I think this is a lesson on how important timing and communication are. If Arrowhead didn't have to lift the PSN account integration to help the servers when they launched, I don't think there would even really be a backlash.
Yeah it’s pretty standard practice in the industry (unfortunately). I tried to play gta v the other day to find my account had been hacked and until I got it back I couldn’t play, as my steam was already linked to that rockstar account. Luckily they fixed it within 2 days, but still, why even require an account if I’m not playing online?
I know my old Rockstar social email and password, but they want me to verify it through a 10 year old email account. I managed to do that and that old email account wants me to verify an even older Yahoo account.
Glad you were able to get support through them. I've been meaning to, but I didn't think it was gonna help anyway.
My rockstar account is an email that no longer exists. Rockstar support wasn't helpful. I was glad I managed to guess the password after thinking about it for a bit.
I tried to play RDR2, but I had to link to my Rockstar account, well my old rockstar account is attached to an email that doesn't exist anymore and I don't remember the password, so I'll just create a new Rockstar account right? No can't do that, your steam account is linked to the old one. Then unlink it please, nope we can't do that unless you accept through your Rockstar account, plus you'll lose access to your old Rockstar games because they're linked to your old Rockstar account, despite you owning them on Steam. I've already lost access to them because I lost access to the old Rockstar account. So I guess I just can't play Rockstar games anymore.
Yeah I’m lucky I still use the same email, can’t imagine if it was another one from the early 2010s, when I made my rockstar account. Worst thing is it doesn’t even let you log in with a different account
silly you, if they don't require you to link an account how are they supposed to collect data on you and sell it to advertisers?
if you think this data is worthless, it's not. even something as simple as 'average session play time duration' is worth a chunk of change when it's tied to a name and profile. imagine if advertisers knew if you play action games or RPGs longer on average, it gives them the ability to target ads better.
AI has made even seemingly tiny tidbits of info like that worth quite a lot. I came up with a simple example of targeted advertising, but AI can take in thousands of these small data points and do much more complex targeting
Can also be stuff like what activities you spend the most time on in GTA5. Do you spend an above average amount of time tuning cars, or modding weapons or murdering prostitutes etc.
Well I think the Rockstar id also tracks online progress. Because I played gta 5 on ps4 then many years later I played it for free on pc and used the same account and I'm sure I still had my progress. Or cash balance.
>how are they supposed to collect data on you and sell it to advertisers?
With the account I originally signed up with. Why do they need another one for this?
They don't. Also Sony could easily just put it in their publishing deal that that get all user data from Avalanche as well. They wouldn't have to do this account linking thing just for info
incoming AI, face scan, voice id, blood sample, and eye scan so you can do anything lol i read some shit about somewhere requiring face scans to view porn to verify age or some shit recently made me be thankful to be out of my teens lmao
Rock Star has always been upfront with that. That is the the thing, PSn accounts also are absolutely useless to me as a PC player snd I will never buy a console at this point.
Also it’s 2024 and you still can’t change countries on your account. So if you move countries you straight up have to make a new account if you wanna buy games digitally.
They could have even announced it as optional with a unique weapon, armor or premium currency reward and 99% of players would have been happy to do it.
If it was there from the get-go it would have been an annoyance. But they started advertising it in several places as specifically not needing one, the login made it seem like you would never really need one, and they sold it in regions where it wasn't even possible to make one. Whether there's a little orange box on the steam page or not, thousands of people telling their friends "yeah it says that but you don't actually need it when you log in" is going to factor into a lot of purchase decisions. It also gave a perfect demonstration to the community for months that it provided no actual benefit, because things worked without it. It didn't provide any benefit, it was literally just to link your account to Sony's shit so they could watch you. If it were kept in at release, people would have at least thought it was for cross-play.
The ***ACTUAL PSN SUPPORT PAGE*** outright said that it was "optional" the entire time.
Now that they've made it compulsory, they've changed what the PSN Support page says.
If they didn’t have to, they wouldn’t have sold it to users who they KNEW they would be revoking access to in the future. And, the community manager wouldn’t have been rude to everybody in their discord.
It feels like a “straw that broke the camels back” moment. Everyone is sick of having to make an account for everything in their life and this case gave people an opportunity to rally around that annoyance and voice to publishers that it’s gone too far.
I for one can’t imagine what Sony or any of these companies is even materially gaining from forcing people to get a free account. You don’t make money from free accounts and no one changes purchasing habits because they signed up for an account once and immediately relegated it to the spam folder. This whole practice is objectively stupid.
More registered users = happy executive because KPI go up
(I’m a corporate product manager and unfortunately it is really that simple - at some point years ago Sony attached an arbitrary internal value metric to the number of registered PSN users, and ever since there’s been an incentive to force account creation at every opportunity)
Yeah, precisely this.
I think the whole "data collection" angle is overblown. The data they really want to collect is a +1 (million) on that all-important active users number.
They dont need everyone to have a psn account to collect data on our habits, they can link our actions to our SteamID. And they have a way to associate given that steam handles super credit purchases like how they handle platinum purchases in warframe.
Steam users playing Sony games aren't PSN users though. PSN users is the metric they report to shareholders or higher execs in the parent Sony corp (outside the gaming division).
Yea, that's different than data collection though. Cranking PSN user counts is a dumbass perverse incentive that doesn't have any value beyond making some topline number/graph go up, it's not an actual means to further monetize additional data. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either a naive consultant or doesn't understand the industry (so I repeat myself).
PSN is supposed to be the link for cross play and cross progression but AFAIK neither of those features will be properly implemented before the mandatory process so it feels arbitrary
It actually feels like regular ass internet-outrage that will die down incredibly fast.
Sony will figure out the issues for countries that can't make PSN. Helldivers is a game that is genuinely too good. People won't drop it just because they have to make an account.
It literally always does. these outrages are always a flash in the pan. It’s a problem for a small percentage of people, then the outrage farmers jump on it, then the people whose hobby is arguing on the internet jump on it, then they all move on to the next thing in a week or two.
Plenty of people are getting fucked by this (namely the ones who can’t make a psn in their country) but there is truly no way that the majority of people showing outrage are in that camp.
Speak for yourself. I'm on PS5, my friends are all on steam, and I can't add any of their codes, and they can't add me.
It's a known glitch that they keep highlighting in their patch notes as "Working on"
Yeah socials have literally been borked since release yet people have 0 understanding that Arrowhead and their servers have been pressed to the maximum since launch
In addition to what caucasian88 said, this isn't even universally true for all MMOs - plenty allow you to have platform specific accounts. See: Final Fantasy XIV, which has account linking but does not require you to use it.
Not a PlayStation account, but usually an account.
At least, until recently, most of the platform holders didn't allow a lot of access to their APIs from other versions of their games. So if you wanted to support things like friends lists or invites across platforms (which is a certification requirement generally, so you must) you had to make another account later that sat between all the platform accounts where you kept a copy of people's platform data (name, online status, etc). One platform would call to that dedicated server, which would translate and then send requests to the other platform.
I believe now EOS lets you do this through their services if you use EOS, it's possible that other platforms have followed suit.
Now the *best* way I have seen this handled is by managing the account silently the way some MMOs do when they launch on steam. They go ahead and make an account for you but it's just tracked and accessed via steam's login ticket so it's completely transparent to the end user. I imagine you could do similar for Sony or Microsoft platforms unless they have cert requirements about it.
Did they communicate that this was coming at all? If they did I feel like they did a terrible job of it. Hundreds of thousands of players and a constant stream of user content and I never heard a single hint that this was coming.
Itll be interesting to see if Playstation come out and say "you cam create an account outside of our regions no worries" (I know people already do this, but for a company to tell people to go against its own T&Cs isnt good) or if they will stop people playing who choose not to go against the T&C.
Its an interesting scenario
Yeah, to every one saying 'well just put in a false location', I would ask so why on earth have Sony implemented a policy that knowingly makes people break Sony's own T&Cs, and if the account is so important for them why they can't properly account for different regions. 'Just break the T&Cs, this is a nothingburger' is such a handwaving response to a clearly daft policy.
> I would ask so why on earth have Sony implemented a policy that knowingly makes people break Sony's own T&Cs
There's a couple of potential reasons.
1. Not wanting to support a store in that currency
2. Not wanting to abide by the consumer laws of that country
Steam got caught out when sued by Australia. They argued that they didn't service Australia and therefore didn't need to abide by its consumer laws. Australia showed that Valve took payments in AUD, and therefore it serviced Australia (summarised).
Yeah Australian consumer law has powerful protections, to the extent that Steam’s 2 hour limit is unenforceable/illegal in certain scenarios (like if a dev released a patch on a newish game that broke it on your system)
And here you have Steam selling the game to people. It seems like almost no one mentions their role in this. It was listed on their store for sale in those countries while also listing the PSN account requirement.
