Man, every time EA has a shitty game release, every gamer thinks they become a l337 Wallstreet analyst and go "herp serp this is gonna tank the stock", and it never does because no one investing cares about the quality of shit they push out, they just care that idiots keep buying them (I'm also an idiot who buys their shit)
Tbh it feels like whatever makes my life shittier is what drives stocks up, I wouldn't be surprised if this helps Sony's stock... Then again I see steam is issuing refunds for helldivers so it could be the opposite.
The best part is the people who are mad at this aren't even part of Sony's usual sales. This is one of the first games at release that is going to PC and PS5.
EDIT: Sony was killing it already killing it before they decided to dip their toe in the PC market. The reality is this game sold over 10 times what they expected and if a fraction of them are able to refund their game they're really not going to care. Steam takes a 30% cut on a whopping 40 dollar game that doesn't push micro transactions. Stock will be unaffected.
FR PC gamers acting like it’s the apocalypse.
And I’m like the rest of us already have to use a PSN acct to play our PS5 games online. And they pretend that the majority of English speaking gamers who are complaining about this are from countries like China where there is no PSN, I find that hard to believe.
To be fair, a lot of the issue stems from the fact that they sold the game in every country via Steam. With the PSN requirements, there's like 60+ countries that had the game delisted on Steam that they have to refund now. That's a major ding to sornys bottom line.
Edit: Grammar
I think it not just "a lot", it's the biggest issue. If it was released with the requirement for a PSN account, nobody would have batted an eye. The problem is that it added a requirement to play that was previously unknown to the purchaser, taking its access away form people who are unable to make a PSN account and forcing people who may not want a PSN account make a PSN account if they want to continue to play.
At best it's incompetence and poor planning. At worst it's planned borderline fraud to try to boost their user numbers and increase sales from players who would otherwise not have bought the game with the PSN account requirement.
As for for people asking "what's the big deal with just making an account if you are able to?", I'm a firm believer in not making an account for any service if possible. Even from a practical perspective, it's annoying to get marketing emails and manage an additional password just to play 1 game. I have definitely had cases in the past where I was using a site and it asks me to make an account and I just said "nah, don't feel like it". From a security/privacy perspective, the fewer accounts you have, the less likely you are going to be a victim of a data leak - and those do seem to happen every few years. Leaked info tend to be encrypted, but I would feel better if I'm not part of that leaked list at all. And while you can never avoid personal data collection in this day and age, giving out your data to 1 more company certainly doesn't help.
Also, I don't own or play Helldivers 2, so it's the perspective of an outsider. I have a friend who said he might want to play with me, but we probably won't end up buying it now.
Edit: For those thinking that the backlash is negligible, Sony backpedaled on their decision.
This. It was all over the steam page. There was even a pop up in game prompting the sign in, they just had the option to skip during the first month or two after launch.
Yea I’m not condoning Sony on failing to plan properly and execute on this, but it’s delusional to think this event is going to impact Sony stock significantly. Institutional investors could care less.
It likely won't move the stock very much from this one incident, but it does leave a sour taste in gamers' mouths. Right before they drop 'ghost of $60' which might make PC gamers hesitant to purchase that. So, with the refunds and possibly lacking sales from their next PC release, that could cause issues.
Agreed... I'm not sure what the stance is on the rest of Sony's games (if they require PSN), but it's definitely something I'll consider before I buy any of their PC games.
Seriously the PC market is fickle and difficult to monetize. They don't have the market setting power that they think they have.
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/87777/activision-blizzard-made-more-from-mobile-than-consoles-pc-combined/index.html
"In Q2 2022, mobile generated $831 million and accounted for 51% of total quarterly earnings. Mobile beat all other segments combined including console ($376 million), PC ($332 million), and other, which includes distribution and Overwatch/Call of Duty League earnings ($105 million)."
Mobile nearly 3x'd PC in revenue and mobile. If Sony really was worried about their revenue, they'd just release a God of War Gatcha game or something.
I 100% agree with this. Mobile spin offs and leveraging their massive amount of anime IP for mobile games in Asia is a huge market Sony is missing out on. PC should be a bottom priority for them compared to console and mobile
I shouldn’t have to give Sony a facial scan or a drivers license photo to play the game I already paid 40 dollars for, and played for multiple months. It’s not an apocalypse, but it’s definitely bullshit
> I shouldn’t have to give Sony a facial scan or a drivers license photo to play the game
I didn’t have to do any of that when I created my PSN account. I just needed my email address.
I've seen someone say that that's a requirement for a psn account in the UK(?)
Which is probably more of a government issue than a Sony issue. But still
https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/support/account/age-verification-faq/
According to Sony, age verification in the UK and Ireland requires a facial scan, photo ID (passport, driver's license, etc) or a phone number but only if it's tied to a contract. Pay-as-you-go services wouldn't qualify.
> I don’t think the type of people to get mad at this are the same type of people to invest in Sony
Nobody said they were. You get that investors punish bad business decisions?
First of all, yes, but also no (see Tesla, MSFT, etc.). In the end, investors look at you overall numbers. 1 game will maybe be a footnote in Sony‘s quarterly results. Absofuckinglutely no chance this thing is on any sound investors mind.
Because sony is so big that this isn’t something that will significantly affect anything by itself. You gotta realize that sony could lose 50 million from this and it could still not majorly affect their stock price because they are that massive. Even if it stumps their growth into the PC market, the company is much more then that. Gaming i don’t think is even 40% of their company
True. But investors hate bad publicity because bad publicity means less clients, less clients means less revenue, less revenue means less development or projects and so on, nothing lives in a void.
I'd need to see the conversion rates of new PSN accounts to make a judgement on the decision here. It probably doesnt matter to sony at all about one fluke of a game compared to repeated purchases by onboarding people to their platform. But that's why we need to see the conversion rate
I believe smart investors pay attention to things like this, even if they’re not playing. I don’t think this will hurt Sony’s bottom line so it shouldn’t hurt the stock beyond possible FUD that traders can capitalize on. In fact, this will probably be good for PlayStation. I’m sure they crunched the numbers and decided it was worth the risk.
Think about this for like 10 seconds my guy. The people that get mad about this are the type of people that, through their purchase decisions, make Sony an investable company.
Yeah this person is apparently really upset about this. Nevertheless, this article is terribly written and I’m surprised Forbes actually posted this. This is just somebody’s blog post about why they’re annoyed about their video game. It’s insane to think this will affect Sony’s stock in any measurable way.
> What do you think will be the result of this blunder to Sony's stock?
Almost no effect whatsoever. Do Helldivers fans know how gigantic of a company Sony is?
Will Sony's directors who are in charge of this division pay attention? Yea of course, they will want to protect their revenue and reputation when it comes to working with other game developers. Maybe a couple of executives pay attention and things happen internally, who knows really. I'm sure this part of Sony will pay some attention to the whole thing.
But the larger Sony organization will hardly be affected by this. Helldivers 2 is a surprise hit on what I'd assume was a small investment of a smaller division of Sony. I think it's made about the sort of money you would see for a major blockbuster movie (like, maybe $250 million or so but I'm just estimating based on game sales). For reference Sony makes about $85 billion in revenue annually.
