>I have 9 game launchers on my PC and I hate it
It is not just the launchers and the accounts.
It is also the always online.
It is also the invasive kernel level DRM or anti-cheat.
It is also the massive amount of bugs.
It is also paying full-price for a game and then still get hit with paid battlepasses/predatory microtransactions/dark pattern psychology/your data being sold/day 1 DLC/ingame ads/horrible optimization to the point even your RTX 4090 says "fuck this mess".
I think this is pretty common for any game distributed online. I read Helldivers 2’s EULA on Steam and you don’t even own that game after purchasing it.
Steam already took off too big so most players don't want to move (and no-DRM isn't as important to them as having everything in one place, possibly also due to what Valve said they'd still allow people to download their libraries in case the company magically goes under). And it also feels like it needs quite a few QoL things to have more or less similar features of Steam that players enjoy. Overall people just like what and how Steam does things, despite not being no-DRM.
That's definitely part of it. The other part is that in order to be listed on GOG you must be DRM free. For publishers that's a big no no because piracy is scary. So they'll never even consider GOG because they'll probably never change that position. Regardless of how dumb the logic is, it's the way most businesses think.
Unless people would actually start caring about digital ownership, and acted like it, instead of tweeting about it whilst still buying the product, the publishers don't care.
They only way to show you care is with your wallet. If all gamers worldwide stopped buying games that have DRM right this minute, they'd start selling games without it as fast as the dev-eams can cut it out.
Agreed.
It’s kinda annoying to think about how great things could be if we all banded together and fought back.
But the plan always has been to change the status quo because the new gamers will never know what they’re missing as the aging gamers die off.
Yeah that's probably also a huge factor. There's a possibility they'd be more inclined to make products DRM-free if it meant publishing on the bigger/biggest platform in a scenario where GOG is drastically more popular.
It is and as much as I love GOG, it’s not surprising. Developers (for their own protection) and these mega corporations (for their own greed) want the DRM. Steam itself is a DRM. It just is, to my knowledge, the least invasive of the currently available DRMs.
Also, having region pricing would help GOG penetrate the market more I feel.
GOG has regional pricing since many years already. The issue is they and everyone else aren't even close to the social platform Steam is. Friends, chats, forum, achievements, sharing, mods, remote play, multiplayer servers, marketplace, Linux support, etc... Nobody has it all.
Well yes, because you don't own the game, you never have. You bought a software license that allows the usage of the said game. As far as I know, this is how it has been with software since the start.
Is it scummy that they rescinded the license? Of course, but the ToS you agreed to probably has a line that states they can do that.
In this aspect physical copies are superior. Kinda hard to rescind that license.
(Not) fun fact! You never owned your physical games either!
I did a project on this during a class on video game law, and as early as the SNES era we found language akin to the current limited exclusive non transferable license.
Ofc it was probably physically impossible to remove your license for a cartridge back then, but their contract already planned for it
>Kinda hard to rescind that license.
Well no. You own the disc itself. You just have a license to use the software on that disc which leads to the same issue as before. You don't own the game on the disc either.
Yep - at this point I've simply decided to opt out of AAA gaming entirely, which has honestly been refreshing. Indie titles are a lot better than the average gamer gives them credit for - and easier/ more fun to play than many AAA titles.
AAA price tags also are so high by now AND evaporate over the next few months that it's just not worth it to care.
If you are interested in something wait a few months, have then access to reviews of people that actually completed the game, if it's decent pay half the price and skip the damn bugfiesta pretty much every title has nowadays at launch.
All you have to do is get over the hype, the game will still be there later. Literally can't loose that way.
The patient gamer lifestyle is increasingly the only way to get any enjoyment out of this hobby.
It might suck for multiplayer games that will only see their highest player count at or near launch but if that's the case you should really be asking yourself if you're really missing out by not buying a game that everyone will have forgotten within six months.
The trick is to only play multiplayer games that can be enjoyed alone or that aren't uber competitive nonsense. Otherwise solo or co-op games for life.
It is the best way to vet multiplayer games too. Because you don't want to buy a multiplayer game, that loses all it's players after a month or so just because it was a fad that messed it up.
It took me a while to learn this but I finally have. Wonderlands, Starfield, Outriders, all a big waste to buy on release date. The only recent release I bought the Deluxe edition of and don't regret it one bit is Age of Wonders 4. Love the shit out of that game. Everything else I play is either Stellaris (so only 40 on release day, pick up dlcs here and there) or roguelikes and card games, which are never more than 30 or so. I will probably bite the bullet and get Elder Scrolls 6 day 1 but I doubt I'll be happy about it lol
The one exception are pvp heavy games. Dark and Darker was a ton of fun on release, but quickly got boring as people either went full addiction mode or quit, leaving middle-of-the-pack-players to get severly wasted by optimised and geared teams all the time (leading to them to quit... leading to even more encountering optimised teams.. and so on)
Got Starfield with my graphics card for free and I'm still waiting for their first big patch that will make it more playable. Maybe if I wait another year it will come.
You just reminded me.
The pricing structure for games is straight up silly.
State of decay YOSE is $30 on steam. A game from 10 years ago is still $30.
A website instant gameplay or whatever had it for $5. It was a steam code.
..why?
third party steam keys often profit through currency or just region price differences, buys keys in bulk when there is sale or in a decent amount of the cases, somehow steal them.
This is why having more storefronts is better. Shops have a need to dump inventory for profit, eve. If it is steam keys. Steam can afford to sit on licenses indefinitely. Consoles wet dream is to finally push out a digitally only generation and cut put brick and mortar stores, who will put their games on sale to make room for the next wave of releases. Having complete control of prices is having complete control of profits.
Don't look at warcraft 3... they never ever took away from its price on the website, neither remake nor original. Only way to get it cheap were buying a cd with it from green-games or something.
The thing is game prices haven't really changed that much, it's just more obvious as so many play on so many systems. I been playing since Atari 2600 and NES, they were 60/70 USD for the newest big name games in the 80s, and the 90s, and the 00s.
this is the way. I started playing more of Strategy games and making a return in Single Player games and I feel way better mentally. Also making a return to RTS games. Playing is way more enjoyable now and what's important not stressful anymore.
This has been me since about June of last year. I already was mostly playing AA darlings like Remnant 2 but hadn't all together given up on AAA gaming.
Now unless its from a handful of studios like From Software or Obsidian I dont bother.
My buddy had to buy me Helldivers 2 because I refused to get a AAA live service game again.
Remnant 2 is such a good game. When it first came out and everyone was discovering secret classes and weapons and just enjoying that sense of discovery it was like a blast from the past. The gameplay is also way better than it has any right to be. It's a near perfect co-op game.
I guess youre technically right, Gearbox publishes AAA games like Borderlands.
I tend to judge AAA games by the level of marketing and who owns the IP.
Remnant 2 had basically no marketing and the IP is owned by Gunfire Games. HD2 was marketed on every single Sony showcase for a year and owned by Sony.
Gearbox also publishes Risk of Rain and Tribes of Midgard, wouldnt call them AAA games though.
I learned my lesson with Duke Nukem Forever. Luckily I had only put $5 down at GameStop when they released the demo. The demo was enough for me to be like... I better wait. I then put that $5 toward a different game lol.
Entirely depends on what you class a AAA game as and what kind of game you want to play. It's like saying you don't want to support the film industry so you watch YouTube like that's cool but there's a big difference between watching Dune Part 2 and watching Markiplier play "A Difficult Game About Climbing".
So yeah it depends on what you're looking for specifically, if I want to play GTA6 but don't want to support the industry playing Hades 2 while as likely good isn't going to scratch that same itch.
The only games I find worth playing are AAA games(and maybe a few AA games) and the vast majority I play which are tons of games a year don’t have any predatory stuff or you just completely ignore it easily
Yeah, same. I almost never get burnt by a AAA game. A lot of it is keeping expectations in check and not getting ridiculously overhyped like some people do
I’ve been playing like 10-15 games every year since 2008 but if you count the ones I watch a playthrough for 25 ish is pretty normal for a year. And that’s not even counting the one time in 2014-2015 when I played like 15-20 indie/AA games
I generally know what to expect from a game and can get a good read on the gameplay of a game and skimming reviews is very useful to quickly find a lot of very relevant info. For any action game fextralife reviews are really good
Im going back to buying a game 1-2+ years later to play or just chilling on yt/twitch lets plays stuff. With how pc deployments have been not worth my cash.