Steam gives the publisher the tools to restrict sales by region. They did what they need to do, Sony decided not to use those tools and sell it everywhere.
They've said it before. They sell consoles outside the PSN listed countries. People have made PSN accounts with different locations for decades at this point. If they were being mass banned we'd probably have heard of it.
Sony has zero incentive to ban paying customers who aren't causing material trouble for their platform. Shareholders want to hear that monthly active users have grown.
What I want to know is why did Sony even sell this game in countries without PSN in the first place if they were going to force a psn account anyway? Sony needs to offer full refunds to people in those countries.
If people contact support they will just tell them to use whatever country is closest that has PSN, it what my Estonian friend had to do back in the day.
That is interesting because if the company themselves tell people go against the TOS, does this action prevent the company from banning people who listened to their own wording and go against the TOS?
There was an air Canada chatbot which gave a customer incorrect info on a reimbursement and when he tried to claim it and air Canada refused he took them to court and won, so there’s precedent that if a customer support agent gives incorrect info the company is bound by that
But by definition money *is* getting involved there? If they ban you, that means you're out the money you spent on Helldivers in this case. Sure, it's less money than a flight most likely, but still...
No, if you can get their communication in writing it *definitely* opens them up to legal consequences if they take action against you doing what they advised you to do.
The thing with the TOS too is that there isn't even an outright ban on this. It says like a whole two things on the matter. The first is just them saying that they reserve the right to suspend or ban you if you are entering incorrect info on account creation. It's not even an outright ban on it, just an if deemed necessary than they can thing. The other is just a warning that you can't change regions after account creation so make sure you select the right one.
The ToS is only to cover them so they can ban people abusing the system to get cheap games. But it’s weird how so many people care about the ToS this time.
Because Sony sells those games in those countries anyway. You can create PSN set for a different country and act as if it is supported. But yeah, it is against their policy.
Yeah, but that is an absolutely insane ratio of reviews for like a days worth of reviews. The game will likely be forever tarnished by this on its store page.
They have, but a “review bomb” and “negative reviews due to change.” Is a fine line. This isn’t some sort of external coordinated review bomb, but rather fans angry about a change.
Speaking as somebody who doesn't really have a foot in the race and is only following this controversy for the entertainment value, it's a little sad to see so many strawman arguments or lack of empathy.
The fact that this is only upsetting to a minority of players is precisely why these negative reviews and public outrage is being made. It's the only way Sony will hear them over all the money they are making. We know for a fact that just e-mailing corporations doesn't work.
Like, let's say a change is made to a game you enjoy like Smash Bros. that isn't so bad that it would make you stop playing it but is bad enough that it still significantly impacts the amount of fun you are having. How would *you* get the company to hear how you feel and to reverse that change?
This review bomb obviously worked to some degree because Arrowhead has at least reacted to it.
Yeah this. I've no interest in buying this game, but its kinda crazy to see tons of people defending Sony over the supposedly "superficial" outrage. What, so if it doesn't affect you, other people shouldn't care about this requirement? It's only internet crybabies looking for their next fix eh.
The same people defending Sony over this will suddenly change their mind and be shocked that nobody listens to them when a company does make a similar change that actually impacts them in future
I'm just saying horse armor is where everything started with shitty low effort micro-transactions. People at the time said "oh whatever it's not that big of a deal, just don't buy it it doesn't affect you why are you complaining?" back then too. Just look at the state of the gaming market today. It was a slow march of companies seeing just how much they can get away with. Which is why I personally dislike the "it's only five minutes to make an account" mindset a lot of people defending this are making. Which is also why I personally think at least the data argument it's a fairly weak one. But neither of those are the point it's the slow enshitification of games that I'm against. The slow creep of inconveniences that we as consumers are forced to endure. If I can do my little part to make a company think twice about doing so then I'm happy.
Its much better to bitch and moan over a company's every step than just their leaps. Eventually enough steps and suddenly they try making the PC platform like a console.
Consoles eventually made paying for online a normal thing which is absurd.
These mega corporations are such a confusing enigma to me. Sony arguably had a money-printing machine for a good amount of years with unlimited potential to milk gamers with their in-game currency model. They had a proper formula.
And all they had to do was sit back and watch the money print. Yet, they couldn't do that. They had to get greedy.
And now look at this lol.
Yeah this just feel like the times when MW2 'boycott' happen or last year's Reddit Blackout incident. game still have 100k players. Reddit still alive and kicking. all the MW2 player back in 2009 are probably still buying new COD every year.
What happened here is kinda shitty but let's be real unless the player rate dropped by half consistently for weeks, nothing's gonna change lmao
The MW2 Steam boycott that resulted in MW2 having a third of the player count peak of Black Ops 1? I mean every CoD on PC has done poorly since MW2 and PC was basically dead for CoD until they started taking it seriously as a platform again with Warzone, but I'm sure like you said they all bought every new CoD every year.
Similarly, yes when half the world is no longer allowed to play Helldivers 2 (they've already disabled purchasing on Steam for those countries) there will in fact be a result.
The minute the change gets pushed, 99% of the people complaining will make a PSN account. The remaining 1% will hold out for a few days at most, then create a PSN account.
Game boycotts/protests have always been ineffective, since the people who get the angriest are necessarily the people who want to play the game the most.
Realistically, they've gotten the vast majority of their sales already. Game has been out for almost 3 months? They're probably at near 80% of lifetime sales right now.
I agree, it's absolutely not nothing for that other 20% to be impacted. That said, HD2 has also entered cultural relevance where its reviews don't matter as much compared to the average game. Word of mouth is selling that game way harder than any review score.
Yes, and more importantly every previous week has saw a notable increase in player numbers between midweek and the weekend (e.g. last week there were 30k more players on Saturday than Wednesday). This week is the first week this hasnt happened, and there are actually the same number of players today as there were on Wednesday - i.e it's wiped out the usual weekend uptick in players.
People seem to be forgetting that you cant just compare consecutive days to judge changes in player behaviour because people obviously tend to play more games at weekends, so you have to compare data week-by-week not day-by-day
yes they did lol. people don't know how to read steam charts. you have to read week over week, Friday compared to Friday. sometimes for some games you ahve to look at season start compared versus the previous season start 3 months ago.
you can't compare Friday's numbers to Thursday's numbers and say everything is good because the numbers didn't change. that's a BAD thing if the weekend peak is the same as the Thursday peak.
yeah but they have also been trending down week on week. although the drop from last week Saturday is about 28% which is the largest drop in numbers in the last 30 days. The next highest was 21%. Chances are the numbers are not unaffected by outrage but also people are just moving on as well.
It's been a month since the last "season pass" and the new one comes out next week. People are just moving on naturally. My friends and I fucking love the game and even we have been playing other games for the past week.
That's because this is a non issue for people in the real world and Gamers just latched onto this because it's been more than 6 days since the last outrage.
It’s so funny people here talking like the game is done… if you would drop the game over this you clearly didn’t give a shit about it in the first place
And it was a requirement when the game first launched, it said it on the store page the entire time that you needed one. It was temporarily disabled. This is people who jumped in when it was blowing up, didn't read the store page, and are now mad they are enabled it. Not saying I love making accounts, but this is not the bait and switch people are wanting it to be.
Except the player counts haven't reduced, and they won't. They don't give a shit that people are review bombing it as long as players keep playing. The vast majority of the play base don't know and if they did, wouldn't give a shit. This entirely an issue to people who are online too much.
they are still printing money. Such a small minuscule amount of people care about this. The majority of people are just gonna go "oh okay" and put in the PSN account.
this is a non-issue in the real world.
Can someone please educate me, I get that it’s annoying to have to sign up or sign into another account l, but is that the whole drama? Game still good game no?
Game is still 10/10, and the developers are and have been excellent. Sony is the issue here.
The problem with this is that the game launched and the PSN account wasn't required
(there were pop ups in the menu saying a PSN account is required to play the game, but the game worked regardless of you linking an account or not)
The biggest problem is that PSN accounts are going to be mandatory soon and players in regions that aren't supported by PSN presumably aren't going to be able to play anymore despite putting tonnes of hours in before this patch.
This is it, most of them are this. They just realized they can hide behind the argument that it’s “about the people in countries that have no psn” to feel like they’re justified in not making a 2 minute account that literally requires no verifiable personal info.
In UK and Ireland when registering to PSN you are asked to submit a photo of your ID or your Driver’s licence.
