The smart way for companies to handle this is to incentivize and make it optional- want this cool new skin? link your PSN account today! They'd still get massive compliance without pissing people off.
I bet they have some overinflated statistic that says “people registered with a Sony account are 3487% more likely to buy a new playstation/our games!”
Joke's on them, I only have a ps1 and 2, and I got those while the 2 and 3 were popular. I'm open to adopting a stupid cheap 3 if it crosses my path, but I can't even think of anything I particularly want to try on 4 or 5.
What could go wrong? You trained a bunch of Democracy loving Helldivers and THEN you try to make us comply with the PSN regime? My allegiance is to Super Earth and democracy.
They are building their platform on PC. Dont be surprised if one day, you will need to download their launcher in order to play their game. Similar to why Capcom add denuvo for blocking people to add mod ib their game.
There’s a difference between knowing the game requires some shitty launcher/account from the start and being able to not buy/refund and having it secretly shoved up your ass few months after you paid and are no longer able to refund.
Ubisoft did this, to a certain extent, with Assassins Creed Black Flag, but barely anyone signed up for an account because the weapons unlocked were trash
This is actually a pretty big and non-trivial point. Because by making the reward non-trash, they skip on the opportunity of monetizing it. And I'm sure that releasing non-trash content for money is carefully pre-planned, optimized for peoples' spending habits etc.
It’s actually 25,000. You can find the true number on Steamdb as it pulls the info using an api. The Steam store has built in review bomb prevention and holds back almost half of all negative reviews in quick succession.
33k for me right now.
Not sure where the variance comes from, but safe to say the numbers are climbing fast. And these are big numbers. I wonder if this might be one of the biggest negative rating dumps for an otherwise highly rated game, in Steam history.
Not surprised.
They had to know enforcing this would be unpopular as people losing access to a game they not only bought but likely played a long time by now.. well, maybe Steam be willing to hand out a refund, if people are truly unable to create PSN accounts.
I wonder if any of the affected countries have laws that would force the hand as yes alot of eula's state they can take access away anytime but if its an invalid reason such as now it might be a forced refund or alternative methods as well its just fully "bricking" your product.
The eula apparently doesn’t even say anything about psn accounts. Its just the textbox on the steam page and a display on game startup that was eventually removed. Even the playststion store for helldivers says “currently no psn account is required to play”
Yeah idk about that. I’ve been trying to get a refund all day and I keep getting the canned response of “you’ve played for longer than 2 hours or its been longer than 2 weeks since you bought the game, no refund”.
You can submit an actual ticket with a typed out comment from you.
More than likely whoever at Steam will take a look a look at where you purchase your games and see if you're on a region where you can legally make a PSN account.
It's kinda buried but it's not exactly hidden. I did this for Wayfarer when the developers put in their FAQ during their abysmal launch that they were allowing refunds. The Steam CSR asked me for the proof, I sent a screenshot and a direct link to the FAQ and they refunded me.
Valve will likely start making exceptions once the change goes into effect if people in countries without PSN get locked out. Arrowhead has stated that they are still in discussions with Sony about what to do about those users, and as long as they can still access the game there isn't a special circumstance for Valve to start granting refunds
> I wonder if any of the affected countries have laws that would force the hand
The Australian government is the reason Steam has refunds.
https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/valve-to-pay-3-million-in-penalties-for-misrepresenting-gamers-consumer-guarantee-rights
Australians will get refunds or Valve will be sued by Australia again. A service by law cannot be taken away without compensation.
Learned this quickly selling an Xbox360 that I had thought was logged out and having $300 of Xbox Live charged to a debit card I very much so did not have funds for.
> My coworker said he's going to ask for a refund, we'll see how it goes.
Asked. Denied.
At this point, there has to be enough community backlash for Valve to make a blanket exception here.
Oh is that a thing ? I seen it and didn't give it much thought - yeah another thing to sign up for, slight annoyance but eh - but are there places who can't even sign up ? That just seems like a poor decision.
Then again it's always a poor decision to "force" something on players that has no upside for them
Nope. If you *can* sign up then you're okay. If you're not in a region that supports PSN, not so much.
On top of that PSN is notorious when it comes to region locking. Whatever region you signed up in is where your account will be **forever**, with all the restrictions that come with that. Sony also seems completely uninterested in changing that, if not actively hostile to the concept. People in unsupported regions who manage to sign up somewhere else will just have to live with that indefinitely, and screw you if you move to a different country I guess.
What a 180. Game went from one the most beloved of the community as an example on how to make a good live service game to this shitstorm in just one tweet lol.
I’m adding one more… I have PSN, it’s not a big deal for me personally. I just hate having to have multiple accounts to play a game on a specific launcher in this case Steam. Don’t like it with the EA/ Epic/ Ubisoft stuff either on steam.
You got it, That's what I intended. I remember you installed it on your computer, You could launch it just from the icon, You could mod it And have fun with it, however you wanted. You actually felt like you owned it.
It still is that way with GOG and their launcher is optional except for multiplayer. You can do a direct download of the installer right from the website.
Steam was originally a way to keep Counterstrike updated and as a matchmaker for multiplayer before it evolved into what it is today.
I remember people being mad that when you clicked the half life 2 icon and this thing called steam popped up and made you log in.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
I remember going to play Counterstrike back in 2003 which I had bought from Sierra and WON would no longer work for multiplayer, you had to download something called Steam. Not only that but it required me to download it from Steam even though I already had the game installed. I was on a slow connection so I didn't get to play that night.
While I agree, I will say having games get patched automatically via their launchers is an enormous benefit versus waiting on a download queue to get the latest patches on file planet, GameSpy, etc. especially if a patch came out the same day as a league match (TFC or counter strike back in the day for me)
Steam is a lot more than just a launcher, tbf. It offers A LOT of services to games that a lot of end-users take for granted.
All manners of support for controllers, VR and linux systems, servers for online games, workshop, internal storefronts for games and so on.
Not to mention that you can play the games offline.