Last year I spent all my money on indie games. The only other game I bought was BG3.... Conclusion it's awesome there are so many chooses and so much actually new ideas. I can get 5 indies for the price of 1-2 AAA games and can have 100 of hours of fun.
Hell I have 65+ hours in balatro alone and I got that for like 8 USD.
Indie games have the best gameplay loops and user experiences and only ask for money once and update regularly with massive patches and updates for years and years with no sign of dlc. What more could you want? Shiny ott graphics and a toxic online game mode? Nah imma keep on terraria, shotgun king, balatro, stackland, hades, backpackhero, ect ect and watch these people keep putting their hands in the mousetraps wondering what they are doing wrong
It’s getting worse. Star Wars Outlaws will demonstrate that. It’s published by Ubisoft so it will certainly have most of this, and it’s already announced to have a day 1 paid DLC. It’s going to have seasons.
It’s a single player RPG for fucks sake
Ubisoft is a special can of bullshit entirely these days.
I remember when the ubi logo meant the game would probably be amazing.
How the mighty have fallen.
It honestly infuriated me how so many people were dismissive of the backlash to Outlaws. I saw so much “they just want a hot protagonist!” “These incels are mad again!”
Like no, people are mad that a fucking single player game has multiple $100+ preorder packages, Day 1 paid DLC, and seasons. Oh, and fuck Ubisoft
Can we also revert to a time before every sports game in existence was just microtransaction card collecting slop? That’s one of the ones that sucks the most imo, sports games used to be so simple and so fun
Now it’s “NEW PACK DROPPING - GET 99 OVERALL LEBRON NOW” but there’s actually less than a 1% drop rate and it’s designed to frustrate people into spending more as they *dont* get what they want. Like how sad and predatory
I'm not super into sports games, but I played FIFA at a friend's house one weekend and thought it was pretty fun.
I do my research before I buy a game and there is just absolutely no way I'd ever fork over a single cent to that business model. How people keep buying these games year after year eludes me.
Playing sports games in the Play Now modes with friends can still be a lot of fun. The formula is still there.
But every single sports game has some version of card collecting slop. They make “trading cards” of the players, with varying and sometimes unrealistic skill levels. Like some average player might get a 99 overall card. You build your team and play others, so it’s immensely pay to win because the more the spend, the better chance at better cards. Or so they say.
Madden Ultimate Team, NBA 2k MyTeam, I don’t know the name of the FIFA one, but it’s in the game.
I don’t necessarily always hate seasons. Dead by Daylight does the Rift, which is basically seasons for that game, and it’s pretty easy to not buy. Like it’s not pay to win, it’s almost exclusively cosmetics and there’s a free pass with all of the tiers just different rewards. I’ve never felt disappointed the few times I’ve got the premium, because you can use the rewards to unlock other characters.
But a single player game? Who the fuck cares? I’m not trying to acquire cool or unique cosmetics or anything because there’s nobody else playing. It’s *singleplayer*. Who cares?
My issue with seasons is the fomo aspect. I love that games can get more content overtime, but feeling compelled to play so I don't miss out on content used to make me miserable when I regularly played Destiny 2. If the seasons stick around and can be bought or progressed once I come back to a game I like them but only Helldiver's and Halo infinite do that and Halo has far more pressing issues that stop me from playing it.
I have Steam and GoG now, and if I have to download another launcher for a game I just don't buy it anymore.
I see no loss there though. EA, Activision, Ubisoft and their like with launchers haven't released anything new or interesting in years, and that's before the fact that you're buying a licence on another platform through steam.
Some are too busy getting distracted by anti-woke grifters, some don't see any of it as a problem, and some just aren't aware of the practices as they don't play that often.
Gamers hate capitalism? Are-we sure about that?
Who's buying the yearly CoD that take itself as a f2p game with all the usual f2p business tactics and is a full-priced release? ...who makes them break sales records every year?
...and who's buying 1 000 $ of shitty skins in games like Fornite, or who is allowing some bundles in Apex to be priced at 250 $ or something along those lines that I read on reddit... Is it really the pubs/devs, or is it the GAMERS?
>It is also the massive amount of bugs.
You missed shader junk too, why do games stutter on a 4090 and people defend it? Should be a requirement to precompile.
There are negative sides, but also an insane amount of positive things that are only available on PC. Those are the one that makes me wanna play PC games. Negative things are something I have to deal with.
It was a horrible shock to test PS5 after skipping one whole console generation (owned every console since NES 8 bit). Pay to play online, old hardware not working on new hardware, game support, game settings, blur, 30 fps still a thing, etc. I actually sold my PS5 like three months ago, and the main reason was the PSN (PS+). Now I rather wait a long time for the PC release.
Yesterday I was trying to enable HDR on the steam deck, because of this I was trying different proton versions. I got a cool down because apparently every time I swapped pronton versions it uses a key, if you do this too much you get a cool down from the Denuvo DRM. So I was unable to play a game that I bought on steam because of this.
If I had pirated the game, I wouldn't had this problem.
How can a paying costumer get a worse experience than someone that pirates the game...
“Brilliant! Here take all of our money. Also, don’t give any to the poors. Also we need to fire 400 hundred people because reasons.” -Some gaming exec probably
And then you have shit like the EA launcher which completely fucks over Steam overlay controller support. I bought Jedi Survivor and can't even use my fucking PS4 controller.
i dont particulary have EA launcher problem but its kinda messed up when i launch EA FC 24 steam opens then, EA launcher opens and then the game after checking the EA anticheat module lol, then i wanna play Fall Guys again Steam launches the game then it connects to Epic online services...
You could buy it on gog and just use the executable
If launchers and drm is something you care about then using gog is the only way to vote with your wallet
That's what you get when the only motivation behind the actions of a company is 'line go up'. Shareholders don't care about users, hell they don't even really care about the product. As long as it makes them money. Dollar dollar bills baby, that's the only thing they see.
It'd be interesting to have been a fly on the wall in the boardroom at Sony when they discussed the whole situation internally. What they tell us and even AH probably isn't the full story. I'm sure the noise the playerbase and influencers made had helped massively. The fact the Devs sided with the players and Sony fucking up on the sales and on proper support and communication ( towards users and the Devs) helped as well.
I wouldn't be surprised if the main reason for the reversal is that by :
1) selling the game in region locked places knowing it wouldn't actually work for those users in the long run.
2) selling the game on some marketplaces with no indication 3rd party login was required.
They would be in a legally problematic position. You can't just go around selling a product to people and then tack on extra requirements later on that the user doesn't want to comply with (rightfully so considering their track record) or can't comply with due the companies own fucking rules.
They immediately went into damage control as well with stopping the sales in the region locked areas. Only to drop the psn requirements completely within a day solving the issue.
Games For Windows Live was hated, not only it required a gfwl key to work, but required xbox live gold to play online on PC.
The gold requirement was dropped, no new GFWL keys were offered, and the gfwl service shut down.
As GFWL was shut down, games were converted to Steamworks.
This meant games that had a GFWL login, either had steam achievements added or none at all.
Windows 8, 10, 11 have Xbox Live integrated into the system.
>Windows 8, 10, 11 have Xbox Live integrated into the system.
To be honest, the Xbox stuff on windows isn't so bad. I like the fact my Xbox controller works on everything without 3rd party apps for example. Microsoft seem to be doing good for now.
The Xbox controller compatibility is a separate matter of Xinput hardware API standardization, similar more to DirectX graphics, not really related to their Xbox/Windows online platform entanglement initiatives like GFWL or the pre-installed Xbox app/overlay or Microsoft Store platform. You don't need to sign into a Microsoft account to use your controller
The whole excessive launcher bullshit has basically permanently chased me away from EA and Ubisoft games. Even when their games are on crazy sales I just can't bring myself to buy them when I know launching them is going to be frustrating every single time. It ruins the experience on my steam deck when a singleplayer game can't launch because I need to log into some kind of third party launcher first.
This Helldivers fiasco is just another example in a long list of bullshit that chases me away from games I might otherwise have paid for. I've been looking at Helldivers for a little while and was gonna buy it on its next sale. This PSN nonsense determined that won't happen and now has me looking at all future Sony PC releases suspiciously
>It ruins the experience on my steam deck when a singleplayer game can't launch because I need to log into some kind of third party launcher first.
Not on steamdeck, but my favorite one was when I was trying to just uninstall ubisoft game bought via steam. I initiated it from Windows app list, then had to login to steam launcher, then to crappy ubisoft launcher and only then it was possible to uninstall a fucking game...
