fuck it, i'm all for it
i want to see some actual truthbombs dropped for once instead of "muh corporate"
Helldivers 2 has been delisted on Steam in countries where PSN isn't available
- Thread starter Red Kong XIX
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i want to see some actual truthbombs dropped for once instead of "muh corporate"
Which really makes me wonder if Sony/Arrowhead were just so naive? Like surely there would have been a better way to tackle this news. Let alone that the number of regions that don't have access to PSN (but have access to steam) seems to have completely eluded them
Honestly, during the chaos of that launch and with everything burning down around them, I can perfectly see a situation were they, believing, whether correctly or incorrectly, that that integration was causing problems, disabled it without much thought as to communicate with the publisher first. I don't think malice or conscious action were required here.
Reminds me of epic when Fortnite released on switch and the whole crossplay thing blew up.
They were right too.
Functionally there's no difference between this and other instance of account linking.
But practically imposing your account linking after the wild success of the game kind of gets people 'grift' sensors going. There's no grift going on here, just bad strategy and messaging.
I just don't think and again I'm welcome to proven wrong, does a developer have the unilateral authority to do something so drastic as turning off a launcher and or link in at will.
I think it is a misinterpretation of what probably occurred, it was their call but they had to get the nod.
It's where they belong though. Right under the fucking bus.
I've never played the game, and have been barely paying attention to the news, but still had to come to the last pages in the thread to see if this was not some misunderstanding. I mean, I have a PS5 and obviously a PSN login, and if I was playing the game on PC I wouldn't have cared about adding the PSN login to it. However, making it a requirement, not an option...
This feels astonishingly stupid. It will end with some sort of backtracking and stupid people being fired at Sony.
This feels astonishingly stupid. It will end with some sort of backtracking and stupid people being fired at Sony.
I keep seeing this statement repeated all over the place and I can't help but have to ask that, other than the one time we all know happened back 13 years ago, when have they had other breaches? If anything they've been rather good about implementing more forms of account security. Hell, they just semi-recently introduced using passkeys for logging in.
The wording is a bit - off - on this. Account linking requires work and testing, it's not some kind of one-word toggle in source control. Using launchers is a whole different level of complexity - the absolute shortest I've ever seen a conversion from one approach to launching a game to another (introducing a launcher and all) was done in a... 3 months or so, and that was a death-march with cancelled christmas and respective CEO outright burning a bunch of people on the teams.
But - all that aside - can a developer run their own script like that? Yes - as long as the platform they are launching on isn't publisher owned - obviously subject to legal risks depending on what contract they signed.
If it IS publisher owned (not this case, but just an example) - then it depends on publisher's quality control - I've seen examples when that was so bad, that it was indeed still possible to go off script (and we've taken advantage of that once or twice).
I think the sad thing is: All of this could have been avoided if Sony simply had PSN support for more countries.
Sure, people would complain about having to create a PSN account, but that's normal, gamers tend to complain about those things, and then they move on. I honestly don't think it would have had much of an impact, if the only problem was people complaining about having to create another login. But the PSN region thing gave people more reason to complain, even those unaffected by it. And i can't blame them, to be honest. I don't know whose fault it is, Sony or Arrowhead, but this entire situation has been handled very poorly, in every possible way.
Selling the game for countries they don't support, basically forcing people to break TOS to use another region, which eventually caused the game to be delisted in those regions. I mean, jeez louise. It was so easy to avoid all of this by simply thinking ahead and making the PSN service available in more countries.
Sure, people would complain about having to create a PSN account, but that's normal, gamers tend to complain about those things, and then they move on. I honestly don't think it would have had much of an impact, if the only problem was people complaining about having to create another login. But the PSN region thing gave people more reason to complain, even those unaffected by it. And i can't blame them, to be honest. I don't know whose fault it is, Sony or Arrowhead, but this entire situation has been handled very poorly, in every possible way.
Selling the game for countries they don't support, basically forcing people to break TOS to use another region, which eventually caused the game to be delisted in those regions. I mean, jeez louise. It was so easy to avoid all of this by simply thinking ahead and making the PSN service available in more countries.
The worst part is that they had literal years to prepare for this. Instead they're just showing that PSN is in no way ready for the GAAS market reality.
Yeah agree, other competitor services are available pretty much everywhere. It is crazy how many countries don't have PSN.