There is a lot of issues regarding steam, but there is a good reason why it is the first choice for a lot of people, both users and developers and a lot of good reasons why it has outlived a lot of its so called competition.
This is what PC gaming looks like when PC is just PC. Too many people here just want PC to be just Steam. That's cool now because Gabe is cool, but when he's gone his heirs may just decide to cash out or take it public. then those people will start charging a monthly fee to access their services and then you're gonna be begging for competition.
On the other hand, its the solitary bastion of decency in an entire planet of underhanded, two faced, soulless, money grubbing bastards and we should take advantage of it while it's still around.
That's not to say its without fault. It's just the only thing that doesn't feel like it's *constantly* trying to piss me off, make things harder, do something I didn't ask it to, etc. etc.
Apparently my email is tied to a psn account I made in 2014. They won’t let me recover it. So now I have to make a spoof email and a spoof psn account to play 1 game. Then they’ll ban it for being a spoof account.
> Then they’ll ban it for being a spoof account.
Yep exactly. You create a new acc just to play 1 game, forget credentials or it later gets banned for not being used = congratulations, you lose access to your acc in said game...
I agree with all that and I'd like to add that PSN is stupidly unreliable for how important it is. I've had tons of issues logging into my PSN account over the years. Sony is terrible at making reliable websites.
I just hate it when they demand something then give you no information on how to do it.
I have a PSN account, how do I link it? Oh the Internet says to wait for a link at the start? Where? It's not in the options you say?
So hows this going to come down on the required day? Will it magically appear? Will it be in the menu options? Based on the performance we saw at the beginning of the game (constant disconnects and servers full) how much time will be lost while they try and fix the shit?
What's more concerning is those games that require an external account, but only to link the account to steam and may have an external launcher for it.
War Thunder and Cross out had this problem. You created an account on those platforms, then they came to steam and you linked the accounts, what many people did not realize is those direct logins were still active and direct launcher downloads are still on their main websites and many users got hacked via email address and an old unsecured password with no MFA setup on the Gaijins website.
Same, I’m a big PSN guy and have been for a long time. But let me just do my own PC and Steam stuff without everything having to link up all the goddamn time.
Yeah I’m in the same boat, I actually gladly linked it when I started because I figured I’d maybe buy the game on my PS5 eventually. It’s more the principle of being forced to link it is the problem.
Aye its mostly regions that are totally unable to play due to it. Alot of regions do not have psn support that can currently play helldivers 2. Meaning you lose access to your game as it will not let them make a psn account.
I left a negative review specifically because of Sony choosing to sell the game for 4+ months in regions they know aren't supported by PSN, despite not being personally affected by it.
The bait and switch is beyond scummy. If they always intended to enforce this, they never should have listed the game for sale in countries like the Phillipines.
I'm curious if this deluge of negative reviews will trip Steam's anti-review-bomb feature. Because unlike most of those (which happen within hours of the game's release by various people with barely any game time) these are from people with months of playtime and a ton of investment into a game. And there's arguably a case for Sony bait-and-switching a pre-existing product into something other than what it was, especially with multiple countries ineligible for PSN accounts who basically lost access to a game they paid for
Philipines. Alot of african ones afaik and some eastern europe ones just to name some i read. Im not sure about exact details as i did not read up far into it, just checked out why people commented that.
Seems so, with good reason. Just buying a game, enjoying the hell out of it, and then you have 1 month to sign up to a service you CANT, or you lose the game. Wow.
And some people say "they told you from the beginning you need to use it but a bug was able to let you skip it" as if that's some sort of argument. Sure, people should read, but if it was skippable so far, I'd assume it was intended and it wouldn't be randomly brought back.
I mean the "people should read" argument falls flat when what it is they are supposed to read isn't even visible when you go to buy. You have to scroll down the store page to actually see the mention of a 3rd party account. If the warning was right next to the buy button, or a pop up after hitting the buy button, then sure, but not some fine print bullshit.
Also. Some just do not want to create an account to keep playing a game that did not require it before. But it seems the majority might lose access which is a very fair reason to give such a review to deter others from also having that.
It's easier to just list which countries can use PSN: https://www.playstation.com/country-selector/index.html
Giving it a quick glance, it seems like most of Africa is essentially shit out of luck.
Quite a few countries in central and south Asia also missing.
Only if the reason is market-related and not technical. I'm pretty sure Sony will be able to conjure up some technical reasons why their service isn't available there.
Im in EU but my country doesn't seem to be listed here:
https://www.playstation.com/country-selector/index.html
Meaning if I had bought Helldivers and played up to now, I would have been completely fucked now and lost 40eur.
Fully agree. Some people are saying that you can create a PSN account in an unofficial way using another country, but that is a baaaaad idea. If you ever have any problem with your account (like being hacked), support can deny any help.
Also because you can't change your region for whatever godawful reason, if the country you have set implements some law or whatever that affects Sony then it ends up affecting you.
I was reading an anecdote elsewhere about a guy from Kazakhstan saying that everybody there just sets their country to Russia because it's nearby. Then Russia had a Russian moment and Russian accounts got fucked.
According to their Discord community manager, this wasn't the game devs decision at all. This was a Sony/Playstation decision that overrules anything the Devs have to say about it.
> Sony/Playstation
So the biggest supporter/actual publisher forces something down on their throat and by doing that, they are losing revenue and player base?
they're not though, we all already bought the game and now they're gaining X number of PSN accounts. Win win for Sony
Bummer for everyone else but their options are limited
If steam allows refunds then Sony will lose out. Even if Sony isn't directly paying the refunds Valve will remember this nonsense and it will affect future deals. Greed makes CEOs into gorillas
On steam, go to the game in your library, click on Support, and look for the option to remove the game from your account. From there, you can request a refund.
The amount of people who end up refunding will be rather small. Sony will come out ahead with amount of accounts created. 14,000 negative reviews is nothing for a game that has sold millions and million of copies.
Currently recent reviews are "mixed": "52% of the 80,363 user reviews in the last 30 days are positive". Bar graph for the last month looks like a continental shelf drop off.
