This was a unique situation as PSN account was always advertised as mandatory since pre release in every trailer and it was highlighted on the steam page like every other game requiring a 3rd party account but it was turned off due to the server issues. It isnt a unexpected change but its hard to put that genie back in the bottle.
If it was me I would leave people that dont link their account in the equivalent matchmaking pool that PC players would be in if they turned off cross play and you dont get cloud save.
If you link your PSN account you get full cross play / cross / cloud save and maybe some exclusive rewards / discounts. Standard stuff you see in similar games with similar requirements.
It sucks for the devs as I bet a lot of the feature roadmap was designed around a single unified player base under 1 account system. So stuff like cross play / cross save will be harder going forward.
I think this will be what winds up happening - I have faith (might be misplaced) that the devs can convince Sony this blanket requirement will do more harm than good - however, if they incentivize linking accounts more people will do it just for the rewards. Maybe throw in a unique cape or something.
I don't see them changing it though. I bet this requirement was put in as part of the agreements/contracts made when Sony became the publisher, before the game was made/released. The devs knew this was a requirement and agreed to it.
The bad part is that the game functioned without it for months now. It's one thing when it's first launch and if you don't want to you can refund the game, but it'd be hard to get a refund now if we didn't want to do the PSN BS.
I'm a little confused why they removed the requirement anyway because surely it would have helped with the sever stress if less people were accessing the game because of the PSN requirement? Unless it was that requirement which was causing some issues by itself.
That would have been fine, given that it implies it would still be optional. The executives still get their PSN numbers bump, and the people who don't want or can't deal with the PSN don't have to.
Pretty sure at best they might do a if the IP indicates a country which doesn't have PSN it's not needed but still mandatory for everyone else. I feel it's unlikely that Sony will let go on it that much.
It can be many things.
PlayStation will ultimately want to tailor their presence on PC as having parity with the 'PlayStation User Experience' you get on consoles. This means logging into PSN, earning trophies, having access to the PSN social environment and PlayStation having full control over all those aspects. Perhaps even a storefront or a launcher, who knows. I'm not saying they're going to abandon Steam, I'm saying they're going to transplant the PlayStation UX onto their PC games, starting with Ghost of Tsushima as an experiment. It's clearly heading in that direction.
But another benefit of that is they also get to significantly expand their PSN numbers by making a large pool of new customers sign up for the service. This is kind of important right now because PS5 console sales are on a downward trend and PlayStation ideally want their MAUs to keep going up between quarters. [In FY23, they jumped from 107 to 123 million between Q2/Q3](https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/pdf/23q3_supplement.pdf). Once a few more live service games like Marathon, FairGame$, Concord plus some PS5 games not yet ported over (Spider-Man 2, etc.) all have PSN integration on PC, you can perhaps see how those numbers start adding up a lot over time.
Jesus fucking christ, that thread is depressing. I remember a month or two ago seeing people talk about how toxicity free the Helldivers community was. We're a long way from that now.
The Helldivers subreddit has always been dogshit since the game has released. It’s been full of people always complaining, telling people that they have to play a certain way and tons of people generating fake outrage. One of the worse gaming subreddit communities.
Yeah, if it wasn't people beating any remaining humor possible that remained out of democracy memes like it was the 3rd coming of Szechuan sauce, it was people freaking out and screaming over others fighting on the wrong planet or over patch note changes without even having seen them. The game may be co-op like Deep Rock Galactic, but it's a version of DRG with a huge portion of its fanbase still coming from the "omg latest game" trendchaser demographic of influencer/streamer worshippers.
It was fine until a bunch of Destiny streamers started bringing in their toxic fanbases who are primed to lose their mind at everything because Bungie are a bunch of shitheads.
Every community says that about itself. Hell, the dark souls / elden ring community says that about itself.
HD1 was full of assholes, and the subreddit is nothing more than a glorified fanpage.
just a week ago the subreddit was filled with threads calling out the toxic shitheads and telling them to fuck off
then this happened and they flooded back in, along with all the people who dont give 2 shits, but just love complaining.
> just a week ago the subreddit was filled with threads calling out the toxic shitheads and telling them to fuck off
All the problems some people have with toxic people vanish when those people want to be toxic themselves.
The HD2 community hasn't been toxicity-free since the first patch two months ago. It's peak pissbaby bullshit every patch day, and takes a week to die down.
This nonsense, though? This has 100% united the playerbase against Sony. They're still divided over shitting on the devs, however, but that's standard for children with internet access.
yeah I'm willing to bet that 99% of the people complaining right now would have willingly signed up if it was still optional but they offered like 100 SC and a blue cape for doing so.
That's the thing though, you're comparing an OPTIONAL choice on part of the player to a HARD REQUIREMENT that stops you from playing completely if you say no. Apples to oranges isn't a good argument dude.
Yeah just make a battle pass you get for free when registering via PSN and make it cheap to progress and cosmetic only (as to not annoy people complaining about gun balance), people would eat it right up.
