And then, even if you break their TOS and create an account in another country, you're still constantly inconvenienced - you can't pay for games using your local payment method, for example, and a useful Playstation mobile app is not even listed in the local app store.
IMO they should either provide the same level of service in all countries, or be forced to charge significantly less when selling their hardware in unsupported countries.
I'm just noting the continued slide from wholly owned property to buying property but only leasing the use of it. I'm sure there are many rights-owners worldwide that are thrilled with this concept.
Counterpoint is that jailbreaking is legal so you do technically own the hardware. Issue is that John Deere, Apple, Sony, Microsoft make it impossible to jailbreak hardware nowadays.
Who would force the price change though?
It seems more reasonable for anyone in a country that doesn't have access to PSN just wouldn't bother buying a PS5 regardless if the price.
edit: typo
(In fact Meta's Quest was not available in my country for a few years until Meta changed their mind and removed the need to have a Facebook account as well).
To make Sony care about small countries it would be best for them to band together and act as a group on that. It must hurt them economically
It's the easiest thing in the world to boycott.
And yet, players consistently fail to make the editors pay for their bad behaviors. EA is still craping on their clients. Blizzards fails forward. Loot boxes, DRM, crippling anti-cheat mechanisms, buggy games with expensive DLC and micro payments are everywhere. Sony even infected their customers with a rootkit once.
If you keep giving them money despite this, then they have correctly noted they can charge you for their fun system despite the inconvenience.
Already more games have been created and published than a human could finish in an entire life. And that's games, not music, movies, series or books.
You could just stop buying any new game forever and have an entire life of wonderful gaming experience.
Hell, I'm still playing old snes games, or the flash version of isaac.
So not buying from an editor?
Easy.
Stop complaining.
Act.
There's also still an "early access" stigma even though must major publishers are basically treating "full" release day as an open beta test now.
All of this to say that careful consumers can only affect a small proportion of the games industry's revenue. It's enough to keep indie games and their small studios alive but so far it has had near zero effect on the AAAs. I suspect the layoffs we're seeing across the industry reflect a contraction in the spending of the majority segment but a lot of AAAs seem to be doubling down on targeting that same segment.
Used to be the case for free mobile games at first, now it's everywhere.
But I can completely relate that it is infuriating and that it takes a lot of filtering through the mainstream shit to manage this well.
The latest example of KSP2 is imo a great example, announced in 2019 for release in 2020, delayed several times to go on to launch into a $50 'early access' early last year with far less functionality than the original game and worse bugs and architectural issues. Despite all the glaring warning signs, so many people ate up the promises. They delivered one basic feature in 6 months (reentry heating). Yet the 'trust' from otherwise smart adults remained. It seems they only finally noticed this past week, when the studio making the game was shut down. Now they expect refunds despite all the warnings Steam has against buying early access games based on future promises.
Besides, you make one of the dumbest point I have ever read on this website. Gas prices going up? Pfeh, I heat my house with a bonfire, wake up sheeple.
This comes across as either gaslighting or refusal of evidence - you have a theory that bad players/companies will be punished by the market, and when it doesn't happen, you conclude that it's the consumer's fault.
Maybe you should consider that your theory is wrong, as it does not match the real world. It appears to me that, these days, most of the time bad players do very well in the market.
However, adding a requirement (it was previously optional) is boneheaded, maybe illegal. It must be terrible to be Arrowhead; they have to sit by and watch while their player base implodes because of a Sony edict.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231207163847/https://store.ste...
> „Requires 3rd-Party Account: PlayStation Network”
However, making it purchasable from countries not supported by PSN accounts was big error on their part.
Do I need a PSN account to play PlayStation games on PC?
No, you currently do not need a PSN account to enjoy PlayStation Studios games on PC, but you will need a Steam account to redeem your voucher code. Some of our PlayStation Studios titles also offer incentives for linking your Steam and PSN accounts.
They're changing all their documentation to match their new announcement: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjlnn1/sony_tr...
This is an official page where Sony themselves sell the game via providing voucher codes for steam. You can buy the game here without ever visiting the steam page. This clearly qualifies as false advertising.
Another issue that has been raised is that Sony is notoriously incompetent with customer data.
It seems pretty clear that Sony always intended to require a PSN account (although that wasn't always communicated well, it was stated on the Steam store page, at the end of news articles, and in the game itself) so there was no meeting of minds. Just confusion.