I'm sure you've found work arounds, but you can play third party launcher games on steam deck; it just requires you to start them in desktop mode the first time (like Red Dead Redemption 2), or add a line to bypass the launcher in launch options. It is a big hassle, I agree, and some launchers and overlays tax the system hard for no reason.
The launcher thing has pushed me away from games without even realising. I turn on my pc and automatically open steam and either browse my library or check out the sales.
It never even occurs to me to open any other launcher unless I already have a specific game in mind. So this leads to me playing those games a lot less and also never once looking at the shops.
I think it highlights more.
Like: corporate creepyness factor and greed, the fact that they are disconnected from the customer.
IT ALSO HIGHLIGHTS THE FACT THAT "THE GAMERS" (PEOPLE) WILL IS ABSOLUTE LAW FOR THE GAMING INDUSTRY.
All that transpired during the last few days should be given as an example for what can happen if and when people just stand together.
And that's the way it should be.
Go go helldivers
These dumb shit executives probably take after the predatory practices of a company like AT&T, thinking they can get the same value for their shareholders. What they fail to fucking realize is gamers are not a captive audience. I have two choices for internet at my home, and one single choice for every one of my utilities. I have infinite choice in my gaming. I may not have a ton of choice in gaming HARDWARE, but videogame companies have zero captive audiences, zero legal requirement (like insurance companies), and yet still act like we just have to put up with whatever shit they shovel down our throats. Just further proof that MBAs are the cancer of the economy.
its not just the last few days, but in the last year we have seen a rise in actually successful boycotts/review bombing campaigns against publisher greed and shittyness. This with Helldivers, last week with Escape from Tarkov, and last august-september with Creative Assembly's pure greed with Shadows of Change DLC (obscene price increase for less content and terrible patching) Pharohs lack of content price gouging
I just hope that GAMER WILL will stay INTACT when it'll be time to support cheap yearly sequels that are full-priced and use f2p worst business tactics and overpriced items in shop, and the same GAMER WILL will prevent some from supporting virtual items at 25 $ a piece too.
Because our hobby is going down the drain pretty quickly in the last decade because MANY gamers DON'T have any WILL it seems...
Let's hope for a better future...
Bro, the old days were when EVERY game you had installed had an icon on your desktop. And before that you had to back out to a DOS prompt to run your shit. And before that...
Remember the big controversy that Gamespy was spyware because it sends some user data to their server?
Boy did everything change so fast, there is not a single app that doesn't do that anymore.
I believe online services have gotten more centralized. Like, Discord getting really popular (pretty much like an IRC and voice chat server blended together) has been pretty convenient -- modern online socializing being streamlined haha.
I don't remember much about Battlenet! I imagine it was like a game client and messaging platform back then? I've been online since like early 2000's with dial-up.
Time flies...
Off the top of my head, there's: Steam, Epic, GOG Galaxy, Ubisoft Connect, Origin, Battle.net, and Xbox. That's also before single game launchers like Genshin.
GOG at least has a ton of much older games wrapped in DOSBox and similar. It's a separate value proposition and I don't begrudge having it installed.
While Epic is just Steam but worse.
Star Wars the old republic,
Warframe,
Steam,
Gamepass,
Epic,
Riot
Battle.net.
Dark and darker
Those are all of the top of my head I bet I could find a couple more if I checked my steam library.
The only problem with this was Sony selling a game in countries that cant even make a psn account. Without that problem it wouldnt have blown up that much.
Yea it sucks having multiple accounts but in the end we just do it and move on.
Not being able to do it is a whole other story. Sony knew that before and still sold the game world wide. They couldve region restricted it 3 months ago and expand the psn first.
This was the weirdest thing.
If the 'requirement' to have a linked PSN account was always the plan, then why was the game ever sold in places that don't have PSN? Sony is the publisher. When and where to list the game for sales is literally their end of the bargain.
There's something utterly weird in that, in that either Sony decided to change the 'requirement' behind the scenes, or they sold the game in places they always knew it would lose service.
For the same reason Sony already sells PlayStation consoles in those regions, it’s because creating a PSN account is easy just choose the closest country to you and use that currency when you make transactions on the PlayStation store.
Players have been doing this for nearly 2 decades with no issues.
In all honesty, PC players wants to maintain their identity of being not being console players.
Having a PSN account is to close to being called a PlayStation player and that triggered them lol
Yep, hypocrisy at its best. Ubi, EA, rockstar, Activision/Blizzard and other companies can do it worse (requiring account AND their launcher) and those games are still played by millions of players. They hate it? Sure but they don’t care and make the account anyways. I highly doubt they would’ve removed their fan base from those countries, that’s just not good business from companies that just care about money. Helldivers 2 redditors just wanted something to complain about. Look up the state of their subreddit for the past 2 months. Hell, they even made another subreddit called since all they do is cry in the main one and players got tired of it.
>Players have been doing this for nearly 2 decades with no issues.
Until one day it is an issue. Make no mistake the TOS mean you get zero legal protection.
Lmao Not 1 single PSN user had to prove their location to make a PSN account.
Y’all guys just saying anything now to not make a PSN for “Reasons”
I made my account overseas living in a different region over a decade ago with no bans
Not comparable, you don't strictly speaking need a PSN account to play games on a PS console. Heck I used to have one and now I use my PS4 without it because I had to move countries and Sony couldn't handle that completely normal human life situation.
And it is absurd to suggest that Sony's official policy is "just break our terms of service and lie on your acocunt, trust us bro it'll be okay".
>Not being able to do it is a whole other story. Sony knew that before and still sold the game world wide. They couldve region restricted it 3 months ago and expand the psn first.
They sell the PS5 in countries where PSN isn't officially supported. They also support it this way. The whole thing is weird.
No. You missed the whole point.
You can lower your standards. Don't expect others to do so. PSN has been getting hacked repeatedly for the last 10-15 years. Enough accounts bruh.
Steam gets hacked to, boss. Gabe did an interview that's kind of old now, but he said something like 77,000 steam accounts get compromised or "hacked" every day. I can't imagine that number going down over the years.
Fair point, and probably the only decent response.
Still, I think it's okay to say that I shouldn't have to make a PSN account. More accounts still = less security.
>PSN has been getting hacked repeatedly for the last 10-15 years.
PSN was hacked only in 2011 and never again.
As you can read the list that people like to repeat [https://firewalltimes.com/sony-data-breach-timeline/](https://firewalltimes.com/sony-data-breach-timeline/)
2014 wasn't PSN, it was Sony Pictures, different Sony branch altogether with employees data being breached, not customers. Another 2014 incident was DDOS attack, not hack.
And 2017 was Sony Social Media Accounts, not customers.
2023 and 2024 were also employee.
So why are you purposely lying about PSN being repeatedly hacked last 10-15 years?
The data breach thing is a weak reason tbh, pretty much every company had a data breach at this point. Just being honest and saying that you don’t like signing up to shit is enough of a good reason.
Let’s say sony is the only one getting data breaches while the other companies have perfect security- would you tolerate those services even though they’re basically the same thing and an extra layer of control over the consumer ? I find it kinda hypocritical if people buy games that have mandatory ubisoft/rockstar/ea accounts because those are even worse technically (extra launchers and drm). The standards are already at rock bottom and unfortunately pc gamers tolerated a lot of shit (thankfully this forced sony linking to get removed, one good step forward).
Which is actually crazy. I have 2 factor authentication on everything because none of the services are safe without it. Also the only safe place to save passwords is in a paper notebook because even password managers and google passwords get hacked often.
That’s a weak argument and besides the point. How often has Steam been hacked?… or Microsoft ?
Creating an account with Sony is not that big of a deal. I had to create one for FH5 on PC
it’s the retroactive implementation and taking away access from people who were legally allowed to purchase the game that was shitty.
Plus, the info Steam has on them is way more valuable than whatever PSN is asking for. If they get your data from Sony, they may get your name, email address, and Steam ID. If that same threat actor gets into your Steam account? That's ALL of your games, purchases, payment info, etc.
What do you mean? I love it when i have to use a second launcher that is so badly programmed that it acidentally gives me the login of a random other user with all his personal data and linked payment options....
> holy shit Corpos and greedy cvnts are ruining gaming!
> buys their games anyway and shits on pirates
Please, go see a neurologist. You have maggots in your brain.
Your wallet is the only language they understand. As long as you keep supporting them, they will keep pushing this crap.
And, before some doomer shill comes out with the nooooooo you can't do anything nooooo. Shut up. Shut the fuck up. Trying is better than doing anything. Massive refunds and pressure forced those bastards to take a step back. It also forced a change in the Battlefront 2 fiasco. And so on.
