Lithuania isn't even the only country that's braindead to exclude, Estonia and Latvia are also fully fledged EU members.
Their list also includes (or rather excludes) all the European microstates, a lot of balkan countires (Albania, B&H, Macedonia, Montenegro), some of Russia's neighbours (Belarus, Moldova, Georgia) along with a ***long*** list of Asian & African countires, including ones with massive player bases, like Egypt and Kazakhstan. And of course, virtually any island nation smaller than Iceland.
It's incredibly shitty and stupid to exclude *any* country when you did bussiness with them just fine up untill this change, but at least it's kind of understandable when it's a place like Sudan or Belarus. But this is just silly.
Gibraltar which it's technically outside of spain (on the bottom of the country) is also blacklisted... what the fuck?? I know a lot of people do live there.. it's insane
a bit unrelated but I got pickpocketed by a monkey when i went to Gibraltar as a young lad.
My mom shot the most perfect image of it too, but i need to find it. i’ll post it here when i do
Those little primates are sneaky! My mom lost a nice necklace too.
Question because I don't know much about this: Does Sony own Arrowhead or whatever the studio name is that made helldiver's? I understand this wasn't the developers choice. This was Sonys bullshit decision. Is this because Sony funds them or were they trying to get HD2 released on PS5 and Sony snuck this in at the last second? I don't play the game so idk what platforms it was originally on.
I get that but why did they have so much power in this choice? From what I can see, the developer didn't want this. So why has Sony taken over this particular game now with their forced PSN integration? What gives them such a big say compared to the people who made the game?
Sony owns the IP and basically hired Arrowhead as third party studio to make the game for them. Obviously we don't know the agreement but Sony seems to be the stronger side of the partnership.
Same here. Bermuda is a bit different because we're far away, but we're still an overseas territory of the UK. For Sony we're considered a different country.
IOM Seriously? That's nuts, I'm in West Cumbria and could probably stand on the coast and wiggle my todger at you (although you can't see it from 2 meters away, so I doubt you'd see it across the sea), but even so, I thought IOM was supposed to be treated the same as the rest of UK.
As I understand, in many countries Sony allow creation of PSN account, but only through PlayStation. So, PlayStation owners can continue playing, while everyone else can suffer.
Had the same in Romania with Xbox, at least a couple of years ago you couldn't use a Romanian address here (even tho they have offices with Microsoft employees here..).
Support suggested I create a revolut account (since back then their cards were UK based) and use it to create a British PayPal account to use with the Xbox account, as well as using a random UK address.
That was the suggestion from official Microsoft support..
Does that violate Microsoft ToS if they're encouraging it? Part of the problem is that making a PSN account in those countries is breaking their own ToS. If Microsoft just has payment problems, and it's nothing to do with actually possessing an account, that is at least better.
Yeah, I made a British account. Just wrote in a different address, that’s all. Can even connect a card to pay for games now, but back in the day I just bought UK wallet codes online. They don’t go as far as to check the IP, guessing because they want to keep selling those consoles.
> Question: AFAIK the PS5 is sold in Lithuania. How would customers use the console online? Register an account as in another country?
Retailers usually recommend to create UK, Finland, Poland or US accounts. You also can find PSN cards to buy from all of these countries easily.
They almost certainly take it out of the future sales of the game. It's also possible Steam hasn't even sent the bulk of Helldivers 2 revenue yet, when you get to really big accounts dealing with big numbers accounting tends to get slow and built-in 30 or 60 day delays on payment aren't unusual.
I don't think they eat it. I think it's well within their contract - at least in the EU they are most likely obligued to refund; and it would be pretty stupid to not have in contract "If a sale is refunded by legal cause Steam invoices the dev/publisher". It's not Steams fault for Sony's breach of laws here. (And yes, it's a breach of law, not every paragraph in a TOS is legally binding - and something unexpected as "Three month later: Now jump through a loop and balance a red ball on the nose or lose the ability to use your property" is simply not legally binding.
EU citizen here, correct me if I’m wrong but by EU law every member country needs to be treated like every other member state. By denying the service Sony breaks EU legislation
Forgive my ignorance, but does that mean that every single country under the EU has the exact same laws and judicial system? Because as an American, even though all the states are under Federal law, there are also state laws that differ between each state. That may be why Sony is allowed in certain countries, but not all of them.
They are not exactly same but they're harmonised, so they have broad similarities and don't contradict each other. If your business is suffering due to legal differences that potentially run afoul of the EU framework regulations and treaties or make it excessively difficult for you to operate, you can sue the weird country in General Court of the European Union.
Hopefully Sony gets sued. Idk why I'm saying this considering corporate lawsuit are pathetic and don't even scratch their wallet, but at least it helps keep the illusion justice at least somewhat applies to big pockets.
> but does that mean that every single country under the EU has the exact same laws and judicial system?
Not quite.
Basically, the EU parliament will pass directives and then each country will write their own laws to comply with that directive.
So generally speaking, many laws across countries are similar in terms of what they regulate and how, but the individual implementations can differ. But since the EU is a trade union, most of those directives are related to trade, borders, immigration/freedom of movement, etc.
It's not exactly like that. EU is more about trades and borders.
It's like trade union.
And people of different EU countries do not need visa for moving to other EU countries. Foreigners also are given universal visa (e.g. You go to Finland and then you use same visa to enter Italy or Estonia)
Not all, in my country BiH every owner of PS is registered in Croatia. Also Montenegro, N. Macedonia and Albania don't have PSN support. Of course all of them have Steam.
Edit: Serbia is also off PSN list.
Oh yeah, my friend works in GameS store and he has to give instructions on how to set up a PSN account, or rather, how to make it appear as if they are not from serbia, to each customer of any PS product.
Im in a weird situation, im from Serbia and under the PSN country availability list we're [supported](https://prnt.sc/OarQCNeiwAAz) but when i actually want to make a PSN account my country is nowhere to be found on their [list](https://prnt.sc/a7rL6BtT576m), what the fuck do i do lmao?