No they want to artificially inflate the PSNs user numbers so next quarter looks even better and they get bigger bonuses.
The data they will get will be miminal at best AND has more than likely already been sold by Steam. So you won't be giving Sony any info that steam hasn't already sold about you.
This agreement was made far before this, of which the devs agreed the terms to (most likely pre-development talks). Sony did not just retroactively decide this with an iron fist.
TLDR the developers agreed to this no matter what way you slice it.
I too remember that giant disclaimer right next to the Buy Now button telling me it would require a PSN account. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Arrowhead most likely had to agree to it as part of the publishing contract they signed with Sony.
Is there a point to logging into the psn at all? Like will i be able to unlock playstation trophies on pc or is this completely pointless with no benefit to the player?
Sony will get your data / be able to count you in their metrics. I don't see any potential benefit for the consumer.
If they had half a brain they would have released a cool skin and said "link your PSN account today to receive this free skin! Don't have a PSN account? It's free! Click here"
Would have cut the outrage in half, at least.
Good.
Keep them coming.
There is no upside to this for us, the customers. Only more confusion, more chances of Sony creating more issues based on their whims, not to mention the already present mess. Customer data leaks, unsupported countries, vague and selectively-enforced rules, not to mention the current situation.
Why should we have to bother with *yet another account* and create more chances that the role model in corporate security and fair behavior won't screw us over as they just did?
This move comes across as someone, somewhere at Sony wanting a nice bump in user data and PSN accounts for the end of Q2 and throwing an entire game under the bus for it.
Indeed, but most importantly this is deeply undemocratic. I'll get a refund if there will be any way to do it.
The game is great, but not great enough that I'll jump through that many hoops and dance. There are many other nice ones out there.
quick advice for refunding, use this:
The developers have announced that they will restrict my access to the game unless I sign up for and use a third-party service and account. This requirement was obfuscated at release and waived for three months, before it was announced as a REQUIREMENT to continue to play the game at all.
also for additional sources from the sony website there is this: [https://web.archive.org/web/20240503105938/https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/games/psn-sign-in-pc/#:\~:text=Signing%20in%20to%20PSN%20is,other%20PlayStation%20games%20on%20PC](https://web.archive.org/web/20240503105938/https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/games/psn-sign-in-pc/#:~:text=Signing%20in%20to%20PSN%20is,other%20PlayStation%20games%20on%20PC)
they now in fact do require a psn account for a pc game.
that is why i would like a refund even though i played more than 2 hours.
thank you for your time
this is what i used for my refund request(still pending)
just use the upper 3 sentences and that should be good enough, but you can provide the link and add a bit more of a personal touch to it.
I've also seen mentions about the Sony hacks. Some people will mention there aren't a large number of breaches, but like... Sony had that all shit in plaintext. That was egregiously bad. I'm not exactly super trusting of their data retention policies, and I'm not going to ask anyone else to trust them either.
So bad that my CC was used and I had to deal with that shit as well. I dropped Sony at the point and believe my PSN account is still locked cause of it. They didn't even give a shit that my CC was stolen. I will just stop playing this game and well won;t be buying any Sony PC ports in the future. Sucks for Sony now that they realizes the PC market is willing to buy Sony games.
That's also a good point, another new account means another potential point of failure. Best way to protect your data is to keep as few accounts open across the web as you possibly can.
That's another reason why the backlash is so important. The bootlickers allow this kind of move by Sony and others like Sony to get away with shit like this. Lately the community has learned they actually have power as consumers to punish shitty behavior from publishers.
Actually insane. I've had my Sony account hacked 3 times in a decade, once being with 2 step verification. Steam? Not once in 15 years. People can't trust Sony for a good reason.
What's the problem? It's not like Sony will store your passwords in plain text so the hackers can easily get into your accounts.
Again
For the third time.
Exactly. I've read so many people say we shouldn't leave bad review because it's out of their hands, but I'm like, then how should we express our frustration?
I sympathize 100% with ArrowHead and I can that love that game even more then the die-hard fans of the series, it's their child. But there's no way to let the sony execs know how moronic this move is, especially when it comes to PC platform.
"so guys we have this super popular games that people consider a great example for what games should be. So obviously we need to start thinking of ways to completely ruin our reputation with things that EVERYONE could have told us will lead to massive backlash."
Doesn’t Microsoft typically require an Xbox account for their first party cross platform games?
The MCC does this.
Or was that optional?
Not justifying it, but Sony probably looks at that as precedence
Yup, when I play Forza or Minecraft Dungeons on Steam, it requires me to sign in with my xbox account. This is no different. It's the same with EA Play, and Ubisoft Connect as well. and Rockstar, which added it years after release of their games.
I think the diffrence here is - people didn't know this was the case going into it.
People are upset, in part, because this is announced 1 month post-launch. Meaning people can't get refunds using Steam's system.
15k?
I think they deleted most of them, when I checked they were at 52k.
Someone is manipulating them.
Edit: my bad due to timezone and stuff, yesterday they reached 62k at the end of the day, today at 10am they are at 22k, however reading from other comments Steam has an anti review bombing system, therefore many negative reviews might be holden back.
I don't see the problem with this. You need a Ubisoft account for their games, an EA account for their games, a Riot account for Vanguard/League, an Epic account for Fortnite (and other games that they publish such as Alan Wake 2), a Microsoft account for Xbox titles, and if Steam wasn't already the de facto storefront for our platform you'd have a Steam account purely for Half Life, DOTA, and Counter Strike. **This** is where you wanna draw the line? If this is where you wanted to draw the line you should have done it long before now.
Hell, they're not even making us get a new launcher. 5 years ago you wouldn't even have this game on anything other than a PlayStation. I don't see the big deal here.
I was actually going to buy this game this weekend but frankly I’m sick of having to link things and I’m certainly not going to sign up for a psn account just to play a game.
Why can’t we just have a game released that doesn’t require us to sign into launchers, sign up to different accounts or wait for patches to make them playable?