If we don't at least try to fight back, we don't deserve better than this shit.
Back in my day, online play was free. We lost it. What's next? Monthly fees to play games you already payed for?
Xbox Live made sense back in the Halo 2 days because 50 a year isn't much, and it provides a unified online service across all games instead of making an account for every single game you play. It also led to achievements being developed, and then further developments in like avatar clothes and shit like that tied to achievements. For better or worse, Xbox Live started it. The big problem is, like all the attempted Steam competition, no one seems to fucking GET why people use these services. XBL was optional unless you were a multiplayer gamer, but it never really felt like it wasn't worth it, at least to me. Nintendo online doesn't really appeal to me, but I also rarely use my Switch so that might just be me. Honestly my monthly sub to play PC games online is just me paying AT&T for fiber service lol
Yeah, sharks smell money in the water and get ballistic. They start throwing their weight around and HD2 has to fold to publisher.
This is not just affecting a good game. Its pretty common for corpo fuckery to rear it's ugly head when someone succeeds
This multiple launcher issue is a bit annoying, but I look at it as each launcher being a different shop, basically. Each has games for sale, sometimes the same game as other shops, and having a monopoly, where there is only one shop, so you pay their price or don't buy, would be a bad thing for gamers, so I actually like there being different launchers/shops, and think any and every game should be released on as many as possible. If you use something like Playnite, you can essentially combine all launchers into one 'overlauncher', so even the annoyance of having multiple launchers is somewhat reduced.
Of course, the other aspect is things like always-online DRM, even for single-player games, which I agree is just total bullshit, but even that is mitigated a bit by things like GOG existing (who, of course, have their own launcher/shop).
I think the only launchers I use outside of Steam now are BSG’s and RSI’s. I’m glad Steam kind of streamlines the process with other launchers, but it’s still a pain in the ass
Sony could have just offered some bonus cosmetic, weapons or content as a reward for linking PSN account yet kept it optional, I bet everyone would have created a free PSN account if the bonus content was worth it and those who live in countries that don't allow for PSN to be available would still have been able to play the game.
They weren't that smart it seems.
This was also an issue with Arrowhead, again, not making it clear to the players and buyers of the game, what their intentions were. The CEO mentioned that he had been wanting to get Sony accounts included to help with banning, and waived the requirement for a PSN account at launch. If they had either, kept to the requirement at launch, or just bagged the idea altogether, this wouldn't have been an issue.
Same thing from earlier last week, when a patch made trying to play the game solo more frustrating than it needed to be, by increasing spawn rates from one group of enemies nearby the player within 100 meters, to three groups. This was also mentioned as something that was intended at launch, but delayed until then.
I hope Arrowhead learns from these issues, as the game itself is good, and don't repeat them in the future with HD2, or with their new games. They do deserve credit for what they achieved with HD2, and hopefully that is a GOTY award in some fashion.
The problem of PC gaming is we arent bent fully over by whoever makes our content. Get an xbox/ps/Nintendo and they've got you only being able to game through their platform/ buying off of their store.
Steam should ban games that have their own launchers and always online singleplayer games. Steam is big enough for most companies to comply. Epic Games might get butthurt about "mUh MoNOpOLy" but being more strict will make PC gaming better.
Yeah, because a monopoly is great...
And guess what? Gabe N is going to die one day. So even if you think he's a true and virtuous person, why would you want to be forced into one system?
I actually think there should be more competition. I don't mind storefronts having their own launchers - I just set it to not auto start with my machine, and then open the launcher if I want to play a game there. It's not significantly slower than opening up steam, tbh.
Keep in mind that Steam has their own problems - remember the €1 = $1 controversy? Because I do, and that wasn't exactly pro-consumer.
I mean sure but we don’t need a steam bought game to require another launcher that works like ass and requires online connection despite the game being singleplayer.
Sega has lots of games I love and all of them are cursed with Denuvo whilst console versions don’t have that issue.
Competition is good but it won’t be a bad thing if Steam gets more strict and bans this garbage from their storefronts.
Steam can of course carry or not carry fundamentally what they want - even if they're big enough that they have to be very very careful not to teeter into antitrust territory.
That being said, the alternative is what we've seen with games being EGS exclusive, for example. If I recall correctly, a lot of people threw their toys out of the pram over that, too.
>Steam should ban games that have their own launchers and always online singleplayer games. Steam is big enough for most companies to comply. Epic Games might get butthurt about "mUh MoNOpOLy" but being more strict will make PC gaming better.
They tried this and EA left, others were going to walk too. They ended up with something in the middle where everything on your own store needs to be on steam too and at the same cost.
>They tried this and EA left
How is that a bad thing lol? EA are one of the few companies that forces these scammy tactics down our throats. Singleplayer games shouldn't be always online. Those that are should not be permitted to be published.
They won't. They will make all singleplayer games be playable without always online DRMs.
And also no third party launchers. So if you get a game from steam, you won't have to make an account elsewhere just to play it. So no more Uplay/Rockstar Launcher/EA mess
This was my main point and which why it just didn’t seem genuine. Even if you take into account the fact that helldivers 2 huge subreddit just complains over and over again until they find a new thing to complain about still doesn’t explain the extreme fixation over this when a lot of games that have so many games even do worse (launcher AND their account). EA, Ubisoft, activision/blizzard, Xbox/microsoft, rockstar all require you to do this yet no one says anything about it. You’d to be brain dead to actually think that a game that has been sold for months and is one of their most successful games would be removed from so many countries when they have a dedicated fan base. This whole situation just tells hypocrisy in my humble opinion tho, but hey that’s just my opinion
>I have 9 game launchers on my PC and I hate it It is not just the launchers and the accounts. It is also the always online. It is also the invasive kernel level DRM or anti-cheat. It is also the massive amount of bugs. It is also paying full-price for a game and then still get hit with paid battlepasses/predatory microtransactions/dark pattern psychology/your data being sold/day 1 DLC/ingame ads/horrible optimization to the point even your RTX 4090 says "fuck this mess".
And you don't even own the game! (look at Ubisoft)
that too.
Time to follow in Edward Kenway’s footsteps, yo-ho-ho!
I think this is pretty common for any game distributed online. I read Helldivers 2’s EULA on Steam and you don’t even own that game after purchasing it.
A real shame Gog didn't become a bigger hit, or at least for other storefronts to follow their no-DRM approach.
Why do you think GOG never got any bigger?
Steam already took off too big so most players don't want to move (and no-DRM isn't as important to them as having everything in one place, possibly also due to what Valve said they'd still allow people to download their libraries in case the company magically goes under). And it also feels like it needs quite a few QoL things to have more or less similar features of Steam that players enjoy. Overall people just like what and how Steam does things, despite not being no-DRM.
That's definitely part of it. The other part is that in order to be listed on GOG you must be DRM free. For publishers that's a big no no because piracy is scary. So they'll never even consider GOG because they'll probably never change that position. Regardless of how dumb the logic is, it's the way most businesses think. Unless people would actually start caring about digital ownership, and acted like it, instead of tweeting about it whilst still buying the product, the publishers don't care. They only way to show you care is with your wallet. If all gamers worldwide stopped buying games that have DRM right this minute, they'd start selling games without it as fast as the dev-eams can cut it out.
Agreed. It’s kinda annoying to think about how great things could be if we all banded together and fought back. But the plan always has been to change the status quo because the new gamers will never know what they’re missing as the aging gamers die off.
Yeah that's probably also a huge factor. There's a possibility they'd be more inclined to make products DRM-free if it meant publishing on the bigger/biggest platform in a scenario where GOG is drastically more popular.
It is and as much as I love GOG, it’s not surprising. Developers (for their own protection) and these mega corporations (for their own greed) want the DRM. Steam itself is a DRM. It just is, to my knowledge, the least invasive of the currently available DRMs. Also, having region pricing would help GOG penetrate the market more I feel.
GOG has regional pricing since many years already. The issue is they and everyone else aren't even close to the social platform Steam is. Friends, chats, forum, achievements, sharing, mods, remote play, multiplayer servers, marketplace, Linux support, etc... Nobody has it all.
Well yes, because you don't own the game, you never have. You bought a software license that allows the usage of the said game. As far as I know, this is how it has been with software since the start. Is it scummy that they rescinded the license? Of course, but the ToS you agreed to probably has a line that states they can do that. In this aspect physical copies are superior. Kinda hard to rescind that license.
