I hate having to make accounts with publishers for games - so I’m happy that everyone got Sony to back down.
I however don’t understand why this game in particular and why Sony in particular received so much backlash, other than it wasn’t required at launch. This isn’t a new practice and most games do this now unfortunately. Microsoft, EA, Activision, Ubisoft, etc.
Just because most games do it doesn't make it right.
They allowed sales of the game in countries where you could not make a PSN account for one, only to bait and switch those users long after the grace period for refunds had expired on Steam.
Also, there was no need for a PSN account for Steam users. They cite things as "making the game safer for everyone", which doesn't make sense considering how often SONY has leaked user data.
The fact they the game is so beloved by a community that is also large and organized is probably what led to such a massive backlash in such a short amount of time.
All correct, but this still isn’t a unique scenario. Many games that have been very loved with a very active community have had the same requirement over the years, helldivers wasn’t anything new.
I suspect this was just a case of the internet caught hold of something and went nuts as it normally does. Was the outcome positive? Absolutely, but it isn’t a new scenario like everyone’s acting it is.
* The game was being sold in regions where players would not be able to make a PSN account, because of PSN's restrictions being tighter than Steams
* At launch the account linking was not mandatory.
* It was also not clearly communicated at this time that it would become mandatory later.
* Even after their public statement that it would be mandatory, Sony's own FAQ still said that PSN accounts were not required to play any games on PC. This was edited after people noticed (Thanks to Arrowhead's CEO calling attention to the FAQ)
At this point it would be reasonable for players to assume it was not actually mandatory at all, despite wording saying it was
And the worst part is it took months for them to fix so they could make it mandatory. Well outside of the usual return window policy for Steam
As I've said elsewhere, this is not just one screw up, it's a bunch
It would have been a very different story if the first time you launch the game it did not let you play unless you link your PSN, which is what most games with this requirement will be like. Then you can choose to either link your account or happily get your refund because you haven't actually played
Also this game has been mired in mild controversy the entire time it's been live because the dev team is genuinely incompetent ie, they released an update that included new purchasable armor that eliminated electric damage, ie a buff to electric weapons.
The same update made using electric weapons crash most games.
The released a new mech that could fire rockets. The rockets would explode immediately after firing in some cases because they would recognize a collision with the hitbox of the mech you are firing from. That's like, my-first-unity-game level bad programming there.
They released an update that supposedly fixed enemies spawning. The actual result was enemies spawning within view, constantly, to the point that even the easier difficulties would overwhelm you. I'm talking you kill an entire patrol, turn 360 degrees, and an entire new patrol spawns directly on top of the corpse of the previous group. The way the game works, this makes it essentially unplayable.
The game's friend and squad management system doesn't work fully if you play on playstation. Since launch. It also fucks up sometimes on PC if your steam username is too short. None of the Steam user APIs work on usernames, they all use a numeric SteamID
If you aren't the "host" of the session (which actually isn't the actual host of the session!) "Damage over time" effects like setting enemies on fire, or using poison gas, do not work at all, ie 0 damage. That hasn't stopped them from buffing the flamethrower because their "Metrics" (lol) say not enough people use it. They've even released armor that buffs using fire without fixing that it literally doesn't work for 3/4ths of the group.
The premier anti-armor weapon the game has is a knock off of the Javelin anti-tank missile launcher. The lock on has never worked correctly. It sometimes refuses to lock on to an enemy vehicle 10 ft in front of you. After 4 months of complaints, the devs FINALLY put it on the list of "known bugs". When people ask what's taking so long, a dev posted an inane response on discord about how "ray casts are hard and have a lot of edge cases" as if ray casts haven't been a basic tool of game development for thirty years.
Like, Arrowhead is amazing at game "feel", Magica feels awesome, even if I've never been able to adjust to the control scheme. Helldivers one seemed really fun but my friends and I couldn't get multiplayer to work, like it would just ignore some players for no reason.
That reason is because Arrowhead devs could not program themselves out of a paper bag. It's always been this way, Magica was so crash prone and buggy that they added a spell to crash the game as a joke.
Plenty of dev teams are similarly incompetent. Hell, I've been that useless before. But they evidently do zero quality assurance, and don't seem to have good enough source control to know what changes go in what release. Many of the above problems are "this would be caught by a single person attempting to play the game, how did you not catch this?"
The Arrowhead support staff said (there are only 4 of them) is that they cannot process "conduct-based reviews" of reports because they have so many users. They wanted to outsource those reports to Sony.
Basically they wanted to make it easier and quicker to ban people for hurty words.
The main problem here is that PSN accounts weren't for the benefit of the customers. Sony decides to cut loose Arrowhead tomorrow and keep the IP, the game would continue to operate as usual. Yes, they probably would have to get marketing departments, and the services that Sony was providing as publisher, but those are easier to scale up/get a partner to manage them.
The PSN requirement wasn't baked in the game, it was tacked on 6 months before release. That's why people say that while it was "required" is not "needed". Required should be kept for things that without them, the system would not work.
Part of the issue is that it wasn't required at launch, became one of the top 10 games by sales numbers and the first published by Sony to make it to that point on the leaderboards, then Sony stepped in and tried to juice their numbers.
I'm 80% speculating here, but given my conversations with avid Tekken players, PSN's authentication backend is garbage and held together with sticks and discarded chewing gum. It regularly goes down. This, I'm going to speculate, is why after 24 hours on Steam, Arrowhead made it "optional" to use PSN to log in; The backend servers were hurting and they wanted this game in the hands of as many people as was reasonable. The devs asked people to please wait a little while so the services backing it could cool off. I also remember multiple of my PS5 owning friends complaining they couldn't get the game on launch day because of nebulous authentication errors.
70% of Helldivers2 players are on PC. For any Sony executive, the thought of having PSN numbers juiced up to 3-4x the number they currently have from one game is a blank cheque from God himself.
However, since it wasn't required at (modulo a few days of) launch, it got a worldwide following. Problem 2: PSN isn't globally available, unlike Xbox, EA, Steam, etc.
Xbox/Steam/EA/Ubisoft does not care where you are. IF you have money, they will take it. If you can figure out how to log in, they will let you use your account. Microsoft/Steam work so well because you don't have to think about it: you move, update your card, buy games. Done.
If you move from the US to the EU with Sony, that might require you to forfeit all your games because you cannot change the region you are in [1] and so players have had to come up with contorted workarounds to figure out how to make things work. Players often resort to buying PSN Gift Cards and then redeeming them just so they don't have to create a whole new account or maintain two accounts (which violates the TOS) just to play their games. Technically, playing on an account outside its region violates the PSN ToS if you squint right.
Steam/Xbox/etc just shrug and go "whatever. As long as you have a card we can process the payment for, you can have your video games."
This meant that people who weren't in a PSN-covered country (which is a lot of them!) you cannot create a PSN account and thus cannot play the game without violating the TOS of the PSN by using a VPN to create the account. On top of that, the requirements for making a PSN account in some countries requires proffering up quite a bit of PII to third parties for identity verification, such as in Britain, where many users found themselves having to upload a photo of their ID and a picture just to create the account.
I however don’t understand why this game in particular and why Sony in particular received so much backlash, other than it wasn’t required at launch. This isn’t a new practice and most games do this now unfortunately. Microsoft, EA, Activision, Ubisoft, etc.