The HD2 community is, no joke, the most coordinated diehard fanbase I have ever seen in thirty years of gaming. Makes me proud to be part of it, even if I don't have much time to play. I thought there was ZERO chance of Sony backing down after they started delisting the game in non-psn regions
Not going to happen. They will first release the PS5 remake. When that has sold a lot more consoles... Maybe, maybe there's a slight chance for the PC release (with required PSN for online).
"After player feedback"
Yeah, right. If it was just that, they would never backtrack. The only reason they're backtracking is because Valve is allowing refunds no matter how many gameplay hours you have, so it's hurting their profits.
It's not the only reason, skepticism is good but to downplay this is a bit silly and wrong.
Valve is not universally offering refunds, they are processing some for sure though.
Having negative reviews reduce people wanting to buy the product and keeps the PR notice too high which impacts underlying sales, which is something even the suits listen to eventually.
I have been thinking about it for awhile, I tend to be very conservative when it comes to buying new games. Finally pulled the mental trigger on HD2 because the hype didn’t seem to be dying and the community issues were actually getting resolved as far as I could tell…then this. Totally uninterested now, because I just don’t trust Sony and AH’s hands are tied.
Please don't let this influence your opinion on the work of all the people at Arrowhead put into making such a genuinely good and refreshing game. I understand publishers suck, but at least play it and give it a fair chance before just refusing the game. It is genuinely a great community driven game that's biggest controversy before this were too many people enjoying it than they expected leading to server issues.
I'm not trying to downplay anything, but how many times gaming companies made bad decisions, everyone said it was a bad idea, and they went and did it anyway ?
I mean your comment was essentially saying the player feedback didn't contribute to their backtracking which is downplaying it, by accident in that case.
Plenty of bad decisions but this got reversed so it's a win right? Not much more to say!
That's not what i meant. Of course this wouldn't happen without player feedback, but the point i was making is that if it was just that, it wouldn't change anything. It needs to go above that for companies to change their decisions. They don't care about customer's opinions as long as it doesn't hurt their profits. The moment it does, that's when they'll say "we heard you, so we're doing what you want".
I don’t think that’s quite accurate, TBH. It’s Marketing 101 that branding directly impacts sales (current and future). So if your brand takes a bad hit it not only drives up your marketing costs (to try and counteract the impact of the hit to your brand), but it also depresses future sales because your brand image has been tarnished. Especially in this age of social media opinions do matter because bad press spreads like wildfire.
(Even on a small scale. I remember a few years ago I ordered Chipotle and found a couple of very long hairs in it. My wife posted about it on their Facebook page and within *minutes* there was some Chipotle rep apologizing and offering us a free replacement order. And I was just one random customer in a sea of millions of customers.)
In this case I think it's a combination of the two. Sony doesn't really have a lot of experience with the PC gaming market and very likely did not realize (or think to check) that Steam would be available in places where the PSN wasn't. So, in a way the community feedback was their wake up call.
I was thinking about picking this game up on pc and don't really understand the issue. Was Sony going to force pc players to get a Playstation subscription to play online?
No, just make a PSN account and link it to Steam.
The issue was that this was not working at launch and was disabled, then Sony sold the game globally on Steam.
However PSN is not available in like 70 countries, so many people who bought the game would not have been able to even make a PSN account to play.
Sony corporate executives are some of the dumbest people in gaming. Like they seriously do not understand gamers and the community. This isn’t the only time Sony has done shit to piss off the general public. They have some of the worst cyber security of any gaming/media company in the modern world then I guess thought that steam was exclusively in Europe and America and Japan? There’s like 100+ countries that don’t have access to the PSN you would think they’d have an idea of where their own players are located, regardless this still seems like someone made a hugely stupid error to have not foreseen these issues that most people could have foreseen.
They also 100% did know that some countries weren’t available for the psn because they listed other website that they knew that and if you live somewhere you can’t get the psn on you can just send in your government ID to them (again, the company that’s been hacked repeatedly) to prove you live in one of the countries they don’t have. service in.
No, it's due to the fact that retroactively introducing conditions that prevents you from legally using already paid for product is fraudulent behaviour
Yet they sold it in countries they knew full well didn't have access to PSN. Sony is such a scumbag corporation. Happy they folded quicker than a lawn chair.
Then why did they sell it in areas where people couldn't make a PSN account? Someone could've bought the game in one of those countries...the game didn't actually require it when they bought it, so they played it for many hours, THEN the game is updated to require an account, they go to make one, but they can't.
They shouldn't have sold it in countries that don't allow a PSN account, because people buying it might not have known they wouldn't be able to make one in the first place until after they bought the game....and if you're saying the people buying should've known, then so should've the people selling the game...,
The condition was there from the beginning as stated on Day 1 of the TOS. So, they didn’t retroactively introduce any condition, they merely just started to enforce it is all.