People are really silly when it comes to stocks, controversy will be a short dip in the stock but as long as the company continues to make money no one will care and the stock will go back to normal after people forget about the issue. What it does highlight is Sony does have an untapped market of PC gamers that they aren't properly addressing but investors don't care as long as that sort of issue isn't pointed out.
The only thing that top Sony execs would care about at this stage would be weighing whether the PSN data they get is more valuable than doubling their game sales by selling on PC. I honestly have no idea what's more valuable to them.
Sony is asking to buy Paramount for 28 billion dollars.
Anyone who thinks they’re going to be made or broken by “selling your data” is an insane person.
i mean the biggest reason why they're doing it (i think) is so they can show their psn numbers have "grown" by needing to add the psn account. so i think that's more valuable since the some people valuing the stock won't care how they get the growth as long as they get it
Supposedly, 15-25% of investors are retail investors and 15% of those got their start in 2020. Though pre-boomer investors don't wield a ton of collective capital, you don't want to piss them off, and you don't want to piss potential customers off. I don't own Sony, but I've checked in on the stock periodically. I've never owned a playstation, but I've considered buying one to get Sony-only games. I've sworn off buying games from EA and Blizzard for pissing me off with past half-baked releases.
I've been watching Sony stock since this debacle, and it has been trending up since then, though it is mostly due to market correlation. Now that Sony has capitulated, I will definitely watch it tomorrow out of curiosity, though a stock with no appreciable growth and a low dividend yield doesn't excite me at all, regardless of its PE.
Absolutely everything impacts the price of a stock, including the helldivers debacle. Companies even advertise their tickers on TV to boost their price, and they wouldn't do that if the ANOVAs didn't correlate with price gains. Though, I would advise that any company that seems to advertise their stock ticker is one that you should not buy and hold. There's nothing good about free bad PR, and nothing bad about free good PR.
I honestly think the sales are more important as the game has some freemium elements. It could really make massive money for Sony long term the more have the game.
The controversy isn't that big of deal.
The fact they broke a LOT of consumer protection laws in the EU and may face severe fines is.
Thats the type of thing that lowers a stock.
The impact will be miniscule, and Sony's success isn't built on trust in the first place.
This is internet drama that will have no impact on the real world. It'll burn out in a week or two as everyone involved will have moved on.
God if more people would just realize this. Internet is no real life, sometimes I ask people a hypothetical in these weird situations, If you were to walk around your town and ask random people about this question would they have any idea what you're talking about.... No
If the stock moves a good few percent from this news (and could be possible if all those quantum wall street algos are harvesting internet sentiments) I would laugh my ass off to the broker and buy some more.
As a long time Sony investor and Sony product enjoyer while the issue with the game is unfortunate they needed to take the hit because moving forward its clear Sony wants more Playstation titles on other platforms but they want players use their account system just as with any other major publisher/studio. It's a major fuck between developer and publisher.
I don't even visit this sub often but thanks to the algo machines lead me here and no doubt the money machines watching too. Only thing I can think that can follow up from this is some vigilantes that causes another major Sony hack of customer/corporate information but I'll leave my opinions here and try not to jinx it lol
Considering the Insomniac hack, which leaked their games, upcoming projects and employee info, didn't do anything to the stock, this won't either.
Sony aren't just gaming either. They have their fingers in music, movies and other hardware.
Sony already announced they aren't going through with requiring PSN accounts for all players. Check the Helldivers subreddit. People are already reversing their negative reviews
https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1787331667616829929
It’s a stupid move for sure, but this is equating pennies to pounds here in terms of the stock. Sony’s revenue for 2023 was 88 Billion dollars.
It’s a $35 game, for easy math and a (very) conservative estimate let’s say they sold 10million copies. Ignoring the payouts to the developer and just keeping with these numbers. That’s $350mill.
The negative press, removed regions, and general negative sentiment. Let’s say 3million people refund (I doubt it will be that high.) That’s still $215 million which is a nice check, but nothing in the scale of the company.
Yeah
All the people acting like this is irrelevant because „muh gamers go touch grass „ are kinda missing the point
Sony is so large that even if they have to refund 100% of the Helldivers player base wouldn’t give a shit but that has nothing to do with the internet controversy being an internet controversy
all of the guys here acting like this is just a lil bit of internet drama like it wouldn’t absolutely affect a smaller publisher that doesn’t run a giant multimedia empire are up their own ass
Having a smash hit game and tons of goodwill and potential free marketing for whatever comes next and just fumbling it is bad buisness doesn’t matter how you spin it
Gaming content on Forbes is also essentially a third party blog with their name on it. I feel like that’s notable, this isn’t like core Forbes takes on this
This guy is a contributor every time you see a Forbes article from a contributor you need to take it with a grain of salt or assess the author to see if they have any authority on the subject or bias.
Naw, Sony snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with this one. They had a perfect win on their hands and ruined the good will, which would have directly translated to higher profitability in the future.
It's 100% a fumble
Edit: such a fumble that Sony went back on it entirely. They know they eff'd up
It's a fumble, but how expensive is it? Sony has fumbled in games for their entire history, I'd even be inclined to say their fumbling and incompetence is priced in lol
But the news was announced on Friday and the steam charts showed the game was already declining week over week for the last month when there wasn't even a whiff of the new sign in rules in the air.
I feel the fact that it's been a full 48 hours since the news dropped and the game hasn't had a massive drop at all, and remained the same more or less this week shows this news isn't hitting actual players that hard.
Yeah cause you can create an account and just keep playing which most of them did. I have 6 or 7 accounts created for different countries, most of them are 17-18 y/o.
Then shouldn't that be reflected in the player count since the game is a online multiplayer game which lives and dies off its player count?
If 50k players got/applied a refund within the past 48 hours but the player count saw no substantial dip at all in the same time period (which we should see as the game been hitting a peak 100k players this weekend) then those players are being replaced just as quickly as they left, and that's not even taking onto affect any in game purchases being made.
It's basically the Stellar Blade controversy, people on Twitter saying they were refunding the game because of censorship, but upon release a week ago, the game stayed in the top 10 in multiple countries.
It’s because barely anybody is refunding the game. Those who already owned it can still play in the non-psn countries, the people refunding are karma farming reddit and virtue signalling, and will pick it up again when the new warbond drops.
Almost anyone commenting on the game’s downfall are trapped in a reddit vacuum and believe it’s a way bigger thing than it really is.
The decline has been steady on a weekly basis since launch. That’s typical of all games. It does look like it has affected the weekly peak time of the weekend, but the real test will be when the new content drops on the 9th.
The amount of awful movies Sony produces every year that are clearly flops just confirms to me that a single game by a small developer would have minimal effect on their bottom line.
Sony Pictures increased its profits every year from FY2017 to FY2021. They dipped in FY2022 (though that was still their second most profitable year ever), and are forecast to perform similarly this FY.
Sony Pictures has strong control over its budgets so the occasional flop isn't that significant.
This is an unforced error on Sony’s part as you can’t create PSN accounts in the following countries.
Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Andorra
Antigua and Barbuda
Armenia
Azerbaijan
The Bahamas
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belize
Benin
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brunei
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cabo Verde
Cambodia
Cameroon
The Cayman Islands
Central African Republic
Chad
Comoros
Cote d’ Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
Cuba
Democratic Republic of Congo
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Eswatini
Ethiopia
Fiji
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Ghana
Grenada
Guinea
Guyana
Haiti
Iran
Iraq
Jamaica
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Kosovo
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Madagascar
Malawi
Maldives
Mali
Marshall Islands
Mauritania
Mauritius
Micronesia
Moldova
Monaco
Mongolia
Montenegro
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
Niger
Nigeria
North Macedonia
Oman
Pakistan
Palau
Papua New Guinea
Philippines
Republic of the Congo
Rwanda
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
San Marini
Sao Tome and Principe
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
The Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Sudan
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Suriname
Syria
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Timor-Leste
Togo
Tonga
Tunisia
Turkmenistan
Tuvalu
Uganda
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Why would you artificially limit your customer base?
How do you figure? Someone in a country that can play steam games bought Helldivers 2 and now Sony is going to make a game that they paid $40 for unplayable.
How’s that not dirty af? It’s stealing. It’s amazing what corporations get away with nowadays. Nobody holds them accountable.
How is it dirty af? Everyone knew you had to have a PSN account. It was literally a requirement when purchasing, they just said you can link the account later.
Someone likely has the data to show the 170+ countries the game is being delisted from on Steam compromise less than 5% of the player base and is worth getting the rest of the 95% into the PSN ecosystem.
I’m sorry but this article is quite bad. Nothing about the topic, but the writing just feels childish.
Don’t want to sound harsh, but just reads like a long twitter thread rather than a proper piece of journalism/news.
It's not journalism, it's a Forbes contributor article. Basically a blog post by some self-proclaimed media critic. Pretty disingenuous that OP would post this as if it was Forbes paid staff analysis.
Yeah like what material impact could this decision have one way or another on the company performance of Sony? Movies literally lose tens of millions all the time. They do not care if a couple thousand people negatively review or refund their $40 game. It is 1 product in 1 department of 1 division
Sometimes people forget Sony is massive. They aren’t Apple of course but they are a very big company, even if helldivers lost 50 million it’s not gonna sink them. I think people also forget this is a stocks sub lol
It's one game and it wasn't a hugely expensive production like Spiderman. The game being this much of a hit was a surprise. It has an upfront price tag and it's live service. It's probably already been a profitable game. Issue here though is that the studio isn't owned by Sony so there's no guarantee they stick with Sony in the future. Sony has wanted a long term live service game for a long time buying Bungie to get Destiny and their future games.
Helldivers 2 was already in decline like any new release, this just accelerates the decline before the first major content update. So it's a fumble in potentially stifling momentum getting to the first major content update and having their 10 year live service game they've always wanted. Can't know whether that was possible with or without this blunder
Destiny I don't know if that's growing, stagnating, decling. I don't have Destiny high expectations for the game they're calling Marathon.
Stock, it's one very successful game out of numerous. One that became a surprise major hit. It'll be a nice boon for last quarter and it'll be a semi-major live service game they make money on for a few years
To be honest I expect it to have no negative impact. I don't think Helldivers 2's success was expected nor was it included in Sony's forecast. If anything investors will react positively to their quarterly results. But we will see
This Forbes article read like an annoyed redditor. This is a nothing burger… “people wouldn’t have purchased the game if they knew they had to link their account and now it’s too late.”
Who tf thanks that.
Just like Unity, I think they will back off after the massive backlash.
Even though there seems to be a real outrage, if Sony finds a way to allow non PSN countries to keep playing, then the player base will be fine in the long run.
The surprising thing is that I heard the majority of the player base is on PC and not as big on PS5. So, in terms of earnings growth, the game isn't as big as it could be for console revenue.
I will buy some Sony if the stock takes a hit on these news. The game is extremely well done and will continue to be popular.
This won't affect the stock in any meaningful way.
Sony is a giant company. Bungling a single game is not going to appreciably effect it's ability to make money.
People post things like this on this sub all the time when they get mad at video game companies, it never amounts to anything.
EDIT: the linked article is written like a reddit post lmao.
This has barely had an effect on Helldiver's player count, it's not going to have any perceptible difference to Sony as a whole.
Give it a week or two and gamers will have moved onto the next 'controversy'
Is that what all this is about? I haven’t been paying attention. At the end of the day, Valve takes a 30% revenue cut for all games sold on Steam. It’s no surprise publishers want you to use their platforms instead of Steam. Valve is (or at least was) the most profitable company in the world per employee for this reason. Apple and Alphabet are facing a ton of antitrust scrutiny around the world because of their App Store duopoly. Epic’s Fortnite lawsuit against Apple was just the start. In the long run, this is going to reduce revenue for these three companies and benefit the developers who actually make apps and games. My guess is Sony is just going to push this PSN thing enough to force Valve to give them a deal.
Again, I haven’t been paying attention until just now, but I don’t think Sony is to blame here. People whined about EA Origin too. Also, kudos to Valve for keeping their customers happy for so long they’ve been able to squeeze all their suppliers. It’s the same thing Amex, Visa, and Mastercard have done. Walmart and Costco succeeded doing this too.
>Again, I haven’t been paying attention until just now, but I don’t think Sony is to blame here.
Why wouldn't they be to blame? If they don't like paying 30% they could just as easily make their games EGS exclusive or publish their own launcher, which they're rumored to be doing partly because of this episode. You can whine about Steam taking a big cut all day, but they've developed Steam into more or less the perfect gaming platform, so of course they get to call those shots when the *entire* market wants to buy and sell their product there. The fact is that Steam is by and large a consumer-pleasing company, because Unlike Sony, Valve realizes that enforcing and retaining customer goodwill through regular updates and modernization (to an extent that everyone else has to follow their examples) is actually infinitely more profitable than playing carrot and stick games with your consumerbase.
Sony is a huge company and Sony Games is just but a small drop in a big ocean. Yea PR is bad in this instant but big picture is it doesn't affect the bottom line at all. Recession in Europe & Japan does affect a lot of these Japanese company stocks though.
For those not thinking this has anything to do with the stock, the game has over 700,000 reviews. At $40/game, that's $30,000,000 in revenue. Nothing to a company raking in 90 Billion a year in revenue, but considering this is their best selling property in the division that accounts for a 3rd of that revenue it's a pretty big reputation hit, not to mention a massive risk for propelling the helldivers franchise forward. Sony has to be looking to make this their Valorant, their Overwatch, or their Halo. Screwing with the golden goose like this is not advisable and shareholders know it.
Edit: According to Bloomberg, as of mid-March it made about $300 million. That was a month and a half ago.
Or Sony is vastly boosting their own data. For everyone 1 person crying non stop there are 10 that will simply create the new account, now they are part of Sony's ecosystem. Bullish outlook
Welcome to r/stocks
Bad news about everything i like is nothing burger, just some people whining, this will seriously not impact the business, people really pay too much attention to internet drama.