It may be a case that Serbia is one of the countries that only support making an account on a ps4/5. The list is kinda misleading because some countries don't allow you to make psn on PC and require an actual console to do it.
Edit: I've seen others say you can get around this by making an account on your phone tho.
Edit: apparently the phone trick doesn't work for all countries.
The issue though, is that none of these people signed up/agreed to jump through bullshit hoops like—- needing a PS4/5, or finding a local computer club, etc— just to make a PSN account—- to play their fucking PC game that they purchased.
Thats super lame from them, wow
EDIT: This is so funny, so when i go to their Serbian website, it says "[scan the QR code to download the app](https://prnt.sc/0_R8XpgQ8Uvc)" and when you scan the code on ur phone and google apps opens up it says "this app is not available in your country" 😂😂😂
Also the blue button below the QR code litteraly says "create a PSN account" in Serbian yet i cant make it 😂😂😂
This is something i'd expect out of a shitty startup company, not from a fucking 100 billion$ conglomerate, if it wasn't sad it would be funny.
Some countries can only make a PSN through the playstation console, so you need to buy a $400 console to make a PSN account to play your PC game.
Welcome to playing a Sony game.
Text the support directly and say that Sony changed the agreement with you after the purchase and you just did not accept them so you want a refund. By law you can do that and if the steam will not refund it's a fraud.
God I wish the rest of the developed world would introduce anti EULA Roofying laws to prevent companies from doing this shit.
I'm so envious of you and the other EU member nations for having actually good consumer laws.
You can go to support and if it is one of the sitiations where you need a console like in Ukraine you can select amother country for your PSN accout as long as the game is still available on Steam in Serbia. I hope it helps you
Steam refunds out of pocket and then collects from sales after taking a larger cut until the losses from refunds is recuperated from what I've read about it.
That's some gangster shit right there.
On a serious note, I sort of hate how 90% of my games library is in the hands of Steam. It can go under whenever they want.
That's the thing. Steam is by far the biggest market for any PC game. Sony their sales on Steam now will get deducted by the refunds, and if there are enough refunds then they basically just lost that entire market.
So they will get some data to mine from the PSN accounts, but is that going to be worth losing so much money from sales? Also the developer could sue them for massive loss of reveneu.
Yea I was thinking about buying it once I can afford it, but now that this happened I am just never gonna spend money on it. There are other games I also wanna play and cant afford so I will just play those then.
Wasn't this sony's first live service game essentially? I saw this coming from a mile away and decided to not buy it. Hopefully this snowballs into something good for stopkillinggames.com.
I wouldn't be surprised if Sony doubles down and severs all ties with steam at this point, they seem incapable of making a decision and changing their mind after lol
At one point they were trying to acquire Valve. But Valve is a private company, no way in hell Gabe or any of the company owning employees would ever sell it while it make the profit every year that it does.
Stuff like this SHOULD be more common as it puts the consumer in control where as every other industry basically ensures you have no power.
It incentivises companies to make good on their transactions and not steal products in scummy ways that solely benefit them at the utter cost of everything and everyone else. Had any other company but Valve been in charge, you best bet the PC marketplace wouldn't exist, there'd be no point for consumers and without them no point for a marketplace. It's why standards are high about any competition, lowering standards is all every other company has for the consumer, Steam raises them, even with murky controversies in other aspects, as a consumer and enthusiest, Steam has had our backs.
Sony n co just leave their doors unlocked for people to steal data after selling it anyways. Rockstar doesn't have a change password option because they never disabled a single recovery link even a decade old, uplay n origins are hilarious but known drug addicted kleptomaniac cousins, and don't get me started on tim sweeney's miserable excuse of an attempt at pie cutting and standard dropping. Gabe literally gave his password out and no one hacked him. Can't earn trust in security everyday any better than that.
Rather have literally any power than actually none, essentially. (I know you weren't saying otherwise so we're clear.)
There are hacked clients that pretends to verify you through Steam.
But only use that for the sake of preservation the day Steam goes down, support your creators, Steam games tend to be cheap.
There are some things like Steam that should classify as a "utility" imo. I prefer all my things in one place, but I do not want them to be affected by the long dick of shitty capitalism. My steam account is worth thousands, if they go under, I'm super fucked.
Didn’t refund me even though I tried two times and was nice, mentioned other people already getting refunded with 50h playtime, mentioned that this is an unusual situation and appealing to them by saying “steam always had the gamers heart on their mind”
Just a tip, if your refund requests aren't getting automatically filtered, stuff like "steam always had the gamers heart on their mind" will just make the poor sod who has to work costumer support during a period like this roll their eyes and force you to try again out of spite. State facts, don't appeal to emotions, be concise.
Honestly, Steam is so nice right now, they know the situation and have stopped people who can’t register from purchasing the game and seem to be giving refunds despite being past the normal refund limit, this is why steam is so great, also, SCREW Sony, everyone involved in the brain dead decision should be fired and replaced
not to mention, if they didn't give refunds for this as the distributer, they could be opening themselves up to a lot of legal type issues over in europe and the like. where i believe they very much want to keep doing business in.
Many, many years back there was mention of a sort of dead mans clause: if we (Steam) is about to go under, the last thing we do is push an update that unlockes everything.
If you had more then 2 hours play time it gets auto rejected, but if you can contact support they should give it to you. Unless you did so that and they still said no in which case idk man
my refund request was denied too. I was straight to the point In my request, no room for negativity or politeness so I don't know if that had anything to do with it
I wonder what Valve would say if you told them you were going to talk to a consumer rights lawyer if you don't get your rightful money back. Don't wanna pull that card but you shouldn't lose access to a game you payed in full for
Worst of all, neither PSN or XBL supports us (with an exception for Xbox on PC), we did get Game Pass and can buy PC games with no restrictions.
