Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut has been delisted on Steam in countries where PSN isn't available
- Thread starter Red Kong XIX
- Start date
Its not mutually exclusive. Sony is wrong for not having psn ready for those regions, but lets also recognize that this was an after-effect of bad faith arguments by gamers.
Anecdotal it may seem, it appeared no one from unsupported regions ever complained about the regional issues. Privileged gamers rocked a dinky-ass but workable boat, and now our region(s) gets screwed.
The boat was rocked and this is the consequences but you notice how diver players are not doing their boycott for this right?
Selfish fools got what they wanted
Selfish fools got what they wanted
You do have to realize how ridiculous that sounds, right? No one from unsupported regions ever complained? Ever? No, they complained to Sony, who didn't care because they own their store. The issue is that this is not Sony's store. This is Valve's, and they do care. Sony has to abide by its own damn ToS on Steam's platform. That's what people don't seem to be getting. Valve wasn't tricked by bad faith gamer arguments. They're following the goddamn law.
There is no way of accurately gauging which complaints are "legitimate" and doesn't justify what Sony is forcing in the first place. This is the after math of Sony releasing their games in all regions for years and suddenly shoving a requirement that renders over a hundred countries unable to buy their games and others being forced to create fake accounts. This would not blow up into the issue it is today if Sony had communicated their plans from the get go. Testing the waters and then doing whatever they want won't fly on a store they do not own.
It's wild that people are trying to pin this on overzealous Helldivers 2 players and not the company mandating a secondary account for no real benefit to the people playing their games. Never mind that one of the reasons the Helldivers 2 thing blew up in the first place was because Sony was suddenly mandating a new requirement for a game that ALREADY WORKED TOTALLY FINE FOR PLAYERS.
Like even if you took the stance that made those Helldivers 2 players look as bad as possible and assumed they were all just complaining because they didn't want to make an account, the calculus is still "Sony is making me sign up for an account for nothing except trophies I probably don't care about because I'm not already a PlayStation member." This shit isn't required. Helldivers 2 becoming a huge success without PSN is proof positive of that. This is all 100% on Sony.
Like even if you took the stance that made those Helldivers 2 players look as bad as possible and assumed they were all just complaining because they didn't want to make an account, the calculus is still "Sony is making me sign up for an account for nothing except trophies I probably don't care about because I'm not already a PlayStation member." This shit isn't required. Helldivers 2 becoming a huge success without PSN is proof positive of that. This is all 100% on Sony.
As someone who lives in a non supported country.. I do not care about creating additional accounts to access stuff, I will and have gladly done that for any game that has asked.... At least it was possible for me to do so... Now instead of having to created a throw away psn account or a throwaway rockstar or throwaway EA or throwaway 2Kaccount etc etc.. ppl such as myself are going to have to go through hoops to create an additional steam account to access the same list of games we had before. And you will STILL have to create an account for new PSN games.... So we all lose.
Thanks for nothing
I don't get why, if Sony want to go this route so badly, they don't have like PSN lite accounts in out of service regions.
Like, you can make a PSN account for your region but they offer no additional support or additional languages. Like, just add the countries to a drop down. They don't have a PSN store for those regions, and don't seem to be looking to make a PC PSN store, so they don't have to worry about transactions and refunds and infrastructure for that and people in these countries can already make an out of region PSN account anyway so why not just add it to a drop down, put a disclaimer that they can only offer support in whatever languages they currently offer support for and call it a day? Just have the stuff handled by the nearest official branch, just treat them as from that country in regards to support. And it's not like Sony customer support is any good anyway.
Obviously, not a free solution and they'd have to update systems and brief CS reps etc but surely it's nothing compared to what they could've been making from sales going forward?
Like, you can make a PSN account for your region but they offer no additional support or additional languages. Like, just add the countries to a drop down. They don't have a PSN store for those regions, and don't seem to be looking to make a PC PSN store, so they don't have to worry about transactions and refunds and infrastructure for that and people in these countries can already make an out of region PSN account anyway so why not just add it to a drop down, put a disclaimer that they can only offer support in whatever languages they currently offer support for and call it a day? Just have the stuff handled by the nearest official branch, just treat them as from that country in regards to support. And it's not like Sony customer support is any good anyway.
Obviously, not a free solution and they'd have to update systems and brief CS reps etc but surely it's nothing compared to what they could've been making from sales going forward?
I don't buy that shareholders actually care about PSN user numbers if it doesn't translate to the one number they care about the most and that is namely profits.
What exactly does it do for a shareholder if PSN numbers increase by a few million non paying users? Having a free PSN account means nothing to a shareholder when the user is not locked into a PS store. These PSN numbers make sense on PlayStation not on Steam.