When you start the game, you literally get a full screen banner that says a PSN account is required to play and you must sign in. It's just that until now you could click cancel and the game would still launch.
How can anyone call it "hidden" is literally beyond me. It's not hidden on page 527 of the EULA or something - it's literally said explicitly on a full screen banner shown to every player who has started the game. Not to mention it's mentioned on the Steam store page.
1) This dialog only showed one time, the very first time you launched the game
2) This dialog was skippable
If you skipped it one single time, it let you play for months now without ever seeing it again. If they wanted to make it clear it was mandatory eventually then the wording and behavior should have made this clear every single time you open the game
Allowing to skip means it's not mandatory, regardless of whatever language is written down on the UI, the TOS, on the steam page, or whatever else
If this was enforced upfront, people would have had an opportunity to refund immediately. If it was communicated clearly that the Skip was temporary, people could have made an informed choice about playing
In their defense there is a sentence on that Modal that does say that a PSN account is required to play. It was also included on the Steam store page that it requires a PSN account. The issue I have is that the functionality of the Modal is at odds with the messaging. In this sort of case, I strongly believe that the Functionality should be taken as the fact, not the message.
If the messaging had been more clear that the Skip function was only temporary and a PSN account would absolutely be mandatory in the future then that would be different
As it stands, the message just seems like a Dark Pattern to try and get users who do not notice the skip button to link a non-mandatory PSN account.
No it wouldn't, because people would still complain. There could be a flashing popup present at all times in a corner of your screen saying "YOU MUST SIGN INTO PSN TO PLAY" and people would still complain, there's no satisfying the outrage when it happens.
As it stands, Sony and Arrowhead have created a mess with inconsistent messaging, inconsistent behavior, and extremely poor customer relations
Would easily win a lawsuit.
As a publisher, it is your job to check these things before you process payment, that why you have a department of lawyers and regional availability settings in Steam.
If their system of accounts, online systems and EULA's are mutually contradicting and incompatible mess, that's on them.
Once you have taken my money, it is now your job to provide the service.
But the reality of modern gaming is this: You start a game and do a marathon of pressing "no", "cancel", "skip", "x", "close" etc to shut off all the bullshit it throws at you. I did so with helldivers and was completely unaware what it says about psn. I didn't even know it was a console game or that Sony was involved! And I would never have bought it if I knew. So in practice I'd say it's exactly as hidden as page 527 on EULA
But this requirement had an entire installation page dedicated to it. It was the only text on that page. I'm honestly surprised people somehow missed it.
They never should have allowed sales in countries where people cannot legally sign up for a PSN account. Especially when they allowed those players to play for months and are now "banning" them, preventing them from playing the game they paid for.
In addition, literally the only place where this requirement was stated was the steam sale page - the EULA had no mention of the PSN account, Sony's webpage explicitly stated you did not require an account to play playstation games on PC.
> Not to mention it's mentioned on the Steam store page.
On the sony online store it's stated that it is not necessary.
On May 4, the day after this shitstorm happened, the FAQ was updated to say that some games on PC may require a PSN account
This was rolled out in absolutely amateurish fashion from start to end. Sony should absolutely be taking heat for this, and no one should be going to bat for them over it.
1) the Steam page made it very clear the PSN is required
2) the game makes it extremely clear with a full screen banner that says you MUST sign in to play.
Honestly, if you bought the game on Steam then Sony's FAQ is irrelevant. If you bought it from Sony then I guess there is some case there.
Sony's FAQ is absolutely relevant here, and they clearly agreed which is why they changed it
So no, nothing was "added".
> https://direct.playstation.com/en-us/buy-games/helldivers-2-...
You're not a developer that signs with a publisher like Sony without knowing the risks.
Happens all the time. Sony is the publisher. A lot of publishers "ruin" games.
Or, you know, don't make agreements that will upset your player base? I'm sure they never were forced to do anything Sony says, except if they entered into a business agreement with Sony, which again, is their own choice, and the developer knew about these requirements from the beginning, but made the requirement optional as they didn't get the technical details right at launch to require PSN.
It must great to be Arrowhead, where players seemingly blame the publisher like the developer has no responsibility over their own game.
It's the fact that modern living simply requires a phone is why the EU is so upset with Apple and Google putting up their garden walls.