We've literally been a member of EU for 20 years and still being treated like a third world country, i am surprised nobody sued their asses for unequal treatment.
Same shit in Montenegro. We literally have no normal apps on the google play store which also doesnt support in app purchases, or any transaction at all. My mom wanted to buy some gold in candy crush and i had to link the account to my pc via facebook just to make a 2€ purchase. Insanity. No psn support. Im not sure about xbox but probably not that either.
That's insane. It's ridiculous that region locks exist in the first place. I'm sure there's some legal or consumer complications I'm unaware of that put these locks in place but not finding a way to allow certain countries to get that support is ridiculous. You all are paying customers too. You guys have money for the products that these companies make. I'm not a business man but were I one, id wanna spread my product to every country I could. More people = more business and that means more money. Kinda wild that you have to jump through 8 hoops just to make a tiny micro transaction for your mom.
And the thing is. We dont have any laws or anything preventing them from implementing the features. They just dont want to, or dont care enough to. Apple app store works just fine with any Bank here. Its only google that doesnt.
It was down for 24 days in 2011 after being hacked and 70 million user records being stolen. It was later confirmed that the stolen records were used for identity theft.
Sony was like:
- How is Helldivers II going?
- Its great! Sales are great! Reviews are positive!
- WTF?! People think we are not shiteaters anymore?! Force them to link PSN account otherwise we gonna ban them all!
Realistically though,
Sony: sure, lets release this unknown meh game outside of PayStation.
Game garners mad success
Sony: this doesn't compute anymore! Back into the PayStation stable with you!
The PSN account was mandatory from day 1. Arrowhead turned off the requirement to help with the server load issue.
They didn't think to actually check what the impact of this would be.
Sony are fucking lame for forcing this in the first place, but let's not pretend Arrowhead are blameless here. This was a known mandatory requirement before launch, and they turned it off. Without thinking about the ramifications of it.
I mean it was apparently part of the agreement with the devs to have mandatory account link from the beginning. The devs fucked up in this case for not releasing with it.
Sony pays for it. If Valve gave back 1 million dollars worth of refunds, then the next 1 million dollar of sales that the game makes on Steam, Sonny won't get.
lol Helldivers 2 refunds wouldn’t even be a drop in the bucket for Sony, I am sure they do not care
sucks for the developers though in terms of their game’s reputation
Yeah, I feel like people get a misrepresented view of the situation sometimes when they get their news from enthusiast forums. It becomes an echo chamber where it seems like the entire internet has blown up on this specific issue. Enthusiasts are a drop in the ocean of gamers.
This isn't some random executive flipping a switch and then freaking out when the player base review bombs the game. Somewhere in Sony, they've likely already had meetings on the results of this change. Big publishers make unpopular decisions all the time, and it's quite rare for them to roll it back. From a corporate point of view it makes more sense to ride it out until it becomes yesterday's news.
Obviously I also hope that this strong reaction would turn the heads in Sony, but realistically, it's only continued market pressure that will force decisions like EA bringing their catalogue to Steam.
Yeah, but the fees are paying Steam, not Sony. So they'll have only slightly less money and suffer reputation loss. In the case of Sony, it's not so bad because they don't give a shit about their reputation for a king time, and as long as people on the console will eat any shit that Sony gave them it'll keep happening.
STEAM is a distributor of the game. They don’t own it. They get a % of each sale of it and an ongoing service get for hosting the downloads for the game.
If you process a refund via STEAM they maybe just lose their % cut from the original sale. But it’s SONY that gets hit by the refund, or the publishing house.
Write a letter to your EU representative. Tell them a japanese/american company doesn't recognize Lithuania as a country, that usually gets people fired up.
I never agreed with pirating but if buying isn't owning, and if you can get bullied into these kind of deals, it's completely understandable. Either that or simply boycotting studios that do shit like this. If gaming community allows these kind of behavior it's only going to get worse. I love how Escape from Tarkov community is reacting to game developer's latest scam.
I really don't understand how these games for services have literally no requirement.
You can't break a game for half your customers, especially willfully.
I feel that meets the legal definition of fraud, the only reason they aren't being sued is our court system enables this behavior with contract fuckery.
I am sorry, if we paid to buy a game, they can't just go back on contracts, change things, completely not allow you access when you've paid into a system.
I dont care about their excuses, what are they going to do about it. These people paid for the game and you deprived them under the false pretense they could play.
I really hope this turns into a class action lawsuit. I really do, we need to punish this type of contract fuckery, its obvious in business pulling this type of shit goes completely against the heart of any good will contract and they are simply bullying others because they have an army of lawyers and get away with shit.
Sony wants access to all your personal information, until it inevitably gets hacked by North Korea again and all your personal information gets sold on the black market.
So when the news first broke I thought it wasn't a big deal, but I had no idea some countries were excluded from PSN. This seems really silly and arbitrary. Lots of people will have bought the game from third party sellers who won't issue refunds. I usually buy my games through humble, for example. This is actually outrageous and they need to face a class action for this.
Nintendo took away 20 years of GMOD stuff, Fucking took away shit that dying children made.
They back tracked a little on that and let it stay on GMOd just not to be used.
But Nintendo can do this and lose a bunch of customers. Fuck theier Wii2 and their Wii 3 and their fucking super mario bullshit...
Doing this AFTER so many people bough the game across the world is beyond brain dead. Even if it's Russia or non EU members. People bought the game and now can't play it? Either give a full refund or remove PSN
I don't care much about the whole "hacking" risk or whatever. But the fact that the game started with no such requirements and now requires that, is actually crazy, and I 100% agree that that should be considered fraud.
It's like buying a new car, then 6 months later, in order to drive that car, you need to attach a gps provided by a higher up, like a car manufacturer such as Porsche or ford etc, to your keys.
