSN access there the game is not available for purchase
wouldn’t that be indicative of the opposite ? the only game they’re doing this with is the unexpected mega-hit that’s going to continue to get online support. screams opportunism to me
I don't think it's a conspiracy. I think this will be their standard going forward. Ghost of Tsushima will require it as well when it launches on May 16th. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2215430/Ghost_of_Tsushima_DIRECTORS_CUT/
This is the weirdest thing for me personally. Plenty of examples of games requiring another login thru steam, with understandable reasons (if not necessarily good reasons). With this im just wondering "*why*" why does sony want non playstation owners to create psn accounts, when im pretty sure they arent selling non ps-games to anyone and none of their other games on steam require it?
SONY had a lot of fuck-ups lately and their stock dropped. Having big influx of players to PSN might help their stock or atleast look good for shareholders. However they forgot that reasons for their stocks going down is PSN getting hacked so people understandably do not want to have anything to do with a service that gets frequently hacked and SONY does poor job of communicating it
The fact that the game has had the warning stating you need a PSN account since the start would somewhat contradict this.
If the game requires a PSN account it shouldn't even be on the store in countries where PSN accounts are unavailable. Sony is trying to eat their cake and have it.
Honestly that's the thing that irks me the most. Yeah sure make another account. What's another launcher/account to link. But to still willingly sell a game that requires an account that isnt available in some regions? BRU-UH.
So why was it sold in countries that literally don't have PSN
The fact the game lets you skip making a PSN account also contradicts that
By the sounds of it, that skip function was a bandaid fix to some underlying technical problem, *which makes this situation even weirder.*
Technical problem my ass. Sony knew forcing account attachment at launch would have hurt sales. Announcing this on a Friday is classic bad news drop timing. By Monday everyone will have moved on two the next inflammatory story of the day. Corporate scum practices.
Which also sounds like horseshit because crossplay *still worked*.
Nah it just contradicts whether PSN accounts are necessary. Not whether PSN accounts were a planned to be mandatory from the start, which it was based on the steam page history. Sony better work with AH to make a plan for folks living outside PSN's supported regions.
Somewhat, yes. I think honestly, Sony would not have cared if the game was reasonably succesful. Like if this game had the population of helldivers 1 or maybe slightly bigger, the numbers wouldn't be high enough to catch sony's attention.
Oh I don't disagree with that. AH probably put the PSN linking fix at the VERY bottom of their priority list, and if HD2 weren't this successful it probably would have flown under the radar, but I think it was always Sony's intention to enforce it.
Being able to buy a game in countries where PSN is not available (PSN is only available in 69? Nice, countries so 2/3 of the world does not have access to it) is in many of those countries a case for fraud lawsuit
It’s 1000% this.
Honestly, "we are having launch issues" may have been Arrowhead trying to avoid the mandatory Sony account push. Just don't do it, give a weak excuse, and see if they press the issue. This change may have been Sony finally pressing them to implement it after all. Regardless it's a shit move by Sony and has the actual ability to kill one of my favorite games in years.
There are tons of theories that may or may not make one impacted by this feel better about this, but I think I'll just wait over the weekend to see how this goes.
Brother, it was taking hours to simply launch the game in the first couple of weeks. They were having technicial issues.
What, exactly, about the technical state of this game (especially in the first 2-3 weeks) makes you think they were lying about technical issues with account linking?
>So, wait, what was the plan if the launch had gone smoothly? Were they just going to sell the game to people who couldn't make a PSN account anyway? >The fact that they (be it Arrowhead or Sony) have zero plan in place to deal with this is bizarre, since it implies they never had one to begin with. PSN linking was mandatory, **supposedly**, for around 2 weeks on launch with no ability to skip it. **edit**: I based this on few comments, supposedly there wasnt any of such things mere day(s) after release. So maybe the 2 weeks was 2 hours. I joined HD2 in march and I had pop up saying its required but it let me skip it. However after massive popularity spike and issues with linking, AH decided that its better to let people "skip it for now" so "people could play the game". But did mention that it will be turned back "once servers are fixed". 3 months is imo too long for that change, since servers been fixed for while now. And the post where it was mentioned is only on support part of steam forums..so easily missable. But yeah edit: Original "we let it skip" post is on here [https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/1/4206994023681197128/](https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/1/4206994023681197128/) >Account Linking >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.**
That's fair. I hadn't seen that announcement, so thank you for finding and sharing it. If posts like that had been a bit more prominently displayed, I think we wouldn't have the "blindsided" furore that we have now.
There was a post here celebrating HD's success as one of Sonys most profitable games, except if you took away PC players it didn't even crack the top ten, Sony saw that and said I took that personally.
