I've always found it ridiculous that Sony is allowed to sell their consoles and games in my county without allowing me to create a PSN account. They even sell the digital PS5, which REQUIRES a PSN account to get any games.
And then, even if you break their TOS and create an account in another country, you're still constantly inconvenienced - you can't pay for games using your local payment method, for example, and a useful Playstation mobile app is not even listed in the local app store.
IMO they should either provide the same level of service in all countries, or be forced to charge significantly less when selling their hardware in unsupported countries.
Is it actually Sony selling their games or consoles in your country or is it 3rd party sellers who import them from elsewhere because there's demand? It is still shitty and annoying that stuff is geoblocked, be it games, movies, books, etc. But the two are pretty different.
I'm not sure about the actual hardware, but physical copies of helldivers 2 are on sale in the Philippines, where you can't make a PSN account. You can find them on Playstation's website which makes me think they are authorized copies https://www.playstation.com/en-ph/games/helldivers-2/
Assuming it's actually sold by unauthorized third party sellers, every step in the chain seems pretty straightforward. People in [country where PSN isn't available] want PS5s. Enterprising people see an opportunity. Sony (or their authorized resellers) in those other countries sell PS5s to the importers because to them you don't need to fill out a KYC form to buy a PS5 so they're they're indistinguishable from someone who's buying one for domestic consumption. The end result is not ideal and the OP acknowledges this, but I'm not seeing where the "rather twisted conception of property" is coming from.
> The end result is not ideal and the OP acknowledges this, but I'm not seeing where the "rather twisted conception of property" is coming from.
I'm just noting the continued slide from wholly owned property to buying property but only leasing the use of it. I'm sure there are many rights-owners worldwide that are thrilled with this concept.
Yes, it is becoming likely that we are just “renting” hardware since the software needed for many consumer products is closed source and you can’t run your own software.
Counterpoint is that jailbreaking is legal so you do technically own the hardware. Issue is that John Deere, Apple, Sony, Microsoft make it impossible to jailbreak hardware nowadays.
> IMO they should either provide the same level of service in all countries, or be forced to charge significantly less when selling their hardware in unsupported countries.
Who would force the price change though?
It seems more reasonable for anyone in a country that doesn't have access to PSN just wouldn't bother buying a PS5 regardless if the price.
Totally fair. That's definitely a Sony problem if it isn't clear what countries are supported. I have to assume I'd return the PS5 if I got it home and couldn't make an account.
It's reasonable to ask for that and it would probably be up to a local government agency to enforce such a rule.
(In fact Meta's Quest was not available in my country for a few years until Meta changed their mind and removed the need to have a Facebook account as well).
To make Sony care about small countries it would be best for them to band together and act as a group on that. It must hurt them economically
If Sony doesn't have any presence in those countries, as evidenced by the fact that you can't create PSN accounts for those countries, do those countries even have jurisdiction over Sony? More practically, what leverage do they have to enforce compliance? Meta (Facebook) doesn't have any presence in China, so they can safely ignore any takedown requests from them, even if they are actually violating Chinese law.
A game is just a game. There is nothing vital to it.
It's the easiest thing in the world to boycott.
And yet, players consistently fail to make the editors pay for their bad behaviors. EA is still craping on their clients. Blizzards fails forward. Loot boxes, DRM, crippling anti-cheat mechanisms, buggy games with expensive DLC and micro payments are everywhere. Sony even infected their customers with a rootkit once.
If you keep giving them money despite this, then they have correctly noted they can charge you for their fun system despite the inconvenience.
Already more games have been created and published than a human could finish in an entire life. And that's games, not music, movies, series or books.
You could just stop buying any new game forever and have an entire life of wonderful gaming experience.
Hell, I'm still playing old snes games, or the flash version of isaac.
That's not how this market works. There is no homogenous group of gamers that can act together. Each year there is a new cohort of 11 years old that knows nothing of past publisher behaviour and wants the latest EA game for their birthday. For FIFA with the lootboxes etc there is the added factor that people buying those are for a big part a distinct group to other gamers, there are many guys that only play FIFA or their favorite sport game and nothing else. So bad behaviour in that area does not affect other game sales as much as it should.
For certain genres and certain games, no amount of negative reviews seems to have any effect on their popularity. I've seen many cases where, on Steam at least, the reviews for a game can be mostly negative, or mixed at best, yet the number of reviews keeps going up like crazy. Meanwhile some very positive and occasionally overwhelmingly positive games can have fewer total reviews a year after release than some poorly reviewed games get in a day.
