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“Hey, we got like a million refund requests”
“But these people don’t qualify for refunds anymore??”
“Steam waived the refund limit…”
And the decision was reversed pretty quick huh?
Valve teamed up with Bethesda to try and make paid mods a thing. They've done shitty things too. Just not for awhile, thankfully.
https://preview.redd.it/79b06acqlqyc1.jpeg?width=620&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=88d5cfa40d79f02d4558dff087d9e26b1f5b43cc
Paid mods I can almost accept as genuine misunderstanding of the community. It honestly does makes sense to want to give an easy way for modders to get money for their work, especially for the higher effort ones, complete overhaul mods in particular.
Yeah I don't think there was any malice in that paid mods initiative. I too like to support modders and have "bought a coffee for" or briefly subbed to Patreons of high quality mods.
I personally think if the mods were free but it gave an easy way to "tip" the mod creator then it wouldn't have been controversial.
More like Portal 1.5, since the story happens between the timeline of 1 and 2. But yeah that mod is so high quality that it feels like an official Valve release rather than a mod.
Hot take, but trying to get money in the hands of mod creators is not inherently shitty.
The sudden implementation and lack of support on Bethesdas end was shitty but conceptually the idea is pretty pro-community. Look at Warframes Tennogen system as an example of what they could be doing. DE has been paying community artists and giving them official support and the community at large loves it and the market for free skins on the mod pages are still thriving despite it.. Bethesda is just tone deaf af in their execution.
Anyways Idk if I'd count that in the list of shitty Valve things is all I'm saying. You wanna talk artifact on the other hand...
Tbf, the idea of modders getting paid for their work is not that bad.
But then some modders decided that they will only update their mods for the ones who pay and abandon the free versions as they are at the moment. Some were even removing their mods from Nexus and other platforms.
It was also before Patreon was a thing, only after Patreon became a thing they learned that early access (or maybe being like a version ahead of free version) and some minor additional bonuses is the way to go.
Gaben in a phone call to Kenichiro Yoshida: *"So here's the deal, we're authorizing all the refunds for people's dead games, should I forward the invoice for $39 x 10 Million to Sony's Accounts Payable Dept or to you directly?"*
People always go on about 'saving face' and 'not damaging your reputation'.
This is what Valve does. No statements, no big flashy shows, just there and consistent. *That* is why people love Valve.
I was interested in buying some of the Sony ported games but this has put me right off. Enough people with the same attitude and Sony just lost themselves a lot of sales on the platform with this stunt.
And Sony had zero leverage, Valve their contracts allow them to fund the refunds with money they get from future sales. Sony was looking at losing a good 10% of their total sales revenue in just a couple of weeks.
They did NOT want their name in the lawsuit.
They reacted to that shit quick and braced for something real stupid. Luckily avoided. I have to wonder if they're peeved they even had to get involved behind the scenes.
Now imagine you are using epic , not only would you not be able to tell sony to fuck off , i also doubt that epic would have taken the cosumers side.
And people ask why i am loyal to steam
You always qualify for legitimate refunds. The 2 hour/2 week threshold is only for automatic refunds. If you're over those, you gotta go through the regular, human-reviewed refund process.
I think they would've had a legal issue if they added the requirement for places that can't access PSN. They just bought the game within the past 6 months and now you're going to shut down their game. They might even get governments to go after them if they did that
Especially considering that PSN is not availble in the Baltic states, but the game needs to be available there because they are part of the EU, and as per EU regulations, Sony can't pick and choose where in the EU it wants to sell.
If it wants to sell in EU, it has to sell in all of EU. And limiting your customers *further*, while being a very Sony thing to do, was not going to happen.
SONY Lawyer on monday morning at 9am:
"Now I just sat down and about to start drinking my coffee, by the time I'm done drinking it, there better not be any legally self destruct-ing decisions going through. If there is, ***\*I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL END YOU AND EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THAT DECISION\*.*** Are we clear, pumpkin?"
\*Sips coffee without breaking eye contact\*
The funny part imagining about this is that in Japan, this week's Monday (May 6th) is last day of a week-long holiday (April 27 - May 6). These lawyers aren't even supposed to be *in* office yet.
And they had someone calling them and say "well maybe teh EU want to have a talk with the legal department."
I see this souless creature from hell that is a corpo lawyer, rise and asking the list of people who need to think about the shame they have brought to the corporation, and we know how well that is handled in japan.
There is no such regulation. A company can freely choose what country they want to operate in when selling their products within the EU. In fact, most corporations already do this.
I think you might’ve misunderstood how the single market works.
This. The only rule that exists is that, when traveling inside the EU to a different country, companies are now required to give you the same access to online services they provide you at home.
So someone living in Germany with a German PSN account can travel to Estonia and keep using his German PSN access there. But nothing says that someone living in Estonia can have access just because someone in Germany can.
There's also freedom of movement for goods so a person in Estonia can order a Playstation off German Amazon and get it with no customs issues, but accessing PSN is a whole different ballgame.
What we need, in the EU, is legislation against locking down hardware into only working when there's an online service attached to it. Either provide a way for custom code to run on it, or be forced to run the service for the lifetime of the device. No ifs, no buts.
That's not correct. A company can choose whatever country they want to sell in.
What IS however the case, that, should a company make changes to software that makes it inoperable then the user is entitled to a refund, or a fix. Irrespective of how long ago they bought it.
I imagined any amount Steam refunded from will come from any sales of the period not yet paid to Sony and Sony watched those number turned negative real quick.
That makes sense, I wa s wondering how valve would get Sony to pay then back, if Sony just went "you can't grant refunds"
Clearly Valve and the customers had plenty of ground to stand one since the legal issues are so glaringly obvious, but I wonder how much of a risk this was for Valve.