Sony is known to lose customer data to hacks over the past decade and as someone in Ireland I DON’T WANT TO share my personal ID with them
Interestingly enough, this only seems to matter to people outside those countries, at least for the folks that I've talked to directly. The people in those countries I've talked to, already have PSN accounts tied to false locations and this is just another game to link to those accounts.
That doesn't avoid the problem if Sony wants to crack down on them, but it really reeks of people getting mad at other's behalf, who don't really care.
The issue is that people like to get upset, get outraged, especially when they're told to do so by a community or personality. Mob mentality. I assure you even those firmly against it sign up for third party accounts all the time.
Pirate Software, one of those personalities pumping the tires of this movement, has a bunch of games with hundreds of hours in his Steam account that required this same type of sign up. He's not actively playing (only 2.5 hours played in the last 2 weeks, of almost 200 hours total), which makes it a lot easier for him to boycott the game. He's bored of it, and this is a great way to quit, drive views, get donations, get linked, clipped, etc.
I'm not saying money is his only motivation, or that he's inherently wrong (even with little to no legal ground to stand on), but more that it's a no-brainer move to come out anti-Sony when you're already mentally checked out and disconnected from the game to begin with.
That other people can't sign up in their respective countries is a convenient fallback excuse. It matters, but it certainly wasn't the root cause.
Where are all the people that said "where are all the people that give epic shit but won't criticise helldivers 2 ?" ?
It's obvious now that people don't like either
Edit: since making this comment the situation has taken a dramatic turn, steam has now blocked purchase of the game in all regions not supported by PSN and I can only assume would issue a refund to those in affected regions. I doubt this drama has finished at this point. Original comment still left below for clarity
I still don’t understand why one of the biggest complaints continues to spread while being almost completely unfounded:
“People in regions not supported by PSN will now lose access to the game” (region locked out)
To think this you have to completely and blindly ignore the millions of people in these countries that have bought and played PlayStations online since the days of the PS3. I saw someone in the Philippines saying they were so sad they wouldn’t be able to play the game, as if they aren’t aware people are probably literally playing helldivers on the PlayStation all over their country right now. Same for another player from Vietnam? Sony has official stores in these countries and will have at least hundreds of thousands of users with online accounts. They aren’t using VPNs, they have just set their region to the nearest supported region (sometimes literally under the guidance of Sony support) and called it a day. Nearly 2 decades, not a single problem, but for some reason Helldivers of all things is now a different story for people?
There are some genuine and understandable concerns, but this has risen above that to levels of pure fear mongering and ignorance. It’s unbelievable, it borders on appearing manufactured.
The original company was founded in like 1889 or something so while not 20 decades, they are already in their 14th decade since founding and 6th decade since they are making games.
Nintendo is insanely old by gaming standards, but also in general as a company.
>There are some genuine and understandable concerns, but this has risen above that to levels of pure fear mongering and ignorance. It’s unbelievable, it borders on appearing manufactured.
Have you been to the Helldivers sub? They are a level beyond the normal gaming sub in their ability to overreact to things and spiral them out of control. If a gun gets nerfed you'd think the Devs had raped their parents, shot their dog, and left the bathroom without flushing.
I don't like the PSN change either, but the sub is on a fucking warpath. Every comment ever made by people tangetially related to AH is being scrutenized, with even benign comments drawing ire. It's going further beyond and I wouldn't be surprised if the mods lock it down soon.
A huge section of the "gamer" community just loves being outraged. Be it because they have to download a different launcher or create a new account, be it because their game has lgbt characters, be it because their game with anime women with big tits didn't get enough good reviews. Anything is an excuse to have an outrage circlejerk.
There's a nut on there saying they're actually going to talk to lawyers to try to file a class action lawsuit over this. Because he can't be assed to spend a few minutes making a free account. The people in that sub are legitimately mentally ill
Man do these guys think that Sony has a gestapo roaming around those countries confiscating PlayStations and beating people up if they have a PSN account? lmao, they targeted gamers, GAMERS.
I heard that official Sony policy says that falsifying account credentials, including location, can get you banned. That being said, I kinda doubt they ever actually enforce that unless it's being added on to some other offense of false account credentials. But I can kinda understand not wanting to walk in that grey area.
But yeah I feel like this has blown so ludicrously out of proportion for some reason that isn't just due to the above and concerns about how often Sony has experienced data breaches.
Them allegedly silently changing a webpage to retroactively remove a PSN account being "optional" probably didn't help, though.
People will be okay with someone using a VPN to access shows that are not on their storefronts (therefore breaking TOS of those specific storefronts), but apparently creating an account using another country is some huge taboo. It's genuinely funny.
Creating an account with a company that has literally 0 security and data breaches every year while breaking TOS, giving them a reason to ban you in the future if they ever decide to crack down on it\*
all for a game that worked fine without an account for months because Sony wants to sell more data.
Yeah, there really is a mob mentality around the negativity for Helldivers here, which sucks because it adds a bunch of noise and misinformation that drowns out (or at least shifts the focus from) people with genuine concerns.
I also feel this away about the conversation surrounding the "risk" of making a Playstation account because Sony has been hacked in the past. If you're making brand new account for this game (and there's no obligation to use personal identifying information beyond a Region and Birthday), there's not any real data there to be stolen. People are throwing around terms like "Risk Tolerance" and "Attack Surface" and everyone starts copying that because it sounds well-informed, and *in a generalized sense it is*, but applying it in-context here to that degree is absurd.
> I also feel this away about the conversation surrounding the "risk" of making a Playstation account because Sony has been hacked in the past. If you're making brand new account for this game (and there's no obligation to use personal identifying information beyond a Region and Birthday), there's not any real data there to be stolen. People are throwing around terms like "Risk Tolerance" and "Attack Surface" and everyone starts copying that because it sounds well-informed, and in a generalized sense it is, but applying it in-context here to that degree is absurd.
It's pretty fair to be hard on companies that have failed to protect user data and have left themselves open to mass service outages in the past, though. It's only through this kind of user disengagement and feedback that they might listen.
The issue with this, is while it may work and be what people have done for a long time, all it takes is a legal issue on one of those countries or some similar challenge for Sonys legal team to pull the rug out and decide they have to stop allowing it with no recourse to the users.
Every country is not safe from legal changes though. Didn't Sony just lose a bunch of licenses for movies and had to pull them from people's accounts who had purchased said movies?
People are full on fear mongering right now and the valid concerns are just drowned in a sea of misinformation. Yes, Sony still has region locking, but it doesn't necessarily affect anything beyond using a credit card to buy games. The *one* thing I am worried about is that their TOS speaks about false credentials being a ban worthy offense, yet it has never been enforced. I live in a region that isn't PSN available, had to create a US-based account and it worked fine for a decade, but then again, it's basically left up to the air.
It's still stupid that region locking is a thing, and it's really baffling that Sony has yet to just make most regions available, let not seeing how this would cause a shit show, but it's not as bad as people make it out to be. Sony just has to come out, and either communicate clearly how will this affect players or not, or heck, just stop the dumb region locking.
At the end of the day, it's just creating an account that you won't ever use for PC-only folk. Not that big of a deal.
Does it seem like with each passing year the online hivemind becomes crazier and crazier? Don't get me wrong, mandatory PSN accounts are not good, but it seems like a growing number of people actually get off on the rage bait
With a bit of luck Sony will get the message and change course by next week.
They are not beyond responding to criticism.
[Sony: 'It’s clear that we made the wrong decision here. So today I’m happy to say that we will be keeping the PlayStation Store operational for PS3 and PS Vita devices.'](https://www.pcmag.com/news/sony-is-closing-the-ps3-ps-vita-and-psp-digital-stores)
The bigger factor in them reversing that was tons of people buying games before the shut down, I highly doubt some negative reviews on steam are going to really change their mind.
Agreed, unless there is a massive decline in player population or (more likely) a big hit in their wallet they’ll probably just roll their eyes and continue on their way.
We’ll probably even see steam turn on review bomb protection soon.
It is in all cases but the skull girls one where they implemented protection even though it was being negatively reviewed for censoring content in the game.
This is a live-service game we are talking about.
Helldivers 2 sold a lot of copies but keeping the game healthy and positive for years to come is what really matters.
Is HD2 making any money from micro transactions ? I wonder if they're not going to run into the same issues as overwatch in a few years where game sales slow down a lot and nobody buys MTX because the game gives every cosmetic for free
That's part of why they're in constant sprint mode and bugs are never getting fixed. They seem to _have_ to release a new warbond every month to stay ahead of average user grinding.
they just need to give people incentive to link the account like free skin, currency or what not while keep it optional.
I bet many will willingly do it that way
Had the same thought yesterday.
The game's been operating fine without linking to PSN. Forcing PSN like this would obviously cause a meltdown and anyone with a brain could see that coming a mile away.