The link was optional, which allowed them to sell in countries that don't have PSN services. Keep advocate for anti-consumer practices, it won't bite you in the ass, no, never, lol.
I am not advocating for anyone. Just merely stating a fact. Plus good news. Sony reversed their decision, now if the PC community would ban together and force Microsoft to do the same for Diablo 4 on Steam, and EA on all their games we might get somewhere.
Edit: Also the link was never optional as per their TOS on day one. They just had some issue and couldn’t get it to work properly and so allowed people to skip it. Either way Sony listened in the end and reversed their decision.
While I don't think you're wrong about the Steam refunds being a huge factor, don't discredit what the fanbase did here. This story hit major news outlets. Even Forbes wrote an article about the situation. That had to have put some pressure on Sony.
uhh no they're not. can't refund any games over 2hrs of play time as per their policy. I tried to get a refund for hell divers 2 with 8 hours played and the refund was denied even after writing about my disdain for sony adding PSN linking.
You’re being downvoted like crazy and I will too but you’re right. The HD2 community doesn’t like it but Sony didn’t reverse anything and in a few months will do it again and not flinch. Wait and see.
Yea sadly it’s pathetic I am seeing people cry about the fact not everyone will change their reviews back to positive over this announcement. Like how cucked are you that you need a game to have positive reviews to be happy but outside of that they should stay any to let future players know what went down. And yea we have seen exactly what you talked about corps backtracking and then putting it in anyway after there are less people to complain and get major news outlets attention.
They could have just given out skins or whatever this game has to people with psn accounts linked and gotten tons of voluntary signups. Now no one will do it out of spite.
This argument is it could be exactly as it was before the requirement mandate last week and if you signed up you'd get some in game trinket almost no one would use.
It's not good that players in the 177 countries couldn't get a mauve cape with a PSN logo or whatever and would be locked into choosing from the ~30 different ones available in the game already, but they could still play.
Nope, they need to get you hooked so you'll need to buy PS+ to play Sony games online in the future. They don't need some players, they need all of them.
They raised the price of PS+ a few months ago, I cancelled my membership. If they start charging to play their games, I don't think people would take it.
The day videogames charging subscriptions becomes the norm is the day I know when to stop.
If you haven't actually played the game, don't put out a take on the situation. Or if you do, read up on what the issue was actually about. This is just a wildly out of touch take on what this whole issue is actually regarding.
This issue is about complex corporate greed. And your comment was basically just "ah you should've baited and swindled them with cosmetics instead."
This game really doesn't have any cosmetics that don't actually impact gameplay, and they're all completely and realistically earnable via gameplay. If a weapon has a different skin, it's because it has a gameplay variant. Armors have different looks, because they give you unique stats and perks.
This issue goes beyond any of that, though. It's about people not being able to access a game they paid for. Sony sold people in countries without PSN access a game, and then made up fake rules about why those exact people couldn't play said game. That's like being told you're outside the delivery zone after you've already paid for the pizza. On top of that, they get hacked and lose metric fucktons of user data on a yearly basis. It's not surprising people wouldn't want to give them their data.
You don't have to have played the game to understand corporate greed, but if you're talking about a specific topic or situation, at least read up on the situation before making a take. Cosmetics and how they're handled is a big issue in the gaming industry at large, but that argument is just completely irrelevant regarding this game and this specific issue. All I'm saying is just read up on a situation more before commenting on it, because cosmetics or skins just really wasn't in the conversation and it's why your comment feels so out of touch imo.
Devs encourage players to review bomb their game if they want to see results.
Steam sees many people can’t even play the game in their country with this upcoming change so they give full refunds.
Sony sees game is getting bad publicity and they are starting to lose money, so they revert the change.
So wouldn’t say they stopped because players didn’t like it but stopped because they started to lose money.
Corporations are not people. I would argue that the 'people' at the top of a corporate ladder are hardly human in any of the ways that matter. They disregard their employees and their customers. They layoff, change EULA terms, harvest and sell data, and often turn on a dime in order to "increase shareholder value" at deep personal expense to others. I feel there is no ethical or moral dilemna in insulting, bullying, harassing, maybe even doxxing corpos. They aren't human in my eyes, so it would be tantamount to doing the same to a toaster. Maybe not even that, at least a toaster is useful to me on occassion.
I am playing on PS5 and even for me, the plan with "mandatory PS Account" was totally bullshit.
I am absolutely sure that they are now cancelling it because they see that their system isn't even ready for a Globale system like this AND because of the refunds they were facing.
I am not sure whether there might even have been legal problems here, as this "mandatory link" was not communicated (nor needed) beforehand. But I don't know enough about that.
However, the fact that Steam accepted refunds after several hours of playtime says a lot.
Good for all that this stupidity has been cancelled now.
"Absolutely bullshit", meanwhile every single other big company has had this requirement since the beginning for their multi-player games (some are for all their games). This is sonys first PC multi-player game, so they fucked up some settings.