There's also still an "early access" stigma even though must major publishers are basically treating "full" release day as an open beta test now.
All of this to say that careful consumers can only affect a small proportion of the games industry's revenue. It's enough to keep indie games and their small studios alive but so far it has had near zero effect on the AAAs. I suspect the layoffs we're seeing across the industry reflect a contraction in the spending of the majority segment but a lot of AAAs seem to be doubling down on targeting that same segment.
This makes me so mad. Every time I have to show my nieces or nephews how to play a game, and I have to show them all the fake buttons they have to avoid to manage to play it through the dark patterns. Even Windows, the OS, is full of traps now. You can't buy any software and have it pretend to be yours anymore.
Used to be the case for free mobile games at first, now it's everywhere.
Just to say: This is avoidable. Ofc one can not give Windows to a child anymore, but there is Linux. For games on Android, of course one can't install games from the Play Store anymore, but there is F-Droid. And for regular PC games, there is still a big selection that works without or with very little micro transactions. And besides, the kids system should not be capable to make any purchases no matter where they click.
But I can completely relate that it is infuriating and that it takes a lot of filtering through the mainstream shit to manage this well.
Proprietary/popular games on Linux come with the same monetization strategy on every platform. You want to play Fortnite, you get the Fortnite ads/loot boxes/nudges even on Linux (plus you'll get banned by anti-cheat quick).
Linux is not the recommended choice for the game selection, it's so that the OS is not already a hostile place with ads and spammy news. The games themselves have still to be filtered, as I wrote.
That's what I use myself, but I can't really recommend it to family overseas... And even that is not safe, this will probably be the last Ubuntu release I can use before the "Ubuntu Pro", Snaps, and other integrations become unbearable.
In the same manner one can avoid many bad aspects of modern cars if they are an experienced mechanic and can build their own, but that's not a reasonable burden for an average person.
Feels a bit absurd to try to lay the blame at the feet of 11 year olds, when adults routinely demonstrate the same behavior.
The latest example of KSP2 is imo a great example, announced in 2019 for release in 2020, delayed several times to go on to launch into a $50 'early access' early last year with far less functionality than the original game and worse bugs and architectural issues. Despite all the glaring warning signs, so many people ate up the promises. They delivered one basic feature in 6 months (reentry heating). Yet the 'trust' from otherwise smart adults remained. It seems they only finally noticed this past week, when the studio making the game was shut down. Now they expect refunds despite all the warnings Steam has against buying early access games based on future promises.
Well in this case things changed AFTER the game was bought, so people got screwed.
Besides, you make one of the dumbest point I have ever read on this website. Gas prices going up? Pfeh, I heat my house with a bonfire, wake up sheeple.
> players consistently fail to make the editors pay for their bad behaviors.
This comes across as either gaslighting or refusal of evidence - you have a theory that bad players/companies will be punished by the market, and when it doesn't happen, you conclude that it's the consumer's fault.
Maybe you should consider that your theory is wrong, as it does not match the real world. It appears to me that, these days, most of the time bad players do very well in the market.
There is a screenshot of an email that someone from Ukraine sent to Sony support and their response was that you can create an account using PS5 but not from a PC.
As a Helldivers 2 PC player who also owns a PS5, this new requirement doesn't bother me personally.
However, adding a requirement (it was previously optional) is boneheaded, maybe illegal. It must be terrible to be Arrowhead; they have to sit by and watch while their player base implodes because of a Sony edict.
Do I need a PSN account to play PlayStation games on PC?
No, you currently do not need a PSN account to enjoy PlayStation Studios games on PC, but you will need a Steam account to redeem your voucher code. Some of our PlayStation Studios titles also offer incentives for linking your Steam and PSN accounts.
Because the consumer is presented with correct info on the product page by the party actually selling the product - Valve. It's the same when buying a car - the information presented to you at the dealership takes precedence over whatever the manufacturer's website says, because the legal assumption is that you are basing your purchase decision on what is in front of you when buying the car by the party actually selling it.
> you will need a Steam account to redeem your voucher code.
This is an official page where Sony themselves sell the game via providing voucher codes for steam. You can buy the game here without ever visiting the steam page. This clearly qualifies as false advertising.
I'm not a lawyer either, but Wikipedia says that requires "a meeting of minds".