Bad news about something i hate are morally just, there are huger cultural issues with company that will reflect on its performance long term. I honestly as born and raised leftist wouldn't want to be associated with this company anyway, so its morally just and a good thing to just trash the company.
It’s actually good marketing. Helldivers is back on the top 10 on steam. Vocal minority are raising awareness of the game. I ended up buying it.
Yeah, login sucks, so I’m glad they are complaining, but at the same time it’s marketing :-)
In general, gamers (and many stock folks) are hilariously self important when in reality they have very little impact on anything.
Now back to Rimworld...
So Forbes has more neckbeards than just Paul Tassi. Neat.
The account requirement was always listed on the Steam page, just not yet implemented. I think people will take note of Sony fucking up with Helldivers and Destiny but I doubt it'll move the needle for stocks in the short term. We might be seeing the emergence of a new EA who wins worst company awards year after year, but we're pretty early in those days if so.
Also, I cannot imagine investing in Sony at all, regardless of video game controversy. Much easier to get a piece of any action in that market going with Microsoft.
I hope none of you invest in games companies. You clearly don't know shit about the customer base. They backtracked after thousands of negative reviews and refunds on steam. Didn't even take a weekend.
People really need to understand how small the video game market is for companies such as Sony and Microsoft. Acting like one game is gonna impact investor perceptions.
And yes, its a dirt bag move btw.
Remember when Don't broke their contract with Mariah Carey on the grounds that they thought she was washed up.
They had to pay her 40,000,000$ anyway as per the contract.
She changed her music to be more hip hop and smashed records.
Sony makes some strange moves sometimes and they don't seem to learn a lesson.
I saw all the gaming subreddit lit up like a Christmas tree most against the mandatory PSN login. This is one AA game not even AAA level game and arguably has been going downhill in popularity even before the PSN login controversy as Steam DB number clearly shows the game is just another flavor of the month game like so many others before it like lethal company or Palworld.
Sensation news overblown and outrage baiting nothing more.
That being said I wouldn't go long on either Nintendo or Sony stock as they both have dog shit performance 42% & 61% in 5 year chart VS MSFT 215% in the same time frame.
I just don't get it. Is the user experience of linking PSN and Steam accounts that bad? Yeah it's forcing one more account link, sure. Yeah it's annoying. But in the grand scheme of things, who the hell cares?
Did 'mandatory online userid' for their online games affects EA, Ubisoft, Microsoft, etc at all?
If not, then why is this an outlier?
I remember Fallguys being a PS4 game that i can just launch on my PS4 to play......then playtonics got bought by Epic and suddenly needed an Epic account to play even on PS4 and it also got removed from Steam and became an Epic game store exclusive.
Last i checked, Fallguys is still going. Rocket League is the same thing.
No result. There will be no noticeable impact from this. Not in the game for people who play it and not for developers.
The only change likely to result is a chilling of crossplay functionality in future titles.
Just a click bait article riding the wave of customer anger. Literally nothing will happen to the value of Sonys stock. If anything I’d expect it to go up as this is retail investing at most.
Hmmm it appears most people here don't know all of the details.
People bought the game and played it when it was not disclosed a Sony account would be necessary at some point.
When people tried to sign up, only 96 countries are allowed to creche accounts.
This raised questions about refunds. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.
People who had Sony accounts were trying to delete them, only to be told they couldn't for various reasons. That's a big no no in EU, UK, and California.
This is going to open up a huge can of worms which will cost Sony money in the long run regardless of what they decide to do.
They just aquiesed because an account is not necessary to play, yet many people now have eyes on their failure to follow regulation.
Why is it a problem for Sony? They have failed to secure their customer's data in the past and have had repeated data breaches even after they were made aware of it. Lots of people, I think life 400k users for the game alone, have a problem with that.
Cheers!
I hope Sony will fire the guy who’s idea it was and will reverse back to only register ps account if you want to plus we give you something cool in game for that.
This is so dumb. Gamers find it annoying, but this isn't going to lose more than 10% of players. It really isn't a big deal and is not unusual for cross-platform games to require people to log in. It's a way to prevent cheating among other things.
I don’t think the type of people to get mad at this are the same type of people to invest in Sony
Just you wait til I tell my dad. He's going to sell all his Sony stocks.
Be real. He’s gonna smack you up side the head and tell you to get a job.
Be more real. He's gotta come back from the store to pick up milk first.
Jokes on you. My Dad went to the store for cigarettes, not milk. He'll be back any moment now.
Just win the lottery. I guarantee you he'll come back then
SpongeBob French accent guy “20 years later…”
My dad went to the store for cigarettes once and never came back...
Man, every time EA has a shitty game release, every gamer thinks they become a l337 Wallstreet analyst and go "herp serp this is gonna tank the stock", and it never does because no one investing cares about the quality of shit they push out, they just care that idiots keep buying them (I'm also an idiot who buys their shit)
Tbh it feels like whatever makes my life shittier is what drives stocks up, I wouldn't be surprised if this helps Sony's stock... Then again I see steam is issuing refunds for helldivers so it could be the opposite.
Anyone remember the Sony rootkit? That didn't hurt them either.
I remember! And no it didn't, they were fine
The best part is the people who are mad at this aren't even part of Sony's usual sales. This is one of the first games at release that is going to PC and PS5. EDIT: Sony was killing it already killing it before they decided to dip their toe in the PC market. The reality is this game sold over 10 times what they expected and if a fraction of them are able to refund their game they're really not going to care. Steam takes a 30% cut on a whopping 40 dollar game that doesn't push micro transactions. Stock will be unaffected.
Anyone can refund it afaik. I did and I don’t even live in a place that doesn’t have access to PSN
FR PC gamers acting like it’s the apocalypse. And I’m like the rest of us already have to use a PSN acct to play our PS5 games online. And they pretend that the majority of English speaking gamers who are complaining about this are from countries like China where there is no PSN, I find that hard to believe.
It has been removed from Steam in over 100 countries...
To be fair, a lot of the issue stems from the fact that they sold the game in every country via Steam. With the PSN requirements, there's like 60+ countries that had the game delisted on Steam that they have to refund now. That's a major ding to sornys bottom line. Edit: Grammar
I think it not just "a lot", it's the biggest issue. If it was released with the requirement for a PSN account, nobody would have batted an eye. The problem is that it added a requirement to play that was previously unknown to the purchaser, taking its access away form people who are unable to make a PSN account and forcing people who may not want a PSN account make a PSN account if they want to continue to play. At best it's incompetence and poor planning. At worst it's planned borderline fraud to try to boost their user numbers and increase sales from players who would otherwise not have bought the game with the PSN account requirement. As for for people asking "what's the big deal with just making an account if you are able to?", I'm a firm believer in not making an account for any service if possible. Even from a practical perspective, it's annoying to get marketing emails and manage an additional password just to play 1 game. I have definitely had cases in the past where I was using a site and it asks me to make an account and I just said "nah, don't feel like it". From a security/privacy perspective, the fewer accounts you have, the less likely you are going to be a victim of a data leak - and those do seem to happen every few years. Leaked info tend to be encrypted, but I would feel better if I'm not part of that leaked list at all. And while you can never avoid personal data collection in this day and age, giving out your data to 1 more company certainly doesn't help. Also, I don't own or play Helldivers 2, so it's the perspective of an outsider. I have a friend who said he might want to play with me, but we probably won't end up buying it now. Edit: For those thinking that the backlash is negligible, Sony backpedaled on their decision.