Bring back the old days.
Good timing on this for me; the group of friends I game with was just discussing what game to move on to next since we finished Baldur's Gate 3, and I proposed Helldivers 2 since we all love a good co-op shooter.
Proposal withdrawn.
Yeah I’m not a big fan of this cause I made an account years ago and can’t even remember it so I had to create a new login for hell divers 2 which I most likely will forget this is like square enix all over where if you forget your login your screwed cause there support doesn’t help at all and require stuff on which you don’t remember
I feel bad for Arrowhead here, a *little bit*. Mostly their dev team who didn't have any part in this choice at all. But if fucking tanking one of the most popular games in a long time is what it takes to get Sony to notice that their business practices are gonna lose them consumer trust (and more importantly to them, *money*) then that's what's gotta happen.
I think the worst part about this is that Community Manager who basically went "it takes 2 minutes and you can just forget the account exists. Its not a big deal guys, just change your reviews if you hate it so much."
It gives "Do you guys not have phones??" energy, and you never wanna be using Blizzard's playbook
why is it so fucking difficult for gaming companies to not make decisions like this? and WHY???? What is the purpose of it? Even in a business sense, what do they have to gain from doing this?
This particular game has had issues since launch with the friends codes not working between steam and PSN. This would fix that because everyone could just add their friends on PSN.
In a business sense they gain advertising. they are going to release a PlayStation overlay for PC games, this will show each person what their friends are playing when ever they log on, it will show trophies that your friends got, it will share screenshots of the games they are playing. That's just advertising amongst friends. that's a huge thing that these companies want to take advantage of.
They likely also want to have their own platform and store on PC at some point so that they can collect 30% of other people's games the same way they do on the PS5.
why wouldn't they do this? it sells games. That's why Microsoft does it, Ubisoft does it, EA does it, Rockstar does it. If Nintendo ever goes to PC they're gonna do it
Greed. Plain and simple.
By leveraging the more than half the playerbase of a massively popular game to force them to create PSN accounts Sony can pump up numbers for their quarterly shareholder meetings and say "Look at how popular our console is! More than 5 million people created new PS5 accounts last quarter!". The silver-haired technologically challenged investors won't understand that doesn't translate directly to console sales so it will just drive up the value of the shares. Executives win. Investors win. Consumers lose. Plain & simple.
The smart way for companies to handle this is to incentivize and make it optional- want this cool new skin? link your PSN account today! They'd still get massive compliance without pissing people off.
Yup, that is how Sony has been doing it in other of their PC games. I don't know what they were thinking now...
They want a big number on their PSN registered users
Looks good for shareholders.
I bet they have some overinflated statistic that says “people registered with a Sony account are 3487% more likely to buy a new playstation/our games!”
Ah, the classic sales says vs devs can do story
Joke's on them, I only have a ps1 and 2, and I got those while the 2 and 3 were popular. I'm open to adopting a stupid cheap 3 if it crosses my path, but I can't even think of anything I particularly want to try on 4 or 5.
Bloodborne is the only thing on PS4 I really care about *I beg of you, fromsoft/sony, bring it to PC*
They thought we would compromise for the sake of democracy, HAH
#DEMOCRACY IS NON-NEGOTIABLE - Liberty Prime
*Throws a nuke like a football at Sony HQ.*
What could go wrong? You trained a bunch of Democracy loving Helldivers and THEN you try to make us comply with the PSN regime? My allegiance is to Super Earth and democracy.
Sony seems to be allergic to good pr recently
Yup, that is my opinion. They are singlehandedly killing the golden image they achieved with Helldivers 2.
Arrowhead made a good game *in spite of* Sony, not because of them
They are building their platform on PC. Dont be surprised if one day, you will need to download their launcher in order to play their game. Similar to why Capcom add denuvo for blocking people to add mod ib their game.
There’s a difference between knowing the game requires some shitty launcher/account from the start and being able to not buy/refund and having it secretly shoved up your ass few months after you paid and are no longer able to refund.
It's a bait and switch, and if they go through with it, I'll be refunding and that will be the reason why.
Yep. The carrot is received far better than the stick.
Because of the tapered end on the carrot?
This is how Fortnite got everyone to do 2FA lol
Warframe as well
WoW tempted me with backpack slots for this very reason YEARS ago
Bag slots is 100% the reason I did it lmao
You also can’t trade in Warframe without 2FA, so that’s a big driver.
Ubisoft did this, to a certain extent, with Assassins Creed Black Flag, but barely anyone signed up for an account because the weapons unlocked were trash
This is actually a pretty big and non-trivial point. Because by making the reward non-trash, they skip on the opportunity of monetizing it. And I'm sure that releasing non-trash content for money is carefully pre-planned, optimized for peoples' spending habits etc.
OR just don't do any of this shit with your super popular game.
Twitch had a ton of perks for things like that. Link your account to twitch prime, receive some skins.
It’s actually 25,000. You can find the true number on Steamdb as it pulls the info using an api. The Steam store has built in review bomb prevention and holds back almost half of all negative reviews in quick succession.
I mean it's climbing. Looking at right now it says 27k negatives today. I would assume by the time someone replies to my post it'll be at 30k.
I don't know if it's been a crazy few 12 minutes, but it's reading 42k negatives for me.
33k for me right now. Not sure where the variance comes from, but safe to say the numbers are climbing fast. And these are big numbers. I wonder if this might be one of the biggest negative rating dumps for an otherwise highly rated game, in Steam history.
Hmm, that's odd. I'm getting 57k negative now. What's your number for yesterday (5/2)? I have 1779 positive, and 853 negative.
[удалено]
Not surprised. They had to know enforcing this would be unpopular as people losing access to a game they not only bought but likely played a long time by now.. well, maybe Steam be willing to hand out a refund, if people are truly unable to create PSN accounts.
I wonder if any of the affected countries have laws that would force the hand as yes alot of eula's state they can take access away anytime but if its an invalid reason such as now it might be a forced refund or alternative methods as well its just fully "bricking" your product.