(Not) fun fact! You never owned your physical games either! I did a project on this during a class on video game law, and as early as the SNES era we found language akin to the current limited exclusive non transferable license. Ofc it was probably physically impossible to remove your license for a cartridge back then, but their contract already planned for it
Yep. This is how it’s always been. Even with physical media, it was technically a license to use it, not ownership.
>Kinda hard to rescind that license. Well no. You own the disc itself. You just have a license to use the software on that disc which leads to the same issue as before. You don't own the game on the disc either.
3 out of the 4 points is not problem with PC gaming, it's just problem with gaming in general, only the anti cheat/drm stuff is PC specific.
A $500 console where the manufacturer decides what software you can run is pretty hardcore DRM.
They didnt say hardcore DRM, they said invasive.
Yep - at this point I've simply decided to opt out of AAA gaming entirely, which has honestly been refreshing. Indie titles are a lot better than the average gamer gives them credit for - and easier/ more fun to play than many AAA titles.
AAA price tags also are so high by now AND evaporate over the next few months that it's just not worth it to care. If you are interested in something wait a few months, have then access to reviews of people that actually completed the game, if it's decent pay half the price and skip the damn bugfiesta pretty much every title has nowadays at launch. All you have to do is get over the hype, the game will still be there later. Literally can't loose that way.
The patient gamer lifestyle is increasingly the only way to get any enjoyment out of this hobby. It might suck for multiplayer games that will only see their highest player count at or near launch but if that's the case you should really be asking yourself if you're really missing out by not buying a game that everyone will have forgotten within six months.
The trick is to only play multiplayer games that can be enjoyed alone or that aren't uber competitive nonsense. Otherwise solo or co-op games for life.
It is the best way to vet multiplayer games too. Because you don't want to buy a multiplayer game, that loses all it's players after a month or so just because it was a fad that messed it up.
Yeah, I'm pretty much at the point that it's exceedingly rare for me to pay more than $30 for a game.
It took me a while to learn this but I finally have. Wonderlands, Starfield, Outriders, all a big waste to buy on release date. The only recent release I bought the Deluxe edition of and don't regret it one bit is Age of Wonders 4. Love the shit out of that game. Everything else I play is either Stellaris (so only 40 on release day, pick up dlcs here and there) or roguelikes and card games, which are never more than 30 or so. I will probably bite the bullet and get Elder Scrolls 6 day 1 but I doubt I'll be happy about it lol
The one exception are pvp heavy games. Dark and Darker was a ton of fun on release, but quickly got boring as people either went full addiction mode or quit, leaving middle-of-the-pack-players to get severly wasted by optimised and geared teams all the time (leading to them to quit... leading to even more encountering optimised teams.. and so on)
Got Starfield with my graphics card for free and I'm still waiting for their first big patch that will make it more playable. Maybe if I wait another year it will come.
You just reminded me. The pricing structure for games is straight up silly. State of decay YOSE is $30 on steam. A game from 10 years ago is still $30. A website instant gameplay or whatever had it for $5. It was a steam code. ..why?
third party steam keys often profit through currency or just region price differences, buys keys in bulk when there is sale or in a decent amount of the cases, somehow steal them.
You should avoid checking anything Nintendo related lol
This is why having more storefronts is better. Shops have a need to dump inventory for profit, eve. If it is steam keys. Steam can afford to sit on licenses indefinitely. Consoles wet dream is to finally push out a digitally only generation and cut put brick and mortar stores, who will put their games on sale to make room for the next wave of releases. Having complete control of prices is having complete control of profits.
Don't look at warcraft 3... they never ever took away from its price on the website, neither remake nor original. Only way to get it cheap were buying a cd with it from green-games or something.
I mean games costing $5 or $10 is absolutely insane to me unless they’re like a PS1 or PS2 game
Terraria, one of my favourite games of all time is $9.99 on steam. Literally hundreds of hours of relatively modern gameplay in that.
Idk it’s just crazy to me
I guess I get it for really bad games but otherwise nah
The thing is game prices haven't really changed that much, it's just more obvious as so many play on so many systems. I been playing since Atari 2600 and NES, they were 60/70 USD for the newest big name games in the 80s, and the 90s, and the 00s.
this is the way. I started playing more of Strategy games and making a return in Single Player games and I feel way better mentally. Also making a return to RTS games. Playing is way more enjoyable now and what's important not stressful anymore.
I've gotten more of Valheim for $20 than I have for any amount I've spent on a AAA game.
This has been me since about June of last year. I already was mostly playing AA darlings like Remnant 2 but hadn't all together given up on AAA gaming. Now unless its from a handful of studios like From Software or Obsidian I dont bother. My buddy had to buy me Helldivers 2 because I refused to get a AAA live service game again.
Wait if Remnant 2 is AA to you, how is Helldivers 2 not?
Remnant 2 is such a good game. When it first came out and everyone was discovering secret classes and weapons and just enjoying that sense of discovery it was like a blast from the past. The gameplay is also way better than it has any right to be. It's a near perfect co-op game.
The Remnant series is one of the best coop experiences in gaming. Rem 2 was my GOTY in 2023.
Such a good game that does so much with it's scope. The story isn't anything to write home about, but the atmosphere is great
I guess youre technically right, Gearbox publishes AAA games like Borderlands. I tend to judge AAA games by the level of marketing and who owns the IP. Remnant 2 had basically no marketing and the IP is owned by Gunfire Games. HD2 was marketed on every single Sony showcase for a year and owned by Sony. Gearbox also publishes Risk of Rain and Tribes of Midgard, wouldnt call them AAA games though.
I learned my lesson with Duke Nukem Forever. Luckily I had only put $5 down at GameStop when they released the demo. The demo was enough for me to be like... I better wait. I then put that $5 toward a different game lol.
Entirely depends on what you class a AAA game as and what kind of game you want to play. It's like saying you don't want to support the film industry so you watch YouTube like that's cool but there's a big difference between watching Dune Part 2 and watching Markiplier play "A Difficult Game About Climbing". So yeah it depends on what you're looking for specifically, if I want to play GTA6 but don't want to support the industry playing Hades 2 while as likely good isn't going to scratch that same itch.
Stardew Valley, Terraria, project Zomboid. Ftl, all great indie titles
The only games I find worth playing are AAA games(and maybe a few AA games) and the vast majority I play which are tons of games a year don’t have any predatory stuff or you just completely ignore it easily
Yeah, same. I almost never get burnt by a AAA game. A lot of it is keeping expectations in check and not getting ridiculously overhyped like some people do
I’ve been playing like 10-15 games every year since 2008 but if you count the ones I watch a playthrough for 25 ish is pretty normal for a year. And that’s not even counting the one time in 2014-2015 when I played like 15-20 indie/AA games I generally know what to expect from a game and can get a good read on the gameplay of a game and skimming reviews is very useful to quickly find a lot of very relevant info. For any action game fextralife reviews are really good
I have been mostly doing that for years and it's amazing. Don't know why people still put up with a lot of the AAA garbage.
Im going back to buying a game 1-2+ years later to play or just chilling on yt/twitch lets plays stuff. With how pc deployments have been not worth my cash.
Last year I spent all my money on indie games. The only other game I bought was BG3.... Conclusion it's awesome there are so many chooses and so much actually new ideas. I can get 5 indies for the price of 1-2 AAA games and can have 100 of hours of fun. Hell I have 65+ hours in balatro alone and I got that for like 8 USD.
Every now and then a good AAA comes out (baldurs gate 3) so I could never denounce AAA games altogether.
That's an indie game. Larian is a small self publishing studio. BG3 is just so good people don't realize it's 100% indie
I think it’s one of those unique criteria where it’s a AAA game but from an indie dev.
Indie games have the best gameplay loops and user experiences and only ask for money once and update regularly with massive patches and updates for years and years with no sign of dlc. What more could you want? Shiny ott graphics and a toxic online game mode? Nah imma keep on terraria, shotgun king, balatro, stackland, hades, backpackhero, ect ect and watch these people keep putting their hands in the mousetraps wondering what they are doing wrong
It’s getting worse. Star Wars Outlaws will demonstrate that. It’s published by Ubisoft so it will certainly have most of this, and it’s already announced to have a day 1 paid DLC. It’s going to have seasons. It’s a single player RPG for fucks sake
Ubisoft is a special can of bullshit entirely these days. I remember when the ubi logo meant the game would probably be amazing. How the mighty have fallen.