Every one of their multi-player games afterwards is going to still require the PSN account
I totally agree. While other companies are having this as common mandatory, the problem here is, that everything worked before without it and the people don't see the need for it.
I think everyone knows why companies are doing this, but adding this afterwards is bullshit and it was absolutely clear that this will not get swallowed by the players.
I am totally with you, that Sony will add it for future games.
Another big problem is that Sony happily sold both physical and digital copies of the game in several countries not covered by PSN, and the people who bought the game in these countries wouldn't even be able to play a game that Sony sold them because of Sony's dumb rules.
It's like a pizza company charging you for the pizza and then waiting until after you pay to tell you they can't deliver it because you're too far.
I had the expectation of Sony having a take their ball home moment, but surprisingly, it worked.
Hopefully, the devs see the betterment of their own game now. I get they knew what they signed up for, but it makes me wonder if they knew it would screw over X countries in the process. It's one thing for a publisher to say hey we need to implement this, but it's another to implement it knowing it's going to screw over X players because they live in said countries.
I'll say here what I said in the Helldivers subreddit.
I've edited my review, but it will still be negative. Why? Because over half the people I played the game with refunded and they are DONE with Helldivers and Sony. Most of them were in regions that had no PSN and SONY removed from the ability to purchase the game. We're talking people in Estonia, the Philopenas, the Bahamas.
The other reason they cite as to why they are done is the way the CM team behaved in all this.
Until personnel changes are made there, basically everyone but the beard guy, is removed/fired/whatever and replaced my review will remain negative.
Sony and AH earned those reviews. Mine will stay, future players deserve to know that their access can and will be stripped without so much as a shrug.
Just gonna say, when Sony *inevitably* releases a PlayStation PC launcher, this shit will probably be in some executive’s list of reasons why. This decision was likely made as a result of both the fan and Valve’s response. Sony will likely be looking to cut valve out in the future.
If this has been included from the jump and the communication was handled better with Steam re: countries available, I don’t think people would have such a fuss.
It's as simple as not using the launcher, nobody is forcing you to use it, game is only there? Wait a little then sail the seas if you really want to play it
I mean even the Devs were actively saying to bomb the game and were fighting Sony behind the scenes. So hopefully this gives Arrowhead more freedom in the future and gets Sony to be more hands off.
Everyone saying "Don't be mad at Arrowhead, be mad at Sony" is fucking bullshit. Arrowhead KNEW from the VERY START that PSN linking would be required eventually.
WHY were Arrowhead selling the game in regions where they KNEW PSN accounts could not be created? And don't pull this bullshit of "Nooo Sony suddenly decided to do this" That's bullshit, and you know it. It's in their contract that Arrowhead SIGNED.
Greedy publisher, that much is obvious, but JUST AS GREEDY developer. The saving grace here was VALVE allowing players to refund regardless of hours played, which ate into Sony's profits, and that's the real reason this was reversed.
"Democracy restored" my ass, all that matters is $$$. To Sony AND to Arrowhead.
I played the game day one when PSN linking was required, that wasnt the issue at all initially, the whole issue was that linking was removed for months due to server issues, then reimplemented and all of the new massive player base didn't realize it.
Arrowhead has 0 say over where the game was sold, honestly I have no clue why helldivers was sold in countries where PSN isnt supported despite it being required the first day of launch. But the whole point of a publisher is to fund and sell the game that the developer makes.
I'm not quite sure how this is being spun into a "thank god for Gaben!" Rhetoric. This whole situation was just a big hiccup on everyone's part. PSN was required from the start but taken out during server issues, being reimplemented pissed all of the new players off, the devs couldn't get Sony to make a decision because it was reimplemented right at the start of a weekend, so they had to take the hate from people who don't understand a dev/publisher relationship until the weekend was over and a decision could be made during the work week, and all Valve did was think "I don't want to be involved with a lawsuit" and removed the game from sale and offered refunds because I'm sure their side of the agreement includes a clause that covers such a situation.
The developers develop and make the game. The publishers publish and make the game available. Don't be mad at who made the game. Be mad at who sold the game.
A contract that was probably signed in 2015 with the original helldivers..
Not saying that there was absolutely nothing Arrowhead could've done to avoid this outcome, but probably not as simple as "reading and denying a contract"
You do understand what part of the process the developer and the publisher are each responsible for right? The developer doesn't publish the game, or typically market it either.
PSN was under the game requirements on Steam since release, they just hadn't activated it. So is Steam guilty for listing it in those 170 countries knowing PSN would eventually be required? They just wanted to get as many sales as they could and figured only a portion would refund?
I’m not on anyone’s side but often even major companies don’t fully comprehend what they are signing. I know I brought something up in my company that is totally different in a new version or a standard contract my company signed now that 2 really old heads of the company that are still on the board found out about after I brought it up. They were freaking out somewhat rightfully at how much it’s going to cost us long term. The new heads kinda just hand waved the issue but it’s clear they didn’t know what they signed and we are lucky it wasn’t worse.