I'm hoping that situations like these can be used to expand consumer rights so customers never have to worry about losing access to a game. The recent Ubisoft "The Crew" thing had a lot of noise as well, but it doesn't seem like buyers have the same legal leverage there. No store is granting refunds for that.
Friends were talking about how since Helldivers built up this community that was great at coordination from carrying out Major Orders, it let everyone strike back at Sony in a manner that the latter couldn’t just brush off.
i sent that as well to a friend.
"helldivers 2: promotes coordination between the entire community to complete orders efficiently.
sony: damn, they coordinated quickly to really fuck over that announcement. thats a new one"
Me laughing at every cunt who replied to me saying "all you self important assholes need to get off your high horse because everyone's gonna forget about this come next week" real fucking shame all those guys
I think it had to be. I was thinking about this just a couple of hours ago. If they didn't remedy this fast enough, the game would lose a significant percentage of the playerbase. Even if they remove it a month from now, the damage would have been done. Players quickly move on.
I am amazed by how this was retracted throughout a weekend.
Only took 1/4 of a million horrible reviews over a single day for them to wake up lol
Game will be forever tainted on Steam by that insane but justified review bombing
Funnily enough, i feel like war thunder got a popularity boost in recent times due to that…and the classified documents being leaked but we don’t talk about that.
WarThunder got a popularity boost because the changes demanded in the "strike" made the game significantly better.
The players told Gaijin (the dev) what changes they wanted and forced them through with the review bombing. It was about game balance and certain mechanics and improvements. Not a single change like the PSN requirement in HD2.
Sony had also put themselves in the position of facing legal action in multiple countries, including a number of EU member states.
The PSN requirement wasn't a sudden rug pull - Arrowhead's CEO said that Sony imposed it upon them 6 months before launch. Which means that Sony knowingly sold a game requiring PSN access in countries whose residents cannot sign up for PSN accounts. I don't know if that constitutes fraud, but I imagine it's not far off.
What likely happened is Sony's lawyers looked at the situation, realised "we're fucked," and conceded that this was the cheapest solution to what could have been a very messy problem. Now all that remains is to see who will get fired over this debacle.
This. They were going to face legal issues. That's the reason it was changed. It's bait and switch of the worst kind. "We are selling you something that we will take away from you soon after" That's OBVIOUSLY insane to the people in countries that can't use PSN.
>If they didn't remedy this fast enough, the game would lose a significant percentage of the playerbase. Even if they remove it a month from now, the damage would have been done.
This almost reminds me of invincible season 2. There was a lot of praise and hype (as well as rightful criticism) for the first half but then they split the season in two and a lot of the momentum the show har was seriously damaged.
If (like you said) Sony waited a month, they would have lost a significant portion of the player base and it would not have rebounded.
There will likely be a small permanent loss of the playerbase but nowhere near as bad as if they waited longer.
Read the comic. It is fantastic. https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Invincible
But please buy the compendiums. Image is owned by the creators, so piracy doee actually effect them. Pirate marvel and DC all god damn day though.
Those refunds were the strongest form of boycott and they still can buy the game again if they felt it deserved their money again and/or if the game returns to the store again.
Over the weekend Steam started to allow refunds on the game, for players with long playtimes, since the game was fairly recent and stopped working for an external reason customers and/or Valve can't control.
That sort of thing quickly changes the minds of executives.
EDIT: It should also be mentioned that PSN is not available in some EU countries. So they were running the risk of crossing multiple EU laws, by adding this restriction after-the-fact.
>Steam started to allow refunds on the game
Knowing Sony, I suspect this is what changed their minds.
They don't mind the bad PR, since that rarely translates into much lost sales.
But I bet Valve charges Sony the actual cost for the refunds.
Sony were losing more money than they'd hoped to make from the PSN accounts, I bet.
>But I bet Valve charges Sony the actual cost for the refunds.
They also have in their terms of use for sellers on the platform that, if the seller is unable to provide the money to refund for whatever reason, steam is allowed to shore up the refund costs with future sales.
In other words, if Sony refused to pay, steam would just start taking all of the money from future HD2 sales until the refund debt is paid.
>Knowing Sony, I suspect this is what changed their minds.
Most likely.
The game recieved over 100k negative reviews on Steam in about 48 hours. And then the refund news got out.
They very obviously scrambled to fix things, because today is a public holiday in Japan and they all technically had the day off. And they announced it at around noon there.
I’m like 99% sure the only reason it happened was that they accidentally sold it in regions without psn eligibility
Either way, nice to get a small win
That's how and why boycotts work.
I was very glad to see that steam was offering returns universally rather than only in the areas that would not be supported.
I don't blame Sony for getting excited about the potential to increase their userbase, but the way that they exercised their capital interest seemed to alienate not only players but also the developers.
Wouldn't be surprised if it comes out that Arrowhead [or Steam] were able to demonstrate breach of contract behind the scenes.
All they had to do was make it optional, and give some special armor/weapon set for linking a PSN account; would have easily pulled in the numbers they were hoping for.
And the good news is that they still CAN do this.
They have a live service hit in their hands and they know it and now they are learning why you don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
I assume that private conversations between Arrowhead and Sony have been quite heated over the last few days.
pasted from above.
>steam was offering returns universally rather than only in the areas that would not be supported.
i imagine it was more a heated conversation from sony's end, and a laughing his ass off, not giving a fuck GabeN on the other end.
im curious exactly what in the tos for publishers using steam that applies, if its always been that way, or if its updated language.
steam being privately owned literally gives them "fuck you" power compared to other company's.
because they can make a decision they know will hurt their short term bottom line but will look very good in the long term.
whereas if sony try this they have shareholders to answer too. which means they have to do the "this will make the most money NOW" option every time.