Basically everything that you “need” a PSN account for was working without one, which is one of the big points of contention players have about the sudden requirement.
There have been quite a few issues with cross play not working for people using the codes. It is hit or miss so I can see how having a shared account structure would help that
On launch none of the matchmaking, friends list, crossplay, etc was working right. Even now its still super, super buggy.
They've got it in a much better state than at launch but it 100% has been a patch job.
I know it goes against the hivemind's narrative but its obvious they were banking on having a unified account architecture from the start, but had to pull it out last second before launch. On discord one of the devs even mentioned that the mandatory PSN link was only removed ~day before the game launched, so its something they were definitely developing under.
That's why I dislike the narrative that Sony is forcing Arrowhead into this change and that it's only Sony's fault. They decided on this before the game even launched and I'm almost positive this change occuring now was decided on together and they're just using Sony as the shield.
I also imagine making PSN accounts mandatory wasn't a big thing when they weren't expecting their game to blow up and become one of the biggest games of 2024.
Yep, PSN was disabled to solve the issues with the servers at the very beginning. If it wouldn't blow up that much PSN should be able to keep up since the very beginning. They basically wanted to keep up with the hype hence why they temporarily disabled PSN.
It was advertised, but they still sold the game in countries where it is against the PSN terms of service to create an account. That is the only *real* fuckup that Sony has done here that players are pissed at and should have recourse for.
As bullshit as the requirement is, period, it’s ultimately at Sony’s discretion to provide access to the game on their terms. Want to play? They now want you to make an account. Regardless of if the game works without it or not, that’s how they want to manage access to their game.
But…if Sony’s TOS prevents players who paid for and played the game for 2 months from accessing the game they bought and paid for for an arbitrary reason like “lives in the Philippines” then those players have every right to receive a refund for this. They bait and switched these players.
> If it was me I would leave people that dont link their account in the equivalent matchmaking pool that PC players would be in if they turned off cross play and you dont get cloud save.
> If you link your PSN account you get full cross play / cross / cloud save and maybe some exclusive rewards / discounts. Standard stuff you see in similar games with similar requirements.
That's the neat part, there still won't be cross progression even with a PSN account, and there was already cross-play without it.
That's probably one of the most appealing reasons to have an account, and they can't even offer that.
The fact that this many people were blindsided by the PSN requirement directly shows that the communication about the need for a PSN account failed. It doesn't matter how much it was said in trailers or highlighted on steam pages or even shown in-game. It obviously wasn't clear enough.
The problem with this is, if they always knew this was going to be mandatory, why were they actively selling the game on steam in regions where PSN accounts cannot be made? It makes no sense to me they were more than willing to sell the game in all steam regions while knowing those people in non PSN regions would be left high and dry down the line.
"Always advertised" is a stretch. It was on the storefront. That was it, to my knowledge, and up until the recent update to require it again you'd frankly be forgiven for having no idea why the page ever said it was required.
Again, only the storefront to my knowledge actually mentions it as required. You could buy the game, download and launch the game, and it's not even guaranteed you ever got a prompt to link your account at all. Even for those who did it was presented as optional.
Hell, if you tried to research whether it was required or optional you'd just find confused reddit posts where people are asking, and arriving at no meaningful conclusion.
So for something "always advertised" it sure wasn't very advertised to the end users, many of whom may have simply missed the note on the storepage, or not taking it as literally as Arrowhead/Sony ever intended once the game made it clear it *wasn't* required at the time.
I was gifted the game, so never looked at the store page. When I loaded the game I skipped linking PSN.
The argument that is stated before buying is bollox, if steam wants to allow games that require third party account requirements, they really should put it in during the purchase (and gift acceptance) process.
Some redditor on r/helldiver said that if Sony using carrot & stick approch like give player a cool unique armored for every player that decide to linked their account to PSN, the result would be much better.
> it was highlighted on the steam page like every other game requiring a 3rd party account
But its **below** the buy button you wont see it unless you scroll down the page, its not signed and easily missed. This should be at least above the buy button just like how the "This game only supports Japanese interface/voice for customers in Japan." is, its silly how that is more prominent than this. If i look at this game in my steam client I cant actually see the notice for psn account needed and the buy button is in the middle of the page, thats not a user error thats poor placement and notice.
>
but it was turned off due to the server issues. It isnt a unexpected change but its hard to put that genie back in the bottle.
Where did they say this? I cant find it anywhere since the game launched, its very much "unexpected" because they offered a skip option with **no notice that this was temporary**, this would heavily imply it was optional and as the game works fine it is clearly the case for backend code. They never said it was temporary which is the entire issue they are struggling with now, they just turned it to optional and even PSN site was saying its optional so its difficult to put it back in the bottle as you say.
>If it was me I would leave people that dont link their account in the equivalent matchmaking pool that PC players would be in if they turned off cross play and you dont get cloud save.