"Are they essential for day to day life" is a new one. I'm not sure that makes sense either, but I'll give you points for originality! It's also debatable whether phones are essential for day to day life, but we can leave that in another thread.
I don't know if everything that has been labeled a console matches this description. Some "consoles" have indeed been stretching any meaningful distinction to or even past the breaking point.
But I will unashamedly go "no true Scotsman" on those: If a machine has a secondary (tertiary, quadrutionary, ...) specific focus with dedicated interface, it might still be a console. Illustration: a console that also can play dvd's ia a dedicated dvd interface. However, if the interface is generic and just waiting for the right app, not so much.
The point is not "can it do general-purpose computing" - a lot of devices can be made to run some linux. The pertinent question: is it made to support general-purpose computing out of the box? Things that I would call game consoles aren't - they're platforms for gaming.
Literally from the first time people argued about this, that was at the core of the issue.
Nobody cares if you're creating a hardware device that can only run your OS and Apps if its not in widespread use. The issue occurs only once they're entrenched and can use their market position as an unfair advantage, which apple unashamedly does.
(And so does Nintendo and Sony with their gaming system, yes. The reason why almost nobody cares is because they're not in widespread use. And if they abuse their market position they also get a lot of flak. A lot more then apple ever gets, that's for sure. Just look at the helldivers 2 debacle last week, Nintendo banning people that mod their games in single player etc.)
Doesn't matter. If I truly own the hardware, I should be able to run my own software.
Toasters also aren't essential to day to day life. Toaster manufacturers aren't putting sophisticated cryptographic locks on their products to keep me from toasting my own bread.
Don't give them any ideas. Coffee brewing machines are already there (kind of).
Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean they can defraud their users
Most the time they break their own Eula, lose customer data, change rules on the fly, etc.
(I agree the behaviour would be regulated a bit either way. But it's not even close to "prison")
Sure, but you are in no way forced or pushed to do that. You only do it if you really want to play their exclusive games. It's a completely free choice in a way that choosing a smartphone isn't (due to various apps being close to required for modern life)
Don't buy the console. Or buy it and something else as well. It's a very fancy toy.
On pmOS, there's also full KVM virtualization support (works out-of-the-box on most aarch64 devices) for more picky apps, as well.
But anyway. I don't want to start the pointless flame war for the milionth time. I think I just have a different definition of "modern life", which is based on using what was considered high-tech not so long ago, like high-throughput radio links and instantaneous worldwide communication (including things like video), without giving up any control. It's not needed to do the abovementioned, so why would I?
BTW, 90% of internet services of any kind still serves "web apps". Which is far from perfect, but gives best compatibility and security out of all technologies we've managed to push to very high adoption.
Personally, I think exclusivity deals need to be banned. The are an inherently anti-competitive practice that does nothing to help consumers.
Given that Sony is historically extremely bad about allowing any crossplay, your argument that exclusive games are the only reason people are pushed into buying a PS is false.
Gaming is part of many people's social lives and Sony deliberately exploits this to maintain market dominance.
Insisting that consumer purchasing decisions are the only or best way to deal with monopolies ignores history and reality.
Videogame consoles are typically not marketed as general purpose computers.
Out of the box, the only thing I can do on my Nintendo Switch is play videogames.
Video game consoles have been crippled so that it would be misleading to market them as general purpose computers.
However, the videogame industry in its entirety was dead-lifted from its premature grave by one "Nintendo Family Computer".
Consoles maybe, but I don't think that the early 8/16-bit microcomputers were affected by the crash of 1983, and in any case the crash was mostly a US phenomenon with minor effects on other regions.
In fact, I was not even sure it had one. I had to look it up and found this: https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/how-to-use-hidden-ninte...
It would be difficult to make a case that the average user would see this as a general purpose computer.
Therefore, not a "general purpose" computer anymore.
AFAIK at the country level ios market share tops out at around 60%. That's nowhere near a "monopoly".
There was no way for iOS except Apple's App store.
I want my delegates to regulate the market to make it more fun to me.
One option more.
The hardware enforced only one store
> on steam the delisting seems to have affected almost no active players
in most cases, if you bought a game on steam before it got delisted, you can still play it. even if you uninstalled it in between, you can re-download it.
the actual impact won't be fully visible until May 30th or June 4th since that's when they will start blocking access to the game for players who didn't link their accounts[1].