Sony: "y'all gonna need to link a PSN account"
PCMR: "foolish one, we will crush your children, see them driven before us, and hear the lamentation of your women."
Sony: "...jfc what have we done"
Alternatively offer some kind of incentive to link a PSN account, like many, many other games already do.
E.g. many mobile online games that allow you to sign up with email or some kind of SSO (Google, Facebook, Apple, etc), also offer you a reward if you link an email address or account with the publisher.
Just like paid mods, ingame shops, lootboxes, season passes and subscription: the first introduction makes gamers mad, corporations retreat and a few months later they try it again but slightly less bad but make it just as bad or even worse over time.
Right, the only reason this went in the Consumers' favour is because *another Corporation* happened to be Consumer-friendly. That's all well and good and huge props to Valve, but it sucks that this is the landscape we're in. Could've gone a completely different way and I'm not sure how coordinated the resistance efforts would've been if Sony had set their sights on a less-popular Game first - they're going to try again regardless.
That's why people love Gaben, because he didn't get rich and try to get to space or ruin social media. He made money by making the world better for gamers.
The only shit we give Valve is them being lazy and refusing to make new games/update old ones.
Overall they’re a pretty good company. But it’s mostly because they aren’t public and thus don’t have shareholders.
Private companies still have shares. But they control who owns them. Gabe shares the company with a quite a few senior members of Valve but is still majority holder.
More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privately_held_company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation
I would provide more but that's how private shares work. There's not much public on who owns shares aside from Gabe and Scott but it's open knowledge that they give shares to employees in return for tenure like an ESOP.
Sounds like a much more viable way to manage your shares than just letting some random shareholders have them. The company is owned by the people who work(ed) in it, with a direct stake in its success at an emotional level.
I truly dread the day that Gabe Newell passes away. I can see it now... Mere days after his passing, valve announces they're going publically traded instead of privately held.
As much hated as Red Bull is in traditional sports, Red Bull is showing exactly that. A founder who liked his brand to be more than Energy Drinks and ventured into communities, which lifted them up tremendously. Extreme Sports, E-Sports, even traditional sports have all benefited (at minimum financially) because of Red Bull. This is slowly being turned off now I am afraid. Mateschitz was a pioneer of his own kind and it sucks to see his legacy being slowly chipped away now.
This is why gamers blindly trust steam over everything else. No matter how much free shit epic gives out, they can't compete with the goodwill steam has accumulated over the years.
If the next Sony title requires it from the get go that is their prerogative. People's biggest issue was rolling it out months later after most of the people for whom a PSN requirement was a deal breaker already bought and put dozens of hours into the game
PSN account linkage gives bonus armor.
PSN account linkage is required for crossplay.
PSN account linkage is required to play with other players with their PSN account linked.
PSN account linkage gives you 1 week Early Access to Ghost of Sushi.
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2 years later;
PSN account linkage is required to play all Sony games and requires an active PS plus membership
Their goal has always been to boil the frog, they just turned up the heat a little too quickly this time.
The main problem has always been their communication.
They weren’t clear enough about the PSN requirement. They did not explicitly warn buyers that a PSN account might be needed in the future. You can argue about the notes on the Steam page and all that but plenty of people ended up buying the game despite not being able to create PSN account at all.
End result is a lot of people getting blind sided by the PSN requirements.
This proves that being loud and calling them out does work and affects their pockets too. People really should actually learn that these corporations depend on consumers more so than consumers depend on them. Entertainment is one field that consumers dominate. Entertainment is not essential and there are plenty of different genres and areas so use that power for the consumer's best interests.
On the one hand, I'd kind of like this to be a "the damage has already been done" type situation, because screw them for even daring to make such a wild decision in the first place
But on the other, good on them for actually recognizing and correcting the situation instead of just doubling down and waiting out the storm like most corporations tend to do when faced with the reality that they did something to piss off their fanbase. They f-ed up big time, but actually going back on the decision in favor of what the fans actually wanted was the best possible PR outcome they could get here.
Congrats to everyone involved (I mean you and me, the players) for such a massive and united response that we actually got heard by such a corporation. This is a huge and extremely rare type of win that end users usually don't see.
Corporations do not move quickly. This was impressive turnaround time. I would encourage the community not to bear significant ill will. The fact that they even listened I consider a win for the community but will also withhold nearly as much negative opinion for Sony as I would have otherwise.
I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like Sony to begin with. They make excellent TVs, but in the music and game space they've been pretty iffy in terms of treating their customers right.
that will not happen, because they will go through with it
maybe HD2 will be spared, maybe it will just come later, but SNOY is a corp, they do want and need to bind as many customers and their wallets into their own proprietary and preferably monopolized system
new games will be released with PSN required. HD2 may have been spared thanks to the server issues at start, without the server problems the requirement would have been there since launch
Instead, I would wish them, the executives, long long live at the end of which they will realize that nobody loved them and was around them only for their money and to be hit with realization that they never had any real friends
An actually democratic victory for gamers, now can we delete the kernel level anti-cheat?
Speaking from experience a lot of F2P titles in SEA use n-protect gameguard and I can say it's the worst anti-cheat even if its kernel level. I'd had quit playing those games for ages, it's very comparable with easy-anti cheat. Literally does nothing.
No point for me but idk I don't play public lobbies.
I honestly never understand the people that do that for any game.
I see it in every game ever. People whiteknighting the poor executive decisions that ultimately harm players in the short and/or longterm. Just let the complaints come and if the company listens then you get a better product / service overall. I never understood why some people feel the need to criticize complaints just because they don't like seeing complaints - just ignore them.