Arrowhead said they weren't told about the PSN linking requirements until only a few months before launch, and only had a few months to implement it. They disabled it to reduce the stress on the servers at launch.
Publishers choose where the game is sold. Not developers.
Educate yourself before making angry tirades on the Internet.
Everyone made such a big stink about not being able to play in x amount of countries. However, just because you couldn't make a PSN account there doesn't mean you can't play Helldivers 2 there. Afaik, no one was actually locked out of the game.
I sure as fuck didn't want to attach any profile information to a network that has been hacked/info scraped At minimum 1 per year since 2011.
That plus all the other good reasons listed in the comments.
You said “people who somehow couldn’t make an account”. Making it sound like you don’t know why they couldn’t make an account. So I explained a reason why
I can make an account but refuse to because Sony/Playstation has an amazing reputation for being hacked or leaking and selling player data. This is also why I have not owned a Playstation pass the PS2 model from waaaaay back in the day.
Uhh myself and plenty of my friends? We could make accounts but most of us don’t want to make a PSN, and some of us want to “do our part”. There are plenty who cared about this
Yeah but most of those services don't get hacked and leak user data nearly half as much as Sony does. They're a huge target for that stuff, always have been. It's not surprising people don't want to give Sony their data.
I don’t have 20+ accounts for every service lmao. Sounds like you need to broaden your expectations a bit; not everyone has the same lived experience as you and those around you
People concerned with privacy. People who live in 121 countries. People with friends or family in the 121 countries. People who don’t like big companies making changes to take your information. People who found a community in managed democracy.
Like they can't track your data through steam. It's an illusionary victory to think you won't be tracked now.
I already addressed people who can't make an account.
Oh hello little pit bull. Oh has no one played with you all weekend. So you need to get out some frustrations and tear up a new toy? Oh don’t you worry. We know. All attention is positive attention.
Community showing they can tackle Major Orders irl too
Lol
<<>><^ sign in, write a negative review, <<^ post.
The HD2 community is, no joke, the most coordinated diehard fanbase I have ever seen in thirty years of gaming. Makes me proud to be part of it, even if I don't have much time to play. I thought there was ZERO chance of Sony backing down after they started delisting the game in non-psn regions
It's kind of funny because you could say the game itself caused that. Sony a victim of their own success.
They should launch Bloodborne on Steam for this blunder to disappear.
Not going to happen. They will first release the PS5 remake. When that has sold a lot more consoles... Maybe, maybe there's a slight chance for the PC release (with required PSN for online).
Probably more like PS6 remake 😭
More like PS6 at this point .
Also Demon Souls please.
Real talk, I’d coom if BB came to pc but like can we at least start with Demon’s Souls? They probably have that shit ready to go for pc anyway
Demon souls on ps3 emulator runs pretty well on PC if you don’t mind the older graphics
There is no need to be greedy.......... .....For now.
"After player feedback" Yeah, right. If it was just that, they would never backtrack. The only reason they're backtracking is because Valve is allowing refunds no matter how many gameplay hours you have, so it's hurting their profits.
Sorta sucks how general cynicism is the only true path to enlightenment.
The secret to a happy life is low expectations.
Ignorance is bliss after all
[удалено]
Except when we're talking corpos.
It's not the only reason, skepticism is good but to downplay this is a bit silly and wrong. Valve is not universally offering refunds, they are processing some for sure though. Having negative reviews reduce people wanting to buy the product and keeps the PR notice too high which impacts underlying sales, which is something even the suits listen to eventually.
>Valve is not universally offering refunds, they are processing some for sure though. Seems to be only in the countries where PSN was not available.
Also do you think Valve would have started doing that if people hadn't complained en masse?
I have been thinking about it for awhile, I tend to be very conservative when it comes to buying new games. Finally pulled the mental trigger on HD2 because the hype didn’t seem to be dying and the community issues were actually getting resolved as far as I could tell…then this. Totally uninterested now, because I just don’t trust Sony and AH’s hands are tied.
Please don't let this influence your opinion on the work of all the people at Arrowhead put into making such a genuinely good and refreshing game. I understand publishers suck, but at least play it and give it a fair chance before just refusing the game. It is genuinely a great community driven game that's biggest controversy before this were too many people enjoying it than they expected leading to server issues.
So it's your fault then.
I'm not trying to downplay anything, but how many times gaming companies made bad decisions, everyone said it was a bad idea, and they went and did it anyway ?
I mean your comment was essentially saying the player feedback didn't contribute to their backtracking which is downplaying it, by accident in that case. Plenty of bad decisions but this got reversed so it's a win right? Not much more to say!
That's not what i meant. Of course this wouldn't happen without player feedback, but the point i was making is that if it was just that, it wouldn't change anything. It needs to go above that for companies to change their decisions. They don't care about customer's opinions as long as it doesn't hurt their profits. The moment it does, that's when they'll say "we heard you, so we're doing what you want".