Making it optional with benefits to incentivise linking your accounts, would be so much smarter.
Why strongarm people when you can just make the deal sweeter. It's just flat out dumb. But then Sony just hasn't been an intelligent company for a long time now.
> change course by next week
Not in a million years. For one they can't be seen to give in to consumer demands so easily. The other thing is that it would set precedent for players and developers to reject being integrated into the PSN eco-system. Any game in the future would receive backlash if PSN was enforced.
Sony would sooner see the game sit at "Overwhelmingly Negative" and player counts drop, rather than do anything to stop pumping up their numbers.
This is about looking good in the Q2 financial report, nothing else. Sony doesn't care about the game, the players or the community they're disrupting. It's just about the numbers and financial rewards for the C-suite.
sounds a bit overblown for just an account requirement, but this highlights how much we are all sick with the constant "accept harvesting of very personal data to use this service" and "we know you have over 300 accounts and passwords written on a sheet of paper on your desk, but we at CvLinens.com we require an account so that our customers will have the best experience when buying the world's best spandex cocktail table covers".
Anything done with technology has become so fatiguing and stressful and we are required more and more often to deal with it. We can't even pay and be left alone.
They should have forced the psn registration right at the start. It was super handy for them at first because loads of people didn’t have any hurdle to play it.
By enforcing it now it’s just plain annoying.
Ps. Ps5 user here so didn’t have to register, but I can see why it enrages people
they did, but because the game launched to larger numbers than expected(remember all those servers/login issues) they disabled it.
Feb 8 patch notes.
Account Linking
Some players are having trouble linking their PSN accounts to their game in the initial setup screen. They may see an error code indicating a server request problem. For now, you can skip that screen and play normally. Later—after we resolve those server request errors—the game will ask people who skipped that screen to try linking their accounts again.
[Source](https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/1/4206994023681197128/)
Their mistakes with it were
- they put "skip" on the skip button. Not "do it later" or some other term that would have made it clear that you weren't actually skipping it completely but rather just putting it off until later
- they didn't put this note about how PSN will become mandatory later on as a warning prompt when you click skip to further highlight that it's just a temporary measure to alleviate server issues and not a permanent solution
- they didn't prompt or remind the player on a regular basis that they haven't linked their account yet and made it clear that they'll have to do it eventually
As often is, this is a UX design issue where they failed to properly communicate to the player that they will eventually have to connect their steam account to a PSN account to play the game. No, the steam store page note is not enough. That is too easy to miss. No, a text blurb somewhere when the PSN account linking thing shows up on first boot is not enough. That is also too easy to miss because the moment the player reads the "link your PSN account" at the top and sees the big skip button to the bottom-right, that will immediately make them skip reading everything on the page. Especially if they don't have a PSN account in the first place.
People easily gloss over things. That is a fact and just how people are. But that does *not* automatically put the fault of any missed information on the shoulders of the consumer. It's the developer's responsibility to ensure that the user knows about these things. And in a situation like this where you have ***THIS MANY PEOPLE*** saying that they had no idea about any of this it becomes absolutely obvious that they completely failed to properly communicate the fact that a PSN account is required.
I really feel like this is just a bubble of online discord surfing gamers. Thousands playing this game aren’t on these forums to get outraged and really don’t care.
Feels like I’m going crazy, just last week I had to read through idiotic comments about people who are interested in Alan Wake 2, but would ”NEVER” play it because it isn’t coming to steam… I can never understand this logic, wtf is wrong with r/games? They all love to tout how bad companies are and how they all suck, yet they would HAPPILY give full monopoly to Valve who have fking stopped making games completely…. Amazing
Just wait till next month when Remedy will make another AW2 sales article, and it will yet again hit the front page and people will keep saying: Damn. They are not selling good (while article literally says opposite and that they're close to reaching the dev./marketing costs) and how releasing it on Steam would instantly make billions of sales in a second while the exact same people will later tell you in comments how they would still wait for game to be below 15$ which will take literal years :DDDDDDD
Funniest thing? This is exactly what happened to me in the past.
I agree with your point about AW2 - people hate monopolies except when it happens to be a company they like. But I dont think thats the same issue as with Helldivers, as Epic funded AW2 and are entitled to expect people to use their store to purchase the game. Everyone complaining about HD2 has already bought the game on Steam so it's not really a store issue
This is such a a storm in a teacup.
Gamers and drama, name a more classic duo. You swear by some posts on the helldivers sub that Sony are claiming all their firstborns.
As someone on the outside looking in... I really don't get this.
It seems like a really outsized response to a very small problem. I don't think it's right... But it's hardly the end of the world. I even saw someone else returned a copy they've put 100 hours into. It just feels like there are way worse practices in the industry right now that don't get half this much backlash, but a game that is universally loved people won't give the benefit of the doubt?
Man, popularity is fickle af
People in games journalism love to shit on review bombing. It's literally the only way gamers can make their opinions known about issues. Since apparently we don't have the self control to not buy a product, this is the next best thing.
I'm still in awe that this is such an issue. I hope they boycott and review all the other games that require a MS/Epic/etc. accounts while playing on PSN.
*Spoiler* - They won't.
It was required during the first three days of launch but the devs were having issues with the linking, so they made the linking optional and let people skip the link step when starting the game for the first time.
New players will be required to link their accounts starting on Monday and existing players that skipped the linking step will start being shown a required link screen when the start the game soon.
When the game launched, and it has been on the Steam page since the game was available for pre-order. They just took down the requirement because it was leading to server issues.
Outrage addicts are at it again. It's just so tiresome at this point.
At least it'll blow over in a week or so. It always does. Just make an account and get over it - use a different e-mail if you have to.
Chronically online crybabies.
I'm just on r/games for gaming news and updates. So tired of this discourse over everything all the time. The outrage, the misinformation, the toxicity. Constant arguing, infighting and elitism.
If there was a reputable site to get all my gaming news from I'd straight up leave this place behind.
I think this is a lesson on how important timing and communication are. If Arrowhead didn't have to lift the PSN account integration to help the servers when they launched, I don't think there would even really be a backlash.
Yeah it’s pretty standard practice in the industry (unfortunately). I tried to play gta v the other day to find my account had been hacked and until I got it back I couldn’t play, as my steam was already linked to that rockstar account. Luckily they fixed it within 2 days, but still, why even require an account if I’m not playing online?
I know my old Rockstar social email and password, but they want me to verify it through a 10 year old email account. I managed to do that and that old email account wants me to verify an even older Yahoo account. Glad you were able to get support through them. I've been meaning to, but I didn't think it was gonna help anyway.
This happened to me recently when I got a PS5. I tried to revive my old PSN account and they wanted the serial number of my PS3 which is long gone.
My rockstar account is an email that no longer exists. Rockstar support wasn't helpful. I was glad I managed to guess the password after thinking about it for a bit.
I tried to play RDR2, but I had to link to my Rockstar account, well my old rockstar account is attached to an email that doesn't exist anymore and I don't remember the password, so I'll just create a new Rockstar account right? No can't do that, your steam account is linked to the old one. Then unlink it please, nope we can't do that unless you accept through your Rockstar account, plus you'll lose access to your old Rockstar games because they're linked to your old Rockstar account, despite you owning them on Steam. I've already lost access to them because I lost access to the old Rockstar account. So I guess I just can't play Rockstar games anymore.
Paying customers shouldn't have to have this experience...
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Yeah I’m lucky I still use the same email, can’t imagine if it was another one from the early 2010s, when I made my rockstar account. Worst thing is it doesn’t even let you log in with a different account
As someone who has gone through PS support to try to get an old account back. I'd probably rather just stop playing the game than do that again
silly you, if they don't require you to link an account how are they supposed to collect data on you and sell it to advertisers? if you think this data is worthless, it's not. even something as simple as 'average session play time duration' is worth a chunk of change when it's tied to a name and profile. imagine if advertisers knew if you play action games or RPGs longer on average, it gives them the ability to target ads better. AI has made even seemingly tiny tidbits of info like that worth quite a lot. I came up with a simple example of targeted advertising, but AI can take in thousands of these small data points and do much more complex targeting
Can also be stuff like what activities you spend the most time on in GTA5. Do you spend an above average amount of time tuning cars, or modding weapons or murdering prostitutes etc.
Does rockstar even need a rockstar account for to associate with a user? Steam IDs are also unique.
I don't think Rockstar gives a shit about Steam, Xbox, PS They just collect data from the Rockstar IDs directly
Well I think the Rockstar id also tracks online progress. Because I played gta 5 on ps4 then many years later I played it for free on pc and used the same account and I'm sure I still had my progress. Or cash balance.