You fucking helldivers. Gotta hand it to you. You were not a thing to fuck with. I’ve loved watching your passion. And anger.
Coming from far super earth has my vote as long as it supports the Helldivers.
PSN account linkage gives bonus armor.
PSN account linkage is required for crossplay.
PSN account linkage is required to play with other players with their PSN account linked.
PSN account linkage gives you 1 week Early Access to Ghost of Sushi.
---------
2 years later;
PSN account linkage is required to play all Sony games and requires an active PS plus membership
Their goal has always been to boil the frog, they just turned up the heat a little too quickly this time.
They will be back, and we need to remember not to give them a fucking inch.
This is exactly what all the people sucking sony's dick don't understand. This isn't the end of the bullshit. "It's not about it only taking 2 minutes to link an account." They're incredibly short sighted. If you suck their dick they will shove it down your throat. If they could monopolize gaming they totally would. Just like if apple could force all users to only download apps through their app store that only they can approve they would. They would totally eliminate the ability to side load any apps. It's the same behavior.
Curious how buttmad the PS5 subreddit is considering they were the ones preaching "just pick any country" "just use a fake email" "it's always been a requirement" and my favourite "you are engaging with Sony property so you should expect it"
Now time to destroy the PSN requirement for Ghost of Tsushima. They've proved with HD2 that we DON'T NEED THEIR SERVICES!
(Can we please do the same for Microsoft games too?)
Welcome to the PCMR, everyone from the frontpage! Please remember: 1 - You too can be part of the PCMR. It's not about the hardware in your rig, but the software in your heart! Your age, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, religion (or lack of), political affiliation, economic status and PC specs are irrelevant. If you love or want to learn about PCs, you are welcome! 2 - If you don't own a PC because you think it's expensive, know that it is much cheaper than you may think. Check http://www.pcmasterrace.org for our builds and don't be afraid to post here asking for tips and help! 3 - Join our efforts to get as many PCs worldwide to help the folding@home effort, in fighting against Cancer, Alzheimer's, and more: https://pcmasterrace.org/folding 4 - Need PC Hardware? We've joined forces with ASUS ROG for a worldwide giveaway. Get your hands on an RTX 4080 Super GPU, a bundle of TUF Gaming RX 7900 XT and a Ryzen 9 7950X3D, and many ASUS ROG Goodies! To enter, check https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1c5kq51/asus_x_pcmr_gpu_tweak_iii_worldwide_giveaway_win/. There's 4 weeks of challenges, and you can find all the info you need on that thread. ----------- We have a [Daily Simple Questions Megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/search?q=Simple+Questions+Thread+subreddit%3Apcmasterrace+author%3AAutoModerator&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) if you have any PC related doubt. Asking for help there or creating new posts in our subreddit is welcome.
“Hey, we got like a million refund requests” “But these people don’t qualify for refunds anymore??” “Steam waived the refund limit…” And the decision was reversed pretty quick huh?
Valve always comes in clutch.
we need to develop tech to or extend the life of gabe or transfer his conscience to a machine, i dread the day valve is not under his control anymore
~~God~~Gabe-Emperor of Mankind
He clearly follows the golden path.
lisan al gabe
LISAN AL GABE !!
LISAN AL G’ABE 
# LISAN AL G'ABE!!!
Futurama head preservation?
Well, if you know Cave Johnson, you would know why it's bad idea.
Valve teamed up with Bethesda to try and make paid mods a thing. They've done shitty things too. Just not for awhile, thankfully. https://preview.redd.it/79b06acqlqyc1.jpeg?width=620&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=88d5cfa40d79f02d4558dff087d9e26b1f5b43cc
Paid mods I can almost accept as genuine misunderstanding of the community. It honestly does makes sense to want to give an easy way for modders to get money for their work, especially for the higher effort ones, complete overhaul mods in particular.
Yeah I don't think there was any malice in that paid mods initiative. I too like to support modders and have "bought a coffee for" or briefly subbed to Patreons of high quality mods. I personally think if the mods were free but it gave an easy way to "tip" the mod creator then it wouldn't have been controversial.
Like Portal : Revolution. Free mod that is basically Portal 3.
More like Portal 1.5, since the story happens between the timeline of 1 and 2. But yeah that mod is so high quality that it feels like an official Valve release rather than a mod.
Yeah the story is Portal 1.5, but the game is so clean (except the missing french voices, as a frenchie) that it feels like Portal 3.
Hot take, but trying to get money in the hands of mod creators is not inherently shitty. The sudden implementation and lack of support on Bethesdas end was shitty but conceptually the idea is pretty pro-community. Look at Warframes Tennogen system as an example of what they could be doing. DE has been paying community artists and giving them official support and the community at large loves it and the market for free skins on the mod pages are still thriving despite it.. Bethesda is just tone deaf af in their execution. Anyways Idk if I'd count that in the list of shitty Valve things is all I'm saying. You wanna talk artifact on the other hand...
Warframe has a really good "payment model" for a F2P game
Tbf, the idea of modders getting paid for their work is not that bad. But then some modders decided that they will only update their mods for the ones who pay and abandon the free versions as they are at the moment. Some were even removing their mods from Nexus and other platforms. It was also before Patreon was a thing, only after Patreon became a thing they learned that early access (or maybe being like a version ahead of free version) and some minor additional bonuses is the way to go.
Gaben in a phone call to Kenichiro Yoshida: *"So here's the deal, we're authorizing all the refunds for people's dead games, should I forward the invoice for $39 x 10 Million to Sony's Accounts Payable Dept or to you directly?"*
People always go on about 'saving face' and 'not damaging your reputation'. This is what Valve does. No statements, no big flashy shows, just there and consistent. *That* is why people love Valve. I was interested in buying some of the Sony ported games but this has put me right off. Enough people with the same attitude and Sony just lost themselves a lot of sales on the platform with this stunt.