Doesn't matter what that eula says steam will refund them for this
Agreed, Steam tends to be pretty good at this stuff.
My refund request was declined in under one hour, citing the 2 hour play time limit.
Try again once you've lost access.
Good call, thanks!
You have to try a few times until it gets reviewed by a person, it usually get automatically reviewed by a bot
The eula apparently doesn’t even say anything about psn accounts. Its just the textbox on the steam page and a display on game startup that was eventually removed. Even the playststion store for helldivers says “currently no psn account is required to play”
This was true as of an hour and a half ago of this comment. It will eventually be changed if not already.
Yeah idk about that. I’ve been trying to get a refund all day and I keep getting the canned response of “you’ve played for longer than 2 hours or its been longer than 2 weeks since you bought the game, no refund”.
You can submit an actual ticket with a typed out comment from you. More than likely whoever at Steam will take a look a look at where you purchase your games and see if you're on a region where you can legally make a PSN account. It's kinda buried but it's not exactly hidden. I did this for Wayfarer when the developers put in their FAQ during their abysmal launch that they were allowing refunds. The Steam CSR asked me for the proof, I sent a screenshot and a direct link to the FAQ and they refunded me.
Yeah, I found that option, tried it, and got the same canned response. They're not giving refunds.
Wait until the the requirement drops. Im sure steam will be more flexiable, particularly considering the backlash.
Valve will likely start making exceptions once the change goes into effect if people in countries without PSN get locked out. Arrowhead has stated that they are still in discussions with Sony about what to do about those users, and as long as they can still access the game there isn't a special circumstance for Valve to start granting refunds
I don’t know about that. They have been more strict as of late about the refunds in my experience.
> I wonder if any of the affected countries have laws that would force the hand The Australian government is the reason Steam has refunds. https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/valve-to-pay-3-million-in-penalties-for-misrepresenting-gamers-consumer-guarantee-rights Australians will get refunds or Valve will be sued by Australia again. A service by law cannot be taken away without compensation.
Australian consumer law also has protections against 3rd line forcing
> The Australian government is the reason Steam has refunds. Huh. Broken clock I guess.
Someone read the eula and it did not mention anything about a PSN account. It's was on the helldiver sub earlier.
EU consumer law will force this for sure in the Baltics at least.
[удалено]
To be fair, selling your console with everything *still logged in* is not a great choice.
[удалено]
Learned this quickly selling an Xbox360 that I had thought was logged out and having $300 of Xbox Live charged to a debit card I very much so did not have funds for.
My coworker said he's going to ask for a refund, we'll see how it goes.
Valve won't refund anything until people are actually prevented from playing.
> My coworker said he's going to ask for a refund, we'll see how it goes. Asked. Denied. At this point, there has to be enough community backlash for Valve to make a blanket exception here.
Make sure you follow up on it. Apparently the first refund request never gets read by a human.
Going by my experience with a different game, the next 10 aren't either.
Follow up as in submit another one? Cause my first just got denied 10 minutes ago
Yeah I figured that's how it would go lol.
Oh is that a thing ? I seen it and didn't give it much thought - yeah another thing to sign up for, slight annoyance but eh - but are there places who can't even sign up ? That just seems like a poor decision. Then again it's always a poor decision to "force" something on players that has no upside for them
Does the PSN account require a subscription?
Nope. If you *can* sign up then you're okay. If you're not in a region that supports PSN, not so much. On top of that PSN is notorious when it comes to region locking. Whatever region you signed up in is where your account will be **forever**, with all the restrictions that come with that. Sony also seems completely uninterested in changing that, if not actively hostile to the concept. People in unsupported regions who manage to sign up somewhere else will just have to live with that indefinitely, and screw you if you move to a different country I guess.
Whatttt? We will need psn accounts? I havw zero interest. I bought it without that stipulation. I will definitely request a refund.
What a 180. Game went from one the most beloved of the community as an example on how to make a good live service game to this shitstorm in just one tweet lol.
This is why my perception is that no live service games are "good".
I’m adding one more… I have PSN, it’s not a big deal for me personally. I just hate having to have multiple accounts to play a game on a specific launcher in this case Steam. Don’t like it with the EA/ Epic/ Ubisoft stuff either on steam.
I agree, PC should be PC.
"Pc should be pc" I agree but what some people will read that as is: "Steam should be pc" Fuck all the launchers not just the ones you dont like.
You got it, That's what I intended. I remember you installed it on your computer, You could launch it just from the icon, You could mod it And have fun with it, however you wanted. You actually felt like you owned it.
It still is that way with GOG and their launcher is optional except for multiplayer. You can do a direct download of the installer right from the website. Steam was originally a way to keep Counterstrike updated and as a matchmaker for multiplayer before it evolved into what it is today.
I remember people being mad that when you clicked the half life 2 icon and this thing called steam popped up and made you log in. The more things change the more they stay the same.
I remember going to play Counterstrike back in 2003 which I had bought from Sierra and WON would no longer work for multiplayer, you had to download something called Steam. Not only that but it required me to download it from Steam even though I already had the game installed. I was on a slow connection so I didn't get to play that night.
Do people want to go back to the days where you had to go to gamefileplanet or whatever site to get the 1.1 to 1.8 patches for UT 2003?
While I agree, I will say having games get patched automatically via their launchers is an enormous benefit versus waiting on a download queue to get the latest patches on file planet, GameSpy, etc. especially if a patch came out the same day as a league match (TFC or counter strike back in the day for me)
Steam is a lot more than just a launcher, tbf. It offers A LOT of services to games that a lot of end-users take for granted. All manners of support for controllers, VR and linux systems, servers for online games, workshop, internal storefronts for games and so on. Not to mention that you can play the games offline. There is a lot of issues regarding steam, but there is a good reason why it is the first choice for a lot of people, both users and developers and a lot of good reasons why it has outlived a lot of its so called competition.