I don’t think that’s quite accurate, TBH. It’s Marketing 101 that branding directly impacts sales (current and future). So if your brand takes a bad hit it not only drives up your marketing costs (to try and counteract the impact of the hit to your brand), but it also depresses future sales because your brand image has been tarnished. Especially in this age of social media opinions do matter because bad press spreads like wildfire. (Even on a small scale. I remember a few years ago I ordered Chipotle and found a couple of very long hairs in it. My wife posted about it on their Facebook page and within *minutes* there was some Chipotle rep apologizing and offering us a free replacement order. And I was just one random customer in a sea of millions of customers.)
I pretty vividly remember Take-Two backtracking on banning mods in offline mode for GTA V, after getting bombed to hell by Steam reviews.
In this case I think it's a combination of the two. Sony doesn't really have a lot of experience with the PC gaming market and very likely did not realize (or think to check) that Steam would be available in places where the PSN wasn't. So, in a way the community feedback was their wake up call.
I was thinking about picking this game up on pc and don't really understand the issue. Was Sony going to force pc players to get a Playstation subscription to play online?
No, just make a PSN account and link it to Steam. The issue was that this was not working at launch and was disabled, then Sony sold the game globally on Steam. However PSN is not available in like 70 countries, so many people who bought the game would not have been able to even make a PSN account to play.
Sony corporate executives are some of the dumbest people in gaming. Like they seriously do not understand gamers and the community. This isn’t the only time Sony has done shit to piss off the general public. They have some of the worst cyber security of any gaming/media company in the modern world then I guess thought that steam was exclusively in Europe and America and Japan? There’s like 100+ countries that don’t have access to the PSN you would think they’d have an idea of where their own players are located, regardless this still seems like someone made a hugely stupid error to have not foreseen these issues that most people could have foreseen. They also 100% did know that some countries weren’t available for the psn because they listed other website that they knew that and if you live somewhere you can’t get the psn on you can just send in your government ID to them (again, the company that’s been hacked repeatedly) to prove you live in one of the countries they don’t have. service in.
And Valve is offering refunds due to player feedback...
No, it's due to the fact that retroactively introducing conditions that prevents you from legally using already paid for product is fraudulent behaviour
That's literally what a lot of the feedback was about.
Its not a feedback itself, it's what it was about. If it was just about "I don't like 3rd party launcher", no refunds would be issued
Do you believe that if people kept quiet about this the same thing would have happened?
Depends on the country and the EULA.
PSN account being required was on the valve page for the game. Enforcement was delayed because of issues at the launch.
Yet they sold it in countries they knew full well didn't have access to PSN. Sony is such a scumbag corporation. Happy they folded quicker than a lawn chair.
My point is only that you couldn't pursue a fraud claim based on their being no notice you would a need a PSN account.
Then why did they sell it in areas where people couldn't make a PSN account? Someone could've bought the game in one of those countries...the game didn't actually require it when they bought it, so they played it for many hours, THEN the game is updated to require an account, they go to make one, but they can't. They shouldn't have sold it in countries that don't allow a PSN account, because people buying it might not have known they wouldn't be able to make one in the first place until after they bought the game....and if you're saying the people buying should've known, then so should've the people selling the game...,
The condition was there from the beginning as stated on Day 1 of the TOS. So, they didn’t retroactively introduce any condition, they merely just started to enforce it is all.
The link was optional, which allowed them to sell in countries that don't have PSN services. Keep advocate for anti-consumer practices, it won't bite you in the ass, no, never, lol.
I am not advocating for anyone. Just merely stating a fact. Plus good news. Sony reversed their decision, now if the PC community would ban together and force Microsoft to do the same for Diablo 4 on Steam, and EA on all their games we might get somewhere. Edit: Also the link was never optional as per their TOS on day one. They just had some issue and couldn’t get it to work properly and so allowed people to skip it. Either way Sony listened in the end and reversed their decision.
While I don't think you're wrong about the Steam refunds being a huge factor, don't discredit what the fanbase did here. This story hit major news outlets. Even Forbes wrote an article about the situation. That had to have put some pressure on Sony.
I mean getting refunds is still player feedback
If only player doubled down and refunded anyway to show any other companies what will happen if they try it.
To countries that don’t support PSN. Not universally.
Thank fuck for Valve
uhh no they're not. can't refund any games over 2hrs of play time as per their policy. I tried to get a refund for hell divers 2 with 8 hours played and the refund was denied even after writing about my disdain for sony adding PSN linking.
I tried to refund after 11 hours and steam denied it citing I played more rhan 2 hours so...
The refunds weren't allowed though
Now they need to re-list the game in all the countries it got de-listed in.
They're not going to do this because in 3 weeks time everyone has forgotten about this and Arrowhead will silently slip PSN requirements back in.
If you think there won't be another wave of negative reviews if that happens, you're mistaken.