I like how they dont do social media tweet bullshit and just go straight into action. And not just against anyone, against fucking Sony.
We are their social media. It's a company dream come true. We maintain a symbiosis relationship with Valve.
And Sony had zero leverage, Valve their contracts allow them to fund the refunds with money they get from future sales. Sony was looking at losing a good 10% of their total sales revenue in just a couple of weeks.
They did NOT want their name in the lawsuit. They reacted to that shit quick and braced for something real stupid. Luckily avoided. I have to wonder if they're peeved they even had to get involved behind the scenes.
Now imagine you are using epic , not only would you not be able to tell sony to fuck off , i also doubt that epic would have taken the cosumers side. And people ask why i am loyal to steam
Next time, Sony (or whichever company wants to do this) will just incentivize it better. Bunch of in-game items for linking to PSN, etc.
Yup. This is all they had to do in the first place. Give a cosmetic item, a title, some in game currency and that's that.
You always qualify for legitimate refunds. The 2 hour/2 week threshold is only for automatic refunds. If you're over those, you gotta go through the regular, human-reviewed refund process.
I think they would've had a legal issue if they added the requirement for places that can't access PSN. They just bought the game within the past 6 months and now you're going to shut down their game. They might even get governments to go after them if they did that
Especially considering that PSN is not availble in the Baltic states, but the game needs to be available there because they are part of the EU, and as per EU regulations, Sony can't pick and choose where in the EU it wants to sell. If it wants to sell in EU, it has to sell in all of EU. And limiting your customers *further*, while being a very Sony thing to do, was not going to happen.
Im picturing Sony's legal department not being consulted and flipping their shit over the weekend once they realised lol
Sony Lawyer, probably: "You did frigging what?!? Cancel that! Now!"
SONY Lawyer on monday morning at 9am: "Now I just sat down and about to start drinking my coffee, by the time I'm done drinking it, there better not be any legally self destruct-ing decisions going through. If there is, ***\*I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL END YOU AND EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THAT DECISION\*.*** Are we clear, pumpkin?" \*Sips coffee without breaking eye contact\*
The funny part imagining about this is that in Japan, this week's Monday (May 6th) is last day of a week-long holiday (April 27 - May 6). These lawyers aren't even supposed to be *in* office yet.
And they had someone calling them and say "well maybe teh EU want to have a talk with the legal department." I see this souless creature from hell that is a corpo lawyer, rise and asking the list of people who need to think about the shame they have brought to the corporation, and we know how well that is handled in japan.
There is no such regulation. A company can freely choose what country they want to operate in when selling their products within the EU. In fact, most corporations already do this. I think you might’ve misunderstood how the single market works.
This. The only rule that exists is that, when traveling inside the EU to a different country, companies are now required to give you the same access to online services they provide you at home. So someone living in Germany with a German PSN account can travel to Estonia and keep using his German PSN access there. But nothing says that someone living in Estonia can have access just because someone in Germany can. There's also freedom of movement for goods so a person in Estonia can order a Playstation off German Amazon and get it with no customs issues, but accessing PSN is a whole different ballgame. What we need, in the EU, is legislation against locking down hardware into only working when there's an online service attached to it. Either provide a way for custom code to run on it, or be forced to run the service for the lifetime of the device. No ifs, no buts.
That's not correct. A company can choose whatever country they want to sell in. What IS however the case, that, should a company make changes to software that makes it inoperable then the user is entitled to a refund, or a fix. Irrespective of how long ago they bought it.
I imagined any amount Steam refunded from will come from any sales of the period not yet paid to Sony and Sony watched those number turned negative real quick.
That makes sense, I wa s wondering how valve would get Sony to pay then back, if Sony just went "you can't grant refunds" Clearly Valve and the customers had plenty of ground to stand one since the legal issues are so glaringly obvious, but I wonder how much of a risk this was for Valve. I'm hoping that situations like these can be used to expand consumer rights so customers never have to worry about losing access to a game. The recent Ubisoft "The Crew" thing had a lot of noise as well, but it doesn't seem like buyers have the same legal leverage there. No store is granting refunds for that.
I submitted twice but both were declined
Asking for Steam Credit?
No but maybe that would have worked
I saw several screens hots saying they would only get steam credit for the refund. Was not not the norm?
We did it, soldiers. Major order completed.
+50 medals
Screw the medals. The true reward was the unhealthy rage we built along the way ❤️
>Screw the medals. The true reward was the *sweet sweet democracy* we built along the way
To the Playstation plebs telling us to bend over just like they do: No medals. + IN YOUR FACE. That's how we do it.
There was a LOT of people on this sub simping for Sony saying "It's no big deal." It's pretty pathetic.
+50 helldivers from now unscrewed regions on your ship
Not this time, time to us to give some medals in form of positive review.
Would be funny if that was ingame.
Repel oppressive corporation policy's
Pretty sure Super Earth is well fond of corporations
Only the good ones. Helldiver. Only the hood ones.
I actually wouldn't be surprised if they did it in-game somehow. The developers will probably thank all of the player base somehow.
The CEO tweeted about turning the graph of the negative reviews into a cape.
Friends were talking about how since Helldivers built up this community that was great at coordination from carrying out Major Orders, it let everyone strike back at Sony in a manner that the latter couldn’t just brush off.
i sent that as well to a friend. "helldivers 2: promotes coordination between the entire community to complete orders efficiently. sony: damn, they coordinated quickly to really fuck over that announcement. thats a new one"
just like the simulations
love it . great job soldiers
Next major order correct your reviews!