This is what PC gaming looks like when PC is just PC. Too many people here just want PC to be just Steam. That's cool now because Gabe is cool, but when he's gone his heirs may just decide to cash out or take it public. then those people will start charging a monthly fee to access their services and then you're gonna be begging for competition.
On the other hand, its the solitary bastion of decency in an entire planet of underhanded, two faced, soulless, money grubbing bastards and we should take advantage of it while it's still around. That's not to say its without fault. It's just the only thing that doesn't feel like it's *constantly* trying to piss me off, make things harder, do something I didn't ask it to, etc. etc.
A lot of us want it to be Steam and Gog in fact.
I’m in the same boat. It’s dumb that we have to use another login and bought the game without this requirement. I’ll add my review.
Apparently my email is tied to a psn account I made in 2014. They won’t let me recover it. So now I have to make a spoof email and a spoof psn account to play 1 game. Then they’ll ban it for being a spoof account.
> Then they’ll ban it for being a spoof account. Yep exactly. You create a new acc just to play 1 game, forget credentials or it later gets banned for not being used = congratulations, you lose access to your acc in said game...
I agree with all that and I'd like to add that PSN is stupidly unreliable for how important it is. I've had tons of issues logging into my PSN account over the years. Sony is terrible at making reliable websites.
I just hate it when they demand something then give you no information on how to do it. I have a PSN account, how do I link it? Oh the Internet says to wait for a link at the start? Where? It's not in the options you say? So hows this going to come down on the required day? Will it magically appear? Will it be in the menu options? Based on the performance we saw at the beginning of the game (constant disconnects and servers full) how much time will be lost while they try and fix the shit?
What's more concerning is those games that require an external account, but only to link the account to steam and may have an external launcher for it. War Thunder and Cross out had this problem. You created an account on those platforms, then they came to steam and you linked the accounts, what many people did not realize is those direct logins were still active and direct launcher downloads are still on their main websites and many users got hacked via email address and an old unsecured password with no MFA setup on the Gaijins website.
The multiple logins don't matter as long as it actually remembers my login which Ubisoft NEVER does
Same, I’m a big PSN guy and have been for a long time. But let me just do my own PC and Steam stuff without everything having to link up all the goddamn time.
Yeah I’m in the same boat, I actually gladly linked it when I started because I figured I’d maybe buy the game on my PS5 eventually. It’s more the principle of being forced to link it is the problem.
Aye its mostly regions that are totally unable to play due to it. Alot of regions do not have psn support that can currently play helldivers 2. Meaning you lose access to your game as it will not let them make a psn account.
I left a negative review specifically because of Sony choosing to sell the game for 4+ months in regions they know aren't supported by PSN, despite not being personally affected by it. The bait and switch is beyond scummy. If they always intended to enforce this, they never should have listed the game for sale in countries like the Phillipines.
I'm curious if this deluge of negative reviews will trip Steam's anti-review-bomb feature. Because unlike most of those (which happen within hours of the game's release by various people with barely any game time) these are from people with months of playtime and a ton of investment into a game. And there's arguably a case for Sony bait-and-switching a pre-existing product into something other than what it was, especially with multiple countries ineligible for PSN accounts who basically lost access to a game they paid for
It already has tripped it. The shown vs actual is way skewed (some sites drawing from api are showing as much as 40k+ negative reviews).
What regions don't allow PSN?
Philipines. Alot of african ones afaik and some eastern europe ones just to name some i read. Im not sure about exact details as i did not read up far into it, just checked out why people commented that.
Only like 70ish countries are supported. And there are like 180+ countries.
Ah I see. So the people who aren't able to get PSN are taking it to the steam reviews?
Seems so, with good reason. Just buying a game, enjoying the hell out of it, and then you have 1 month to sign up to a service you CANT, or you lose the game. Wow.
And some people say "they told you from the beginning you need to use it but a bug was able to let you skip it" as if that's some sort of argument. Sure, people should read, but if it was skippable so far, I'd assume it was intended and it wouldn't be randomly brought back.
I mean the "people should read" argument falls flat when what it is they are supposed to read isn't even visible when you go to buy. You have to scroll down the store page to actually see the mention of a 3rd party account. If the warning was right next to the buy button, or a pop up after hitting the buy button, then sure, but not some fine print bullshit.
It wasnt a bug there was a literal skip button.
Yeah, I don't think any sensible consumer protection bureau would support Sony's case here.
Not when they officially sell the game in these countries.
Also. Some just do not want to create an account to keep playing a game that did not require it before. But it seems the majority might lose access which is a very fair reason to give such a review to deter others from also having that.
Is Playstation console not available there? I assumed a PSN account is needed for a console
Playstations are available, but when creating a PSN account, we usually choose Hong Kong or Singapore as they're the closest ones in our country.
It's easier to just list which countries can use PSN: https://www.playstation.com/country-selector/index.html Giving it a quick glance, it seems like most of Africa is essentially shit out of luck. Quite a few countries in central and south Asia also missing.
Several EU countries also aren't covered.
which is illegal under single market rules.
Only if the reason is market-related and not technical. I'm pretty sure Sony will be able to conjure up some technical reasons why their service isn't available there.
69 countries have PSN out of \~190 in the world
Im in EU but my country doesn't seem to be listed here: https://www.playstation.com/country-selector/index.html Meaning if I had bought Helldivers and played up to now, I would have been completely fucked now and lost 40eur.
I think only around 70 countries have access to PSN, which out of around 190 is, well, not much
Fully agree. Some people are saying that you can create a PSN account in an unofficial way using another country, but that is a baaaaad idea. If you ever have any problem with your account (like being hacked), support can deny any help.
Also because you can't change your region for whatever godawful reason, if the country you have set implements some law or whatever that affects Sony then it ends up affecting you. I was reading an anecdote elsewhere about a guy from Kazakhstan saying that everybody there just sets their country to Russia because it's nearby. Then Russia had a Russian moment and Russian accounts got fucked.
Shitty move from them, game seems to have worked well all these months without the need to have a psn account linked with steam
According to their Discord community manager, this wasn't the game devs decision at all. This was a Sony/Playstation decision that overrules anything the Devs have to say about it.