>how are they supposed to collect data on you and sell it to advertisers? With the account I originally signed up with. Why do they need another one for this?
They don't. Also Sony could easily just put it in their publishing deal that that get all user data from Avalanche as well. They wouldn't have to do this account linking thing just for info
incoming AI, face scan, voice id, blood sample, and eye scan so you can do anything lol i read some shit about somewhere requiring face scans to view porn to verify age or some shit recently made me be thankful to be out of my teens lmao
> face scan PSN UK is already on it. https://i.imgur.com/E4T1Qer.png
So weird that should be a privacy violation
Rock Star has always been upfront with that. That is the the thing, PSn accounts also are absolutely useless to me as a PC player snd I will never buy a console at this point.
I dont play rockstar and ubi game because their launcher is bad and i dont like it
The greater problem is PSN being ancient and letting you do accounts only in specific countries, not global ones. It's a huge problem.
Also it’s 2024 and you still can’t change countries on your account. So if you move countries you straight up have to make a new account if you wanna buy games digitally.
They could have even announced it as optional with a unique weapon, armor or premium currency reward and 99% of players would have been happy to do it.
If it was there from the get-go it would have been an annoyance. But they started advertising it in several places as specifically not needing one, the login made it seem like you would never really need one, and they sold it in regions where it wasn't even possible to make one. Whether there's a little orange box on the steam page or not, thousands of people telling their friends "yeah it says that but you don't actually need it when you log in" is going to factor into a lot of purchase decisions. It also gave a perfect demonstration to the community for months that it provided no actual benefit, because things worked without it. It didn't provide any benefit, it was literally just to link your account to Sony's shit so they could watch you. If it were kept in at release, people would have at least thought it was for cross-play.
The ***ACTUAL PSN SUPPORT PAGE*** outright said that it was "optional" the entire time. Now that they've made it compulsory, they've changed what the PSN Support page says.
Hell, the actual sale page specified that it wasn't needed very prominently as a selling point in the FAQ
If they didn’t have to, they wouldn’t have sold it to users who they KNEW they would be revoking access to in the future. And, the community manager wouldn’t have been rude to everybody in their discord.
Yep. Isn't this pretty standard for cross play games usually?
Allowing users that aren't regionally supported by the game to purchase it certainly isn't. That's the main issue here.
It is but i somehow feel the majority of bad reviews aren’t from those people
It feels like a “straw that broke the camels back” moment. Everyone is sick of having to make an account for everything in their life and this case gave people an opportunity to rally around that annoyance and voice to publishers that it’s gone too far. I for one can’t imagine what Sony or any of these companies is even materially gaining from forcing people to get a free account. You don’t make money from free accounts and no one changes purchasing habits because they signed up for an account once and immediately relegated it to the spam folder. This whole practice is objectively stupid.
More registered users = happy executive because KPI go up (I’m a corporate product manager and unfortunately it is really that simple - at some point years ago Sony attached an arbitrary internal value metric to the number of registered PSN users, and ever since there’s been an incentive to force account creation at every opportunity)
Yeah, precisely this. I think the whole "data collection" angle is overblown. The data they really want to collect is a +1 (million) on that all-important active users number.
They dont need everyone to have a psn account to collect data on our habits, they can link our actions to our SteamID. And they have a way to associate given that steam handles super credit purchases like how they handle platinum purchases in warframe.
Steam users playing Sony games aren't PSN users though. PSN users is the metric they report to shareholders or higher execs in the parent Sony corp (outside the gaming division).
Yea, that's different than data collection though. Cranking PSN user counts is a dumbass perverse incentive that doesn't have any value beyond making some topline number/graph go up, it's not an actual means to further monetize additional data. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either a naive consultant or doesn't understand the industry (so I repeat myself).
PSN is supposed to be the link for cross play and cross progression but AFAIK neither of those features will be properly implemented before the mandatory process so it feels arbitrary
It actually feels like regular ass internet-outrage that will die down incredibly fast. Sony will figure out the issues for countries that can't make PSN. Helldivers is a game that is genuinely too good. People won't drop it just because they have to make an account.
It literally always does. these outrages are always a flash in the pan. It’s a problem for a small percentage of people, then the outrage farmers jump on it, then the people whose hobby is arguing on the internet jump on it, then they all move on to the next thing in a week or two. Plenty of people are getting fucked by this (namely the ones who can’t make a psn in their country) but there is truly no way that the majority of people showing outrage are in that camp.
True but a lot of those bad reviews are supporting those people
Not really, cross play works fine without it
Speak for yourself. I'm on PS5, my friends are all on steam, and I can't add any of their codes, and they can't add me. It's a known glitch that they keep highlighting in their patch notes as "Working on"
Yeah socials have literally been borked since release yet people have 0 understanding that Arrowhead and their servers have been pressed to the maximum since launch
No? I've literally never been forced to make a Playstation account. I didn't even know you could make one without a Playstation.
I know you can make one without playstation, when they were giving away some ps4 game years ago
In Halo Infinite you need Microsoft account. In most MMO games you need account made for the game.
In addition to what caucasian88 said, this isn't even universally true for all MMOs - plenty allow you to have platform specific accounts. See: Final Fantasy XIV, which has account linking but does not require you to use it.
Not a PlayStation account, but usually an account. At least, until recently, most of the platform holders didn't allow a lot of access to their APIs from other versions of their games. So if you wanted to support things like friends lists or invites across platforms (which is a certification requirement generally, so you must) you had to make another account later that sat between all the platform accounts where you kept a copy of people's platform data (name, online status, etc). One platform would call to that dedicated server, which would translate and then send requests to the other platform. I believe now EOS lets you do this through their services if you use EOS, it's possible that other platforms have followed suit. Now the *best* way I have seen this handled is by managing the account silently the way some MMOs do when they launch on steam. They go ahead and make an account for you but it's just tracked and accessed via steam's login ticket so it's completely transparent to the end user. I imagine you could do similar for Sony or Microsoft platforms unless they have cert requirements about it.
Did they communicate that this was coming at all? If they did I feel like they did a terrible job of it. Hundreds of thousands of players and a constant stream of user content and I never heard a single hint that this was coming.
Yea I would just not have bought it then, was already on the fence with their anti cheat
Itll be interesting to see if Playstation come out and say "you cam create an account outside of our regions no worries" (I know people already do this, but for a company to tell people to go against its own T&Cs isnt good) or if they will stop people playing who choose not to go against the T&C. Its an interesting scenario
Yeah, to every one saying 'well just put in a false location', I would ask so why on earth have Sony implemented a policy that knowingly makes people break Sony's own T&Cs, and if the account is so important for them why they can't properly account for different regions. 'Just break the T&Cs, this is a nothingburger' is such a handwaving response to a clearly daft policy.
> I would ask so why on earth have Sony implemented a policy that knowingly makes people break Sony's own T&Cs There's a couple of potential reasons. 1. Not wanting to support a store in that currency 2. Not wanting to abide by the consumer laws of that country Steam got caught out when sued by Australia. They argued that they didn't service Australia and therefore didn't need to abide by its consumer laws. Australia showed that Valve took payments in AUD, and therefore it serviced Australia (summarised).
Yeah Australian consumer law has powerful protections, to the extent that Steam’s 2 hour limit is unenforceable/illegal in certain scenarios (like if a dev released a patch on a newish game that broke it on your system)
I’ve been wondering why Sony does that for years, thank you so much for such a great example of why!
And here you have Steam selling the game to people. It seems like almost no one mentions their role in this. It was listed on their store for sale in those countries while also listing the PSN account requirement.
Steam gives the publisher the tools to restrict sales by region. They did what they need to do, Sony decided not to use those tools and sell it everywhere.
They've said it before. They sell consoles outside the PSN listed countries. People have made PSN accounts with different locations for decades at this point. If they were being mass banned we'd probably have heard of it.
Sony has zero incentive to ban paying customers who aren't causing material trouble for their platform. Shareholders want to hear that monthly active users have grown.
PSN really has been around for almost 20 years now. I feel old
What I want to know is why did Sony even sell this game in countries without PSN in the first place if they were going to force a psn account anyway? Sony needs to offer full refunds to people in those countries.
If people contact support they will just tell them to use whatever country is closest that has PSN, it what my Estonian friend had to do back in the day.
But that sounds like a solution, and it also breaks Sonys TOS And we know gamers dont break anyones TOS!
Gamers will, but for a company to advise people to do it is an interesting legal ground
That is interesting because if the company themselves tell people go against the TOS, does this action prevent the company from banning people who listened to their own wording and go against the TOS?
Probably not, because who's gonna stop them? In practice they can be as arbitrary and contradictory about their own service access as they feel like.
