I'm surprised it took until Monday for them to backtrack. I don't see how anybody can reasonably defend Sony here; the mere fact that the situation got to this point is on them entirely as far as I'm concerned. If it's true that they pushed the PSN requirement onto Arrowhead a mere 6 months prior to launch, that is kind of crazy from a timeline perspective. Whether or not the issues with PSN linking were the result of poor implementation or Sony's backend burning to the ground, that initial launch period was the only time you could reasonably expect to make account linking mandatory.
Permitting Arrowhead to turn that off, even temporarily, was the nail in the coffin for forcing the integration. Coming back months later and saying 'oh by the way, we're now going to enforce that thing we haven't enforced since launch and you will no longer be able to play the game if you don't do this' is probably one of the most obvious PR disasters in the making that I could imagine for your fledgling lightning-in-a-bottle franchise. The fact that apparently nobody at Sony was willing to compromise on this before the review/refund shitshow shows either a strong lack of insight into the PC market or a truly inflexible approach to running a business, which is particularly sinful management in my opinion when Sony is attempting to establish a major presence in a new market.
On top of that mess, Sony selling the game in regions where they don't actually support PSN is also a very dumb oversight. Worse, how is it that an international gaming company's account system and online platform only supports ~70(?) countries in [current year]? To me it sounds positively archaic.
Hopefully, Sony can take away some important lessons from this incident:
1.) PSN needs a ton of work if they want it to be a platform-agnostic worldwide service. From how the service/infrastructure is run to how many countries are supported, from what I've seen and read PSN is not even remotely up to the task at present. Sony needs to quickly ramp up investment if they want their PC gaming initiative to be truly successful.
2.) There's no putting a genie back in the bottle once it's out. We can only speculate as to why Sony was so adamant about forcing PSN account linking (and I don't buy the moderation argument for a single second), but you enforce it from the beginning or not at all. The infrastructure was not up to the task, and neither was the contract with the developer if they were unilaterally permitted to waive the requirement. That being said, if I was a 3rd party developer contracting with Sony as a publisher, I would be very hesitant to hand Sony that sort of control, especially during the critical launch windows that can entirely make or break games when said integration service can essentially be nonfunctional and prevent users from playing your game. If linking is mandatory, a robust backend account service on the Sony side is absolutely necessary.
3.) PC gamers are not console gamers. They have different needs, desires, and attitudes about things. Sony experienced a gigantic amount of pain because they did not adequately understand the PC market. I don't think anybody could've anticipated the sheer magnitude of the backlash, but the reaction itself was predictable. Sony should bend to meet the needs of the PC gaming market if they want to succeed -- it doesn't work the other way around like in the console space where they own the whole fiefdom. PC gamers can (and from what we've just seen, absolutely will) tell Sony to fuck off for arbitrary or petty reasons -- and that's their right as consumers that I'm glad they acted on. Nobody should be forced to accept a corporation's bullshit if they don't agree with it by voting with their wallet and their feedback.
4.) A minor note relatively speaking, but waiting until Monday to change course was absolutely unacceptable. Either time your changes more appropriately or have management that isn't asleep at the wheel. This was the sort of PR nightmare that should've had executives in the office (U.S. and Japan) by Friday evening working 16 hour shifts until there was a plan in motion and the situation was mitigated. What the fuck are they paying those people for if management isn't on hand to quickly provide guidance and resolve the disaster?