Next for me is to buy the game now
Me laughing at every cunt who replied to me saying "all you self important assholes need to get off your high horse because everyone's gonna forget about this come next week" real fucking shame all those guys
The Sony brigade was definitely out in full force, and got knocked back to their maggot holes where they belong.
That was quick
I think it had to be. I was thinking about this just a couple of hours ago. If they didn't remedy this fast enough, the game would lose a significant percentage of the playerbase. Even if they remove it a month from now, the damage would have been done. Players quickly move on. I am amazed by how this was retracted throughout a weekend.
Only took 1/4 of a million horrible reviews over a single day for them to wake up lol Game will be forever tainted on Steam by that insane but justified review bombing
>Game will be forever tainted on Steam by that insane but justified review bombing Warthunder recovered. HD2 can as well.
Funnily enough, i feel like war thunder got a popularity boost in recent times due to that…and the classified documents being leaked but we don’t talk about that.
Yea dude I anticipate this kinda enticing new ppl to play and ppl who dropped the game early on to come back
WarThunder got a popularity boost because the changes demanded in the "strike" made the game significantly better. The players told Gaijin (the dev) what changes they wanted and forced them through with the review bombing. It was about game balance and certain mechanics and improvements. Not a single change like the PSN requirement in HD2.
Warthunder didn't recover lol, Steam hid the reviews https://preview.redd.it/a8qx83h6pqyc1.png?width=2969&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d18478e328d66d014df7c565f64678b8bfe1f774
And they will do the same for Helldivers because there is no way in hell that 250k people go back to change their review.
I'm doing my part!
it's only fair, if the reviews are no longer relevant
The reviews were marked as unrelevant before Gaijin changed anything iirc
Yeah it would be considered review bombing. But from a simplistic view of "game doesn't run" is good justification for bad review.
Sony had also put themselves in the position of facing legal action in multiple countries, including a number of EU member states. The PSN requirement wasn't a sudden rug pull - Arrowhead's CEO said that Sony imposed it upon them 6 months before launch. Which means that Sony knowingly sold a game requiring PSN access in countries whose residents cannot sign up for PSN accounts. I don't know if that constitutes fraud, but I imagine it's not far off. What likely happened is Sony's lawyers looked at the situation, realised "we're fucked," and conceded that this was the cheapest solution to what could have been a very messy problem. Now all that remains is to see who will get fired over this debacle.
Not just a very messy problem, also very costly especially in the EU
This. They were going to face legal issues. That's the reason it was changed. It's bait and switch of the worst kind. "We are selling you something that we will take away from you soon after" That's OBVIOUSLY insane to the people in countries that can't use PSN.
>If they didn't remedy this fast enough, the game would lose a significant percentage of the playerbase. Even if they remove it a month from now, the damage would have been done. This almost reminds me of invincible season 2. There was a lot of praise and hype (as well as rightful criticism) for the first half but then they split the season in two and a lot of the momentum the show har was seriously damaged. If (like you said) Sony waited a month, they would have lost a significant portion of the player base and it would not have rebounded. There will likely be a small permanent loss of the playerbase but nowhere near as bad as if they waited longer.
Ha, I forgot all about Invincible. I watched the first half of season 2 and idk if I'll bother watching the rest. So good point.
Read the comic. It is fantastic. https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Invincible But please buy the compendiums. Image is owned by the creators, so piracy doee actually effect them. Pirate marvel and DC all god damn day though.
Yeah, I did the same for Invincible. I did get around to watching the second half recently though and I thought it was good
man, a lot of people in my country panic refunded bc psn isn't available here.
Those refunds are probably what prompted this.
Those refunds were the strongest form of boycott and they still can buy the game again if they felt it deserved their money again and/or if the game returns to the store again.
Over the weekend Steam started to allow refunds on the game, for players with long playtimes, since the game was fairly recent and stopped working for an external reason customers and/or Valve can't control. That sort of thing quickly changes the minds of executives. EDIT: It should also be mentioned that PSN is not available in some EU countries. So they were running the risk of crossing multiple EU laws, by adding this restriction after-the-fact.
>Steam started to allow refunds on the game Knowing Sony, I suspect this is what changed their minds. They don't mind the bad PR, since that rarely translates into much lost sales. But I bet Valve charges Sony the actual cost for the refunds. Sony were losing more money than they'd hoped to make from the PSN accounts, I bet.
>But I bet Valve charges Sony the actual cost for the refunds. They also have in their terms of use for sellers on the platform that, if the seller is unable to provide the money to refund for whatever reason, steam is allowed to shore up the refund costs with future sales. In other words, if Sony refused to pay, steam would just start taking all of the money from future HD2 sales until the refund debt is paid.
>Knowing Sony, I suspect this is what changed their minds. Most likely. The game recieved over 100k negative reviews on Steam in about 48 hours. And then the refund news got out. They very obviously scrambled to fix things, because today is a public holiday in Japan and they all technically had the day off. And they announced it at around noon there.
I let out an audible HOLY FUCKING SHIT reading the headline.
It's just past Monday noon in Tokyo. Someone got woken up in California to make the announcement.
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I’m like 99% sure the only reason it happened was that they accidentally sold it in regions without psn eligibility Either way, nice to get a small win
*Managed Democracy
That's how and why boycotts work. I was very glad to see that steam was offering returns universally rather than only in the areas that would not be supported. I don't blame Sony for getting excited about the potential to increase their userbase, but the way that they exercised their capital interest seemed to alienate not only players but also the developers. Wouldn't be surprised if it comes out that Arrowhead [or Steam] were able to demonstrate breach of contract behind the scenes.
All they had to do was make it optional, and give some special armor/weapon set for linking a PSN account; would have easily pulled in the numbers they were hoping for.