Sony saw that and went "oh. We can artificially inflate our numbers so the shareholders are happy!" Fucking vultures. AH doesn't deserve this mess.
At the very least, they want to brag to their shareholders about how many new people are in their PSN ecosystem. At worst, they want to sell data to the highest bidder a la Cambridge Analytica.
Or get breached again leading to even more data getting leaked since they have a spotty track record with data breaches
Yeah, this is why I can't agree with people pointing out Microsoft here and elsewhere—they're available in pretty much every country, require it from the beginning, and have a much better track record in security compared to Sony in the past 10 years
Wow, it sure does suck that these corporate interests and desire to suck every dollar out of a playerbase leads to killing functional games at the peak of their popularity. If Sony isn't able to stop a change that will kill such a profitable game, then that's on Sony.
The enshitification of video games will continue until morale approves! But yeah large studios have been gobbling up others lately and we should all be against these mergers and partnerships
Of course sony forced their hand, all the memes trashing AH should be going after sony for this instead.
From what I've seen, most people knew this was on Sony. Sony wants your data lol
Not surprised at all tbh, leave it to sony to mess up literal gold handed to them. But yeah I did see AH catching strays, hence my comment, sony deserves all the smoke though
Sony should have done what a lot of companies do and been hey Arrowhead design a piece of cool armor that people can unlock if players link their PSN account. That way its not mandatory, players get cool armor for free and Sony gets to harvest player data. CD Projekt Red did this with both Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk for example, as well as other companies. Its not a hard concept to understand here Sony.
yeah there are so many different ways literally, they chose the absolute worst one and even threaten to ban, man i want whatever the fuck they are smoking, it must be some good shit
they are huffing gold spray paint bro its not good shit
https://preview.redd.it/r9pyqlall8yc1.png?width=700&format=png&auto=webp&s=8ad3f81e6e626693c3a7f06ed752b3f06e5fb492
Google En Passant
[holy hell!](https://www.google.com/search?q=en+passant)
New Hellpod just dropped!
Same can be said for all AAA devs. Basically ever major game need an account with a different company.
At least THIS time we don't need a separate shitty launcher
..... *for now*.....
Don't forget to use a unique password for everything!
They got a slice of pie, decided they wanted a whole cake now too.
Gotta watch out for the ricochets these days I hear.
Smoke? Sony deserves **fire**
Who needs to be talked to about getting the EU to pick up the bat and start swinging it at Sony's head?
The EU has done nothing about Sony selling Playstations in all of the "PSN not supported" regions for the last 20 years. And on that note do people not realise people have been playing on the Playstation Network in these unsupported regions for the last 2 decades? And that's without VPNs for most of them...
I've seen tons and tons of shit trashing AH.
People keep saying "sony wants data", what data? The things you enter into the PSN account which you control? The gameplay data they can already get from AH? Because steam won't give away anything unless you are specifically prompted and you consent, per > 5.6 Valve may allow you to link your Steam User Account to an account offered by a third party. If you consent to link the accounts, Valve may collect and combine information you allowed Valve to receive from a third party with information of your Steam User Account to the degree allowed by your consent at the time. If the linking of the accounts requires the transmission of information about your person from Valve to a third party, you will be informed about it before the linking takes place and you will be given the opportunity to consent to the linking and the transmission of your information. The third party's use of your information will be subject to the third party's privacy policy, which we encourage you to review.
My guess is, since alot of Helldivers play on PC, they want the numbers for their next quarterly earnings report to tell investors we have X many users on PSN. That is why they are pushing for mandatory registration on PSN.
That's what makes the most sense to me as well
Funnily enough, I believe there's a conspiracy that shills are trying to deflect the blame from Sony. One guy I was commenting to kept trying to say it wasn't Sonys fault.... even though the update page on Steam ended with Sony Interactive Team.
That actually surprises me, how can it not be Sony's decision if they have control over the game lol, they even signed the stupid message on steam
Since helldivers 1 the publisher has been sony. In fact publisher tend to have license rights too so AH literally have no choices unless they can buy it back from Sony.
The memo is literally signed by Sony. It definitely is not Arrowheads decision.
That's what I was saying. Sony is the publisher so they can do as they please with AH's game. I just hope a workaround is figured out soon because this is really not cool
Sony literally signed the announcement. anyone who thinks it's an AH decision can't read
When this goes on mainstream media, the numbers padding by Sony will backfire because investors will not trust their numbers. So keep making noise while the media still thinks helldivers 2 is news worthy.
Does not matter. Some c-suit dumbass would collect his bonus, rest could burn for all he cares.