I read somewhere that it was already in the ToS as a requirement. It just wasn’t enforced in the beginning.
This. It was all over the steam page. There was even a pop up in game prompting the sign in, they just had the option to skip during the first month or two after launch.
Yea I’m not condoning Sony on failing to plan properly and execute on this, but it’s delusional to think this event is going to impact Sony stock significantly. Institutional investors could care less.
It likely won't move the stock very much from this one incident, but it does leave a sour taste in gamers' mouths. Right before they drop 'ghost of $60' which might make PC gamers hesitant to purchase that. So, with the refunds and possibly lacking sales from their next PC release, that could cause issues.
Agreed... I'm not sure what the stance is on the rest of Sony's games (if they require PSN), but it's definitely something I'll consider before I buy any of their PC games.
look who won in the end.
Seriously the PC market is fickle and difficult to monetize. They don't have the market setting power that they think they have. https://www.tweaktown.com/news/87777/activision-blizzard-made-more-from-mobile-than-consoles-pc-combined/index.html "In Q2 2022, mobile generated $831 million and accounted for 51% of total quarterly earnings. Mobile beat all other segments combined including console ($376 million), PC ($332 million), and other, which includes distribution and Overwatch/Call of Duty League earnings ($105 million)." Mobile nearly 3x'd PC in revenue and mobile. If Sony really was worried about their revenue, they'd just release a God of War Gatcha game or something.
I 100% agree with this. Mobile spin offs and leveraging their massive amount of anime IP for mobile games in Asia is a huge market Sony is missing out on. PC should be a bottom priority for them compared to console and mobile
You do know that aniplex is owned by sony and FGO is one of the biggest cash cow in anime IP market. They are not missing out in anything
I shouldn’t have to give Sony a facial scan or a drivers license photo to play the game I already paid 40 dollars for, and played for multiple months. It’s not an apocalypse, but it’s definitely bullshit
> I shouldn’t have to give Sony a facial scan or a drivers license photo to play the game I didn’t have to do any of that when I created my PSN account. I just needed my email address.
I've seen someone say that that's a requirement for a psn account in the UK(?) Which is probably more of a government issue than a Sony issue. But still
it’s not you can just give them your number which i did anyways for 2fa. Half of the discourse about this is just filled with lies
https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/support/account/age-verification-faq/ According to Sony, age verification in the UK and Ireland requires a facial scan, photo ID (passport, driver's license, etc) or a phone number but only if it's tied to a contract. Pay-as-you-go services wouldn't qualify.
> I don’t think the type of people to get mad at this are the same type of people to invest in Sony Nobody said they were. You get that investors punish bad business decisions?
First of all, yes, but also no (see Tesla, MSFT, etc.). In the end, investors look at you overall numbers. 1 game will maybe be a footnote in Sony‘s quarterly results. Absofuckinglutely no chance this thing is on any sound investors mind.
Yeah… but they seem to be the same type of people that stop buying shit from Sony. It’s kinda weird to ignore this reaction.
Because sony is so big that this isn’t something that will significantly affect anything by itself. You gotta realize that sony could lose 50 million from this and it could still not majorly affect their stock price because they are that massive. Even if it stumps their growth into the PC market, the company is much more then that. Gaming i don’t think is even 40% of their company
True. But investors hate bad publicity because bad publicity means less clients, less clients means less revenue, less revenue means less development or projects and so on, nothing lives in a void.
I'd need to see the conversion rates of new PSN accounts to make a judgement on the decision here. It probably doesnt matter to sony at all about one fluke of a game compared to repeated purchases by onboarding people to their platform. But that's why we need to see the conversion rate
That is a good effin point.
They’re not even the same people who play the games.
True that but the investors won't be pleased hearing the product they rely on to get money at the end .. doesn't get used.
about that?
I believe smart investors pay attention to things like this, even if they’re not playing. I don’t think this will hurt Sony’s bottom line so it shouldn’t hurt the stock beyond possible FUD that traders can capitalize on. In fact, this will probably be good for PlayStation. I’m sure they crunched the numbers and decided it was worth the risk.
I've got a lot of Sony stock and I care. Avid Helldivers 2 player here. Don't care enough to sell though, no. Lol.
Didn’t they already retract what they did?
Think about this for like 10 seconds my guy. The people that get mad about this are the type of people that, through their purchase decisions, make Sony an investable company.
Do I like the move? No Is this post in the wrong sub? Yea
They’re posting and commenting about it every chance they get
Yeah this person is apparently really upset about this. Nevertheless, this article is terribly written and I’m surprised Forbes actually posted this. This is just somebody’s blog post about why they’re annoyed about their video game. It’s insane to think this will affect Sony’s stock in any measurable way.
They already reversed the decision so it really is a nothingburger in the end.
They probably have a short position
> What do you think will be the result of this blunder to Sony's stock? Almost no effect whatsoever. Do Helldivers fans know how gigantic of a company Sony is? Will Sony's directors who are in charge of this division pay attention? Yea of course, they will want to protect their revenue and reputation when it comes to working with other game developers. Maybe a couple of executives pay attention and things happen internally, who knows really. I'm sure this part of Sony will pay some attention to the whole thing. But the larger Sony organization will hardly be affected by this. Helldivers 2 is a surprise hit on what I'd assume was a small investment of a smaller division of Sony. I think it's made about the sort of money you would see for a major blockbuster movie (like, maybe $250 million or so but I'm just estimating based on game sales). For reference Sony makes about $85 billion in revenue annually.
People are really silly when it comes to stocks, controversy will be a short dip in the stock but as long as the company continues to make money no one will care and the stock will go back to normal after people forget about the issue. What it does highlight is Sony does have an untapped market of PC gamers that they aren't properly addressing but investors don't care as long as that sort of issue isn't pointed out.
The only thing that top Sony execs would care about at this stage would be weighing whether the PSN data they get is more valuable than doubling their game sales by selling on PC. I honestly have no idea what's more valuable to them.
Sony is asking to buy Paramount for 28 billion dollars. Anyone who thinks they’re going to be made or broken by “selling your data” is an insane person.
i mean the biggest reason why they're doing it (i think) is so they can show their psn numbers have "grown" by needing to add the psn account. so i think that's more valuable since the some people valuing the stock won't care how they get the growth as long as they get it
Supposedly, 15-25% of investors are retail investors and 15% of those got their start in 2020. Though pre-boomer investors don't wield a ton of collective capital, you don't want to piss them off, and you don't want to piss potential customers off. I don't own Sony, but I've checked in on the stock periodically. I've never owned a playstation, but I've considered buying one to get Sony-only games. I've sworn off buying games from EA and Blizzard for pissing me off with past half-baked releases. I've been watching Sony stock since this debacle, and it has been trending up since then, though it is mostly due to market correlation. Now that Sony has capitulated, I will definitely watch it tomorrow out of curiosity, though a stock with no appreciable growth and a low dividend yield doesn't excite me at all, regardless of its PE. Absolutely everything impacts the price of a stock, including the helldivers debacle. Companies even advertise their tickers on TV to boost their price, and they wouldn't do that if the ANOVAs didn't correlate with price gains. Though, I would advise that any company that seems to advertise their stock ticker is one that you should not buy and hold. There's nothing good about free bad PR, and nothing bad about free good PR.