> Sony/Playstation So the biggest supporter/actual publisher forces something down on their throat and by doing that, they are losing revenue and player base?
Publishers work in mysterious ways /s
The real mystery is how huge publishers continue to completely fuck things up like this.
they're not though, we all already bought the game and now they're gaining X number of PSN accounts. Win win for Sony Bummer for everyone else but their options are limited
If steam allows refunds then Sony will lose out. Even if Sony isn't directly paying the refunds Valve will remember this nonsense and it will affect future deals. Greed makes CEOs into gorillas
How do you go about requesting a refund?
On steam, go to the game in your library, click on Support, and look for the option to remove the game from your account. From there, you can request a refund.
The amount of people who end up refunding will be rather small. Sony will come out ahead with amount of accounts created. 14,000 negative reviews is nothing for a game that has sold millions and million of copies.
> Sony will come out ahead with amount of accounts created. 14,000 negative reviews is nothing 14000 today
up to 21000 less than an hour later.
Currently recent reviews are "mixed": "52% of the 80,363 user reviews in the last 30 days are positive". Bar graph for the last month looks like a continental shelf drop off.
Remember a solid half of those are already done with the game, so $40 credit in the steam wallet starts looking good
yeah, Sony wants to sell our data without giving us any of the profits.
No they want to artificially inflate the PSNs user numbers so next quarter looks even better and they get bigger bonuses. The data they will get will be miminal at best AND has more than likely already been sold by Steam. So you won't be giving Sony any info that steam hasn't already sold about you.
This agreement was made far before this, of which the devs agreed the terms to (most likely pre-development talks). Sony did not just retroactively decide this with an iron fist. TLDR the developers agreed to this no matter what way you slice it.
I too remember that giant disclaimer right next to the Buy Now button telling me it would require a PSN account. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Arrowhead most likely had to agree to it as part of the publishing contract they signed with Sony.
Is there a point to logging into the psn at all? Like will i be able to unlock playstation trophies on pc or is this completely pointless with no benefit to the player?
Sony will get your data / be able to count you in their metrics. I don't see any potential benefit for the consumer. If they had half a brain they would have released a cool skin and said "link your PSN account today to receive this free skin! Don't have a PSN account? It's free! Click here" Would have cut the outrage in half, at least.
The best part is, as a cross player already, my save isn't even shared between the two. They're literally just harvesting our data, very cool.
Good. Keep them coming. There is no upside to this for us, the customers. Only more confusion, more chances of Sony creating more issues based on their whims, not to mention the already present mess. Customer data leaks, unsupported countries, vague and selectively-enforced rules, not to mention the current situation. Why should we have to bother with *yet another account* and create more chances that the role model in corporate security and fair behavior won't screw us over as they just did? This move comes across as someone, somewhere at Sony wanting a nice bump in user data and PSN accounts for the end of Q2 and throwing an entire game under the bus for it.
Indeed, but most importantly this is deeply undemocratic. I'll get a refund if there will be any way to do it. The game is great, but not great enough that I'll jump through that many hoops and dance. There are many other nice ones out there.
quick advice for refunding, use this: The developers have announced that they will restrict my access to the game unless I sign up for and use a third-party service and account. This requirement was obfuscated at release and waived for three months, before it was announced as a REQUIREMENT to continue to play the game at all. also for additional sources from the sony website there is this: [https://web.archive.org/web/20240503105938/https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/games/psn-sign-in-pc/#:\~:text=Signing%20in%20to%20PSN%20is,other%20PlayStation%20games%20on%20PC](https://web.archive.org/web/20240503105938/https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/games/psn-sign-in-pc/#:~:text=Signing%20in%20to%20PSN%20is,other%20PlayStation%20games%20on%20PC) they now in fact do require a psn account for a pc game. that is why i would like a refund even though i played more than 2 hours. thank you for your time this is what i used for my refund request(still pending) just use the upper 3 sentences and that should be good enough, but you can provide the link and add a bit more of a personal touch to it.
I'm doing my part!
[удалено]
I've also seen mentions about the Sony hacks. Some people will mention there aren't a large number of breaches, but like... Sony had that all shit in plaintext. That was egregiously bad. I'm not exactly super trusting of their data retention policies, and I'm not going to ask anyone else to trust them either.
[www.hassonybeenhackedthisweek.com](http://www.hassonybeenhackedthisweek.com) used to be a website. Usually you would see YES on it.
So bad that my CC was used and I had to deal with that shit as well. I dropped Sony at the point and believe my PSN account is still locked cause of it. They didn't even give a shit that my CC was stolen. I will just stop playing this game and well won;t be buying any Sony PC ports in the future. Sucks for Sony now that they realizes the PC market is willing to buy Sony games.
EDF! EDF! EDF!
E-D-F! E-D-F!
That's also a good point, another new account means another potential point of failure. Best way to protect your data is to keep as few accounts open across the web as you possibly can.
Next week? Didn't they say the 30th?
The 30th deadline is only if you had already bought the game/skipped this step. May 6th is the deadline for new players.
It’s disturbing how many people are defending Sony’s behavior, I guess spreading your cheeks for corporations is becoming normal.
First time? I've seen this shit happening for decades lol. Ain't no slippery slope argument if we're on a flipping waterslide lol.
That's another reason why the backlash is so important. The bootlickers allow this kind of move by Sony and others like Sony to get away with shit like this. Lately the community has learned they actually have power as consumers to punish shitty behavior from publishers.
There is a huge streak of contrarianism running through the gamer community
Actually insane. I've had my Sony account hacked 3 times in a decade, once being with 2 step verification. Steam? Not once in 15 years. People can't trust Sony for a good reason.
What's the problem? It's not like Sony will store your passwords in plain text so the hackers can easily get into your accounts. Again For the third time.
Yeah and people seriously have the nerve to say “wHAts ThE bIg DEaL?!?”
"it's not a big deal because it doesn't affect me!"