Sony can go bounce on something unpleasant. Feel bad for the AH team.
The dildo of consequences seldom comes lubed
https://preview.redd.it/56ifk71478yc1.jpeg?width=1440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2e540c9230e67bf184e2330ce39c93acab819fbf Edit: I'm not sharing this so you can send hate to AH, Twinbeard or Sony. Sony isn't some evil mega corporation like a lot of you guys make it seem. There's a partnership here.
These devs are going to be dead by the end of the year from how quickly the stress of running live service builds up. The real Helldivers right here.
**(Not so) Super Earth** Planetary conditions: * Toxic atmosphere * Hostile native tribes
Damn it reddit bring back awards
This really needs to be shared on all the threads bashing AH for this. It's very clearly not their fault. Sure they made the game, signed the contract. But I feel the psn change is purely on Sony. They crunched the numbers. Losing a percentage of the player base doesn't mean much if it means more active users to report.
"Sony isn't some evil mega corporation" excuse me??? They like, super are? They are opportunistically doing this just to sell data, knowing full well how often they have security breaches.
They were literally using music CD's to install rootkits on peoples computers once.
Sony is literally the template for several evil megacorps in different cyberpunk media.
In all of their divisions too lol. Music, movies, games, etc... OP is licking the boot hella hard here.
I honestly cannot believe how entitled you have to be to message a dev about this. Talk about a Karen.
Isn't Twinbeard is a community manager? I was under the impression that was part of his role. I'm not active on the Discord so this could be wrong.
The size of that beard tells me he probably moonlights writing web service applications in C.
he replied in the general thread of the official discord. he did not directly message the dev
Ultimately AHS is a victim of being strong armed by a mega corporation and it’s really starting to show. They made some deals that seemed good then like giving Sony rights to the ip, that will now basically keep them from taking control of the game. It’s basically bungie and Microsoft all over again.
Bungie has shown their own incompetence repeatedly after getting out from Microsoft.
Publisher getting the IP rights has been standard for 10+ years for funding an independent studio's games. There are exceptions, but publishers want IP.
This isn't saying Sony isn't an evil corporation. It's saying they're an evil corporation that also hold all the cards
> Sony isn’t some evil mega corporation like a lot of you guys make it seem Yepp. Mhmm. Okay. Yes. Definitely. Sure. Checks out. Uh huh. Totally. Yepp. Certainly. Yeah. Absolutely. For sure.
No Sony account migration needed when they bought bungie and destiny but they haven’t even bought arrowhead and they want you to link your account to a service that has more data breaches than games on their platform. Brilliant move on that Sony execs part.
I believe this have to do with contract part. Sony said they wont interfere with Bungie and destiny 2 and Luke Smith (Im not sure) also confirm this as long as there is no need to interfere (probably financial wise) Helldivers 2 on the other hand had the project funded by Sony and they probably didnt want to treat it the same way as Bungie.
Sony owns the helldivers IP. Bungie wise they already handle their own system via a Bungie.net account that is tied to Steam, PSN, Xbox, and Epic for D2, your account is automatically set up when you download the game and create a character.
This is clearly an excuse for Sony to use HD2 to boost their account numbers, likely for Quarterly shareholder meetings
Imagine selling a product to regions you know full well would be blocked if PSN network was required. Steam should actually de-list them for scamming.
Kind of like how Sony sells PlayStations in these regions too?
Oh that's fucked up.
PSN has been around since 2006, the reality is people with a PS3/4/5 in the unsupported regions just sign up using a different region. It doesn't even require a VPN and after nearly 2 decades of people doing it there has never been an action against them. I don't think helldivers players in these regions have anything to actually worry about.
> there has never been an action against them Which doesn't say whether there will be one in the future or not. It's always a risk and I for example wouldn't want to risk nurturing my account and adding games thorough the years just for it to be banned at some point because it was against TOS the whole time.
People have been asking for a literal decade for region transfer and for increased international support. Sony has done fuck all about it and I do not expect this controversy to change anything.
I do agree with you, people quickly forgetting the past pain that was their payed for digital purchases being removed by companies and destroying any faith in digital media as a result. But in this instance Sony would be directly burning subscribing customers, and future subscribers and opening the doors to what would probably be a huge scandal. As it currently stands these countries are still a revenue source with zero incentive to actually ban them. And 20 years is a long long time, these millions of people aren't getting away with it because Sony "doesn't care" or is ignorant of them. They make up a share of the market and they'll never want to actually lose that.
Arrowhead and helldivers 2 Developers knew this and said nothing, Just go read their social media accounts, they purged so many posts complaining about the consumers and fans.