It seems pretty clear that Sony always intended to require a PSN account (although that wasn't always communicated well, it was stated on the Steam store page, at the end of news articles, and in the game itself) so there was no meeting of minds. Just confusion.
true in legal terms. But it was hidden and the reason given for the change was a blatant lie. They were deceiving users until they could no longer refund. Something like that is often called a scam or fraud
When you start the game, you literally get a full screen banner that says a PSN account is required to play and you must sign in. It's just that until now you could click cancel and the game would still launch.
How can anyone call it "hidden" is literally beyond me. It's not hidden on page 527 of the EULA or something - it's literally said explicitly on a full screen banner shown to every player who has started the game. Not to mention it's mentioned on the Steam store page.
1) This dialog only showed one time, the very first time you launched the game
2) This dialog was skippable
If you skipped it one single time, it let you play for months now without ever seeing it again. If they wanted to make it clear it was mandatory eventually then the wording and behavior should have made this clear every single time you open the game
Allowing to skip means it's not mandatory, regardless of whatever language is written down on the UI, the TOS, on the steam page, or whatever else
If this was enforced upfront, people would have had an opportunity to refund immediately. If it was communicated clearly that the Skip was temporary, people could have made an informed choice about playing
Yes, how is it a technical difficulty to remove a skip button? Players from countries that can't legally acquire a PSN account, or don't want to get one, would have been able to return it ASAP.
I guess it was easier to inflate their numbers.
The technical difficulty was that PSN was not integrated correctly so the skip button was put there so players could play without doing it
In their defense there is a sentence on that Modal that does say that a PSN account is required to play. It was also included on the Steam store page that it requires a PSN account. The issue I have is that the functionality of the Modal is at odds with the messaging. In this sort of case, I strongly believe that the Functionality should be taken as the fact, not the message.
If the messaging had been more clear that the Skip function was only temporary and a PSN account would absolutely be mandatory in the future then that would be different
As it stands, the message just seems like a Dark Pattern to try and get users who do not notice the skip button to link a non-mandatory PSN account.
"If the messaging had been more clear that the Skip function was only temporary and a PSN account would absolutely be mandatory in the future then that would be different"
No it wouldn't, because people would still complain. There could be a flashing popup present at all times in a corner of your screen saying "YOU MUST SIGN INTO PSN TO PLAY" and people would still complain, there's no satisfying the outrage when it happens.
> Players from countries that can't legally acquire a PSN account
Would easily win a lawsuit.
As a publisher, it is your job to check these things before you process payment, that why you have a department of lawyers and regional availability settings in Steam.
If their system of accounts, online systems and EULA's are mutually contradicting and incompatible mess, that's on them.
Once you have taken my money, it is now your job to provide the service.
But the reality of modern gaming is this: You start a game and do a marathon of pressing "no", "cancel", "skip", "x", "close" etc to shut off all the bullshit it throws at you. I did so with helldivers and was completely unaware what it says about psn. I didn't even know it was a console game or that Sony was involved! And I would never have bought it if I knew. So in practice I'd say it's exactly as hidden as page 527 on EULA
I sort of agree, in that I skip a lot of the legal text during installation. I didn't read the EULA, for example.
But this requirement had an entire installation page dedicated to it. It was the only text on that page. I'm honestly surprised people somehow missed it.
Not all players got this banner, especially players from countries where they cannot sign up for PSN accounts.
They never should have allowed sales in countries where people cannot legally sign up for a PSN account. Especially when they allowed those players to play for months and are now "banning" them, preventing them from playing the game they paid for.
In addition, literally the only place where this requirement was stated was the steam sale page - the EULA had no mention of the PSN account, Sony's webpage explicitly stated you did not require an account to play playstation games on PC.
Sony's FAQ previously (on May 3) stated that a PSN account is optional for playing games on PC
On May 4, the day after this shitstorm happened, the FAQ was updated to say that some games on PC may require a PSN account
This was rolled out in absolutely amateurish fashion from start to end. Sony should absolutely be taking heat for this, and no one should be going to bat for them over it.
It was clearly advertised on the steam page, but also on launch you had a full screen banner that said you MUST sign in with a PSN account to play this game. It's just that until now you could click cancel and the game would still launch.
It’s still playable but overrun with the worst kind of paradox dlc. Arrowhead are great devs but their biz side comes off as explorative. I was happy to see HD2 actually does a good job at post game monitization because they did such a sloppy job with mahicka
> It must be terrible to be Arrowhead; they have to sit by and watch while their player base implodes because of a Sony edict.
Or, you know, don't make agreements that will upset your player base? I'm sure they never were forced to do anything Sony says, except if they entered into a business agreement with Sony, which again, is their own choice, and the developer knew about these requirements from the beginning, but made the requirement optional as they didn't get the technical details right at launch to require PSN.