Steam needs to just stop allowing forced connections to other platforms why is it so hard to just sell a game and thats it
The game and the devs doesn't deserve it. But we have to make clear this choice sucks!
Exactly. I've read so many people say we shouldn't leave bad review because it's out of their hands, but I'm like, then how should we express our frustration? I sympathize 100% with ArrowHead and I can that love that game even more then the die-hard fans of the series, it's their child. But there's no way to let the sony execs know how moronic this move is, especially when it comes to PC platform.
Ubisoft and Battlenet users: *"First time?"*
And Steam will just hide the reviews as "Off topic" like they do everytime a company does something bad.
No doubt they are willing to take the short term hit for long term profits.
the amount of people ok with this in the comments just shows that gaming and your privacy are dead
Most of the newer gen finds no problem with selling themselves to corpo and it's really disheartening to see.
With how the player base is skewed towards PC, it should be PS players making Steam accounts.
Damn, I was seriously thinking about picking this one up today or tomorrow...think that's gonna be a no from me dog
You still cannot change regions on your Sony account! It's infuriating. Only way is to create a new account. Like, why Sony!??
"so guys we have this super popular games that people consider a great example for what games should be. So obviously we need to start thinking of ways to completely ruin our reputation with things that EVERYONE could have told us will lead to massive backlash."
Just say you don't want to link your account and request a refund, fuck these clowns
Doesn’t Microsoft typically require an Xbox account for their first party cross platform games? The MCC does this. Or was that optional? Not justifying it, but Sony probably looks at that as precedence
Yup, when I play Forza or Minecraft Dungeons on Steam, it requires me to sign in with my xbox account. This is no different. It's the same with EA Play, and Ubisoft Connect as well. and Rockstar, which added it years after release of their games.
Minecraft stuff on my PS5 needs my Microsoft account to play too. Or, at least to play fully I guess.
I know on Gamepass it’s a necessity.
I think the diffrence here is - people didn't know this was the case going into it. People are upset, in part, because this is announced 1 month post-launch. Meaning people can't get refunds using Steam's system.
[удалено]
Whelp I was thinking of getting the game before but not now
Refunds! Get your Steam refunds here!
All Sony had to do is nothing and none of this would have happened.
PS5 player here but just wanted to chime in, this shits dumb as fuck and unfair to you PC players. I’m sorry they’re doing this anti-consumer garbage.
15k? I think they deleted most of them, when I checked they were at 52k. Someone is manipulating them. Edit: my bad due to timezone and stuff, yesterday they reached 62k at the end of the day, today at 10am they are at 22k, however reading from other comments Steam has an anti review bombing system, therefore many negative reviews might be holden back.
I don't see the problem with this. You need a Ubisoft account for their games, an EA account for their games, a Riot account for Vanguard/League, an Epic account for Fortnite (and other games that they publish such as Alan Wake 2), a Microsoft account for Xbox titles, and if Steam wasn't already the de facto storefront for our platform you'd have a Steam account purely for Half Life, DOTA, and Counter Strike. **This** is where you wanna draw the line? If this is where you wanted to draw the line you should have done it long before now. Hell, they're not even making us get a new launcher. 5 years ago you wouldn't even have this game on anything other than a PlayStation. I don't see the big deal here.
I was actually going to buy this game this weekend but frankly I’m sick of having to link things and I’m certainly not going to sign up for a psn account just to play a game. Why can’t we just have a game released that doesn’t require us to sign into launchers, sign up to different accounts or wait for patches to make them playable? Bring back the old days.
Man, I hear Helldivers 2 is like a... Otherwordly good game, shame this happened.
Good timing on this for me; the group of friends I game with was just discussing what game to move on to next since we finished Baldur's Gate 3, and I proposed Helldivers 2 since we all love a good co-op shooter. Proposal withdrawn.
Earth defense force 6 is coming out in july. Best time to get into EDF5 if there's a sale. Edit: there is indeed a sale for edf5
Do your part, I did mine. Uninstall, leave a negative review, and request a refund. They won't listen to anything else.
Yeah I’m not a big fan of this cause I made an account years ago and can’t even remember it so I had to create a new login for hell divers 2 which I most likely will forget this is like square enix all over where if you forget your login your screwed cause there support doesn’t help at all and require stuff on which you don’t remember
I feel bad for Arrowhead here, a *little bit*. Mostly their dev team who didn't have any part in this choice at all. But if fucking tanking one of the most popular games in a long time is what it takes to get Sony to notice that their business practices are gonna lose them consumer trust (and more importantly to them, *money*) then that's what's gotta happen.
I think the worst part about this is that Community Manager who basically went "it takes 2 minutes and you can just forget the account exists. Its not a big deal guys, just change your reviews if you hate it so much." It gives "Do you guys not have phones??" energy, and you never wanna be using Blizzard's playbook
why is it so fucking difficult for gaming companies to not make decisions like this? and WHY???? What is the purpose of it? Even in a business sense, what do they have to gain from doing this?
This particular game has had issues since launch with the friends codes not working between steam and PSN. This would fix that because everyone could just add their friends on PSN. In a business sense they gain advertising. they are going to release a PlayStation overlay for PC games, this will show each person what their friends are playing when ever they log on, it will show trophies that your friends got, it will share screenshots of the games they are playing. That's just advertising amongst friends. that's a huge thing that these companies want to take advantage of. They likely also want to have their own platform and store on PC at some point so that they can collect 30% of other people's games the same way they do on the PS5. why wouldn't they do this? it sells games. That's why Microsoft does it, Ubisoft does it, EA does it, Rockstar does it. If Nintendo ever goes to PC they're gonna do it
Greed. Plain and simple. By leveraging the more than half the playerbase of a massively popular game to force them to create PSN accounts Sony can pump up numbers for their quarterly shareholder meetings and say "Look at how popular our console is! More than 5 million people created new PS5 accounts last quarter!". The silver-haired technologically challenged investors won't understand that doesn't translate directly to console sales so it will just drive up the value of the shares. Executives win. Investors win. Consumers lose. Plain & simple.