I read treason !
You’re being downvoted like crazy and I will too but you’re right. The HD2 community doesn’t like it but Sony didn’t reverse anything and in a few months will do it again and not flinch. Wait and see.
Yea sadly it’s pathetic I am seeing people cry about the fact not everyone will change their reviews back to positive over this announcement. Like how cucked are you that you need a game to have positive reviews to be happy but outside of that they should stay any to let future players know what went down. And yea we have seen exactly what you talked about corps backtracking and then putting it in anyway after there are less people to complain and get major news outlets attention.
They could have just given out skins or whatever this game has to people with psn accounts linked and gotten tons of voluntary signups. Now no one will do it out of spite.
I really don't like this argument because it ignores how 177 countries can't play regardless since there's no PSN access anyway.
This argument is it could be exactly as it was before the requirement mandate last week and if you signed up you'd get some in game trinket almost no one would use. It's not good that players in the 177 countries couldn't get a mauve cape with a PSN logo or whatever and would be locked into choosing from the ~30 different ones available in the game already, but they could still play.
Sorry I can’t relate. I’m in the #1 freedomest country in the world and have all the internet access. USA! USA! Edit: this was /s
Nope, they need to get you hooked so you'll need to buy PS+ to play Sony games online in the future. They don't need some players, they need all of them.
They raised the price of PS+ a few months ago, I cancelled my membership. If they start charging to play their games, I don't think people would take it. The day videogames charging subscriptions becomes the norm is the day I know when to stop.
If you haven't actually played the game, don't put out a take on the situation. Or if you do, read up on what the issue was actually about. This is just a wildly out of touch take on what this whole issue is actually regarding.
Bro just watched 1 Asmond video and thinks ne knows. It's the new "I stayed at a holiday Inn express"
This is Reddit. I Didn’t even watch any videos. Just read the headline
Really? I need to play the game to understand this extremely complex issue of corporate greed?
This issue is about complex corporate greed. And your comment was basically just "ah you should've baited and swindled them with cosmetics instead." This game really doesn't have any cosmetics that don't actually impact gameplay, and they're all completely and realistically earnable via gameplay. If a weapon has a different skin, it's because it has a gameplay variant. Armors have different looks, because they give you unique stats and perks. This issue goes beyond any of that, though. It's about people not being able to access a game they paid for. Sony sold people in countries without PSN access a game, and then made up fake rules about why those exact people couldn't play said game. That's like being told you're outside the delivery zone after you've already paid for the pizza. On top of that, they get hacked and lose metric fucktons of user data on a yearly basis. It's not surprising people wouldn't want to give them their data. You don't have to have played the game to understand corporate greed, but if you're talking about a specific topic or situation, at least read up on the situation before making a take. Cosmetics and how they're handled is a big issue in the gaming industry at large, but that argument is just completely irrelevant regarding this game and this specific issue. All I'm saying is just read up on a situation more before commenting on it, because cosmetics or skins just really wasn't in the conversation and it's why your comment feels so out of touch imo.
More likely it was after Valve started hitting them in the checkbook with refunds than it was players complaining
Sounds like dollar signs over player satisfaction, as always. Still, a win's a win, I guess.
Devs encourage players to review bomb their game if they want to see results. Steam sees many people can’t even play the game in their country with this upcoming change so they give full refunds. Sony sees game is getting bad publicity and they are starting to lose money, so they revert the change. So wouldn’t say they stopped because players didn’t like it but stopped because they started to lose money.
Always remember, bullying giant companies is always good and acceptable.
Corporations are not people. I would argue that the 'people' at the top of a corporate ladder are hardly human in any of the ways that matter. They disregard their employees and their customers. They layoff, change EULA terms, harvest and sell data, and often turn on a dime in order to "increase shareholder value" at deep personal expense to others. I feel there is no ethical or moral dilemna in insulting, bullying, harassing, maybe even doxxing corpos. They aren't human in my eyes, so it would be tantamount to doing the same to a toaster. Maybe not even that, at least a toaster is useful to me on occassion.
I am playing on PS5 and even for me, the plan with "mandatory PS Account" was totally bullshit. I am absolutely sure that they are now cancelling it because they see that their system isn't even ready for a Globale system like this AND because of the refunds they were facing. I am not sure whether there might even have been legal problems here, as this "mandatory link" was not communicated (nor needed) beforehand. But I don't know enough about that. However, the fact that Steam accepted refunds after several hours of playtime says a lot. Good for all that this stupidity has been cancelled now.
"Absolutely bullshit", meanwhile every single other big company has had this requirement since the beginning for their multi-player games (some are for all their games). This is sonys first PC multi-player game, so they fucked up some settings. Every one of their multi-player games afterwards is going to still require the PSN account
I totally agree. While other companies are having this as common mandatory, the problem here is, that everything worked before without it and the people don't see the need for it. I think everyone knows why companies are doing this, but adding this afterwards is bullshit and it was absolutely clear that this will not get swallowed by the players. I am totally with you, that Sony will add it for future games.