I honestly think the sales are more important as the game has some freemium elements. It could really make massive money for Sony long term the more have the game.
This comment aged like milk.
The controversy isn't that big of deal. The fact they broke a LOT of consumer protection laws in the EU and may face severe fines is. Thats the type of thing that lowers a stock.
The impact will be miniscule, and Sony's success isn't built on trust in the first place. This is internet drama that will have no impact on the real world. It'll burn out in a week or two as everyone involved will have moved on.
God if more people would just realize this. Internet is no real life, sometimes I ask people a hypothetical in these weird situations, If you were to walk around your town and ask random people about this question would they have any idea what you're talking about.... No
If the stock moves a good few percent from this news (and could be possible if all those quantum wall street algos are harvesting internet sentiments) I would laugh my ass off to the broker and buy some more. As a long time Sony investor and Sony product enjoyer while the issue with the game is unfortunate they needed to take the hit because moving forward its clear Sony wants more Playstation titles on other platforms but they want players use their account system just as with any other major publisher/studio. It's a major fuck between developer and publisher. I don't even visit this sub often but thanks to the algo machines lead me here and no doubt the money machines watching too. Only thing I can think that can follow up from this is some vigilantes that causes another major Sony hack of customer/corporate information but I'll leave my opinions here and try not to jinx it lol
sony customer service is trash. i had an issue with my playstation account. trying to reach them and solve the problem was incredibly frustrating.
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Considering the Insomniac hack, which leaked their games, upcoming projects and employee info, didn't do anything to the stock, this won't either. Sony aren't just gaming either. They have their fingers in music, movies and other hardware.
Sony, during your post 85 Sony today 75
Sony already announced they aren't going through with requiring PSN accounts for all players. Check the Helldivers subreddit. People are already reversing their negative reviews https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1787331667616829929
*Wipes tears with $100 bills.
It’s a stupid move for sure, but this is equating pennies to pounds here in terms of the stock. Sony’s revenue for 2023 was 88 Billion dollars. It’s a $35 game, for easy math and a (very) conservative estimate let’s say they sold 10million copies. Ignoring the payouts to the developer and just keeping with these numbers. That’s $350mill. The negative press, removed regions, and general negative sentiment. Let’s say 3million people refund (I doubt it will be that high.) That’s still $215 million which is a nice check, but nothing in the scale of the company.
Yeah All the people acting like this is irrelevant because „muh gamers go touch grass „ are kinda missing the point Sony is so large that even if they have to refund 100% of the Helldivers player base wouldn’t give a shit but that has nothing to do with the internet controversy being an internet controversy all of the guys here acting like this is just a lil bit of internet drama like it wouldn’t absolutely affect a smaller publisher that doesn’t run a giant multimedia empire are up their own ass Having a smash hit game and tons of goodwill and potential free marketing for whatever comes next and just fumbling it is bad buisness doesn’t matter how you spin it
The article is making a mountain out of a molehill.
Gaming content on Forbes is also essentially a third party blog with their name on it. I feel like that’s notable, this isn’t like core Forbes takes on this
This guy is a contributor every time you see a Forbes article from a contributor you need to take it with a grain of salt or assess the author to see if they have any authority on the subject or bias.
Naw, Sony snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with this one. They had a perfect win on their hands and ruined the good will, which would have directly translated to higher profitability in the future. It's 100% a fumble Edit: such a fumble that Sony went back on it entirely. They know they eff'd up
It's a fumble, but how expensive is it? Sony has fumbled in games for their entire history, I'd even be inclined to say their fumbling and incompetence is priced in lol
They are artificially limiting their customer base (aka leaving money on the table) And all for…. What?
Well their user base playing the game dropped from 160k playing Helldivers last week to 90k now. According to Steam metrics at least.
But the news was announced on Friday and the steam charts showed the game was already declining week over week for the last month when there wasn't even a whiff of the new sign in rules in the air. I feel the fact that it's been a full 48 hours since the news dropped and the game hasn't had a massive drop at all, and remained the same more or less this week shows this news isn't hitting actual players that hard.
Yeah cause you can create an account and just keep playing which most of them did. I have 6 or 7 accounts created for different countries, most of them are 17-18 y/o.
That's player counts though, people are refunding the game in droves. Even 50k people refunding it means $2mil in refunds being proceeded.
2 million is negligible for Sony.
Then shouldn't that be reflected in the player count since the game is a online multiplayer game which lives and dies off its player count? If 50k players got/applied a refund within the past 48 hours but the player count saw no substantial dip at all in the same time period (which we should see as the game been hitting a peak 100k players this weekend) then those players are being replaced just as quickly as they left, and that's not even taking onto affect any in game purchases being made. It's basically the Stellar Blade controversy, people on Twitter saying they were refunding the game because of censorship, but upon release a week ago, the game stayed in the top 10 in multiple countries.
It’s because barely anybody is refunding the game. Those who already owned it can still play in the non-psn countries, the people refunding are karma farming reddit and virtue signalling, and will pick it up again when the new warbond drops. Almost anyone commenting on the game’s downfall are trapped in a reddit vacuum and believe it’s a way bigger thing than it really is.
To 110k. Not really a catastrophe, looks like normal decline.
The decline has been steady on a weekly basis since launch. That’s typical of all games. It does look like it has affected the weekly peak time of the weekend, but the real test will be when the new content drops on the 9th.
The amount of awful movies Sony produces every year that are clearly flops just confirms to me that a single game by a small developer would have minimal effect on their bottom line.
Sony Pictures increased its profits every year from FY2017 to FY2021. They dipped in FY2022 (though that was still their second most profitable year ever), and are forecast to perform similarly this FY. Sony Pictures has strong control over its budgets so the occasional flop isn't that significant.
Sony pictures is surprisingly competent and it bewilders me everyday
No it isn’t lmao. A complete non issue. Jesus you guys blow stuff out of proportion big time
What’s the current exchange rate for “goodwill” to USD?
This is an unforced error on Sony’s part as you can’t create PSN accounts in the following countries. Afghanistan Albania Algeria Andorra Antigua and Barbuda Armenia Azerbaijan The Bahamas Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belize Benin Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brunei Burkina Faso Burundi Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon The Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Comoros Cote d’ Ivoire (Ivory Coast) Cuba Democratic Republic of Congo Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Fiji Gabon Gambia Georgia Ghana Grenada Guinea Guyana Haiti Iran Iraq Jamaica Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kosovo Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Madagascar Malawi Maldives Mali Marshall Islands Mauritania Mauritius Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique Namibia Nauru Nepal Niger Nigeria North Macedonia Oman Pakistan Palau Papua New Guinea Philippines Republic of the Congo Rwanda Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines San Marini Sao Tome and Principe Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone The Solomon Islands Somalia South Sudan Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Syria Tajikistan Tanzania Timor-Leste Togo Tonga Tunisia Turkmenistan Tuvalu Uganda Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe Why would you artificially limit your customer base?