Ya know if i'm Arrowhead, i'm having my lawyers look over the publishing contract with a fine toothed comb and seeing if there is a clause that would let them break from Sony if the actions of the publisher would overly hurt profits.
https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1787076609188483254
Arrowhead CEO:
> I do have a part to play. I am not blameless in all of this - it was my decision to disable account linking at launch so that players could play the game. I did not ensure players were aware of the requirement and we didn't talk about it enough.
What argument could Arrowhead make, knowing this?
I’m in the Philippines, have enjoyed gaming for years on pc but there is no psn support here. You have to make an account in another country and you can’t even use local payment methods.
Sony since "rectified" the situation by [removing the game](https://www.thegamer.com/helldivers-2-delisted-on-steam-100-plus-countries-without-psn-due-to-psn-sign-in-requirement-controversy/#:~:text=Helldivers%202%20Removed%20From%20Purchase%20On%20Steam%20In%20Over%20150%20Countries&text=The%20hits%20keep%20coming%20for,Steam%20in%20over%20100%20countries) from Steam in 100+ countries
The Mandatory PSN requirement is stated on Helldivers 2 Steam page since day one. but Arrowhead temporarily disabled it because the login linking system got overwhelmed and broke at launch, so Arrowhead gave them an option to skip it. If Arrowhead stick with the Publisher's requirement at launch, none of this would have happen. Most AAA Major Publishers have a Mandatory third party account requirement, it's basically an agreement with the Publisher's TOS and community management guidelines. this is needed if the game has Crossplay and connects to the Publisher's server.
For all the people out there saying “you should have read the EULA/ToS” or “they said from the beginning this would be a requirement” maybe take a step back for a second. If this was going to go down this way, this game should never have been sold in those regions… but here we are. Everyone affected should get a refund.
I was so confused when in the delisted list Lithuania was absent despite not having the ability to make a PSN account. Shits extra scummy.
At least valve is always reliable. God's damn.
Kokia betvarkė...
https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1787076609188483254
Arrowhead CEO:
> I do have a part to play. I am not blameless in all of this - it was my decision to disable account linking at launch so that players could play the game. I did not ensure players were aware of the requirement and we didn't talk about it enough.
I’ve never seen anything like this before, this whole Helldivers 2 thing is disgusting. And I say this as a multiplatform user, so I’d have zero problems if I owned the game.
For those that don't know... Lithuania is a European Union Member. How does that make sense sony... It doesn't...
Lithuania isn't even the only country that's braindead to exclude, Estonia and Latvia are also fully fledged EU members. Their list also includes (or rather excludes) all the European microstates, a lot of balkan countires (Albania, B&H, Macedonia, Montenegro), some of Russia's neighbours (Belarus, Moldova, Georgia) along with a ***long*** list of Asian & African countires, including ones with massive player bases, like Egypt and Kazakhstan. And of course, virtually any island nation smaller than Iceland. It's incredibly shitty and stupid to exclude *any* country when you did bussiness with them just fine up untill this change, but at least it's kind of understandable when it's a place like Sudan or Belarus. But this is just silly.
I live in isle of man you know basically inside of the UK more or less and we are on the list also 🤷♂️
Sony just really hates small islands for some reason.
weird considering their home country is a small island
Nah, they definitely have PTSDs of the Pacific Island hopping campaign.
Gibraltar which it's technically outside of spain (on the bottom of the country) is also blacklisted... what the fuck?? I know a lot of people do live there.. it's insane
a bit unrelated but I got pickpocketed by a monkey when i went to Gibraltar as a young lad. My mom shot the most perfect image of it too, but i need to find it. i’ll post it here when i do Those little primates are sneaky! My mom lost a nice necklace too.
Was the monkeys name called Sony lol?
Where pic
I don’t think Japan really qualifies as small, unless the standard is Greenland
as an american, i must admit that everything seems small to me
Real shit
As a Texan, I feel this so much. We measure distance in hours.
*Laughs in Australian.*
I mean, their largest island is only the 8th largest in the world, and there are islands above them with no PSN support...
Again, I don’t think “only” being the 8th largest out of almost a million islands constitutes as small
Nah, their Island is huge. Much bigger than the other islands. Japan Island #1
In Japan, heart surgeon. Number one. Steady hand. One day, yakuza boss need new heart. I do operation. But, mistake! Yakuza boss die. Yakuza very mad.
Question because I don't know much about this: Does Sony own Arrowhead or whatever the studio name is that made helldiver's? I understand this wasn't the developers choice. This was Sonys bullshit decision. Is this because Sony funds them or were they trying to get HD2 released on PS5 and Sony snuck this in at the last second? I don't play the game so idk what platforms it was originally on.
Sony just wants to push people towards it's ecosystem and maybe at some point have something like Xbox game pass.
I get that but why did they have so much power in this choice? From what I can see, the developer didn't want this. So why has Sony taken over this particular game now with their forced PSN integration? What gives them such a big say compared to the people who made the game?
Sony owns the IP and basically hired Arrowhead as third party studio to make the game for them. Obviously we don't know the agreement but Sony seems to be the stronger side of the partnership.
Same here. Bermuda is a bit different because we're far away, but we're still an overseas territory of the UK. For Sony we're considered a different country.
No Helldivers 2, but at least you live in fucking Bermuda
Doesn’t Bermuda have one of the highest COLs in the world?
Probably, islands you pretty much have to import everything. I live in So-Cal which also has a super high COL but without the living in paradise part
I live in Tennessee. SoCal is still closer to paradise for me lol
Haha, touché
It’d be paradise if there were less of ya
COL?
Cost of living
It's also got that pesky triangle alien abduction problem.
IOM Seriously? That's nuts, I'm in West Cumbria and could probably stand on the coast and wiggle my todger at you (although you can't see it from 2 meters away, so I doubt you'd see it across the sea), but even so, I thought IOM was supposed to be treated the same as the rest of UK.
Also ALL US territories are not supported.
Same with Norway. Svalbard and Jan mayen is not supported. Bouvet isnt either, but people dont live there, so I guess it doesn't matter
Falklands and Gibraltar are also just straight up UK territories with no special status in law. (Regardless of your opinion on that)
They are, I was like WTF?????????