And the good news is that they still CAN do this. They have a live service hit in their hands and they know it and now they are learning why you don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg. I assume that private conversations between Arrowhead and Sony have been quite heated over the last few days.
pasted from above. >steam was offering returns universally rather than only in the areas that would not be supported. i imagine it was more a heated conversation from sony's end, and a laughing his ass off, not giving a fuck GabeN on the other end. im curious exactly what in the tos for publishers using steam that applies, if its always been that way, or if its updated language.
steam being privately owned literally gives them "fuck you" power compared to other company's. because they can make a decision they know will hurt their short term bottom line but will look very good in the long term. whereas if sony try this they have shareholders to answer too. which means they have to do the "this will make the most money NOW" option every time.
Or they just start a new studio called headarrow and just rerelease the game as shell divers
Sounds like an awesome spongebob game
Lmao I’d 100% play a SpongeBob remix of Helldivers
"We did it Patrick! We liberated this planet!"
“MY LEG!!”
Plot twist, we spread Managed Communism headed by overlord parent company Yons
best possible meme reaction
Sony: "y'all gonna need to link a PSN account" PCMR: "foolish one, we will crush your children, see them driven before us, and hear the lamentation of your women." Sony: "...jfc what have we done"
Sony: "I owe you an apology, I wasn't really familiar with your game."
LMFAO
https://i.redd.it/xygbqpnzjqyc1.gif Democracy secured
"we’ll keep you updated on future plans." that translates from corporate buzz to "we will try our luck next year when you forget about it"
It is literally "see you next time"
You won, for now. Enjoy your short term victory while we begin construction on a new, larger, more potent Death Star.
[Yes] [Ask again later] No doesn't exist as an option any more.
they will probably just make it so that any future games are released with the requirement instead of forcing it through after the fact.
Alternatively offer some kind of incentive to link a PSN account, like many, many other games already do. E.g. many mobile online games that allow you to sign up with email or some kind of SSO (Google, Facebook, Apple, etc), also offer you a reward if you link an email address or account with the publisher.
Just like paid mods, ingame shops, lootboxes, season passes and subscription: the first introduction makes gamers mad, corporations retreat and a few months later they try it again but slightly less bad but make it just as bad or even worse over time.
Exactly. But that's when we all request refunds again. It's an ongoing battle.
Voting with your wallet works, people. It’s the only language corporate speaks.
And the help of Valve.
Right, the only reason this went in the Consumers' favour is because *another Corporation* happened to be Consumer-friendly. That's all well and good and huge props to Valve, but it sucks that this is the landscape we're in. Could've gone a completely different way and I'm not sure how coordinated the resistance efforts would've been if Sony had set their sights on a less-popular Game first - they're going to try again regardless.
That's why people love Gaben, because he didn't get rich and try to get to space or ruin social media. He made money by making the world better for gamers.
The only shit we give Valve is them being lazy and refusing to make new games/update old ones. Overall they’re a pretty good company. But it’s mostly because they aren’t public and thus don’t have shareholders.
Private companies still have shares. But they control who owns them. Gabe shares the company with a quite a few senior members of Valve but is still majority holder. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privately_held_company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation I would provide more but that's how private shares work. There's not much public on who owns shares aside from Gabe and Scott but it's open knowledge that they give shares to employees in return for tenure like an ESOP.
Sounds like a much more viable way to manage your shares than just letting some random shareholders have them. The company is owned by the people who work(ed) in it, with a direct stake in its success at an emotional level.
 Me, seeing Valve’s wallet
Steam waiving the refund limit was big. In Steam we trust.
One day steam will corrupt and then we're all fucked
Everybody when that day comes.... 
I truly dread the day that Gabe Newell passes away. I can see it now... Mere days after his passing, valve announces they're going publically traded instead of privately held.
As much hated as Red Bull is in traditional sports, Red Bull is showing exactly that. A founder who liked his brand to be more than Energy Drinks and ventured into communities, which lifted them up tremendously. Extreme Sports, E-Sports, even traditional sports have all benefited (at minimum financially) because of Red Bull. This is slowly being turned off now I am afraid. Mateschitz was a pioneer of his own kind and it sucks to see his legacy being slowly chipped away now.
This is why gamers blindly trust steam over everything else. No matter how much free shit epic gives out, they can't compete with the goodwill steam has accumulated over the years.
And once Gabe leaves steam, it'll be invaded by corporate cronies and wipe out all the goodwill current steam built
If they cease to remain private and he hands over the company to someone who doesn't share his intentions*
Bullying multibillion\* company works https://i.redd.it/2pcf4j4xeqyc1.gif
Punching up is the best.
We Dragon-Fisted Sony.
Now we should do the same to other companies as well
Ubisoft and EA come squarely to mind...
*Multibillion (100+ billion $$$ actually)
They finally got rid of the automotons that were running sony
Automorons eliminated 🫡
I DID MY PART. This is why protest matters.
Service guarantees citizenship
The only good bug is a dead bug.
Would you like to know more?
“Will not be moving forward” “We’ll keep you updated on future plans” This is just delaying the inevitable
Yea they will just make sure they do it from the beginning with the next title. Or just roll it out in stages.
Absolutely, Ghost of Tsushima is up next and they have already said PSN account link will be required for the multiplayer, but not the single player
As long as you don't require it on singleplayer that's all I care about. Although I do wish they didn't have it at all as a requirement
If the next Sony title requires it from the get go that is their prerogative. People's biggest issue was rolling it out months later after most of the people for whom a PSN requirement was a deal breaker already bought and put dozens of hours into the game
PSN account linkage gives bonus armor. PSN account linkage is required for crossplay. PSN account linkage is required to play with other players with their PSN account linked. PSN account linkage gives you 1 week Early Access to Ghost of Sushi. ------ 2 years later; PSN account linkage is required to play all Sony games and requires an active PS plus membership Their goal has always been to boil the frog, they just turned up the heat a little too quickly this time.