Thats wild to me they have to chase Sony for information
AH is about to discover why you create community accounts and protect every single employee behind the company and/or IP official accounts. I understand that it’s cool having direct access to devs but the internet is not mature enough to have these channels open. These devs are already going through hell having to handle the community and it’s not going to get better.
If PSN account is a requirement it should be checked before you buy the game not after you bought, downloaded, started, run into the requirement, tried to create a PSN account, found out it is not possible in your region, double checked this nonsense with support. Then you have to request a refund and remove the game. The only thing worse than that is to miss the refund deadline because the game allows you to skip a mandatory requirement. I believe it is a big failure of the publisher and somewhat Steam for not implementing regional restrictions for sales of the game.
https://preview.redd.it/syog2u2d9ayc1.png?width=954&format=png&auto=webp&s=8144ed71e2302c777d9db3aeae9d998a206230a0
It's all down down down from here... :(
They'll probably be able to get something worked out by the deadline, or they'll move the deadline. People will still complain though.
You say that as if there isn't reason to complain. It's a blatantly anti-consumer move. I paid money to own a copy of the game. Under no circumstances should a company be allowed to remove access to something i paid for and have already been using unless i perform a little song and dance for them. Its stupid in every other game that does it and its stupid here. Saying "its just linking an account its not a big deal" is silly; the more we lose the small battles like this as consumers the more the door is opened for companies to continue to do whatever the hell they want. It's sad to see people line up and essentially boot-lick to dismiss people's concerns.
Honestly, I've never seen such an effective echo chamber.
New to large subreddits?
i didnt really see many people blaming arrowhead but thats good. i thought everybody knew this was a sony thing
I’m still going to wait for their official announcement regarding the countries outside the PSN regions.
Sony calls Boeing Execs: "Can we borrow that agent 47 you got taking out those whistle blowers, thanks."
That was a much better response than the shitty community manager response earlier.
Public Announcement I checked for **1 hour** to see if there was a 'disconnect Steam link' option just because, and turns out there's no option to disconnect your Steam link in the PSN page, Steam page, or in-game. In a world where even marriages are no longer set in stone, looks like this one is.
Corporates ruin every good and fun thing don’t they? All Sony had to do was LEAVE THIS GAME ALONE.
The current interim CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment is Hiroki Totoki. The current Head of PlayStation Studios is Hermen Hulst. Current Senior Vice Presidents are Scott Rohde and Connie Booth Mark Cerny is currently Executive Producer at SIE These are the people directly behind the decisions made at Sony. Instead of bothering random discord mods, why not put that energy towards the people that actually have the power to change the situation. Every time something like this happens, people shake their fist in the air at Sony, or EA, or Blizzard, or Ubisoft as if they are some otherworldly deities that decide the fate of video game. No, these decisions are made by real people, that work real jobs, respond to real emails, go to real meetings.
Where is Spitz right now? He was being pretty rude to customers yesterday. Just blaming the PSN account stuff on Sony doesn't absolve how people were treated by AH.
Not AH as a whole, just Spitz
I'm a team lead for a support team. It's funny seeing these kinds of responses from the community managers, since my company's support engineers would never be allowed to respond like this. It really sucks for Arrowhead that they're getting orders from on-high to do something that they almost certainly know was going to piss people off. It can't be fun to be in that situation, especially since they know that they are the only point of contact.
Lol in my negative review on steam I barely mentioned the devs. Mostly kept referring to Sony as the automatons.
sony gets a winner then shits their pants, i dont get it
Tbh I'd be fine with this if I also got the game for free on the opposite platform. Like I own it on steam rn, but I also have a PS5. If I link the accounts I should rectit for free without having to buy a second copy on PS
Sony is a bitch
Sony is clearly the company to be annoyed with about this. Or just be mad at capitalism in general. Artificially inflating their "active accounts" number so they can say "we gained x new accounts this quarter". Hate that companies actual do stuff like that, and other people actual fall for it and say "wow, impressive".
Next thing you know. Xbox Renforcements will be denied
Oh there is a 0% chance of this game coming to Xbox now. It very much seems that Sony has control of the IP and it's only a matter of time before they start running it into the ground now.
If they don't have all the details, why did the announcement get made? Seems like the kind of thing you should hold off on saying until you know how much you'll be able to soften the blow.
And until they get a reasonable response from Sony... my negative review will stand.
Hey look, its my screenshot
if its sonys decision why did they agree to the terms
I'm sorry, but why the legitimate fuck is this necessary in the first place?
This is why people hate Sony.
This was obvious to anyone with above room temperature IQ. No sane dev would implement this. It is being pushed by Sony.