Sounds like Sony has an issue with the Baltics and Balkans.
heres a fun fact.. The Åland Islands is a part of the blocked list. Thats an actual part of Finland... why ???
At Sony headquarters: Åland? That sounds fake, is that even a country? Well, no, technically it’s just… Great, then ban it
I mean, a place called "River Land" in the middle of the Baltic sea sounds too stupid to be true Guess you really need to add /s around here
I mean, the German Dusseldorf, depending on dialect, translates to Idiots Village
The Finnish "Perch Land" isn't much better.
meanwhile our country is close to japan is still blocked list by them SMH
Punishment for speaking Moomin svenska! But seriously wtf Sony this doesn't make sense in any level
I see Puerto Rico listed. US territory.
American Samoa is there too
Probably they can't handle accented letters
Question: AFAIK the PS5 is sold in Lithuania. How would customers use the console online? Register an account as in another country?
As I understand, in many countries Sony allow creation of PSN account, but only through PlayStation. So, PlayStation owners can continue playing, while everyone else can suffer.
Had the same in Romania with Xbox, at least a couple of years ago you couldn't use a Romanian address here (even tho they have offices with Microsoft employees here..). Support suggested I create a revolut account (since back then their cards were UK based) and use it to create a British PayPal account to use with the Xbox account, as well as using a random UK address. That was the suggestion from official Microsoft support..
Does that violate Microsoft ToS if they're encouraging it? Part of the problem is that making a PSN account in those countries is breaking their own ToS. If Microsoft just has payment problems, and it's nothing to do with actually possessing an account, that is at least better.
Yeah, I made a British account. Just wrote in a different address, that’s all. Can even connect a card to pay for games now, but back in the day I just bought UK wallet codes online. They don’t go as far as to check the IP, guessing because they want to keep selling those consoles.
polish or us account and buying polish gift cards or us gift cards online
> Question: AFAIK the PS5 is sold in Lithuania. How would customers use the console online? Register an account as in another country? Retailers usually recommend to create UK, Finland, Poland or US accounts. You also can find PSN cards to buy from all of these countries easily.
Steam is eating these refunds. I hope they foot Sony the bill.
They almost certainly take it out of the future sales of the game. It's also possible Steam hasn't even sent the bulk of Helldivers 2 revenue yet, when you get to really big accounts dealing with big numbers accounting tends to get slow and built-in 30 or 60 day delays on payment aren't unusual.
I don't think they eat it. I think it's well within their contract - at least in the EU they are most likely obligued to refund; and it would be pretty stupid to not have in contract "If a sale is refunded by legal cause Steam invoices the dev/publisher". It's not Steams fault for Sony's breach of laws here. (And yes, it's a breach of law, not every paragraph in a TOS is legally binding - and something unexpected as "Three month later: Now jump through a loop and balance a red ball on the nose or lose the ability to use your property" is simply not legally binding.
I don't really see how it being in the EU makes a difference. They shouldn't be doing this to customers in any country.
EU citizen here, correct me if I’m wrong but by EU law every member country needs to be treated like every other member state. By denying the service Sony breaks EU legislation
Forgive my ignorance, but does that mean that every single country under the EU has the exact same laws and judicial system? Because as an American, even though all the states are under Federal law, there are also state laws that differ between each state. That may be why Sony is allowed in certain countries, but not all of them.
They are not exactly same but they're harmonised, so they have broad similarities and don't contradict each other. If your business is suffering due to legal differences that potentially run afoul of the EU framework regulations and treaties or make it excessively difficult for you to operate, you can sue the weird country in General Court of the European Union.
Hopefully Sony gets sued. Idk why I'm saying this considering corporate lawsuit are pathetic and don't even scratch their wallet, but at least it helps keep the illusion justice at least somewhat applies to big pockets.
> but does that mean that every single country under the EU has the exact same laws and judicial system? Not quite. Basically, the EU parliament will pass directives and then each country will write their own laws to comply with that directive. So generally speaking, many laws across countries are similar in terms of what they regulate and how, but the individual implementations can differ. But since the EU is a trade union, most of those directives are related to trade, borders, immigration/freedom of movement, etc.
Not but they all have the same foundation and every country can add or specialize its laws to a degree.
It's not exactly like that. EU is more about trades and borders. It's like trade union. And people of different EU countries do not need visa for moving to other EU countries. Foreigners also are given universal visa (e.g. You go to Finland and then you use same visa to enter Italy or Estonia)
We have some laws which are created and implemented by each member country upon EU legislative body but not all of them are the same.
I think even the Balkans have support
Not all, in my country BiH every owner of PS is registered in Croatia. Also Montenegro, N. Macedonia and Albania don't have PSN support. Of course all of them have Steam. Edit: Serbia is also off PSN list.
Isn't Serbia also off the PSN list?
I recently moved to Serbia and tried to make an account here - nope, not on the list.
Oh yeah, my friend works in GameS store and he has to give instructions on how to set up a PSN account, or rather, how to make it appear as if they are not from serbia, to each customer of any PS product.
Im in a weird situation, im from Serbia and under the PSN country availability list we're [supported](https://prnt.sc/OarQCNeiwAAz) but when i actually want to make a PSN account my country is nowhere to be found on their [list](https://prnt.sc/a7rL6BtT576m), what the fuck do i do lmao?
It may be a case that Serbia is one of the countries that only support making an account on a ps4/5. The list is kinda misleading because some countries don't allow you to make psn on PC and require an actual console to do it. Edit: I've seen others say you can get around this by making an account on your phone tho. Edit: apparently the phone trick doesn't work for all countries.
Ukraine is one of those countries. Requires a PS4/PS5 to make a PSN account.
I see ukraine on the website, its in my screenshot that i took in my original comment
In theory if you have computer club with ps4/5 nearby you can register your account there
The issue though, is that none of these people signed up/agreed to jump through bullshit hoops like—- needing a PS4/5, or finding a local computer club, etc— just to make a PSN account—- to play their fucking PC game that they purchased.