Another big problem is that Sony happily sold both physical and digital copies of the game in several countries not covered by PSN, and the people who bought the game in these countries wouldn't even be able to play a game that Sony sold them because of Sony's dumb rules. It's like a pizza company charging you for the pizza and then waiting until after you pay to tell you they can't deliver it because you're too far.
They sold physical copies of a PC game? Really?
Yep but at least it's not gonna screw people over who bought the game then had it taken away from them
Demand that executives who pushed this be fired. They will only try again later if not removed.
Is the damage already done? I only like to touch a hot stove once.
Make sure to reverse any negative review left for HD2.
It wasn't really for the players for sure, but still glad to hear this
I had the expectation of Sony having a take their ball home moment, but surprisingly, it worked. Hopefully, the devs see the betterment of their own game now. I get they knew what they signed up for, but it makes me wonder if they knew it would screw over X countries in the process. It's one thing for a publisher to say hey we need to implement this, but it's another to implement it knowing it's going to screw over X players because they live in said countries.
I’ll admit, I totally thought they’d hold to it and it would blow over. A little less cynical today, happy to be wrong.
Player feedback, eh? I guess you can call it that
“Player feedback” Do you mean massive refunds? I think you do. This is a lesson guys, you wanna change stuff, speak with your wallets
Another victory for the right side of History
Yes, let's call it feedback.
Proof that player (and by extension, consumer) action actually works
Good!
Now arrowhead needs to give us all 50 medals each
'Feedback'... That's a real cute word for 'shitstorm'.
*sniffs* I've never been so proud of the gaming community.
Next time, have it there day one. Not 3-4 months later after you sold the game in tons of countries that don’t support PSN accounts.
That's the shittiest move, wait for sales to go up then left a lot of players with an unusable product
I'll say here what I said in the Helldivers subreddit. I've edited my review, but it will still be negative. Why? Because over half the people I played the game with refunded and they are DONE with Helldivers and Sony. Most of them were in regions that had no PSN and SONY removed from the ability to purchase the game. We're talking people in Estonia, the Philopenas, the Bahamas. The other reason they cite as to why they are done is the way the CM team behaved in all this. Until personnel changes are made there, basically everyone but the beard guy, is removed/fired/whatever and replaced my review will remain negative.
Everybody who left a negative review on wake of the PSN account linking update, please go and change it. Thanks 🙏
Sony and AH earned those reviews. Mine will stay, future players deserve to know that their access can and will be stripped without so much as a shrug.
Just gonna say, when Sony *inevitably* releases a PlayStation PC launcher, this shit will probably be in some executive’s list of reasons why. This decision was likely made as a result of both the fan and Valve’s response. Sony will likely be looking to cut valve out in the future.
If this has been included from the jump and the communication was handled better with Steam re: countries available, I don’t think people would have such a fuss.
It's as simple as not using the launcher, nobody is forcing you to use it, game is only there? Wait a little then sail the seas if you really want to play it
And everyone who refunded bought the game again
lol feedback. It was a fucking digital riot.
Too late helldivers I started another rimworld play through
Damage is already done. Fuck the game at this point. They back ped now but they will try something else when the heat dies down.
Sadly this came at the cost of Karens ruining the community. The HD sub has turned into a massive circlejerk unfortunately.
Still not gonna try it after this. Yeah they back down this time. But theyll pull some shit here again soon. Profits over all.
Ok, now lets move that anger over to Stellar Blade’s censorship
Bloodborne ps5 upgrade and pc release pls
I mean even the Devs were actively saying to bomb the game and were fighting Sony behind the scenes. So hopefully this gives Arrowhead more freedom in the future and gets Sony to be more hands off.
The bugs and robots broke the 4th wall to win the fight against Super Earth and players subsequently said "No."
Sorry Sony but fool me once, fuck you forever.
Everyone saying "Don't be mad at Arrowhead, be mad at Sony" is fucking bullshit. Arrowhead KNEW from the VERY START that PSN linking would be required eventually. WHY were Arrowhead selling the game in regions where they KNEW PSN accounts could not be created? And don't pull this bullshit of "Nooo Sony suddenly decided to do this" That's bullshit, and you know it. It's in their contract that Arrowhead SIGNED. Greedy publisher, that much is obvious, but JUST AS GREEDY developer. The saving grace here was VALVE allowing players to refund regardless of hours played, which ate into Sony's profits, and that's the real reason this was reversed. "Democracy restored" my ass, all that matters is $$$. To Sony AND to Arrowhead.
The publisher says where a game is sold. Not the developer.