It must great to be Arrowhead, where players seemingly blame the publisher like the developer has no responsibility over their own game.
Not only this, but I am not convinced that Arrowhead are entirely on the up and up about blaming Sony. I've seen too many places where the Sony messaging is pretty clear about accounts not being required. It seems very strange that Sony decides to make the policy change with this game without updating the policy.
I would make the case the consoles aren't essential for day to day life. They simply aren't general computing devices but have a very specific purpose. They've broaded somewhat to include more media features but few people are securing jobs or submitting government applications on their consoles.
It's the fact that modern living simply requires a phone is why the EU is so upset with Apple and Google putting up their garden walls.
Whenever someone brings up this nebulous "General Purpose Computer" concept, I challenge them to articulate what makes a phone a general purpose computer, but not a game console. So far I haven't heard a convincing answer. They both have CPUs and typical computer architectures, and can run a wide variety of software. Surely the intention of both smartphone makers and game console makers is that their devices are not made for a "general" purpose, and that (so far) has allowed them to justify locking them down.
"Are they essential for day to day life" is a new one. I'm not sure that makes sense either, but I'll give you points for originality! It's also debatable whether phones are essential for day to day life, but we can leave that in another thread.
While i won't aim to provide a full and perfect definition: a phone is a computing device with a generic interface and the goal of being a platform for a wide variety of software aimed at many different goals: 1-on-1 communication (calling), messaging, social networks, document exchange, note taking, web browsing, photography & photo editing, video & video editing, inventory, physical access control, ...
Consoles have a game-targeted interface and a singular focus on games.
I don't know if everything that has been labeled a console matches this description. Some "consoles" have indeed been stretching any meaningful distinction to or even past the breaking point.
But I will unashamedly go "no true Scotsman" on those: If a machine has a secondary (tertiary, quadrutionary, ...) specific focus with dedicated interface, it might still be a console. Illustration: a console that also can play dvd's ia a dedicated dvd interface. However, if the interface is generic and just waiting for the right app, not so much.
The point is not "can it do general-purpose computing" - a lot of devices can be made to run some linux. The pertinent question: is it made to support general-purpose computing out of the box? Things that I would call game consoles aren't - they're platforms for gaming.
The issue with apples walled garden is entirely based around how widespread their use is.
Literally from the first time people argued about this, that was at the core of the issue.
Nobody cares if you're creating a hardware device that can only run your OS and Apps if its not in widespread use. The issue occurs only once they're entrenched and can use their market position as an unfair advantage, which apple unashamedly does.
(And so does Nintendo and Sony with their gaming system, yes. The reason why almost nobody cares is because they're not in widespread use. And if they abuse their market position they also get a lot of flak. A lot more then apple ever gets, that's for sure. Just look at the helldivers 2 debacle last week, Nintendo banning people that mod their games in single player etc.)
> I would make the case the consoles aren't essential for day to day life.
Doesn't matter. If I truly own the hardware, I should be able to run my own software.
Toasters also aren't essential to day to day life. Toaster manufacturers aren't putting sophisticated cryptographic locks on their products to keep me from toasting my own bread.
> Toasters also aren't essential to day to day life. Toaster manufacturers aren't putting sophisticated cryptographic locks on their products to keep me from toasting my own bread.
Don't give them any ideas. Coffee brewing machines are already there (kind of).
iOS only matters in this case, because they have close to monopoly in some areas. But at you listed, in the EU you've got Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and the whole PC market. Consoles are really not a prison in this case.
(I agree the behaviour would be regulated a bit either way. But it's not even close to "prison")
They are prison, and it has nothing to do with either regulation or using the laissez-faire approach. You are being sold a computer which is controlled by someone else, even after the sale takes place. That's essentially it. Maybe it would even require no additional regulation, just interpretation of current regulation (the essential basics of civil law, that is) which would make a contract of sale of such device invalid, as you're not controlling it, treating it de-facto more like as a indefinite rent contract.
> You are being sold a computer which is controlled by someone else, even after the sale takes place.
Sure, but you are in no way forced or pushed to do that. You only do it if you really want to play their exclusive games. It's a completely free choice in a way that choosing a smartphone isn't (due to various apps being close to required for modern life)
Don't buy the console. Or buy it and something else as well. It's a very fancy toy.
Well, I'm pretty much okay using fully open Linux called postmarketOS on a smartphone, plus Andbox/Waydroid for (sandboxed!) compatibility with Android apps. That's also a free choice.