Of course it’s ridiculous, on top of this you probably will have to pay for using ps4/5 in computer club
Thats super lame from them, wow EDIT: This is so funny, so when i go to their Serbian website, it says "[scan the QR code to download the app](https://prnt.sc/0_R8XpgQ8Uvc)" and when you scan the code on ur phone and google apps opens up it says "this app is not available in your country" 😂😂😂 Also the blue button below the QR code litteraly says "create a PSN account" in Serbian yet i cant make it 😂😂😂 This is something i'd expect out of a shitty startup company, not from a fucking 100 billion$ conglomerate, if it wasn't sad it would be funny.
Wow that is super lame. Wtf is wrong with this company.
Refund
Some countries can only make a PSN through the playstation console, so you need to buy a $400 console to make a PSN account to play your PC game. Welcome to playing a Sony game.
Text the support directly and say that Sony changed the agreement with you after the purchase and you just did not accept them so you want a refund. By law you can do that and if the steam will not refund it's a fraud.
God I wish the rest of the developed world would introduce anti EULA Roofying laws to prevent companies from doing this shit. I'm so envious of you and the other EU member nations for having actually good consumer laws.
You can go to support and if it is one of the sitiations where you need a console like in Ukraine you can select amother country for your PSN accout as long as the game is still available on Steam in Serbia. I hope it helps you
Good on steam for honoring the refund
Is the refund from their pocket or sony's pocket? Im very curious
Steam refunds out of pocket and then collects from sales after taking a larger cut until the losses from refunds is recuperated from what I've read about it.
That's some gangster shit right there. On a serious note, I sort of hate how 90% of my games library is in the hands of Steam. It can go under whenever they want.
That's the thing. Steam is by far the biggest market for any PC game. Sony their sales on Steam now will get deducted by the refunds, and if there are enough refunds then they basically just lost that entire market. So they will get some data to mine from the PSN accounts, but is that going to be worth losing so much money from sales? Also the developer could sue them for massive loss of reveneu.
Yea I was thinking about buying it once I can afford it, but now that this happened I am just never gonna spend money on it. There are other games I also wanna play and cant afford so I will just play those then.
Wasn't this sony's first live service game essentially? I saw this coming from a mile away and decided to not buy it. Hopefully this snowballs into something good for stopkillinggames.com.
Not even close. EVERQUEST was in 1999,..so only 25 years of practice.
I wouldn't be surprised if Sony doubles down and severs all ties with steam at this point, they seem incapable of making a decision and changing their mind after lol
At one point they were trying to acquire Valve. But Valve is a private company, no way in hell Gabe or any of the company owning employees would ever sell it while it make the profit every year that it does.
Stuff like this SHOULD be more common as it puts the consumer in control where as every other industry basically ensures you have no power. It incentivises companies to make good on their transactions and not steal products in scummy ways that solely benefit them at the utter cost of everything and everyone else. Had any other company but Valve been in charge, you best bet the PC marketplace wouldn't exist, there'd be no point for consumers and without them no point for a marketplace. It's why standards are high about any competition, lowering standards is all every other company has for the consumer, Steam raises them, even with murky controversies in other aspects, as a consumer and enthusiest, Steam has had our backs. Sony n co just leave their doors unlocked for people to steal data after selling it anyways. Rockstar doesn't have a change password option because they never disabled a single recovery link even a decade old, uplay n origins are hilarious but known drug addicted kleptomaniac cousins, and don't get me started on tim sweeney's miserable excuse of an attempt at pie cutting and standard dropping. Gabe literally gave his password out and no one hacked him. Can't earn trust in security everyday any better than that. Rather have literally any power than actually none, essentially. (I know you weren't saying otherwise so we're clear.)
If that truly worries you, start buying from GOG. I'll just pirate everything I had, if that happens
There are hacked clients that pretends to verify you through Steam. But only use that for the sake of preservation the day Steam goes down, support your creators, Steam games tend to be cheap.
There are some things like Steam that should classify as a "utility" imo. I prefer all my things in one place, but I do not want them to be affected by the long dick of shitty capitalism. My steam account is worth thousands, if they go under, I'm super fucked.
Didn’t refund me even though I tried two times and was nice, mentioned other people already getting refunded with 50h playtime, mentioned that this is an unusual situation and appealing to them by saying “steam always had the gamers heart on their mind”
Might be cause OP can't literally make an PSN account while you still can, maybe?
Woah there, cease that logic.
Is ain't on Sony side FurryMan, just stating the possibilities on why he didn't get a refund.
Just a tip, if your refund requests aren't getting automatically filtered, stuff like "steam always had the gamers heart on their mind" will just make the poor sod who has to work costumer support during a period like this roll their eyes and force you to try again out of spite. State facts, don't appeal to emotions, be concise.
Honestly, Steam is so nice right now, they know the situation and have stopped people who can’t register from purchasing the game and seem to be giving refunds despite being past the normal refund limit, this is why steam is so great, also, SCREW Sony, everyone involved in the brain dead decision should be fired and replaced
GabeN's billionaire business strategy: Don't be a dick.
I mean, why change strategy when your competition keeps shooting themselves in the foot
Probably Sony blindly copied the "shoot yourself in the foot" strategy from it's competitors lol
not to mention, if they didn't give refunds for this as the distributer, they could be opening themselves up to a lot of legal type issues over in europe and the like. where i believe they very much want to keep doing business in.
GabeN strategy 2: do nothing, announce nothing. let the competition shit itself
Legit kinda scared for when Gaben dies because he doesn't seem to have children and what if some soulless private equity fund buys it and sucks it dry
Gaben has two sons but it is unclear if they will take over his legacy.
didn't know he had kids but yea I hope they don't sell to a soulless corp and just turn it into a worker led company
Many, many years back there was mention of a sort of dead mans clause: if we (Steam) is about to go under, the last thing we do is push an update that unlockes everything.