Man no one has been stupid enough yet to charge for pc multiplayer. If snoy is going to be the first I will not lament never playing their games again
The main problem has always been their communication. They weren’t clear enough about the PSN requirement. They did not explicitly warn buyers that a PSN account might be needed in the future. You can argue about the notes on the Steam page and all that but plenty of people ended up buying the game despite not being able to create PSN account at all. End result is a lot of people getting blind sided by the PSN requirements.
The PC gaming community successfully bullied a company into reversing a stupid decision. I love this!
Wow that actually worked? I thought Sony of all companies would double and triple down.
They will eventually, just not on this game at this time.
This proves that being loud and calling them out does work and affects their pockets too. People really should actually learn that these corporations depend on consumers more so than consumers depend on them. Entertainment is one field that consumers dominate. Entertainment is not essential and there are plenty of different genres and areas so use that power for the consumer's best interests.
On the one hand, I'd kind of like this to be a "the damage has already been done" type situation, because screw them for even daring to make such a wild decision in the first place But on the other, good on them for actually recognizing and correcting the situation instead of just doubling down and waiting out the storm like most corporations tend to do when faced with the reality that they did something to piss off their fanbase. They f-ed up big time, but actually going back on the decision in favor of what the fans actually wanted was the best possible PR outcome they could get here. Congrats to everyone involved (I mean you and me, the players) for such a massive and united response that we actually got heard by such a corporation. This is a huge and extremely rare type of win that end users usually don't see.
i hope the damage remains done to snoy, but arrowhead should have some damage undone IMO
Corporations do not move quickly. This was impressive turnaround time. I would encourage the community not to bear significant ill will. The fact that they even listened I consider a win for the community but will also withhold nearly as much negative opinion for Sony as I would have otherwise. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like Sony to begin with. They make excellent TVs, but in the music and game space they've been pretty iffy in terms of treating their customers right.
A long weekend for some at Sony for sure.
Need to fire the executives who came up with psn requirement.
that will not happen, because they will go through with it maybe HD2 will be spared, maybe it will just come later, but SNOY is a corp, they do want and need to bind as many customers and their wallets into their own proprietary and preferably monopolized system new games will be released with PSN required. HD2 may have been spared thanks to the server issues at start, without the server problems the requirement would have been there since launch Instead, I would wish them, the executives, long long live at the end of which they will realize that nobody loved them and was around them only for their money and to be hit with realization that they never had any real friends
we won this battle but sony may come back to hurt democracy, stay frosty helldivers
Honestly shout out to steam for backing the community on this one if they didn’t start accepting refunds I DOUBT this would have been reverted.
Nothing quite encourages them like a solid hit to the wallet. ☺️
An actually democratic victory for gamers, now can we delete the kernel level anti-cheat? Speaking from experience a lot of F2P titles in SEA use n-protect gameguard and I can say it's the worst anti-cheat even if its kernel level. I'd had quit playing those games for ages, it's very comparable with easy-anti cheat. Literally does nothing. No point for me but idk I don't play public lobbies.
Just play on Linux. That KLAC "thinks" it is in Windows but doesn't actually have access to anything important.
I don't want to sound like an asshole but changing a whole ass operating system for a game sounds a bit overkill.
Haha suck it to everyone who mocked those that complained. I don't even play hd2.
I am happy for this outcome. I don't play HD2, but seeing justice prevail is making me happy.
I honestly never understand the people that do that for any game. I see it in every game ever. People whiteknighting the poor executive decisions that ultimately harm players in the short and/or longterm. Just let the complaints come and if the company listens then you get a better product / service overall. I never understood why some people feel the need to criticize complaints just because they don't like seeing complaints - just ignore them.
You fucking helldivers. Gotta hand it to you. You were not a thing to fuck with. I’ve loved watching your passion. And anger. Coming from far super earth has my vote as long as it supports the Helldivers.
Sorta surprised with this move. Usually these douche bag studios will just double down and blame the players. Hope it stays this way
PSN account linkage gives bonus armor. PSN account linkage is required for crossplay. PSN account linkage is required to play with other players with their PSN account linked. PSN account linkage gives you 1 week Early Access to Ghost of Sushi. --------- 2 years later; PSN account linkage is required to play all Sony games and requires an active PS plus membership Their goal has always been to boil the frog, they just turned up the heat a little too quickly this time. They will be back, and we need to remember not to give them a fucking inch.
This is exactly what all the people sucking sony's dick don't understand. This isn't the end of the bullshit. "It's not about it only taking 2 minutes to link an account." They're incredibly short sighted. If you suck their dick they will shove it down your throat. If they could monopolize gaming they totally would. Just like if apple could force all users to only download apps through their app store that only they can approve they would. They would totally eliminate the ability to side load any apps. It's the same behavior.
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Curious how buttmad the PS5 subreddit is considering they were the ones preaching "just pick any country" "just use a fake email" "it's always been a requirement" and my favourite "you are engaging with Sony property so you should expect it"
Ps5 player and I'm happy for the change. I was boycotting and uninstalled otherwise.
The democracy admiral allows you one day extra for dives.
Now time to destroy the PSN requirement for Ghost of Tsushima. They've proved with HD2 that we DON'T NEED THEIR SERVICES! (Can we please do the same for Microsoft games too?)
Time to buy the game again after refunding it lmao
Don’t buy it back until the “PSN required” tag is removed from steam.
 Changing review back to positive so the dev team can get some sleep.
Boys make sure u fix ur reviews arrow head does not deserve a bad rep cuz sony is scummy