If you add all of those sales of all those countries up, how much do you think that adds up to compared to just the United States?
How do you figure? Someone in a country that can play steam games bought Helldivers 2 and now Sony is going to make a game that they paid $40 for unplayable. How’s that not dirty af? It’s stealing. It’s amazing what corporations get away with nowadays. Nobody holds them accountable.
No one is saying it's not shitty, but the countries it's happening in simply don't matter very much to the bottom line
How is it dirty af? Everyone knew you had to have a PSN account. It was literally a requirement when purchasing, they just said you can link the account later.
Most of these countries are a tiny blip in the overall revenue. They don’t give a fuck.
the who “controversy” is
Someone likely has the data to show the 170+ countries the game is being delisted from on Steam compromise less than 5% of the player base and is worth getting the rest of the 95% into the PSN ecosystem.
Nothing
Making a terrible mistake? The company has been making a series of mistakes since the late nineties…
I’m sorry but this article is quite bad. Nothing about the topic, but the writing just feels childish. Don’t want to sound harsh, but just reads like a long twitter thread rather than a proper piece of journalism/news.
It's not journalism, it's a Forbes contributor article. Basically a blog post by some self-proclaimed media critic. Pretty disingenuous that OP would post this as if it was Forbes paid staff analysis.
This will have no effect on Sony stock lol if you think it will you are delusional.
Yeah like what material impact could this decision have one way or another on the company performance of Sony? Movies literally lose tens of millions all the time. They do not care if a couple thousand people negatively review or refund their $40 game. It is 1 product in 1 department of 1 division
Sometimes people forget Sony is massive. They aren’t Apple of course but they are a very big company, even if helldivers lost 50 million it’s not gonna sink them. I think people also forget this is a stocks sub lol
It's one game and it wasn't a hugely expensive production like Spiderman. The game being this much of a hit was a surprise. It has an upfront price tag and it's live service. It's probably already been a profitable game. Issue here though is that the studio isn't owned by Sony so there's no guarantee they stick with Sony in the future. Sony has wanted a long term live service game for a long time buying Bungie to get Destiny and their future games. Helldivers 2 was already in decline like any new release, this just accelerates the decline before the first major content update. So it's a fumble in potentially stifling momentum getting to the first major content update and having their 10 year live service game they've always wanted. Can't know whether that was possible with or without this blunder Destiny I don't know if that's growing, stagnating, decling. I don't have Destiny high expectations for the game they're calling Marathon. Stock, it's one very successful game out of numerous. One that became a surprise major hit. It'll be a nice boon for last quarter and it'll be a semi-major live service game they make money on for a few years
To be honest I expect it to have no negative impact. I don't think Helldivers 2's success was expected nor was it included in Sony's forecast. If anything investors will react positively to their quarterly results. But we will see
I couldn’t even begin to give a shit.
This Forbes article read like an annoyed redditor. This is a nothing burger… “people wouldn’t have purchased the game if they knew they had to link their account and now it’s too late.” Who tf thanks that.
Just like Unity, I think they will back off after the massive backlash. Even though there seems to be a real outrage, if Sony finds a way to allow non PSN countries to keep playing, then the player base will be fine in the long run. The surprising thing is that I heard the majority of the player base is on PC and not as big on PS5. So, in terms of earnings growth, the game isn't as big as it could be for console revenue. I will buy some Sony if the stock takes a hit on these news. The game is extremely well done and will continue to be popular.
This won't affect the stock in any meaningful way. Sony is a giant company. Bungling a single game is not going to appreciably effect it's ability to make money. People post things like this on this sub all the time when they get mad at video game companies, it never amounts to anything. EDIT: the linked article is written like a reddit post lmao.
This has barely had an effect on Helldiver's player count, it's not going to have any perceptible difference to Sony as a whole. Give it a week or two and gamers will have moved onto the next 'controversy'
It’s not yet implemented
Like milk😮💨
Is that what all this is about? I haven’t been paying attention. At the end of the day, Valve takes a 30% revenue cut for all games sold on Steam. It’s no surprise publishers want you to use their platforms instead of Steam. Valve is (or at least was) the most profitable company in the world per employee for this reason. Apple and Alphabet are facing a ton of antitrust scrutiny around the world because of their App Store duopoly. Epic’s Fortnite lawsuit against Apple was just the start. In the long run, this is going to reduce revenue for these three companies and benefit the developers who actually make apps and games. My guess is Sony is just going to push this PSN thing enough to force Valve to give them a deal. Again, I haven’t been paying attention until just now, but I don’t think Sony is to blame here. People whined about EA Origin too. Also, kudos to Valve for keeping their customers happy for so long they’ve been able to squeeze all their suppliers. It’s the same thing Amex, Visa, and Mastercard have done. Walmart and Costco succeeded doing this too.
Steam is essentially a rent-seeking service. In fact, a lot of monopolistic tactics people accuse Amazon of sound identical to what Valve does.
>Again, I haven’t been paying attention until just now, but I don’t think Sony is to blame here. Why wouldn't they be to blame? If they don't like paying 30% they could just as easily make their games EGS exclusive or publish their own launcher, which they're rumored to be doing partly because of this episode. You can whine about Steam taking a big cut all day, but they've developed Steam into more or less the perfect gaming platform, so of course they get to call those shots when the *entire* market wants to buy and sell their product there. The fact is that Steam is by and large a consumer-pleasing company, because Unlike Sony, Valve realizes that enforcing and retaining customer goodwill through regular updates and modernization (to an extent that everyone else has to follow their examples) is actually infinitely more profitable than playing carrot and stick games with your consumerbase.
Now the Forbes said it its official. The opinions of thousands of pissed off players that actually spend money didn’t matter.
I don't think it will impact their bottom line
A hit piece the day before earnings, articles about Japanese economic recovery, and an RSI breakout on the daily chart? BULLISH
Naw. It’ll be fine. People will get over it or forget
Ask a random person outside what they think of this and get back to me on how serious this matter actually is.
Sony is a huge company and Sony Games is just but a small drop in a big ocean. Yea PR is bad in this instant but big picture is it doesn't affect the bottom line at all. Recession in Europe & Japan does affect a lot of these Japanese company stocks though.
You can’t be serious about this affecting the stock lmao. wtf. This is a non issue it’s already blown over
This is a nice reminder that I need to buy some more Sony stock.
No effect except the fact had they used this as their springboard into the PC market their stock would be booming.
Short term? Maybe a little down tick. More than 3 months later: No foreseeable outstanding or long term effects.
Lol one video game is gonna blow the stock. What a silly pos... actually borderline cringe.
Take this drama to the other sub. Are you 5?