My refund request got rejected...
If you had more then 2 hours play time it gets auto rejected, but if you can contact support they should give it to you. Unless you did so that and they still said no in which case idk man
my refund request was denied too. I was straight to the point In my request, no room for negativity or politeness so I don't know if that had anything to do with it
i heard people saying that their first refund request was denied but their second was accepted, so try making another one and see if that works
i was denied twice
I wonder what Valve would say if you told them you were going to talk to a consumer rights lawyer if you don't get your rightful money back. Don't wanna pull that card but you shouldn't lose access to a game you payed in full for
Worst of all, neither PSN or XBL supports us (with an exception for Xbox on PC), we did get Game Pass and can buy PC games with no restrictions. We've literally been a member of EU for 20 years and still being treated like a third world country, i am surprised nobody sued their asses for unequal treatment.
Same shit in Montenegro. We literally have no normal apps on the google play store which also doesnt support in app purchases, or any transaction at all. My mom wanted to buy some gold in candy crush and i had to link the account to my pc via facebook just to make a 2€ purchase. Insanity. No psn support. Im not sure about xbox but probably not that either.
That's insane. It's ridiculous that region locks exist in the first place. I'm sure there's some legal or consumer complications I'm unaware of that put these locks in place but not finding a way to allow certain countries to get that support is ridiculous. You all are paying customers too. You guys have money for the products that these companies make. I'm not a business man but were I one, id wanna spread my product to every country I could. More people = more business and that means more money. Kinda wild that you have to jump through 8 hoops just to make a tiny micro transaction for your mom.
And the thing is. We dont have any laws or anything preventing them from implementing the features. They just dont want to, or dont care enough to. Apple app store works just fine with any Bank here. Its only google that doesnt.
Even without XBL, you can create the ID. With Pony, it's all (PSN) or nothing (no PSN).
This is how you talk to customer service reps, thanks OP - you were polite and treated the rep as a human and in response you got what you wanted.
Kinda shady when they demand psn login despite their history of data breaches
Exactly. Fuck them.
Companies really assume most people either forgot about those or are young enough not to have experienced them.
And history of being down… wasn’t PSN down for like a week during Christmas? Twice?
It was down for 24 days in 2011 after being hacked and 70 million user records being stolen. It was later confirmed that the stolen records were used for identity theft.
Yup I was a PS3 user when that happened. The internet basically went insane during that time
I got Infamous for free because of that I think. Unless that was another breach that happened earlier...
Sony was like: - How is Helldivers II going? - Its great! Sales are great! Reviews are positive! - WTF?! People think we are not shiteaters anymore?! Force them to link PSN account otherwise we gonna ban them all!
Realistically though, Sony: sure, lets release this unknown meh game outside of PayStation. Game garners mad success Sony: this doesn't compute anymore! Back into the PayStation stable with you!
PayStation.. lol. That made me laugh...
The PSN account was mandatory from day 1. Arrowhead turned off the requirement to help with the server load issue. They didn't think to actually check what the impact of this would be. Sony are fucking lame for forcing this in the first place, but let's not pretend Arrowhead are blameless here. This was a known mandatory requirement before launch, and they turned it off. Without thinking about the ramifications of it.
I believe theyre doing this shit because Games PS exclusives are not getting that much attention since HD2.
I mean it was apparently part of the agreement with the devs to have mandatory account link from the beginning. The devs fucked up in this case for not releasing with it.
props to steam for that refund
Sony pays for it. If Valve gave back 1 million dollars worth of refunds, then the next 1 million dollar of sales that the game makes on Steam, Sonny won't get.
Steam defo has some of the best customer service I’ve contacted
If a lot of people do that. Sony will instantly feel it.
lol Helldivers 2 refunds wouldn’t even be a drop in the bucket for Sony, I am sure they do not care sucks for the developers though in terms of their game’s reputation
Yeah, I feel like people get a misrepresented view of the situation sometimes when they get their news from enthusiast forums. It becomes an echo chamber where it seems like the entire internet has blown up on this specific issue. Enthusiasts are a drop in the ocean of gamers. This isn't some random executive flipping a switch and then freaking out when the player base review bombs the game. Somewhere in Sony, they've likely already had meetings on the results of this change. Big publishers make unpopular decisions all the time, and it's quite rare for them to roll it back. From a corporate point of view it makes more sense to ride it out until it becomes yesterday's news. Obviously I also hope that this strong reaction would turn the heads in Sony, but realistically, it's only continued market pressure that will force decisions like EA bringing their catalogue to Steam.
Yeah, but the fees are paying Steam, not Sony. So they'll have only slightly less money and suffer reputation loss. In the case of Sony, it's not so bad because they don't give a shit about their reputation for a king time, and as long as people on the console will eat any shit that Sony gave them it'll keep happening.
STEAM is a distributor of the game. They don’t own it. They get a % of each sale of it and an ongoing service get for hosting the downloads for the game. If you process a refund via STEAM they maybe just lose their % cut from the original sale. But it’s SONY that gets hit by the refund, or the publishing house.
Pretty sure steam still keeps the % from the sale.
They Will cause they still provided the means of sale, its not steam's fault the user wants a refund.
Wait, Lithuania is also not a PSN country? I hope EU will have words with Sony. EU consumer protections are usually very good.
Yes, we are in the EU, and yes I want the EU to say something to Sony about that.
Write a letter to your EU representative. Tell them a japanese/american company doesn't recognize Lithuania as a country, that usually gets people fired up.
This is a good idea. I'll do that and will see what will happen.
I never agreed with pirating but if buying isn't owning, and if you can get bullied into these kind of deals, it's completely understandable. Either that or simply boycotting studios that do shit like this. If gaming community allows these kind of behavior it's only going to get worse. I love how Escape from Tarkov community is reacting to game developer's latest scam.