On pmOS, there's also full KVM virtualization support (works out-of-the-box on most aarch64 devices) for more picky apps, as well.
You're still essentially using either iOS or Android if you want to interact with many banks. Sometimes they will let you use compatibility layers, sometimes not. (I can't access some bank apps on OxygenOS, which is actual Android)
But anyway. I don't want to start the pointless flame war for the milionth time. I think I just have a different definition of "modern life", which is based on using what was considered high-tech not so long ago, like high-throughput radio links and instantaneous worldwide communication (including things like video), without giving up any control. It's not needed to do the abovementioned, so why would I?
BTW, 90% of internet services of any kind still serves "web apps". Which is far from perfect, but gives best compatibility and security out of all technologies we've managed to push to very high adoption.
> Sure, but you are in no way forced or pushed to do that. You only do it if you really want to play their exclusive games.
Personally, I think exclusivity deals need to be banned. The are an inherently anti-competitive practice that does nothing to help consumers.
Given that Sony is historically extremely bad about allowing any crossplay, your argument that exclusive games are the only reason people are pushed into buying a PS is false.
Gaming is part of many people's social lives and Sony deliberately exploits this to maintain market dominance.
Insisting that consumer purchasing decisions are the only or best way to deal with monopolies ignores history and reality.
> However, the videogame industry in its entirety was dead-lifted from its premature grave by one "Nintendo Family Computer".
Consoles maybe, but I don't think that the early 8/16-bit microcomputers were affected by the crash of 1983, and in any case the crash was mostly a US phenomenon with minor effects on other regions.
How is a general purpose computer defined? In any case this argument is moot, the point is that once you purchase something, it's yours and no vendor locks and restrictions should be put on it. You are limiting my choices as a consumer by not letting me access multiple stores or modify the hardware.
Not even this. It probably has a full-fledged browser pre-installed, making its classification as a general-purpose computer pretty obvious even for an average user, and far less "hackish" than otherwise.
It is a general purpose computer running a specialized operating system. Something doesn't stop being a general purpose computer when you change the OS.
If only the US had some sort of anti-trust laws, then perhaps we wouldn't need to rely on the EU to regulate US companies. To be clear, that is snark because that's how I communicate, however I suppose it could be argued that the laws we have have effectively been neutered through selection of right-wing justices over the last half century or so, and so we are indeed helpless against the ever consolidating megacorps.
I don't think the tiny amount of games that are get a physical copy makes much of a point here. Most games you need to obtain through the online store.
This really sucks for some people, but the true impact may be overreported and is definitely blown out of proportion by the review bombing. While all this is hugely controversial on reddit, if you look at steam charts, the player count did not take any obvious hit. In fact it follows the natural trend after every content release. So at least on steam the delisting seems to have affected almost no active players. It's very possible that whoever is responsible looked at the data, saw the true player numbers from those 100 countries and decided it was worth taking the L in favour of tightening the online service to make future development easier. Especially since this "requirement" was in there already from the beginning, they just didn't enforce it (likely because they never thought the game would see this much success).
> on steam the delisting seems to have affected almost no active players
in most cases, if you bought a game on steam before it got delisted, you can still play it. even if you uninstalled it in between, you can re-download it.
the actual impact won't be fully visible until May 30th or June 4th since that's when they will start blocking access to the game for players who didn't link their accounts[1].
There is no business reason to cut down your own market unless it comes with additional expenses due to technical reasons. I'm pretty sure someone weighed these numbers again after the game's huge upgrades in infrastructure due to its unexpected success and decided differently this time.
How would removing players from steam push their numbers? Especially since it is obvious from the charts that the removed countries contributed almost nothing to the active playerbase?
Every Helldivers 2 player on Steam needs to create a Playstation Network account now, even if they don't own a Playstation. Without PSN account Steam users won't be able to play the game in a couple of days.
Yes, that is what is happening. But it is not an explanation for why, because by itself that action is going to reduce SIA's market and thereby revenue. There must be a technical/legal reason and other comments have already pointed out how the current system is both trashy for developers and legally risky.
Doesn't matter if different people are responsible for number of accounts and from revenue... One will push for this and other one likely have not even noticed...
> look at steam charts, the player count did not take any obvious hit
> the actual impact won't be fully visible until May 30th or June 4th since that's when they will start blocking access to the game for players who didn't link their accounts
There would be no impact if this game was some MMORPG or mostly singleplayer title.