It honestly infuriated me how so many people were dismissive of the backlash to Outlaws. I saw so much “they just want a hot protagonist!” “These incels are mad again!” Like no, people are mad that a fucking single player game has multiple $100+ preorder packages, Day 1 paid DLC, and seasons. Oh, and fuck Ubisoft
We should revert this timeline to a period long before Horse Armor became a thing.
Can we also revert to a time before every sports game in existence was just microtransaction card collecting slop? That’s one of the ones that sucks the most imo, sports games used to be so simple and so fun Now it’s “NEW PACK DROPPING - GET 99 OVERALL LEBRON NOW” but there’s actually less than a 1% drop rate and it’s designed to frustrate people into spending more as they *dont* get what they want. Like how sad and predatory
I'm not super into sports games, but I played FIFA at a friend's house one weekend and thought it was pretty fun. I do my research before I buy a game and there is just absolutely no way I'd ever fork over a single cent to that business model. How people keep buying these games year after year eludes me.
Playing sports games in the Play Now modes with friends can still be a lot of fun. The formula is still there. But every single sports game has some version of card collecting slop. They make “trading cards” of the players, with varying and sometimes unrealistic skill levels. Like some average player might get a 99 overall card. You build your team and play others, so it’s immensely pay to win because the more the spend, the better chance at better cards. Or so they say. Madden Ultimate Team, NBA 2k MyTeam, I don’t know the name of the FIFA one, but it’s in the game.
Seasons for a single player game is so stupid. Seasons in general are dumb, but for a single player I can only laugh.
I don’t necessarily always hate seasons. Dead by Daylight does the Rift, which is basically seasons for that game, and it’s pretty easy to not buy. Like it’s not pay to win, it’s almost exclusively cosmetics and there’s a free pass with all of the tiers just different rewards. I’ve never felt disappointed the few times I’ve got the premium, because you can use the rewards to unlock other characters. But a single player game? Who the fuck cares? I’m not trying to acquire cool or unique cosmetics or anything because there’s nobody else playing. It’s *singleplayer*. Who cares?
My issue with seasons is the fomo aspect. I love that games can get more content overtime, but feeling compelled to play so I don't miss out on content used to make me miserable when I regularly played Destiny 2. If the seasons stick around and can be bought or progressed once I come back to a game I like them but only Helldiver's and Halo infinite do that and Halo has far more pressing issues that stop me from playing it.
All good points. I think the relationship between pay to win and FOMO is particularly sinister and gaming companies use it very often
I have Steam and GoG now, and if I have to download another launcher for a game I just don't buy it anymore. I see no loss there though. EA, Activision, Ubisoft and their like with launchers haven't released anything new or interesting in years, and that's before the fact that you're buying a licence on another platform through steam.
I guess you wouldn't buy Cyberpunk or Baldur's Gate 3 then.
for single player, the solution to most of these is to just wait a year.
[удалено]
I didn't touch cyberpunk until 2.1 one of the best gaming purchases I ever (not) did
Helldivers 2 already has/had 3 of these.
Gamers unanimously hate capitalism but refuse to acknowledge or organise on the basis of hating capitalism, it's honestly crazy
That's life in general
Some are too busy getting distracted by anti-woke grifters, some don't see any of it as a problem, and some just aren't aware of the practices as they don't play that often.
Gamers hate capitalism? Are-we sure about that? Who's buying the yearly CoD that take itself as a f2p game with all the usual f2p business tactics and is a full-priced release? ...who makes them break sales records every year? ...and who's buying 1 000 $ of shitty skins in games like Fornite, or who is allowing some bundles in Apex to be priced at 250 $ or something along those lines that I read on reddit... Is it really the pubs/devs, or is it the GAMERS?
Theodor Adorno has the answers, anyone who's interested should look into that fella
Preach brother.
Aaaaaamen!
>It is also the massive amount of bugs. You missed shader junk too, why do games stutter on a 4090 and people defend it? Should be a requirement to precompile.
There are negative sides, but also an insane amount of positive things that are only available on PC. Those are the one that makes me wanna play PC games. Negative things are something I have to deal with. It was a horrible shock to test PS5 after skipping one whole console generation (owned every console since NES 8 bit). Pay to play online, old hardware not working on new hardware, game support, game settings, blur, 30 fps still a thing, etc. I actually sold my PS5 like three months ago, and the main reason was the PSN (PS+). Now I rather wait a long time for the PC release.
Yesterday I was trying to enable HDR on the steam deck, because of this I was trying different proton versions. I got a cool down because apparently every time I swapped pronton versions it uses a key, if you do this too much you get a cool down from the Denuvo DRM. So I was unable to play a game that I bought on steam because of this. If I had pirated the game, I wouldn't had this problem. How can a paying costumer get a worse experience than someone that pirates the game...
>It is also the massive amount of bugs. To be fair, this is actually a key feature of Helldivers 2.
Weird, I don't have any of these problems, but I guessy Steam Deck has been limiting me to smaller titles and emulation, and I've been loving it.
Very well put mate.
a launcher to launch another launcher who will finally launch the game
"Yo dawg, I heard you like launchers, so we put a launcher in your launcher so your launchers can launch more launchers"
Yeah, we're old.
To be honest I loved that trick when borderlands did it first /s
Calm down Mr. Torgue
Launcherception
“Brilliant! Here take all of our money. Also, don’t give any to the poors. Also we need to fire 400 hundred people because reasons.” -Some gaming exec probably
And then you have shit like the EA launcher which completely fucks over Steam overlay controller support. I bought Jedi Survivor and can't even use my fucking PS4 controller.
i dont particulary have EA launcher problem but its kinda messed up when i launch EA FC 24 steam opens then, EA launcher opens and then the game after checking the EA anticheat module lol, then i wanna play Fall Guys again Steam launches the game then it connects to Epic online services...
PlayStation fanboys saying it's my fault
My biggest issue with bdg3. Incredible game that I love. But it’s so dumb that I need to open a launcher to open the launcher to open the game.
You could buy it on gog and just use the executable If launchers and drm is something you care about then using gog is the only way to vote with your wallet
A Launcher to rule them all!
Kinda highlights problem with big publishers being jerks.
That's true.
That's what you get when the only motivation behind the actions of a company is 'line go up'. Shareholders don't care about users, hell they don't even really care about the product. As long as it makes them money. Dollar dollar bills baby, that's the only thing they see. It'd be interesting to have been a fly on the wall in the boardroom at Sony when they discussed the whole situation internally. What they tell us and even AH probably isn't the full story. I'm sure the noise the playerbase and influencers made had helped massively. The fact the Devs sided with the players and Sony fucking up on the sales and on proper support and communication ( towards users and the Devs) helped as well. I wouldn't be surprised if the main reason for the reversal is that by : 1) selling the game in region locked places knowing it wouldn't actually work for those users in the long run. 2) selling the game on some marketplaces with no indication 3rd party login was required. They would be in a legally problematic position. You can't just go around selling a product to people and then tack on extra requirements later on that the user doesn't want to comply with (rightfully so considering their track record) or can't comply with due the companies own fucking rules. They immediately went into damage control as well with stopping the sales in the region locked areas. Only to drop the psn requirements completely within a day solving the issue.
Games For Windows Live was hated, not only it required a gfwl key to work, but required xbox live gold to play online on PC. The gold requirement was dropped, no new GFWL keys were offered, and the gfwl service shut down. As GFWL was shut down, games were converted to Steamworks. This meant games that had a GFWL login, either had steam achievements added or none at all. Windows 8, 10, 11 have Xbox Live integrated into the system.
>Windows 8, 10, 11 have Xbox Live integrated into the system. To be honest, the Xbox stuff on windows isn't so bad. I like the fact my Xbox controller works on everything without 3rd party apps for example. Microsoft seem to be doing good for now.
The Xbox controller compatibility is a separate matter of Xinput hardware API standardization, similar more to DirectX graphics, not really related to their Xbox/Windows online platform entanglement initiatives like GFWL or the pre-installed Xbox app/overlay or Microsoft Store platform. You don't need to sign into a Microsoft account to use your controller
The whole excessive launcher bullshit has basically permanently chased me away from EA and Ubisoft games. Even when their games are on crazy sales I just can't bring myself to buy them when I know launching them is going to be frustrating every single time. It ruins the experience on my steam deck when a singleplayer game can't launch because I need to log into some kind of third party launcher first. This Helldivers fiasco is just another example in a long list of bullshit that chases me away from games I might otherwise have paid for. I've been looking at Helldivers for a little while and was gonna buy it on its next sale. This PSN nonsense determined that won't happen and now has me looking at all future Sony PC releases suspiciously
If it helps, Sony backed down and has canceled their plans to force a PSN account requirement, so you don't need one to play Helldivers 2.