Unilateral authority? I would imagine no. Unilateral capability? Sure. If they did, what was Sony supposed to do? Specially during that chaos? They would communicate with Arrowhead and tell them that obligatory PSN linking was a requirement since launch and that they should reinstate it as soon as possible. Realistically there is nothing that a publisher can do to avoid this nor to fix it by their own means.
Of course, that's assuming that when the CEO said he made the call, he meant unilaterally. After all, how they sell the game and with which requirements should be responsibility of the publisher, not the CEO of a contractor. He shouldn't be the one making those calls to begin with. I don't know the contract between Sony and AH but I would imagine that it's not that much different than this. If I am wrong with how a relationship between dev and publisher works, I apologiize and would love a correction.
The real winner here is Battlestate Games because their massive $250 Tarkov fuckup has basically been wiped out of existence by this. No one is talking about it anymore.
Battlestate was like, "Watch as we get the worst PR in the fastest way possible and destroy our credibility with our userbase." and Sony was all like, "Hold my beer."
Battlestate was like, "Watch as we get the worst PR in the fastest way possible and destroy our credibility with our userbase." and Sony was all like, "Hold my beer."
It doesn't need to have support for more countries, it needs to stop being region locked at all. You should be able to create a PSN account no matter where you live, and if all you use it for is to link it to your Steam account then that's it, mission accomplished. If you want to buy games in PS Store with it then you provide a payment method which is tied to your country of residence, and another mission is accomplished.
The problem is that the whole architecture of PSN accounts is archaic and has been hurting Sony's online efforts for some time now. This is just another incident in the list.
Their CEO previously had words of high praise for Sony and their relationship with them. I can't imagine those feelings are still there given this entire debacle.
And they're 100% in the right for it. Good on AH.
lmao
Again, it's not Arrowhead's job to make sure PSN works. That's Sony's job. Consider that 100% of Helldivers 2 currently works without PSN integration.
To connect your PSN account, you needed to scan a QR code which takes you to Sony's PSN page to create an account. Arrowhead provided that QR code, they did their job. What happened was that people were not able to make their account on Sony's PSN page. Arrowhead does not control Sony's PSN page.
i mean sometimes you have to get burnt
clearly plenty of other publishers still havent learned
its all a risk, it could have been someone else, but this time it wasnt
View: https://twitter.com/Repost_Nothing/status/1786923196098511284
not content with having no games on their console, Sony is making sure to finish the mission they started with the PS3 and have no games on other consoles too
It's a nice sentiment, but we all know everyone raging over this is just going to make an account no questions asked for the next big flavor of the month multiplayer title. Just like they always have before.
Hard to believe Sony botched this so badly.
I mean, not actually that hard to believe but still.
I mean, not actually that hard to believe but still.
Wonder how Ghost of Tsushima fares. Legends/multiplayer requires a PSN account at launch, so I'm interested in tracking on how it does on PC. Especially since there's no country restrictions on it btw.
On the other hand, this ordeal determined how the distribution of finances is now handled across multiple plattforms, which was the reason service games weren't as easily eligible for crossplay. MS used the fiasco to position themselves as pro-consumer and pro-gamer, which still sticks for them.
Sales wise they will land between Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone. Which will be enough.
Shame they didn't turn it off in these regions to start with if always planning to enable PSN accounts like it said on the store page but when you don't require it for 3 months it becomes the norm and not temporary. Now to change it is def a bit bait and switch so get why people are angry as it's a good game.
Also surprised they let this news go live on friday to gain big traction over the weekend.
Also surprised they let this news go live on friday to gain big traction over the weekend.
Because Helldivers 2 is a multiplayer game. A live-service game. So they started it with this.
Same reason why PSN integration will be madatory for Ghost of Tsushima: Legends (the multiplayer mode) while you don't need it if you are only playing Ghost of Tsushima's singleplayer campaign.
MAU and more control.
This is such an own-goal, and for what?
And? Like, what's your point?
If people want to tell Sony to fuck off, and next week sign up for Foobar's service, that's 100% fine. Again, Sony isn't owed "equality" or "fairness" or whatever in peoples' behavior. They're a multi multi multibilion dollar company famous for having a ridiculously outdated network architecture and a string of catastrophic security failures. If people view them as especially untrustworthy, that's entirely on Sony.
Returnal had a somewhat multiplayer component.
Also, PSN is not required for the game to work properly, as it was proved for the past 3 months. It's not like it goes through PSN Infrastructure. It's not even a PlayStation first-party game.