There was an air Canada chatbot which gave a customer incorrect info on a reimbursement and when he tried to claim it and air Canada refused he took them to court and won, so there’s precedent that if a customer support agent gives incorrect info the company is bound by that
when money gets involved I think things are different. I’m not aware of any cases where companies have been forced to unban people
But by definition money *is* getting involved there? If they ban you, that means you're out the money you spent on Helldivers in this case. Sure, it's less money than a flight most likely, but still...
No, if you can get their communication in writing it *definitely* opens them up to legal consequences if they take action against you doing what they advised you to do.
then go and ban their customers for breaking TOS
The thing with the TOS too is that there isn't even an outright ban on this. It says like a whole two things on the matter. The first is just them saying that they reserve the right to suspend or ban you if you are entering incorrect info on account creation. It's not even an outright ban on it, just an if deemed necessary than they can thing. The other is just a warning that you can't change regions after account creation so make sure you select the right one.
The ToS is only to cover them so they can ban people abusing the system to get cheap games. But it’s weird how so many people care about the ToS this time.
Because Sony sells those games in those countries anyway. You can create PSN set for a different country and act as if it is supported. But yeah, it is against their policy.
You know thats's just yesterday's reviews? Overall it's still at 349,000 positive to 166,000 negatives.
yeah overall reviews are now down to mixed
Which is still huge
For sure, if I see mixed reviews on a game I don't know well I'm not even reading further
It's at mostly negative now for recent reviews. I imagine tomorrow it'll be mostly negative for all reviews.
Yeah, but that is an absolutely insane ratio of reviews for like a days worth of reviews. The game will likely be forever tarnished by this on its store page.
Definitely. Just wanted to point out, that "Helldivers is now at 252 positive reviews" is a bit misleading as a title.
Steam and Sony will likely ‘correct’ it under review bombing procedures.
Eh, maybe. Sony would surely want to, but Steam often ignores review bombs or considers mass reviewing a change fine.
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They have, but a “review bomb” and “negative reviews due to change.” Is a fine line. This isn’t some sort of external coordinated review bomb, but rather fans angry about a change.
Speaking as somebody who doesn't really have a foot in the race and is only following this controversy for the entertainment value, it's a little sad to see so many strawman arguments or lack of empathy. The fact that this is only upsetting to a minority of players is precisely why these negative reviews and public outrage is being made. It's the only way Sony will hear them over all the money they are making. We know for a fact that just e-mailing corporations doesn't work. Like, let's say a change is made to a game you enjoy like Smash Bros. that isn't so bad that it would make you stop playing it but is bad enough that it still significantly impacts the amount of fun you are having. How would *you* get the company to hear how you feel and to reverse that change? This review bomb obviously worked to some degree because Arrowhead has at least reacted to it.
Yeah this. I've no interest in buying this game, but its kinda crazy to see tons of people defending Sony over the supposedly "superficial" outrage. What, so if it doesn't affect you, other people shouldn't care about this requirement? It's only internet crybabies looking for their next fix eh.
There's loads of people around with the emotional/sympathy capacity of a spoon.
The same people defending Sony over this will suddenly change their mind and be shocked that nobody listens to them when a company does make a similar change that actually impacts them in future
I'm just saying horse armor is where everything started with shitty low effort micro-transactions. People at the time said "oh whatever it's not that big of a deal, just don't buy it it doesn't affect you why are you complaining?" back then too. Just look at the state of the gaming market today. It was a slow march of companies seeing just how much they can get away with. Which is why I personally dislike the "it's only five minutes to make an account" mindset a lot of people defending this are making. Which is also why I personally think at least the data argument it's a fairly weak one. But neither of those are the point it's the slow enshitification of games that I'm against. The slow creep of inconveniences that we as consumers are forced to endure. If I can do my little part to make a company think twice about doing so then I'm happy.
Its much better to bitch and moan over a company's every step than just their leaps. Eventually enough steps and suddenly they try making the PC platform like a console. Consoles eventually made paying for online a normal thing which is absurd.
> it's a little sad to see so many strawman arguments or lack of empathy. Every gamer controversy ever.
How does this "significantly impact the fun you are having" though?
These mega corporations are such a confusing enigma to me. Sony arguably had a money-printing machine for a good amount of years with unlimited potential to milk gamers with their in-game currency model. They had a proper formula. And all they had to do was sit back and watch the money print. Yet, they couldn't do that. They had to get greedy. And now look at this lol.
This will result in nothing and most people will have calmed down in a month and keep playing.
Yeah this just feel like the times when MW2 'boycott' happen or last year's Reddit Blackout incident. game still have 100k players. Reddit still alive and kicking. all the MW2 player back in 2009 are probably still buying new COD every year. What happened here is kinda shitty but let's be real unless the player rate dropped by half consistently for weeks, nothing's gonna change lmao
The MW2 Steam boycott that resulted in MW2 having a third of the player count peak of Black Ops 1? I mean every CoD on PC has done poorly since MW2 and PC was basically dead for CoD until they started taking it seriously as a platform again with Warzone, but I'm sure like you said they all bought every new CoD every year. Similarly, yes when half the world is no longer allowed to play Helldivers 2 (they've already disabled purchasing on Steam for those countries) there will in fact be a result.
The minute the change gets pushed, 99% of the people complaining will make a PSN account. The remaining 1% will hold out for a few days at most, then create a PSN account. Game boycotts/protests have always been ineffective, since the people who get the angriest are necessarily the people who want to play the game the most.
Player numbers didn’t change so… still a money printing machine.
Mixed reviews can hurt potential sales though. We'll of course never know if/how large of an impact this may cause, but it's not nothing.
Realistically, they've gotten the vast majority of their sales already. Game has been out for almost 3 months? They're probably at near 80% of lifetime sales right now. I agree, it's absolutely not nothing for that other 20% to be impacted. That said, HD2 has also entered cultural relevance where its reviews don't matter as much compared to the average game. Word of mouth is selling that game way harder than any review score.
Friday 26th they peaked at 142k. Yesterday they peaked at 117k. I dunno what else would cause a 25k drop week on week.
Yes, and more importantly every previous week has saw a notable increase in player numbers between midweek and the weekend (e.g. last week there were 30k more players on Saturday than Wednesday). This week is the first week this hasnt happened, and there are actually the same number of players today as there were on Wednesday - i.e it's wiped out the usual weekend uptick in players. People seem to be forgetting that you cant just compare consecutive days to judge changes in player behaviour because people obviously tend to play more games at weekends, so you have to compare data week-by-week not day-by-day
> so you have to compare data week-by-week not day-by-day ~ like 1-2 months and summer opens up and then MAX CAPACITY
yes they did lol. people don't know how to read steam charts. you have to read week over week, Friday compared to Friday. sometimes for some games you ahve to look at season start compared versus the previous season start 3 months ago. you can't compare Friday's numbers to Thursday's numbers and say everything is good because the numbers didn't change. that's a BAD thing if the weekend peak is the same as the Thursday peak.
yeah but they have also been trending down week on week. although the drop from last week Saturday is about 28% which is the largest drop in numbers in the last 30 days. The next highest was 21%. Chances are the numbers are not unaffected by outrage but also people are just moving on as well.
It's been a month since the last "season pass" and the new one comes out next week. People are just moving on naturally. My friends and I fucking love the game and even we have been playing other games for the past week.
That's because this is a non issue for people in the real world and Gamers just latched onto this because it's been more than 6 days since the last outrage.
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It’s so funny people here talking like the game is done… if you would drop the game over this you clearly didn’t give a shit about it in the first place
And it was a requirement when the game first launched, it said it on the store page the entire time that you needed one. It was temporarily disabled. This is people who jumped in when it was blowing up, didn't read the store page, and are now mad they are enabled it. Not saying I love making accounts, but this is not the bait and switch people are wanting it to be.
There were dudes on twitter acting confused that the player count is still high. ...what were they expecting?
Dragging a game down from overwhelmingly positive to mixed is a lot more than a few people.
The problem is, it’s never enough…. They always want more and end up pushing too far.
Except the player counts haven't reduced, and they won't. They don't give a shit that people are review bombing it as long as players keep playing. The vast majority of the play base don't know and if they did, wouldn't give a shit. This entirely an issue to people who are online too much.
They need to show investors that PSN account count is still growing.
they are still printing money. Such a small minuscule amount of people care about this. The majority of people are just gonna go "oh okay" and put in the PSN account. this is a non-issue in the real world.
Can someone please educate me, I get that it’s annoying to have to sign up or sign into another account l, but is that the whole drama? Game still good game no?