Helldivers is PvE game-as-a-service and it's model works best when network effects are strong. Basically a lot of people are playing such games because their friends are playing it. And the most opinionated and active people are the ones who bring their friends into the game.
So even if relatively small percent of active playerbase will leave the game they'll likely to take some of their friends with them, etc.
Come on, they want this to be a PlayStation exclusive because it boosts ps5 sales and everyone wants to have the “hits” only on their platform. they just can’t easily get away with it.
Most of the reasons reported are around moderation. I think it's simply much easier for Sony to ban an account on their system (and revoke all of its content licenses as punishment) than it is to manage and wrangle steam account bans.
PSN accounts are subject to their own, malleable ToS whereas they are somewhat limited in their reprisals against a steam account, beyond simple bans.
There is a good technical reason behind that. As far as I can see crossplay doesn't work well at all in the game right now. Mostly issues where inviting friends to play is broken. This isn't surprising when you do not have a common identity system to fallback on for all players.
Why would the player count take a hit? The game is still playable, so people want to play the game until they can't anymore, assuming the decision isn't reversed.
The impact has not even happened yet, as the news was released a few days ago, just before the weekend; the majority of players are probably not even aware of it yet. After a week or two, we will see what the true impact really is.
Checked out of curiosity, at the time I started writing this comment, the Steam store page lists a total of 465,340 reviews for Helldivers 2, of which 137,264 are negative reviews left in the last three days. The game was released ~3 months ago, giving us the beautiful statistic that over 3 months, 1/3rd of all reviews were negative reviews left in the last 3 days.
Not if you consider the point of a review is to either alert people to an awesome game that could make them happier, or warn them that they shouldn't waste their time or money. The latter applies here.
The enforcement makes this game a waste of time and money for 170 countries.
If you are in the majority of the countries in the world, it's not a minor inconvenience; the game straight up will not work for you, because PSN is not supported in your country.
The devs have explicitly warned those users to not create an account in a different region to get around this, as it is an explicit ToS violation.
Ain't that the truth. For me it was a reminder that the values of the company that chose to install malware on your PC[1] are alive and well. I personally dropped PSN and started boycotting them after I would not get a refund on a toddler purchased game.
The problem here is also that it's not just annoying, some EU member states are not supported for PSN accounts and according the TOS you can get your PSN account banned if you sign up with the wrong country!
Valve is already fully covered, they will honor refunds to the game and any loss they make will be taken out of future sales. Of course it's possible that future sales won't make up for the loss in this case, but Valve is still very unlikely to make a loss overall.
Valve is well covered here. Like any other platform they only make payouts to publishers / developers after a big delay so they'll have plenty of Sony's money to cover refunds.
I still haven't forgotten the time that Sony deliberately and secretly infected millions of computers with a rootkit in order to enforce DRM that also introduced exploitable security vulnerabilities, and then lied about it, and then after the backlash shipped an "uninstaller" that just hid the rootkit better and introduced more exploitable security vulnerabilities.
I feel bad for Arrowhead, but let it be known that if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Maybe next time they'll think twice before partnering with such a trash company.
I find the support for Arrowhead surprising. They went into business with Sony and allowed this. The CEO tweeting "We just want to make gaaameeees" is such a weak ass excuse. Take some responsibility for your choices.
Arrowhead are literally saying that requirement was always there, it was just temporary not enforced/supported. It's not Sony that suddenly introduced that new requirement.
Arrowhead were the ones having this delayed-change-of-contract.
Arrowhead allowed their game to be sold in countries where you will not be able to play.
> Arrowhead allowed their game to be sold in countries where you will not be able to play.
This is the thing that I'm not sure of and that I think the question of whether to blame Arrowhead depends on. Who authorized selling it in non PSN countries in the first place? Is that Arrowhead's responsibility as a studio, or Sony's responsibility as a publisher?
Considering you can find locations to buy the physical game on Playstation's official website, even in unsupported countries, I'm leaning towards the latter
Can someone explain the logic behind not supporting all countries by default? What does Sony have to lose by letting people in tiny countries buy their games?
Probably the complexity of differing laws of each country.
Helldivers 2 on ps5 requires at least a paid psn membership. In order to do that, a payment needs to be on file.
This is just purely a guess, but I suppose Sony doesn’t have the appropriate licenses to operate in those countries and thus cannot take payment.
They could take payment via ps gift cards but that user would have have to fraudulently claim they are located in another country and buy ps gift cards from that country to get the credits.
Depending on country, user may pay more or less than what it would retail in user country.