Of course it doesn't need account linking for it to work properly. No game does. They want the MAUs and more control over their game, just like all the other big publishers. Sony owns the IP and is the publisher. So it is a Sony 1st party game, even if they don't own Arrowhead Studios (2nd party yadayada).
Except that everything actually worked. The problem is the server overload which made Arrowhead decide to deactivate the obligation (because yes you could still link your account for those who wanted it) to reduce server requests. But if the game had had the number of players Sony and AH estimated none of this would have happened.
Moreover, the CEO provided a little more information:
View: https://twitter.com/Pilestedt/status/1787174108045656540
and as he says the problem is that they should have communicated at regular intervals to remind them that this deactivation was temporary
The fact that they're doing this to people retroactively for one. Even if it was just that, I'd say it's an overreaction, but doing it to people in territories where PSN isn't available is extremely shitty. Even if Sony fixed it somehow it's still bad optics.
The review bombing and… general overreaction I've seen on social is still stupid. The way people on Reddit are handling it is stupid. It's all an overreaction. It's still bad optics to do this after the fact. Microsoft might have you make an account but they're not doing it retroactively.
Most players are on windows, and thus already have a ms account.
Jean-Baptiste
@jbaptistepg
I appreciate your response. I wish to understand why you accepted money from customers in countries you KNEW would not be able to play your game a few months down the line. These sales should have been restricted from the start. Please refund these players. That's my issue.
Pilestedt
@Pilestedt
Hey, we do not handle the selling of the game. We develop and support it, when it comes to the details of how it's sold. Up to publishers and stores. PSN restrictions are a PSN issue, I wouldn't know why you can't make an account in different parts of the world. [My emphasis. I don't have a PS5 or PC, so this is interesting to me. They only handle the selling of the game ... but not how are able to play the game by logging in to their servers?]
6:45 PM · May 5, 2024
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@jbaptistepg
I appreciate your response. I wish to understand why you accepted money from customers in countries you KNEW would not be able to play your game a few months down the line. These sales should have been restricted from the start. Please refund these players. That's my issue.
Pilestedt
@Pilestedt
Hey, we do not handle the selling of the game. We develop and support it, when it comes to the details of how it's sold. Up to publishers and stores. PSN restrictions are a PSN issue, I wouldn't know why you can't make an account in different parts of the world. [My emphasis. I don't have a PS5 or PC, so this is interesting to me. They only handle the selling of the game ... but not how are able to play the game by logging in to their servers?]
6:45 PM · May 5, 2024
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Yeah people are free to do whatever they want. But it would just demonstrate that this whole situation has been blown out of proportion and is largely performative.
that twitter thread is crazyJean-Baptiste
@jbaptistepg
I appreciate your response. I wish to understand why you accepted money from customers in countries you KNEW would not be able to play your game a few months down the line. These sales should have been restricted from the start. Please refund these players. That's my issue.
Pilestedt
@Pilestedt
Hey, we do not handle the selling of the game. We develop and support it, when it comes to the details of how it's sold. Up to publishers and stores. PSN restrictions are a PSN issue, I wouldn't know why you can't make an account in different parts of the world. [My emphasis. I don't have a PS5 or PC, so this is interesting to me. They only handle the selling of the game ... but not how are able to play the game by logging in to their servers?]
this jean baptiste guy and some others are absolute idiots who do not understand anything and are just being complete assholes
what a travesty
Why not take two minutes to actually educate yourself on the ongoing developments? It's gone a bit further than "I don't want to make an account or log in with PSN".
Helldivers is a first party IP, developed by a third party developer, so it's a first party game.
This is the key thing of all this. If arrowhead's CEO hasn't panicked and disabled PSN login, we wouldnt had this clusterfuck today. Now, it's true that this is sony's great fault for not having servers prepared for that influx of new accounts, and i think this is not the first time that happens.
Sony wants to bet hard on GaaS gaming, but still have an unprepared online infrastructure.
How would it demonstrate that? I'll willingly bank with Bank A, but when Bank B tries to convince me to sign back up I tell them to pound sand because I still remember the time they shut down my chequing account for 3 days accidentally. I'll willingly pay local Company A for drink delivery, but I won't sign up again with drink delivery Company B after having my credit card stolen in a data breach from them a few years ago. I'll give resetera a personal email address but LinkedIn can go fuck itself for no particular reason other than I don't like it.
Why does my willingness to sign up for one company mean my unwillingness to sign up with another is "performative"?
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