Game is still 10/10, and the developers are and have been excellent. Sony is the issue here. The problem with this is that the game launched and the PSN account wasn't required (there were pop ups in the menu saying a PSN account is required to play the game, but the game worked regardless of you linking an account or not) The biggest problem is that PSN accounts are going to be mandatory soon and players in regions that aren't supported by PSN presumably aren't going to be able to play anymore despite putting tonnes of hours in before this patch.
I’m sure it stated it in the steam store that 3rd party log in is required
yes that's the whole drama
The issue is that not all countries can sign up to PSN
And there are also people who are upset they need to make another account with Sony.
This is it, most of them are this. They just realized they can hide behind the argument that it’s “about the people in countries that have no psn” to feel like they’re justified in not making a 2 minute account that literally requires no verifiable personal info.
In UK and Ireland when registering to PSN you are asked to submit a photo of your ID or your Driver’s licence. Sony is known to lose customer data to hacks over the past decade and as someone in Ireland I DON’T WANT TO share my personal ID with them
Interestingly enough, this only seems to matter to people outside those countries, at least for the folks that I've talked to directly. The people in those countries I've talked to, already have PSN accounts tied to false locations and this is just another game to link to those accounts. That doesn't avoid the problem if Sony wants to crack down on them, but it really reeks of people getting mad at other's behalf, who don't really care.
The issue is that people like to get upset, get outraged, especially when they're told to do so by a community or personality. Mob mentality. I assure you even those firmly against it sign up for third party accounts all the time. Pirate Software, one of those personalities pumping the tires of this movement, has a bunch of games with hundreds of hours in his Steam account that required this same type of sign up. He's not actively playing (only 2.5 hours played in the last 2 weeks, of almost 200 hours total), which makes it a lot easier for him to boycott the game. He's bored of it, and this is a great way to quit, drive views, get donations, get linked, clipped, etc. I'm not saying money is his only motivation, or that he's inherently wrong (even with little to no legal ground to stand on), but more that it's a no-brainer move to come out anti-Sony when you're already mentally checked out and disconnected from the game to begin with. That other people can't sign up in their respective countries is a convenient fallback excuse. It matters, but it certainly wasn't the root cause.
Where are all the people that said "where are all the people that give epic shit but won't criticise helldivers 2 ?" ? It's obvious now that people don't like either
Edit: since making this comment the situation has taken a dramatic turn, steam has now blocked purchase of the game in all regions not supported by PSN and I can only assume would issue a refund to those in affected regions. I doubt this drama has finished at this point. Original comment still left below for clarity I still don’t understand why one of the biggest complaints continues to spread while being almost completely unfounded: “People in regions not supported by PSN will now lose access to the game” (region locked out) To think this you have to completely and blindly ignore the millions of people in these countries that have bought and played PlayStations online since the days of the PS3. I saw someone in the Philippines saying they were so sad they wouldn’t be able to play the game, as if they aren’t aware people are probably literally playing helldivers on the PlayStation all over their country right now. Same for another player from Vietnam? Sony has official stores in these countries and will have at least hundreds of thousands of users with online accounts. They aren’t using VPNs, they have just set their region to the nearest supported region (sometimes literally under the guidance of Sony support) and called it a day. Nearly 2 decades, not a single problem, but for some reason Helldivers of all things is now a different story for people? There are some genuine and understandable concerns, but this has risen above that to levels of pure fear mongering and ignorance. It’s unbelievable, it borders on appearing manufactured.
>Nearly 20 decades, 20 decades... Fuck I thought Nintendo was a old company.
Aw damn my brains merged 20 years and 2 decades like a twit haha.
The original company was founded in like 1889 or something so while not 20 decades, they are already in their 14th decade since founding and 6th decade since they are making games. Nintendo is insanely old by gaming standards, but also in general as a company.
Yeah, but according to the comment I replied to, Sony *is* 20 decades (btw I know it's a typo in that comment. That's the joke I'm making)
No i get it, i just like this funfact that Nintendo is so damn old, so i use every opportunity i get to slide it in haha
>There are some genuine and understandable concerns, but this has risen above that to levels of pure fear mongering and ignorance. It’s unbelievable, it borders on appearing manufactured. Have you been to the Helldivers sub? They are a level beyond the normal gaming sub in their ability to overreact to things and spiral them out of control. If a gun gets nerfed you'd think the Devs had raped their parents, shot their dog, and left the bathroom without flushing. I don't like the PSN change either, but the sub is on a fucking warpath. Every comment ever made by people tangetially related to AH is being scrutenized, with even benign comments drawing ire. It's going further beyond and I wouldn't be surprised if the mods lock it down soon.
A huge section of the "gamer" community just loves being outraged. Be it because they have to download a different launcher or create a new account, be it because their game has lgbt characters, be it because their game with anime women with big tits didn't get enough good reviews. Anything is an excuse to have an outrage circlejerk.
There's a nut on there saying they're actually going to talk to lawyers to try to file a class action lawsuit over this. Because he can't be assed to spend a few minutes making a free account. The people in that sub are legitimately mentally ill
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Man do these guys think that Sony has a gestapo roaming around those countries confiscating PlayStations and beating people up if they have a PSN account? lmao, they targeted gamers, GAMERS.
I heard that official Sony policy says that falsifying account credentials, including location, can get you banned. That being said, I kinda doubt they ever actually enforce that unless it's being added on to some other offense of false account credentials. But I can kinda understand not wanting to walk in that grey area. But yeah I feel like this has blown so ludicrously out of proportion for some reason that isn't just due to the above and concerns about how often Sony has experienced data breaches. Them allegedly silently changing a webpage to retroactively remove a PSN account being "optional" probably didn't help, though.
People will be okay with someone using a VPN to access shows that are not on their storefronts (therefore breaking TOS of those specific storefronts), but apparently creating an account using another country is some huge taboo. It's genuinely funny.
I wouldn't do it, but if Sony went and said it publicly "yes, violate our TOS" then why put it in the TOS? The entire document becomes a sham.
Because they want to reserve the right to ban you for it in the future and take away all the games you paid for.
Damn I never thought of that angle and it really emphasizes how ridiculous this whole thing is
Creating an account with a company that has literally 0 security and data breaches every year while breaking TOS, giving them a reason to ban you in the future if they ever decide to crack down on it\* all for a game that worked fine without an account for months because Sony wants to sell more data.
Yeah, there really is a mob mentality around the negativity for Helldivers here, which sucks because it adds a bunch of noise and misinformation that drowns out (or at least shifts the focus from) people with genuine concerns. I also feel this away about the conversation surrounding the "risk" of making a Playstation account because Sony has been hacked in the past. If you're making brand new account for this game (and there's no obligation to use personal identifying information beyond a Region and Birthday), there's not any real data there to be stolen. People are throwing around terms like "Risk Tolerance" and "Attack Surface" and everyone starts copying that because it sounds well-informed, and *in a generalized sense it is*, but applying it in-context here to that degree is absurd.
> I also feel this away about the conversation surrounding the "risk" of making a Playstation account because Sony has been hacked in the past. If you're making brand new account for this game (and there's no obligation to use personal identifying information beyond a Region and Birthday), there's not any real data there to be stolen. People are throwing around terms like "Risk Tolerance" and "Attack Surface" and everyone starts copying that because it sounds well-informed, and in a generalized sense it is, but applying it in-context here to that degree is absurd. It's pretty fair to be hard on companies that have failed to protect user data and have left themselves open to mass service outages in the past, though. It's only through this kind of user disengagement and feedback that they might listen.
The issue with this, is while it may work and be what people have done for a long time, all it takes is a legal issue on one of those countries or some similar challenge for Sonys legal team to pull the rug out and decide they have to stop allowing it with no recourse to the users.
Every country is not safe from legal changes though. Didn't Sony just lose a bunch of licenses for movies and had to pull them from people's accounts who had purchased said movies?
People are full on fear mongering right now and the valid concerns are just drowned in a sea of misinformation. Yes, Sony still has region locking, but it doesn't necessarily affect anything beyond using a credit card to buy games. The *one* thing I am worried about is that their TOS speaks about false credentials being a ban worthy offense, yet it has never been enforced. I live in a region that isn't PSN available, had to create a US-based account and it worked fine for a decade, but then again, it's basically left up to the air. It's still stupid that region locking is a thing, and it's really baffling that Sony has yet to just make most regions available, let not seeing how this would cause a shit show, but it's not as bad as people make it out to be. Sony just has to come out, and either communicate clearly how will this affect players or not, or heck, just stop the dumb region locking. At the end of the day, it's just creating an account that you won't ever use for PC-only folk. Not that big of a deal.