A multiplayer game that's very successful on Steam - but published by Sony - suddenly has a requirement to have both a Steam and PSN account in order to log into the game - a couple of months after the game was released.
As a PC gamer I would be pissed too tbh (on the other hand, it's the same bullshit that Ubisoft pulls for their games released on Steam).
And not just that. They required PSN accounts on countries where PSN is not available (and using a VPN to create it goes against the ToS, and people get banned). So in those countries they have effectively banned you from playing the game you purchased weeks ago.
>using a VPN to create it goes against the ToS, and people get banned
Though that seem to be enforced less often than people think it is, one Philippine player (a country that did not have PSN) was ejected from Sony's live esports events because of them entering using another country's flag (in this case, Hong Kong - it is a common practice for players in ASEAN region without PSN, such as Philippines and Vietnam, to create an Hong Kong or Singapore account): https://www.carmudi.com.ph/journal/local-player-qualifies-gr...
This is a big deal because PSN not even available in all EU countries. E.g there is no PSN in: Andorra, Estonia, Latvia. In Ukraine for example you can only register PSN account if you own PlayStation.
I think players were already asked to link their accounts since the game's release, but it was optional (in the sense that you could easily skip that step).
> Valve says that Steam is avaible in 237 countries. there are territories that are considered countries by valve that arent recognized by the world as being their own separate country like Taiwan
A lot of enterprises define “country” as “has its own ISO 3166-1 country code”. ISO 3166-1 includes 249 entries: sovereign states, their dependent territories, and “areas of special geographic interest” (e.g. Antarctica).
The English term “country” is ambiguous. In a narrow sense it means only sovereign states, but in a broader sense includes overseas territories and even some subnational divisions (e.g. the four countries that make up the UK)
Too many good games have had their player bases gimped by the rise of stupid “one hit wonder” games like palworld or helldivers 2.
The Finals is somehow struggling to maintain a decent player base despite being objectively one of the freshest and best game releases in a decade. I can’t get my friends to play it because they’re too busy memeing about space bugs on a mediocre shooter.
Glad to see that these games time and time again shoot themselves in the foot. Good riddance!
Definitely the case with Genshin for example. Poster child for me for this new kind of game: always online (even if single player), low barrier to entry, designed to be addictive.
Let's be honest Helldivers 2 is a really good PvE game with AFAIK only cosmetics via microtransactions. It's not some addictive MMORPG to earn money from whales.
Whole issue here is not about game at all, but about Sony being player hostile company and just plain breaking some customer protection laws.
Micro transactions allow easier unlocking of functional upgrades via "warbonds" that you buy eith premium currency "Super Credits". This currency is easily available in game and I have unlocked all the warbonds without any micro transactions. Even if you do buy the warbonds, you still need to play the game to earn "medals" to unlock the items within the warbond.
All in all, it is a pretty reasonable and non-exploitative monetization and is about the limit for what I would tolerate in a game I already paid for.
I bought it to play with friends and haven't found it as addictive compared to other titles I got sucked into in the past . If anything, there is no pay-to-win and the gameplay doesn't change a lot as you progress. It's just a fun co-op with very spectacular chaotic clashes - social media notifications have more to do with slot machines than this game's ever been close to.
Not sure what you mean by modern, to me modernity started in the 1600s.
If you mean something like 'contemporary', then I'd like to mention that casino-like elements where rather common in the video game boom of the 1990s. Could for example listen to how old-fashioned Sonic sounded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gsa_4s3CjmI
The list used by steam contains like 250 countries, because they split some countries in different regions, e. g. Mayotte is listed as a separate country despite being part of France
I find the reaction to be appropriate, a large amount of people can't play the game anymore. What else would you expect? "I paid a considerable amount of money for the game and now I can't play it anymore, but the graphics were very nice on the small amount of time I played, 5 stars"?
On Steam: If there's little yellow boxes in the right hand column, someone somewhere is reserving the right to ruin your day in some way. Helldivers 2 has three of them: DRM, Third party account, and third party EULA.
Best avoid games with little yellow boxes, especially if you prefer just playing games vs legal drama. (And of course gog.com doesn't have any little yellow boxes)
If it were on GOG, there would be no DRM or third party accounts required. With potential exception for online play. But most GOG games are single player offline games. Even online games would be more of the type where you run local server and connect with you friends by sharing IP:port combo.
PSN is still free but it only gives you access to the store and an account to keep user data, PS plus is an add on to it that costs money and is required for multiplayer.