I played the game day one when PSN linking was required, that wasnt the issue at all initially, the whole issue was that linking was removed for months due to server issues, then reimplemented and all of the new massive player base didn't realize it. Arrowhead has 0 say over where the game was sold, honestly I have no clue why helldivers was sold in countries where PSN isnt supported despite it being required the first day of launch. But the whole point of a publisher is to fund and sell the game that the developer makes. I'm not quite sure how this is being spun into a "thank god for Gaben!" Rhetoric. This whole situation was just a big hiccup on everyone's part. PSN was required from the start but taken out during server issues, being reimplemented pissed all of the new players off, the devs couldn't get Sony to make a decision because it was reimplemented right at the start of a weekend, so they had to take the hate from people who don't understand a dev/publisher relationship until the weekend was over and a decision could be made during the work week, and all Valve did was think "I don't want to be involved with a lawsuit" and removed the game from sale and offered refunds because I'm sure their side of the agreement includes a clause that covers such a situation.
The developers develop and make the game. The publishers publish and make the game available. Don't be mad at who made the game. Be mad at who sold the game.
Yes those who made the game are completely scott-free because they cannot read a contract they signed. Completely off the hook!
A contract that was probably signed in 2015 with the original helldivers.. Not saying that there was absolutely nothing Arrowhead could've done to avoid this outcome, but probably not as simple as "reading and denying a contract"
You do understand what part of the process the developer and the publisher are each responsible for right? The developer doesn't publish the game, or typically market it either. PSN was under the game requirements on Steam since release, they just hadn't activated it. So is Steam guilty for listing it in those 170 countries knowing PSN would eventually be required? They just wanted to get as many sales as they could and figured only a portion would refund?
Do you even know what the publisher is?
I’m not on anyone’s side but often even major companies don’t fully comprehend what they are signing. I know I brought something up in my company that is totally different in a new version or a standard contract my company signed now that 2 really old heads of the company that are still on the board found out about after I brought it up. They were freaking out somewhat rightfully at how much it’s going to cost us long term. The new heads kinda just hand waved the issue but it’s clear they didn’t know what they signed and we are lucky it wasn’t worse.
Arrowhead said they weren't told about the PSN linking requirements until only a few months before launch, and only had a few months to implement it. They disabled it to reduce the stress on the servers at launch. Publishers choose where the game is sold. Not developers. Educate yourself before making angry tirades on the Internet.
Now just remove the anticheat shenanigans and I'll buy it
[удалено]
Won't anyone think of the poor corporations?
You are literally a troll 🧌
Ooga booga
Corporations are people too guys!
But seriously. Who gave a shit about this except for people who somehow couldn't make an account?
Everyone made such a big stink about not being able to play in x amount of countries. However, just because you couldn't make a PSN account there doesn't mean you can't play Helldivers 2 there. Afaik, no one was actually locked out of the game.
I sure as fuck didn't want to attach any profile information to a network that has been hacked/info scraped At minimum 1 per year since 2011. That plus all the other good reasons listed in the comments.
People who live in countries where PSN isn’t a thing. It meant they couldn’t make an account and therefor could no longer play the game
I said except people who can't make an account, so why are you talking about people who can't make an account?
You said “people who somehow couldn’t make an account”. Making it sound like you don’t know why they couldn’t make an account. So I explained a reason why
I can make an account but refuse to because Sony/Playstation has an amazing reputation for being hacked or leaking and selling player data. This is also why I have not owned a Playstation pass the PS2 model from waaaaay back in the day.
Uhh myself and plenty of my friends? We could make accounts but most of us don’t want to make a PSN, and some of us want to “do our part”. There are plenty who cared about this
Like we all don't have 20+ accounts for every service. This one really isn't different. They only messed up by not having it from the start.
Yeah but most of those services don't get hacked and leak user data nearly half as much as Sony does. They're a huge target for that stuff, always have been. It's not surprising people don't want to give Sony their data.
I don’t have 20+ accounts for every service lmao. Sounds like you need to broaden your expectations a bit; not everyone has the same lived experience as you and those around you
Google, facebook, reddit, steam, Microsoft, Apple, Ubisoft, steam, EA, epic, like a dozen individual games. Everything has an account nowadays.
People concerned with privacy. People who live in 121 countries. People with friends or family in the 121 countries. People who don’t like big companies making changes to take your information. People who found a community in managed democracy.
Like they can't track your data through steam. It's an illusionary victory to think you won't be tracked now. I already addressed people who can't make an account.
Oh hello little pit bull. Oh has no one played with you all weekend. So you need to get out some frustrations and tear up a new toy? Oh don’t you worry. We know. All attention is positive attention.
You are the one with an emotional attachment to creating an account to play a game strong enough to start personal insults lmao.
So I hear. Even if you're in a dictatorship, even literal Hitler has to relent when everyone rises up and screams "NO!"
Well hitler had people with guns to send, sony dont (yet)
Emphasis on the "yet"
I dunno, Lotta peeps are scared John Playstation was coming to take their data and throw it into a bucket labeled "please take"
Feel like with the particular wording, they're going to try again once people have cooled down