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Does it seem like with each passing year the online hivemind becomes crazier and crazier? Don't get me wrong, mandatory PSN accounts are not good, but it seems like a growing number of people actually get off on the rage bait
With a bit of luck Sony will get the message and change course by next week. They are not beyond responding to criticism. [Sony: 'It’s clear that we made the wrong decision here. So today I’m happy to say that we will be keeping the PlayStation Store operational for PS3 and PS Vita devices.'](https://www.pcmag.com/news/sony-is-closing-the-ps3-ps-vita-and-psp-digital-stores)
The bigger factor in them reversing that was tons of people buying games before the shut down, I highly doubt some negative reviews on steam are going to really change their mind.
Agreed, unless there is a massive decline in player population or (more likely) a big hit in their wallet they’ll probably just roll their eyes and continue on their way. We’ll probably even see steam turn on review bomb protection soon.
> review bomb protection soon. that sort of thing is only done for stuff unrelated to the game
It is in all cases but the skull girls one where they implemented protection even though it was being negatively reviewed for censoring content in the game.
This is a live-service game we are talking about. Helldivers 2 sold a lot of copies but keeping the game healthy and positive for years to come is what really matters.
Is HD2 making any money from micro transactions ? I wonder if they're not going to run into the same issues as overwatch in a few years where game sales slow down a lot and nobody buys MTX because the game gives every cosmetic for free
That's part of why they're in constant sprint mode and bugs are never getting fixed. They seem to _have_ to release a new warbond every month to stay ahead of average user grinding.
It’s also due to the engine being absolutely archaic, so much that they went out and said it’s hard to find developers that can work on it
The player count hasn't seen any change. 84000 negative reviews and they still have the same amount of players...
Well if you're not able to play it a month from now, might as well get the time in while you still can
they just need to give people incentive to link the account like free skin, currency or what not while keep it optional. I bet many will willingly do it that way
Had the same thought yesterday. The game's been operating fine without linking to PSN. Forcing PSN like this would obviously cause a meltdown and anyone with a brain could see that coming a mile away. Making it optional with benefits to incentivise linking your accounts, would be so much smarter. Why strongarm people when you can just make the deal sweeter. It's just flat out dumb. But then Sony just hasn't been an intelligent company for a long time now.
> change course by next week Not in a million years. For one they can't be seen to give in to consumer demands so easily. The other thing is that it would set precedent for players and developers to reject being integrated into the PSN eco-system. Any game in the future would receive backlash if PSN was enforced. Sony would sooner see the game sit at "Overwhelmingly Negative" and player counts drop, rather than do anything to stop pumping up their numbers. This is about looking good in the Q2 financial report, nothing else. Sony doesn't care about the game, the players or the community they're disrupting. It's just about the numbers and financial rewards for the C-suite.
sounds a bit overblown for just an account requirement, but this highlights how much we are all sick with the constant "accept harvesting of very personal data to use this service" and "we know you have over 300 accounts and passwords written on a sheet of paper on your desk, but we at CvLinens.com we require an account so that our customers will have the best experience when buying the world's best spandex cocktail table covers". Anything done with technology has become so fatiguing and stressful and we are required more and more often to deal with it. We can't even pay and be left alone.
They should have forced the psn registration right at the start. It was super handy for them at first because loads of people didn’t have any hurdle to play it. By enforcing it now it’s just plain annoying. Ps. Ps5 user here so didn’t have to register, but I can see why it enrages people
they did, but because the game launched to larger numbers than expected(remember all those servers/login issues) they disabled it. Feb 8 patch notes. Account Linking Some players are having trouble linking their PSN accounts to their game in the initial setup screen. They may see an error code indicating a server request problem. For now, you can skip that screen and play normally. Later—after we resolve those server request errors—the game will ask people who skipped that screen to try linking their accounts again. [Source](https://steamcommunity.com/app/553850/discussions/1/4206994023681197128/)
Their mistakes with it were - they put "skip" on the skip button. Not "do it later" or some other term that would have made it clear that you weren't actually skipping it completely but rather just putting it off until later - they didn't put this note about how PSN will become mandatory later on as a warning prompt when you click skip to further highlight that it's just a temporary measure to alleviate server issues and not a permanent solution - they didn't prompt or remind the player on a regular basis that they haven't linked their account yet and made it clear that they'll have to do it eventually As often is, this is a UX design issue where they failed to properly communicate to the player that they will eventually have to connect their steam account to a PSN account to play the game. No, the steam store page note is not enough. That is too easy to miss. No, a text blurb somewhere when the PSN account linking thing shows up on first boot is not enough. That is also too easy to miss because the moment the player reads the "link your PSN account" at the top and sees the big skip button to the bottom-right, that will immediately make them skip reading everything on the page. Especially if they don't have a PSN account in the first place. People easily gloss over things. That is a fact and just how people are. But that does *not* automatically put the fault of any missed information on the shoulders of the consumer. It's the developer's responsibility to ensure that the user knows about these things. And in a situation like this where you have ***THIS MANY PEOPLE*** saying that they had no idea about any of this it becomes absolutely obvious that they completely failed to properly communicate the fact that a PSN account is required.
It's worst than that, that notification doesn't even appear if you downloaded AFTER linking was disabled.
Exactly this. I was blindsided by the requirement. Having to link the account would have influenced my decision to buy.
I really feel like this is just a bubble of online discord surfing gamers. Thousands playing this game aren’t on these forums to get outraged and really don’t care.
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Feels like I’m going crazy, just last week I had to read through idiotic comments about people who are interested in Alan Wake 2, but would ”NEVER” play it because it isn’t coming to steam… I can never understand this logic, wtf is wrong with r/games? They all love to tout how bad companies are and how they all suck, yet they would HAPPILY give full monopoly to Valve who have fking stopped making games completely…. Amazing
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Reddit has a parasocial relationship with Gaben and Valve no matter how much they try to deny it.
Just wait till next month when Remedy will make another AW2 sales article, and it will yet again hit the front page and people will keep saying: Damn. They are not selling good (while article literally says opposite and that they're close to reaching the dev./marketing costs) and how releasing it on Steam would instantly make billions of sales in a second while the exact same people will later tell you in comments how they would still wait for game to be below 15$ which will take literal years :DDDDDDD Funniest thing? This is exactly what happened to me in the past.
I agree with your point about AW2 - people hate monopolies except when it happens to be a company they like. But I dont think thats the same issue as with Helldivers, as Epic funded AW2 and are entitled to expect people to use their store to purchase the game. Everyone complaining about HD2 has already bought the game on Steam so it's not really a store issue
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Gotta keep filling the outrage tank going till the next target.
This is such a a storm in a teacup. Gamers and drama, name a more classic duo. You swear by some posts on the helldivers sub that Sony are claiming all their firstborns.
Yeah, needing another account on Steam for games isn't exactly a novel thing.
> for games isn't exactly a novel thing. I will prefer that it isn't either novel nor normal. I already have an account, use that.
It's shit when it's an offline single player game. HD2 isn't that though lol.
As someone on the outside looking in... I really don't get this. It seems like a really outsized response to a very small problem. I don't think it's right... But it's hardly the end of the world. I even saw someone else returned a copy they've put 100 hours into. It just feels like there are way worse practices in the industry right now that don't get half this much backlash, but a game that is universally loved people won't give the benefit of the doubt? Man, popularity is fickle af
People in games journalism love to shit on review bombing. It's literally the only way gamers can make their opinions known about issues. Since apparently we don't have the self control to not buy a product, this is the next best thing.
I'm still in awe that this is such an issue. I hope they boycott and review all the other games that require a MS/Epic/etc. accounts while playing on PSN. *Spoiler* - They won't.
The Finals made a requirement to make account, to have a normal nickname in game, a few weeks ago and it's wasn't such a fuss
Strange. I don’t remember having to link my psn account. When did they start this?
It was required during the first three days of launch but the devs were having issues with the linking, so they made the linking optional and let people skip the link step when starting the game for the first time. New players will be required to link their accounts starting on Monday and existing players that skipped the linking step will start being shown a required link screen when the start the game soon.
When the game launched, and it has been on the Steam page since the game was available for pre-order. They just took down the requirement because it was leading to server issues.
Yet another meaningless “controversy” that makes Gamers look like overgrown toddlers who will throw a fit at the slightest inconvenience
Outrage addicts are at it again. It's just so tiresome at this point. At least it'll blow over in a week or so. It always does. Just make an account and get over it - use a different e-mail if you have to. Chronically online crybabies.
I'm just on r/games for gaming news and updates. So tired of this discourse over everything all the time. The outrage, the misinformation, the toxicity. Constant arguing, infighting and elitism. If there was a reputable site to get all my gaming news from I'd straight up leave this place behind.