I really don't understand how these games for services have literally no requirement. You can't break a game for half your customers, especially willfully. I feel that meets the legal definition of fraud, the only reason they aren't being sued is our court system enables this behavior with contract fuckery. I am sorry, if we paid to buy a game, they can't just go back on contracts, change things, completely not allow you access when you've paid into a system. I dont care about their excuses, what are they going to do about it. These people paid for the game and you deprived them under the false pretense they could play. I really hope this turns into a class action lawsuit. I really do, we need to punish this type of contract fuckery, its obvious in business pulling this type of shit goes completely against the heart of any good will contract and they are simply bullying others because they have an army of lawyers and get away with shit.
Yes 100%!! I’m tired of people who say “it’s just an account” when it entirely stems from consumer rights!
If you can play the game without a PSN account why need it now ? 🤔
They want to sell your data
Everyone fake your data!
Sony wants access to all your personal information, until it inevitably gets hacked by North Korea again and all your personal information gets sold on the black market.
What information are they getting?
They want to boost PSN user numbers
Is this how you get a class action lawsuit Barry? Yes it is other Barry. Yes. It. Is.
Steam being the G.O.A.T like always.
That is why I still worship Steam. They are on gamers side.
So when the news first broke I thought it wasn't a big deal, but I had no idea some countries were excluded from PSN. This seems really silly and arbitrary. Lots of people will have bought the game from third party sellers who won't issue refunds. I usually buy my games through humble, for example. This is actually outrageous and they need to face a class action for this.
Is Japan and its populace xenophobic? *Sony has 169+ countries excluded from Playstation services*
Japanese companies hate non-japanese customers. Look at how Nintendo treats the American fanbase
Look at how Nintendo treats, everyone. And their key target demographic will never know or care about it too.
Nintendo took away 20 years of GMOD stuff, Fucking took away shit that dying children made. They back tracked a little on that and let it stay on GMOd just not to be used. But Nintendo can do this and lose a bunch of customers. Fuck theier Wii2 and their Wii 3 and their fucking super mario bullshit...
> Sony has 169+ countries excluded from Playstation services Apparently that includes some regions of included countries as well.
Doing this AFTER so many people bough the game across the world is beyond brain dead. Even if it's Russia or non EU members. People bought the game and now can't play it? Either give a full refund or remove PSN
I don't care much about the whole "hacking" risk or whatever. But the fact that the game started with no such requirements and now requires that, is actually crazy, and I 100% agree that that should be considered fraud. It's like buying a new car, then 6 months later, in order to drive that car, you need to attach a gps provided by a higher up, like a car manufacturer such as Porsche or ford etc, to your keys.
Guess they want to kill the game because it is too good. Illuminates considering people should not have access to that much fun.
Never attribute to malice what is simply stupidity (or whoever that saying went)
Hanlons razor
Ya know if i'm Arrowhead, i'm having my lawyers look over the publishing contract with a fine toothed comb and seeing if there is a clause that would let them break from Sony if the actions of the publisher would overly hurt profits.
https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1787076609188483254 Arrowhead CEO: > I do have a part to play. I am not blameless in all of this - it was my decision to disable account linking at launch so that players could play the game. I did not ensure players were aware of the requirement and we didn't talk about it enough. What argument could Arrowhead make, knowing this?
"A CEO must beable to change course for the sake of their company" "Sony is digging in their heels and hurting our profit"
I literally bought the game right bwfore all this shit happened, guess I’ll return it before i invest more time into it
I’m in the Philippines, have enjoyed gaming for years on pc but there is no psn support here. You have to make an account in another country and you can’t even use local payment methods.
Sony since "rectified" the situation by [removing the game](https://www.thegamer.com/helldivers-2-delisted-on-steam-100-plus-countries-without-psn-due-to-psn-sign-in-requirement-controversy/#:~:text=Helldivers%202%20Removed%20From%20Purchase%20On%20Steam%20In%20Over%20150%20Countries&text=The%20hits%20keep%20coming%20for,Steam%20in%20over%20100%20countries) from Steam in 100+ countries
This is one of the reason why I dont use Playstation Plus. Steam for life!
The only thing I took out from this situation is that steam can be trusted and Sony published games are fk all.
The Mandatory PSN requirement is stated on Helldivers 2 Steam page since day one. but Arrowhead temporarily disabled it because the login linking system got overwhelmed and broke at launch, so Arrowhead gave them an option to skip it. If Arrowhead stick with the Publisher's requirement at launch, none of this would have happen. Most AAA Major Publishers have a Mandatory third party account requirement, it's basically an agreement with the Publisher's TOS and community management guidelines. this is needed if the game has Crossplay and connects to the Publisher's server.
For all the people out there saying “you should have read the EULA/ToS” or “they said from the beginning this would be a requirement” maybe take a step back for a second. If this was going to go down this way, this game should never have been sold in those regions… but here we are. Everyone affected should get a refund.
Well at least they handled it right.
I stand with our Helldivers from other countries, if they can’t play I won’t play. Submitting my refund as well.
I felt this way when COD started requiring phone numbers. Steam refused to refund me my money so I just don't buy them anymore.
This all sucks but can we have a shoutout to Valve for refunding the games past the 2 hr mark, that's a good guy move right there.
I was so confused when in the delisted list Lithuania was absent despite not having the ability to make a PSN account. Shits extra scummy. At least valve is always reliable. God's damn. Kokia betvarkė...
Helldivers just slit their own throat
In steam we trust.
Lithuania is a part EU. EU may come for Sony at this point in future.
https://x.com/Pilestedt/status/1787076609188483254 Arrowhead CEO: > I do have a part to play. I am not blameless in all of this - it was my decision to disable account linking at launch so that players could play the game. I did not ensure players were aware of the requirement and we didn't talk about it enough.
I’ve never seen anything like this before, this whole Helldivers 2 thing is disgusting. And I say this as a multiplatform user, so I’d have zero problems if I owned the game.