Pretty sure it's Sony that are in control of PSN accounts and whether their games on PC need it or not, not some random Helldivers players.
Yea, even without the Helldivers 2 review bombing this issue would've cropped up on Steam's end at some point one way or another.
edit: The post by Kyougar on the last page sums it up well.
You have to know that this was inevitable as soon as Sony decided to mandate this stuff. Sure, people can try to make accounts connected to another region, but not everyone is going to understand that they can do that or be savvy enough to do it, and it doesn't take a lot of people complaining that the game they bought has broken functionality in some regions before it becomes a news story, even if Helldivers 2 had never happened at all.
But someone's already said all this stuff better than I can:
There are a whole bunch of ways to solve this problem, some of which even let Sony keep PSN integration. Sony can spin up proper PSN presences in affected countries. They could create a different account structure that isn't tied to regions and doesn't allow for purchases. They could potentially change their ToS. They can make PSN integration optional. They could NOT INTEGRATE PSN AT ALL. The idea that the only options here are "Sony forces PSN integration on everyone" or "selfish Helldivers 2 players ruin things for everyone" is patently ridiculous.
I did this with Helldivers 2 on the day it was delisted in the Philippines. I bought a key from Greenman gaming and the code worked. Unfortunately, Helldivers 2 is not available in the Philippines anymore on Greenman gaming when I checked today.
So maybe it will work if you can still get a key from other key sites. Or maybe key activations will also be disabled in the future.
This at the very least is why I think they will take steps to attempt to fix the issue. Their biggest Steam launch ever, one of their biggest game launches ever and this nonsense. It can't look good to the shareholders and it's finally forcing Sony's hand to deal with this mess of their own making.
Is there any way Sony could add PSN account connectivity without having Steam to delist them from over a hundred countries?
What I think one of the business possibilities could be:
They have the data of how many copies they sold in these countries, and how much they spent in microtransactions.
They must have calculated how much less revenue they would make, estimating that of course not a 100% would not buy it, because people on PC like to fiddle with things and get around regional blockages.
They confronted with the benefits (?) of losing that vs bringing the players into PSN (I don't know, counting as MAUs, etc). They decided it was worth it.
Because after I learned people with a PS5 in these countries also have to create an account in an approved region, there is no way they will adapt PSN into 170+. I hope they would, I don't know, maybe extend near countries to cover them? I don't know how that works, and other stores would be the best example.
But for me, a person that does not know any HD2 business metric, seems crazy that the type of game with the premise that you want to get the most players, capitalizing in seasonal updates and etc, is regionally restricted in so many places.
If I was the developer, I would want the game to reach the most people possible, and also, how the fuck did they not plan it before? Like allowing everybody to buy it for it to be blocked later? Don't they plan this before hand? Jesus Christ in my company I have better planning of my projects than these people in the gaming space. Hire me wtf.
I'm sounding livid but it's because they seem so incompetent in what they do 😭😭😭
I don't play games on PC so can someone explain why this is a problem? I'm Australian but I live in China. So my PSN account is Australian and I have to use an Australian credit card or Australian PSN points cards for digital purchases but you can easily buy them online and I don't need to use a VPN to connect to PSN or anything. Am I breaking tos because I moved to another country?
I don't really have much faith that they'll be noticeably faster with rolling out PSN to other regions to be honest. Where on PS they give a little nudge and wink to set up a different region account and buy there, I think they'll just expect the same on PC from those same regions. They have shown they don't value these regions much and I don't think they will change that stance.
With their current set up probably not, they will probably have to set up "lesser" PSN accounts that aren't linked up to a PS Store so they aren't selling anything through them, but that will probably be much more easier said than done given PSN.
Start supporting PSN account creation in all the countries. I mean it's Sony. They could do it if they wanted to. But it's easier to piss people off and have it your way.
People were making PSN accounts without living in those regions for years, a lot of people set up Japanese accounts to get Japanese exclusive games that way. I don't think Sony ever did anything about that, and I'm pretty sure Sony wouldn't have cared if people in the unsupported countries made accounts in supported regions. Because of the HD2 situation, though, people started to refund the game in large enough numbers that Steam decided to remove the ability to purchase the game from unsupported countries. This has the ripple effect of Steam preventing unsupported countries from buying future releases like GoT, even if they could have just made a PSN account for another country and bought it anyway.
Mostly stayed away from this thread because the corpo apologism is honestly terrible for my mental health, but a couple things:
Many of the countries on the prohibited list have lower GDPs compared to the PSN supported markets. Gaming is the(?) largest entertainment medium globally, pulling in more revenue than movies, TV and music combined. If you make an account outside of your region and pay sales tax on those purchases, you are removing capital from your own country and gifting it to a country that almost certainly doesn't need it as much as your economy does.