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/553850/view/41968685...
I really doubt that there is a single technical reason behind the decision, it's more likely that it has been enforced by Sony business peeps.
> look at steam charts, the player count did not take any obvious hit
> the actual impact won't be fully visible until May 30th or June 4th since that's when they will start blocking access to the game for players who didn't link their accounts
Helldivers is PvE game-as-a-service and it's model works best when network effects are strong. Basically a lot of people are playing such games because their friends are playing it. And the most opinionated and active people are the ones who bring their friends into the game.
So even if relatively small percent of active playerbase will leave the game they'll likely to take some of their friends with them, etc.
Suuurrree, there are rumours about Xbox (https://insider-gaming.com/sony-helldivers-2-on-xbox/) but I’m gonna go out a limb here and say there’s sweet duck all chance in hell of that happening now.
PSN accounts are subject to their own, malleable ToS whereas they are somewhat limited in their reprisals against a steam account, beyond simple bans.
The impact has not even happened yet, as the news was released a few days ago, just before the weekend; the majority of players are probably not even aware of it yet. After a week or two, we will see what the true impact really is.
Checked out of curiosity, at the time I started writing this comment, the Steam store page lists a total of 465,340 reviews for Helldivers 2, of which 137,264 are negative reviews left in the last three days. The game was released ~3 months ago, giving us the beautiful statistic that over 3 months, 1/3rd of all reviews were negative reviews left in the last 3 days.
The enforcement makes this game a waste of time and money for 170 countries.
The devs have explicitly warned those users to not create an account in a different region to get around this, as it is an explicit ToS violation.
any older users here may remember the SOE (sony online entertainment) days. They’d do evil stuff that would make this look like a rookie move.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
I guess lawyers at valve had to work extra to come up with a decision, because they're probably going to court over this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
I feel bad for Arrowhead, but let it be known that if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Maybe next time they'll think twice before partnering with such a trash company.
Arrowhead are literally saying that requirement was always there, it was just temporary not enforced/supported. It's not Sony that suddenly introduced that new requirement.
Arrowhead were the ones having this delayed-change-of-contract. Arrowhead allowed their game to be sold in countries where you will not be able to play.
This is the thing that I'm not sure of and that I think the question of whether to blame Arrowhead depends on. Who authorized selling it in non PSN countries in the first place? Is that Arrowhead's responsibility as a studio, or Sony's responsibility as a publisher?
Considering you can find locations to buy the physical game on Playstation's official website, even in unsupported countries, I'm leaning towards the latter
I can't imagine they the tracking data they get from accounts is more profitable than an actual sale.
Perhaps they're convinced that forcing people to create accounts somehow leads to more future sales?
Also apparently in some countries, Sony will verify the age and identity of users by having them upload a govt id and add selfie.
I don’t remember this step in USA based accounts though. So ymmv
Helldivers 2 on ps5 requires at least a paid psn membership. In order to do that, a payment needs to be on file.
This is just purely a guess, but I suppose Sony doesn’t have the appropriate licenses to operate in those countries and thus cannot take payment.
They could take payment via ps gift cards but that user would have have to fraudulently claim they are located in another country and buy ps gift cards from that country to get the credits.
Depending on country, user may pay more or less than what it would retail in user country.
After digging into the network tab, seems I'm failing a fraud screen somehow. No way to get around it.
Oh well, guess I won't buy your game.
"errorCode": 3329793,
"humanReadableCode": "failedFraudScreen",
"humanReadableValidationErrors": [],
"apiName": "purchase"As a PC gamer I would be pissed too tbh (on the other hand, it's the same bullshit that Ubisoft pulls for their games released on Steam).
Though that seem to be enforced less often than people think it is, one Philippine player (a country that did not have PSN) was ejected from Sony's live esports events because of them entering using another country's flag (in this case, Hong Kong - it is a common practice for players in ASEAN region without PSN, such as Philippines and Vietnam, to create an Hong Kong or Singapore account): https://www.carmudi.com.ph/journal/local-player-qualifies-gr...
This sounds like a very simple class action
Also this is happening in other countries, not USA.
In the end I suspect affected players will get a refund.
It isn’t as big a deal as the gamers are making it seem.
So yah, they are kinda fucked if the EU comes after them legally.