EDIT: I feel like I should point out that PC players don't need PS plus to play multiplayer, I think literally every copy would be refunded if they tried to pull that one.
HQ location means nothing. It's still being controlled by Tokyo. If Anything, SE will be the sacrificial lamb that will be used to be sent to the slaughter house.
They did this with the mobile division in Sweden. Blame, cut and relocate.
That would be if they censored games to Japanese standards everywhere, which they don't. They use different censorship rules (and wheel positions) in different countries.
I'm not going to argue how to do analogies on the Internet on a dead thread, but I'm confused about everything you say.
I don't read it as one. Culture, as a context, is important when considering actions of people. And the actions of a company are actions of the people who control that company.
> the culture of the Japanese conservative business owners
Then that 'culture' could use some whacks up the backside, so they don't rootkit PCs and purposely damage CD readers, like that poor kid's portable player going red-hot because of their shenanigans.
Must have been twenty years since Sony got a cent from me, and they're not getting another anytime soon.
There's so much coverage of this from the gamer crowd that entirely ignores that a PSN account was required from the beginning but waived because of the unexpected popularity of the game and how Sony couldn't handle it. To be fair, when they had problems and added a Skip button, they should have made it more clear that a PSN account would be required in the future, but given the willful ignorance of the facts by the sensationalist reports, I don't know that it would've mattered.
Seems more like the gaming community was looking for a reason to be pissed off than this being an actual issue. I wouldn't be surprised if this was being stoked by the same folks trying to create antisemitic conspiracies about diversity consultants (check out NeverKnowsBest's Gamergate 2.0 video for context, https://youtu.be/CGmESJM6BFQ?si=RsfLWiewo7uXZY8r )
>They shouldn't have sold the games on Steam in countries where PSN is not available
yep, as simple as that
this would have made the situation much better. Game would have gotten lower scores and player base overall.
Doing it now and like this leaves the feeling, that they got enough money from sales and now they want to bring some traffic to psn
Yes this is a puzzling part of the story, for sure. The handling of the situation overall is pretty poor (also for instance the community management response was pretty stupid)
If you live in a country where you can't create a PSN account, just create one for another country. You can trivially find addresses to use online. To make digital purchases, you can import gift cards from the same region as your account. I believe Play-Asia sells those. If you buy games from multiple regions, you need an account for each region so you can access their DLCs.
For many years, I wouldn't connect an actual payment to my account due to security concerns and would just go to the store to buy a gift card whenever I wanted to make a digital purchase. There's no reason why you can't import the gift cards.
Basically, the whole "create an account in a different country" thing is an IQ test like the "enter an age of 13 or older to create an account" IQ test that was forced onto the internet by a stupid law the US government passed in the late 90s. Just use the obvious workaround to protect the company from legal liability over stupid laws like a normal person would.
Gaming web sites publish articles on how to create PSN accounts in other regions[0] because this is common practice for gamers who care about imports (hence why Play-Asia will sell you out of region PSN gift cards). I imagine China is a special case because of the totalitarian dictatorship's restrictions on gaming and the fact that Playstation does business there which means they have to keep Winnie the Pooh[1] happy. The Chinese version of the PS5 seems to be region locked[2] which is not the case for PS5s sold in other countries.
Due to technical issues at the launch of HELLDIVERS™ 2, we allowed the linking requirements for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to be temporarily optional. That grace period will now expire. See details below in this post.
Account linking plays a critical role in protecting our players and upholding the values of safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games. This is our main way to protect players from griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behaviour. It also allows those players that have been banned the right to appeal.
As such, as of May 6th, all new HELLDIVERS 2 players on Steam will be required to connect their Steam account to a PlayStation Network account. Current players on Steam will start to see the mandatory login from May 30th and will be required to have linked a Steam and PlayStation Network account by June 4th. PlayStation Network accounts are free and easy to set up using this link
https://www.playstation.com/support/account/create-account-f...
We understand that while this may be an inconvenience to some of you, this step will help us to continue to build a community that you are all proud to be a part of.
Many thanks for your continued support of HELLDIVERS 2!
Sounds like It's not that they can't ban players without a PSN account, but the punishment of being banned from playing any of your PS games online is real motivator. I thought we realized eons ago that forced puritanism is the antithesis of humanity.
And then, even if you break their TOS and create an account in another country, you're still constantly inconvenienced - you can't pay for games using your local payment method, for example, and a useful Playstation mobile app is not even listed in the local app store.
IMO they should either provide the same level of service in all countries, or be forced to charge significantly less when selling their hardware in unsupported countries.