By continuing to create accounts outside of your own country you are also demonstrating to Sony that your territory is not worthy of its infrastructure. You'll always be second-class citizens to them as they continue to turn a blind eye to the breaking of their own TOS. Would you benefit from regional pricing if they properly supported your territory? Maybe. Are they going to implement that if they know you'll happily support them not bothering so that you can instead pay 2x as much purchasing from a neighbouring region? Absolutely not.
If you are mad at ANY part of this entire process, get mad at the billionaire company treading on your economy to get your pennies as they continue to offer your territory nothing in return apart from an unspoken promise to not ban you for skirting their lax rules. This is a Sony problem, not a "gamers" problem. Any ire directed at people rightfully lambasting Sony for being utter garbage is misdirected and not worth taking seriously.
I will once again be dipping out now.
Many of the countries on the prohibited list have lower GDPs compared to the PSN supported markets. Gaming is the(?) largest entertainment medium globally, pulling in more revenue than movies, TV and music combined. If you make an account outside of your region and pay sales tax on those purchases, you are removing capital from your own country and gifting it to a country that almost certainly doesn't need it as much as your economy does.
By continuing to create accounts outside of your own country you are also demonstrating to Sony that your territory is not worthy of its infrastructure. You'll always be second-class citizens to them as they continue to turn a blind eye to the breaking of their own TOS. Would you benefit from regional pricing if they properly supported your territory? Maybe. Are they going to implement that if they know you'll happily support them not bothering so that you can instead pay 2x as much purchasing from a neighbouring region? Absolutely not.
If you are mad at ANY part of this entire process, get mad at the billionaire company treading on your economy to get your pennies as they continue to offer your territory nothing in return apart from an unspoken promise to not ban you for skirting their lax rules. This is a Sony problem, not a "gamers" problem. Any ire directed at people rightfully lambasting Sony for being utter garbage is misdirected and not worth taking seriously.
I will once again be dipping out now.
Don't you see, the backlash FORCED Sony to remove the game in those territories. It was the ONLY option!
Fucking. Clown. Shoes.
Fucking. Clown. Shoes.
Creating an account that's not for the country in which you reside is against ToS. But Sony so far hasn't taken action against this on PlayStation. It's different on PC because Steam/third party stores are involved and don't control what Sony does or may do in future. They are protecting themselves.
I agree that some people might have overreacted when the account requirement just came in, but I disagree about that reaction being Sony deciding to delist from these regions.
Enforcing PSN login with region restrictions leave 2 options:
- Leave the game available on Steam in unsupported regions, those who want to play will need to use VPN to make a PSN account
- Delist the game from those unsupported regions
They went with option 2, the positive is they don't look stupid for basically encouraging people to break their own TOS, but this is the result.
Of course, the best option would've been to not enforce region restrictions on Sony/PSN accounts if they really wanted to sue their own account system.
whether anybody protested or not, the same thing would have happened as soon as valve found out that people can't create local PSN accounts in all these countries.
There's nobody to blame here but Sony.
Option 1 was never truly at play on Steam. Option 1 worked on Playstation consoles because you have to agree to TOS to make a PSN account to buy games. Option 1 doesn't work on Steam because you don't have to agree to Sony TOS to buy games on Steam. Other than removing the PSN requirement the only play for Sony games on Steam is to remove them from countries where you can't create a PSN account.
The minute they added the PSN requirement to Steam Sony played themselves. They are not setup globally in the same way that Steam or Microsoft is.
This in many cases is a point that sounds good in practice but in reality it often doesn't work. Many countries are either to small, too remote, too expensive or too archaic to bother investing any time at all for a publisher/ game company to figure out the tax/payment/legal system.
For example there are countries in that list that have a total population of 10,000 ppl total. With volitile governments and systems and forget online payments.
Nobody's saying that. Anyone pointing to the Helldivers backlash is merely making the point that it was the straw that broke the camel's back.
I really don't understand why people think that highlighting the consequences of the Helldivers 2 backlash is in any way defending Sony. It's just stating what happened and really what we all should have expected.
you just wait
in a few years theyll have the second most popular pc store
Im very interested in knowing what would need to be done to add new regions to PSN.
Just for clarity, you don't need a VPN to create or use a PSN account.
Helldivers didn't bring this on. If you're selling a product and the support team is telling customers to break the company TOS to access all the features of the product, then your company fucked up. That isn't something that can be ignored, and would have to be dealt with at some stage.