I think players were already asked to link their accounts since the game's release, but it was optional (in the sense that you could easily skip that step).
also, for further context, here's the official announcement that sparked this whole thing: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/553850/view/41968685...
PSN is available in 73 out of 195 countries, while Steam is available everywhere.
Shouldn't that put the number of countries where the game isn't available anymore at 122 instead of 177?
(not that it matters much in practice of course)
From Google, 2017.
The English term “country” is ambiguous. In a narrow sense it means only sovereign states, but in a broader sense includes overseas territories and even some subnational divisions (e.g. the four countries that make up the UK)
https://github.com/RudeySH/SteamCountries/blob/master/json/c...
Too many good games have had their player bases gimped by the rise of stupid “one hit wonder” games like palworld or helldivers 2.
The Finals is somehow struggling to maintain a decent player base despite being objectively one of the freshest and best game releases in a decade. I can’t get my friends to play it because they’re too busy memeing about space bugs on a mediocre shooter.
Glad to see that these games time and time again shoot themselves in the foot. Good riddance!
The game that plays you, too
They arent designed for your fun necessarily, but rather addictive mechanism that keep you coming back.
Obviously dopamine from slot machine mechanisms and winning. Oxytocin from online gaming... These companies know how to make addiction.
Whole issue here is not about game at all, but about Sony being player hostile company and just plain breaking some customer protection laws.
All in all, it is a pretty reasonable and non-exploitative monetization and is about the limit for what I would tolerate in a game I already paid for.
If you mean something like 'contemporary', then I'd like to mention that casino-like elements where rather common in the video game boom of the 1990s. Could for example listen to how old-fashioned Sonic sounded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gsa_4s3CjmI
I guess no Holy warriors in the crusade for defending Earth ?
In 177 countries to be exact. For context, there are 195 countries in the world.
Best avoid games with little yellow boxes, especially if you prefer just playing games vs legal drama. (And of course gog.com doesn't have any little yellow boxes)
EDIT: I feel like I should point out that PC players don't need PS plus to play multiplayer, I think literally every copy would be refunded if they tried to pull that one.
Seems more like the gaming community was looking for a reason to be pissed off than this being an actual issue. I wouldn't be surprised if this was being stoked by the same folks trying to create antisemitic conspiracies about diversity consultants (check out NeverKnowsBest's Gamergate 2.0 video for context, https://youtu.be/CGmESJM6BFQ?si=RsfLWiewo7uXZY8r )
They shouldn't have sold the game on Steam in countries where PSN is not available.
yep, as simple as that this would have made the situation much better. Game would have gotten lower scores and player base overall. Doing it now and like this leaves the feeling, that they got enough money from sales and now they want to bring some traffic to psn
For many years, I wouldn't connect an actual payment to my account due to security concerns and would just go to the store to buy a gift card whenever I wanted to make a digital purchase. There's no reason why you can't import the gift cards.
Basically, the whole "create an account in a different country" thing is an IQ test like the "enter an age of 13 or older to create an account" IQ test that was forced onto the internet by a stupid law the US government passed in the late 90s. Just use the obvious workaround to protect the company from legal liability over stupid laws like a normal person would.
[0]: https://www.siliconera.com/how-to-make-a-japanese-ps4-and-ps...
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-win...
[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/playstation/comments/x61kb7/ps5_chi...
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/553850/view/41968685...
Attention Helldivers,
Due to technical issues at the launch of HELLDIVERS™ 2, we allowed the linking requirements for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to be temporarily optional. That grace period will now expire. See details below in this post.
Account linking plays a critical role in protecting our players and upholding the values of safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games. This is our main way to protect players from griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behaviour. It also allows those players that have been banned the right to appeal.
As such, as of May 6th, all new HELLDIVERS 2 players on Steam will be required to connect their Steam account to a PlayStation Network account. Current players on Steam will start to see the mandatory login from May 30th and will be required to have linked a Steam and PlayStation Network account by June 4th. PlayStation Network accounts are free and easy to set up using this link https://www.playstation.com/support/account/create-account-f...
We understand that while this may be an inconvenience to some of you, this step will help us to continue to build a community that you are all proud to be a part of.
Many thanks for your continued support of HELLDIVERS 2!
Sony Interactive Entertainment
That Sony was selling the game to 150 countries with the intention of making all of those purchases unusable?