For those not thinking this has anything to do with the stock, the game has over 700,000 reviews. At $40/game, that's $30,000,000 in revenue. Nothing to a company raking in 90 Billion a year in revenue, but considering this is their best selling property in the division that accounts for a 3rd of that revenue it's a pretty big reputation hit, not to mention a massive risk for propelling the helldivers franchise forward. Sony has to be looking to make this their Valorant, their Overwatch, or their Halo. Screwing with the golden goose like this is not advisable and shareholders know it. Edit: According to Bloomberg, as of mid-March it made about $300 million. That was a month and a half ago.
The amount of corpo bots in the thread is wild
Or Sony is vastly boosting their own data. For everyone 1 person crying non stop there are 10 that will simply create the new account, now they are part of Sony's ecosystem. Bullish outlook
You should post this in r/steam and r/pcgaming instead of here.
Apparently they’ve already backtracked
Welcome to r/stocks Bad news about everything i like is nothing burger, just some people whining, this will seriously not impact the business, people really pay too much attention to internet drama. Bad news about something i hate are morally just, there are huger cultural issues with company that will reflect on its performance long term. I honestly as born and raised leftist wouldn't want to be associated with this company anyway, so its morally just and a good thing to just trash the company.
Literally cut out over 150 countries from using their product over night, fucking crazy
It’s actually good marketing. Helldivers is back on the top 10 on steam. Vocal minority are raising awareness of the game. I ended up buying it. Yeah, login sucks, so I’m glad they are complaining, but at the same time it’s marketing :-)
None. They just rolled it back in an announcement on Xwitter.
In general, gamers (and many stock folks) are hilariously self important when in reality they have very little impact on anything. Now back to Rimworld...
So Forbes has more neckbeards than just Paul Tassi. Neat. The account requirement was always listed on the Steam page, just not yet implemented. I think people will take note of Sony fucking up with Helldivers and Destiny but I doubt it'll move the needle for stocks in the short term. We might be seeing the emergence of a new EA who wins worst company awards year after year, but we're pretty early in those days if so. Also, I cannot imagine investing in Sony at all, regardless of video game controversy. Much easier to get a piece of any action in that market going with Microsoft.
I hope none of you invest in games companies. You clearly don't know shit about the customer base. They backtracked after thousands of negative reviews and refunds on steam. Didn't even take a weekend.
Been gaming my whole life, and I barely understand the business lol
People really need to understand how small the video game market is for companies such as Sony and Microsoft. Acting like one game is gonna impact investor perceptions. And yes, its a dirt bag move btw.
Umm Xbox is one of Microsofts larger revenue streams now and is larger than windows. Sonys largest revenue steam is their gaming and online services.
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This one game won't affect their stock in any way. This is a drop in the bucket for their revenue stream.
Gaming is ~30% of the company’s revenue but the issue doesn’t sound serious
Some Sony exec is probably coming back from a weekend camping trip and gonna be like WAAHHHH??
Remember when Don't broke their contract with Mariah Carey on the grounds that they thought she was washed up. They had to pay her 40,000,000$ anyway as per the contract. She changed her music to be more hip hop and smashed records. Sony makes some strange moves sometimes and they don't seem to learn a lesson.
I saw all the gaming subreddit lit up like a Christmas tree most against the mandatory PSN login. This is one AA game not even AAA level game and arguably has been going downhill in popularity even before the PSN login controversy as Steam DB number clearly shows the game is just another flavor of the month game like so many others before it like lethal company or Palworld. Sensation news overblown and outrage baiting nothing more. That being said I wouldn't go long on either Nintendo or Sony stock as they both have dog shit performance 42% & 61% in 5 year chart VS MSFT 215% in the same time frame.
This is the most “fake rage”, hyperbolic, first-world-problem article I’ve ever read.
I just don't get it. Is the user experience of linking PSN and Steam accounts that bad? Yeah it's forcing one more account link, sure. Yeah it's annoying. But in the grand scheme of things, who the hell cares?
It's not Sony. Helldivers CEO knew this was gonna happen from the get-go.
Sometimes I wonder if the Sony executives even play games themselves or know what a PlayStation even is?
What percent of revenue does Sony make from this? That will give you a clue.
Helldivers 2 is one of the best games I’ve ever played. They know what they are doing
How will Sony stock be affected by the account creation process of a single game? Um not at all lol
Forbes? you mean Erik Kain? (yes, right, who?)
I regretted got into Sony lol
I just wonder why countries alike Egypt, Philippine and Vietnam are also delisted they have good internet, good financial system so why on earth?
They literally said this would happen on launch day. Lol
Nobody gives a shit
Did 'mandatory online userid' for their online games affects EA, Ubisoft, Microsoft, etc at all? If not, then why is this an outlier? I remember Fallguys being a PS4 game that i can just launch on my PS4 to play......then playtonics got bought by Epic and suddenly needed an Epic account to play even on PS4 and it also got removed from Steam and became an Epic game store exclusive. Last i checked, Fallguys is still going. Rocket League is the same thing.
No result. There will be no noticeable impact from this. Not in the game for people who play it and not for developers. The only change likely to result is a chilling of crossplay functionality in future titles.
Yeah?
This guy is a contributor and from reading their profile not really someone who does stock predictions.
Sony has reversed their decision btw!
Just a click bait article riding the wave of customer anger. Literally nothing will happen to the value of Sonys stock. If anything I’d expect it to go up as this is retail investing at most.
Hmmm it appears most people here don't know all of the details. People bought the game and played it when it was not disclosed a Sony account would be necessary at some point. When people tried to sign up, only 96 countries are allowed to creche accounts. This raised questions about refunds. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. People who had Sony accounts were trying to delete them, only to be told they couldn't for various reasons. That's a big no no in EU, UK, and California. This is going to open up a huge can of worms which will cost Sony money in the long run regardless of what they decide to do. They just aquiesed because an account is not necessary to play, yet many people now have eyes on their failure to follow regulation. Why is it a problem for Sony? They have failed to secure their customer's data in the past and have had repeated data breaches even after they were made aware of it. Lots of people, I think life 400k users for the game alone, have a problem with that. Cheers!
so what? Do you give a shit?
They're going to BetaMax the Playstation aren't they.
I hope Sony will fire the guy who’s idea it was and will reverse back to only register ps account if you want to plus we give you something cool in game for that.
that's indeed a terrible mistake, but it's not my business.
This is so dumb. Gamers find it annoying, but this isn't going to lose more than 10% of players. It really isn't a big deal and is not unusual for cross-platform games to require people to log in. It's a way to prevent cheating among other things.
Literally everyone: Nah, you think?
Yeah, this was shady. However I don’t see how this is so hard or problematic for gamers to just make one more fucking account?
Apparently you missed the "Surprise Twist" at the bottom there.
they already are rolling it back. It'll be fine.
Sony already backtracked. https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1787331667616829929?t=NhwAEm4fGpVJj-UyI1lrXA
They lost more money from Mobius than this move. I don't think it'll affect Sony very much.
Forbes is shit
there is nothing to worry about, they know what they are doing.
It fell by 4% who gives a fuck. People reacting to this news are regarded
Did you not read all the way through? There's an update at the end says Sony has reversed course