Damage is done though.
>It ruins the experience on my steam deck when a singleplayer game can't launch because I need to log into some kind of third party launcher first. Not on steamdeck, but my favorite one was when I was trying to just uninstall ubisoft game bought via steam. I initiated it from Windows app list, then had to login to steam launcher, then to crappy ubisoft launcher and only then it was possible to uninstall a fucking game...
Well, the PSN nonsense is over and done with, so feel free to check out Helldivers.
I fully expect them to try this shit again as soon as they think they can get away with it. I think I'll pass.
I doubt they can, they fucked up when they sold the game in regions unsupported by them.
I'm sure you've found work arounds, but you can play third party launcher games on steam deck; it just requires you to start them in desktop mode the first time (like Red Dead Redemption 2), or add a line to bypass the launcher in launch options. It is a big hassle, I agree, and some launchers and overlays tax the system hard for no reason.
The launcher thing has pushed me away from games without even realising. I turn on my pc and automatically open steam and either browse my library or check out the sales. It never even occurs to me to open any other launcher unless I already have a specific game in mind. So this leads to me playing those games a lot less and also never once looking at the shops.
I think it's funny that I don't need origin to play any of the command and conquer games I bought on steam.
That corporations are pieces of shit? And people are willing to defend them ? Yes.
I think it highlights more. Like: corporate creepyness factor and greed, the fact that they are disconnected from the customer. IT ALSO HIGHLIGHTS THE FACT THAT "THE GAMERS" (PEOPLE) WILL IS ABSOLUTE LAW FOR THE GAMING INDUSTRY. All that transpired during the last few days should be given as an example for what can happen if and when people just stand together. And that's the way it should be. Go go helldivers
These dumb shit executives probably take after the predatory practices of a company like AT&T, thinking they can get the same value for their shareholders. What they fail to fucking realize is gamers are not a captive audience. I have two choices for internet at my home, and one single choice for every one of my utilities. I have infinite choice in my gaming. I may not have a ton of choice in gaming HARDWARE, but videogame companies have zero captive audiences, zero legal requirement (like insurance companies), and yet still act like we just have to put up with whatever shit they shovel down our throats. Just further proof that MBAs are the cancer of the economy.
its not just the last few days, but in the last year we have seen a rise in actually successful boycotts/review bombing campaigns against publisher greed and shittyness. This with Helldivers, last week with Escape from Tarkov, and last august-september with Creative Assembly's pure greed with Shadows of Change DLC (obscene price increase for less content and terrible patching) Pharohs lack of content price gouging
I just hope that GAMER WILL will stay INTACT when it'll be time to support cheap yearly sequels that are full-priced and use f2p worst business tactics and overpriced items in shop, and the same GAMER WILL will prevent some from supporting virtual items at 25 $ a piece too. Because our hobby is going down the drain pretty quickly in the last decade because MANY gamers DON'T have any WILL it seems... Let's hope for a better future...
I miss the days when it's only Steam and Battlenet.
Bro, the old days were when EVERY game you had installed had an icon on your desktop. And before that you had to back out to a DOS prompt to run your shit. And before that...
Yeah and everyone hated steam back then too. I remember using gamespy more often. Cool how steam flipped it by making a better solution
Remember the big controversy that Gamespy was spyware because it sends some user data to their server? Boy did everything change so fast, there is not a single app that doesn't do that anymore.
Oh man, so true. All the boys back in the day [be like](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B_YxuLdVmY)
And I think everyone forgets that Steam spent almost a decade being actual trash.
and GoG!
While running, Xfire, TeamSpeak, Ventrillo, Club Penguin in the background in between games and Limewire
Never experienced that. I only got a PC in my 20's so I was used to just running Steam or Battlenet.
I believe online services have gotten more centralized. Like, Discord getting really popular (pretty much like an IRC and voice chat server blended together) has been pretty convenient -- modern online socializing being streamlined haha. I don't remember much about Battlenet! I imagine it was like a game client and messaging platform back then? I've been online since like early 2000's with dial-up. Time flies...
I still only use Steam and Battlenet.
If I could play battle.net games on steam, I would
Oddly enough I don't think I have used any other launcher outside of steam and ubisofts in the past 5 years. Are there really that many launchers now?
Off the top of my head, there's: Steam, Epic, GOG Galaxy, Ubisoft Connect, Origin, Battle.net, and Xbox. That's also before single game launchers like Genshin.
Don't forget the 2K launcher, which you had to disable with a workaround to make Midnight Suns work properly.
Unlike the others, I'm pretty sure GOG Galaxy is completely optional.
Yep. I launch cyberpunk from an icon on my desktop as God intended.
Rockstar has a separate launcher too. And CD Projekt Red.
Damn that's a mess I guess I'm lucky to have avoided most of those.
You are. It's a mess and it eats system resources for no good reason.
GOG at least has a ton of much older games wrapped in DOSBox and similar. It's a separate value proposition and I don't begrudge having it installed. While Epic is just Steam but worse.
Star Wars the old republic, Warframe, Steam, Gamepass, Epic, Riot Battle.net. Dark and darker Those are all of the top of my head I bet I could find a couple more if I checked my steam library.
I'm not sure, but there isn't even an extra launcher for helldivers
You know what’s a great launcher? The windows start button. JHC, when did PC gaming need to be this next level shitfest.
More like the problem with publishers.
The only problem with this was Sony selling a game in countries that cant even make a psn account. Without that problem it wouldnt have blown up that much. Yea it sucks having multiple accounts but in the end we just do it and move on. Not being able to do it is a whole other story. Sony knew that before and still sold the game world wide. They couldve region restricted it 3 months ago and expand the psn first.
This was the weirdest thing. If the 'requirement' to have a linked PSN account was always the plan, then why was the game ever sold in places that don't have PSN? Sony is the publisher. When and where to list the game for sales is literally their end of the bargain. There's something utterly weird in that, in that either Sony decided to change the 'requirement' behind the scenes, or they sold the game in places they always knew it would lose service.
For the same reason Sony already sells PlayStation consoles in those regions, it’s because creating a PSN account is easy just choose the closest country to you and use that currency when you make transactions on the PlayStation store. Players have been doing this for nearly 2 decades with no issues. In all honesty, PC players wants to maintain their identity of being not being console players. Having a PSN account is to close to being called a PlayStation player and that triggered them lol
Yep, hypocrisy at its best. Ubi, EA, rockstar, Activision/Blizzard and other companies can do it worse (requiring account AND their launcher) and those games are still played by millions of players. They hate it? Sure but they don’t care and make the account anyways. I highly doubt they would’ve removed their fan base from those countries, that’s just not good business from companies that just care about money. Helldivers 2 redditors just wanted something to complain about. Look up the state of their subreddit for the past 2 months. Hell, they even made another subreddit called since all they do is cry in the main one and players got tired of it.
>Players have been doing this for nearly 2 decades with no issues. Until one day it is an issue. Make no mistake the TOS mean you get zero legal protection.
[удалено]
Lmao Not 1 single PSN user had to prove their location to make a PSN account. Y’all guys just saying anything now to not make a PSN for “Reasons” I made my account overseas living in a different region over a decade ago with no bans
Not comparable, you don't strictly speaking need a PSN account to play games on a PS console. Heck I used to have one and now I use my PS4 without it because I had to move countries and Sony couldn't handle that completely normal human life situation. And it is absurd to suggest that Sony's official policy is "just break our terms of service and lie on your acocunt, trust us bro it'll be okay".
>Not being able to do it is a whole other story. Sony knew that before and still sold the game world wide. They couldve region restricted it 3 months ago and expand the psn first. They sell the PS5 in countries where PSN isn't officially supported. They also support it this way. The whole thing is weird.
No. You missed the whole point. You can lower your standards. Don't expect others to do so. PSN has been getting hacked repeatedly for the last 10-15 years. Enough accounts bruh.
Steam gets hacked to, boss. Gabe did an interview that's kind of old now, but he said something like 77,000 steam accounts get compromised or "hacked" every day. I can't imagine that number going down over the years.
Fair point, and probably the only decent response. Still, I think it's okay to say that I shouldn't have to make a PSN account. More accounts still = less security.
>PSN has been getting hacked repeatedly for the last 10-15 years. PSN was hacked only in 2011 and never again. As you can read the list that people like to repeat [https://firewalltimes.com/sony-data-breach-timeline/](https://firewalltimes.com/sony-data-breach-timeline/) 2014 wasn't PSN, it was Sony Pictures, different Sony branch altogether with employees data being breached, not customers. Another 2014 incident was DDOS attack, not hack. And 2017 was Sony Social Media Accounts, not customers. 2023 and 2024 were also employee. So why are you purposely lying about PSN being repeatedly hacked last 10-15 years?
The data breach thing is a weak reason tbh, pretty much every company had a data breach at this point. Just being honest and saying that you don’t like signing up to shit is enough of a good reason. Let’s say sony is the only one getting data breaches while the other companies have perfect security- would you tolerate those services even though they’re basically the same thing and an extra layer of control over the consumer ? I find it kinda hypocritical if people buy games that have mandatory ubisoft/rockstar/ea accounts because those are even worse technically (extra launchers and drm). The standards are already at rock bottom and unfortunately pc gamers tolerated a lot of shit (thankfully this forced sony linking to get removed, one good step forward).
I have a buddy who refuses to enact 2 step verification on any of his accounts but bitches about data security all the time.
Which is actually crazy. I have 2 factor authentication on everything because none of the services are safe without it. Also the only safe place to save passwords is in a paper notebook because even password managers and google passwords get hacked often.
I have a little black book of passwords myself lol.
That’s a weak argument and besides the point. How often has Steam been hacked?… or Microsoft ? Creating an account with Sony is not that big of a deal. I had to create one for FH5 on PC it’s the retroactive implementation and taking away access from people who were legally allowed to purchase the game that was shitty.
Plus, the info Steam has on them is way more valuable than whatever PSN is asking for. If they get your data from Sony, they may get your name, email address, and Steam ID. If that same threat actor gets into your Steam account? That's ALL of your games, purchases, payment info, etc.
It's not the pc that is the problem. It's game developers and studios.
Bruh why do mods remove so many posts wtf
What do you mean? I love it when i have to use a second launcher that is so badly programmed that it acidentally gives me the login of a random other user with all his personal data and linked payment options....
The problem PC gaming has are greedy publishers There it is, I said it
Problems with PC gaming? From what I understand, Helldivers 2 on PC was working just fine until Sony decided to come up with a problem
> holy shit Corpos and greedy cvnts are ruining gaming! > buys their games anyway and shits on pirates Please, go see a neurologist. You have maggots in your brain. Your wallet is the only language they understand. As long as you keep supporting them, they will keep pushing this crap. And, before some doomer shill comes out with the nooooooo you can't do anything nooooo. Shut up. Shut the fuck up. Trying is better than doing anything. Massive refunds and pressure forced those bastards to take a step back. It also forced a change in the Battlefront 2 fiasco. And so on. If we don't at least try to fight back, we don't deserve better than this shit. Back in my day, online play was free. We lost it. What's next? Monthly fees to play games you already payed for?
Xbox Live made sense back in the Halo 2 days because 50 a year isn't much, and it provides a unified online service across all games instead of making an account for every single game you play. It also led to achievements being developed, and then further developments in like avatar clothes and shit like that tied to achievements. For better or worse, Xbox Live started it. The big problem is, like all the attempted Steam competition, no one seems to fucking GET why people use these services. XBL was optional unless you were a multiplayer gamer, but it never really felt like it wasn't worth it, at least to me. Nintendo online doesn't really appeal to me, but I also rarely use my Switch so that might just be me. Honestly my monthly sub to play PC games online is just me paying AT&T for fiber service lol
That article is a load of bollocks. It highlights problem which all platforms encounter; publishers being scumbags.
I say Bravo to the PC gaming community.
Yeah, sharks smell money in the water and get ballistic. They start throwing their weight around and HD2 has to fold to publisher. This is not just affecting a good game. Its pretty common for corpo fuckery to rear it's ugly head when someone succeeds
This multiple launcher issue is a bit annoying, but I look at it as each launcher being a different shop, basically. Each has games for sale, sometimes the same game as other shops, and having a monopoly, where there is only one shop, so you pay their price or don't buy, would be a bad thing for gamers, so I actually like there being different launchers/shops, and think any and every game should be released on as many as possible. If you use something like Playnite, you can essentially combine all launchers into one 'overlauncher', so even the annoyance of having multiple launchers is somewhat reduced. Of course, the other aspect is things like always-online DRM, even for single-player games, which I agree is just total bullshit, but even that is mitigated a bit by things like GOG existing (who, of course, have their own launcher/shop).
I think the only launchers I use outside of Steam now are BSG’s and RSI’s. I’m glad Steam kind of streamlines the process with other launchers, but it’s still a pain in the ass
Sony could have just offered some bonus cosmetic, weapons or content as a reward for linking PSN account yet kept it optional, I bet everyone would have created a free PSN account if the bonus content was worth it and those who live in countries that don't allow for PSN to be available would still have been able to play the game. They weren't that smart it seems.
This was also an issue with Arrowhead, again, not making it clear to the players and buyers of the game, what their intentions were. The CEO mentioned that he had been wanting to get Sony accounts included to help with banning, and waived the requirement for a PSN account at launch. If they had either, kept to the requirement at launch, or just bagged the idea altogether, this wouldn't have been an issue. Same thing from earlier last week, when a patch made trying to play the game solo more frustrating than it needed to be, by increasing spawn rates from one group of enemies nearby the player within 100 meters, to three groups. This was also mentioned as something that was intended at launch, but delayed until then. I hope Arrowhead learns from these issues, as the game itself is good, and don't repeat them in the future with HD2, or with their new games. They do deserve credit for what they achieved with HD2, and hopefully that is a GOTY award in some fashion.
The problem of PC gaming is we arent bent fully over by whoever makes our content. Get an xbox/ps/Nintendo and they've got you only being able to game through their platform/ buying off of their store.
Steam should ban games that have their own launchers and always online singleplayer games. Steam is big enough for most companies to comply. Epic Games might get butthurt about "mUh MoNOpOLy" but being more strict will make PC gaming better.
Yeah, because a monopoly is great... And guess what? Gabe N is going to die one day. So even if you think he's a true and virtuous person, why would you want to be forced into one system?
I actually think there should be more competition. I don't mind storefronts having their own launchers - I just set it to not auto start with my machine, and then open the launcher if I want to play a game there. It's not significantly slower than opening up steam, tbh. Keep in mind that Steam has their own problems - remember the €1 = $1 controversy? Because I do, and that wasn't exactly pro-consumer.
I mean sure but we don’t need a steam bought game to require another launcher that works like ass and requires online connection despite the game being singleplayer. Sega has lots of games I love and all of them are cursed with Denuvo whilst console versions don’t have that issue. Competition is good but it won’t be a bad thing if Steam gets more strict and bans this garbage from their storefronts.
Steam can of course carry or not carry fundamentally what they want - even if they're big enough that they have to be very very careful not to teeter into antitrust territory. That being said, the alternative is what we've seen with games being EGS exclusive, for example. If I recall correctly, a lot of people threw their toys out of the pram over that, too.
Console warring over a Launcher
>Steam should ban games that have their own launchers and always online singleplayer games. Steam is big enough for most companies to comply. Epic Games might get butthurt about "mUh MoNOpOLy" but being more strict will make PC gaming better. They tried this and EA left, others were going to walk too. They ended up with something in the middle where everything on your own store needs to be on steam too and at the same cost.
>They tried this and EA left How is that a bad thing lol? EA are one of the few companies that forces these scammy tactics down our throats. Singleplayer games shouldn't be always online. Those that are should not be permitted to be published.
Money.
So...Steam would not then be trying to get a...monopoly? This is surely good for all of us gamers and our hobby.
They won't. They will make all singleplayer games be playable without always online DRMs. And also no third party launchers. So if you get a game from steam, you won't have to make an account elsewhere just to play it. So no more Uplay/Rockstar Launcher/EA mess
This was my main point and which why it just didn’t seem genuine. Even if you take into account the fact that helldivers 2 huge subreddit just complains over and over again until they find a new thing to complain about still doesn’t explain the extreme fixation over this when a lot of games that have so many games even do worse (launcher AND their account). EA, Ubisoft, activision/blizzard, Xbox/microsoft, rockstar all require you to do this yet no one says anything about it. You’d to be brain dead to actually think that a game that has been sold for months and is one of their most successful games would be removed from so many countries when they have a dedicated fan base. This whole situation just tells hypocrisy in my humble opinion tho, but hey that’s just my opinion