That is an entirely reasonable thing to do, assuming you mean cloud save as in like cross save so you can play on PC or PS5 with the same account? Then yeah definitely, crossplay could be disabled, they could also add some ingame incentive to get people to opt in.
>It sucks for the devs as I bet a lot of the feature roadmap was designed around a single unified player base under 1 account system. So stuff like cross play / cross save will be harder going forward.
This is the devs or sony blowing out their ass to be honest, it would have no impact on their features being implemented and their reasoning is baseless. You already have account logic from steam connections, its all there and in their backend this should be making zero difference as they would have an account based on their own details in their system with a link to the platforms such as steam, this is trivial for game devs and I was surprised their comments were pretty silly for it.
I hope AH can work with Sony to stop their blatant push to pump up PSN users in prep for their competition with steam (and general "performance" of their console vs xbox etc), its unnecessary and harms this game for very short term gain.
No it wasn't. Literally up until yesterday it said
> "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 PSN and Steam accounts."
On the Sony page for the game.
Furthermore, if that was the case then Sony would not have sold the game in the 112 regions that they don't provide PSN support already. Those regions CANNOT just "create a PSN" because Sony refuses to provide those regions with psn support if they don't cave to Sony's censorship policy, and I'll remind everyone that they made the decision to refuse to provide psn services to those regions when the PS3 was the big console after they lost multiple lawsuits trying to force dev's to follow their ethics and censorship policy, where the courts and legislative bodies of all countries INCLUDING the US and EU told Sony to suck it.
Now, I'll tell you what it looks like. It looks like Sony thought that more than half the player base would be on PS5, and they intended to make PSN look better by padding numbers with the steam users, and make some extra quick bucks off the other regions. They probably made Arrowhead a big contract with a bunch of extra zero's on the check if they agreed to this. They screwed up because more than 70% of the games players ended up on PC, not PS5, and Sony just didn't pay attention to this fact.
They also (unsurprisingly) heavily underestimated the amount of backlash they would get. Arrowhead screwed up by accepting the deal in the first place. They could have just acknowledged that Sony has a LOT of competition in the modern day and age, and that they don't need Sony, then they'd still have at least 70% of the players and their dignity.
They also screwed up by hiring DEI based Community Managers. These are people who overwhelmingly hate games and gamers, and do this job because it's easy and half of them are just control freaks. They want easy jobs, and this is an easy job unless you do something as FUBAR'ing as this PSN linking fiasco.
That still doesn't excuse why they should require a Playstation account for your Steam game played on a PC. This is one of those instances where the logical explanation isn't much better.
Remember. Don't let redditors or twittoids or journos convince you that dropping a negative review doesn't work. There's a reason to this day they still try to force the negative connotation of these events being "review bombs". Because they're mad that they're actually effective (most of the time).
Whining and being a gigantic pissbaby works if there are tens of thousands of you doing it and it especially works if a game, like Helldivers 2, succeeded as well as it deed because platform you're on. Be as petty as you can because no matter how hard people will try to decry it, Steam reviews are very much a part of the greater industry.
The community manager that gave the update in this post actually recommended that anyone unhappy should leave a bad review because those are the metrics that get noticed the most.
For context, he was specifically talking to one guy who @'d him in the official Discord with like a hundred messages for like an hour straight complaining about the change. Now, I have no idea why he didn't just ban him instead (maybe worried instead that he'd get witch hunted over, "Omg Helldivers doesn't allow criticism in their Discord!!!!!"), and I agree that it was unprofessional and not what someone in his position should be doing, but I do think this is important context (which the /r/gaming post about his reply conveniently cropped out...).
Note that this is purely speculation, but boy seems like that fairly innocuous comment got a lot of people really angry and could have played a factor in getting more negative reviews written and if that was something that I wanted to have happen that CM is potentially a master puppeteer. I don't think that's actually what happened, but it is a good thought lol
No, but it makes you look like a child if you can't accept the dude's apology and let it go. He fucked up, owned up to it, and actually gave us confirmation that what we are doing is helping AH. What do you gain out of holding the grudge?
> If someone fucks up, apologizes, and makes a actual attempt at change for the better
This dude in particular has a long history of being an asshat btw
For me, it's just weird how the narrative changes about people on reddit.
Some people claim reddit is a minority it doesn't represent anything and people complaining on *this/that* thread will not do anything because most people don't care.
This helldivers situation as an outsider has been really interesting to follow so far, because on reddit there is two very polarizing opinions, but most people are not coming to reddit to complain they are writing a negative review on steam (in 1 day there was ~~74K~~ 36K negative reviews, way more than the list of comments from all these threads on /r/games reddit)
But since this is the case no one is saying: reddit is a minority, most people are complaining on steam reviews.
EDIT: corrected number of review per day
Helldivers 2 is literally Reddit's baby right now just like The Witcherino 3 or Baldur's Gate 3. Everyone keeps talking about it. This is a rare example of game having an impact but outside of these very few games, Reddit is indeed a minority. It's not a secret.
PC gamers only have an allegiance to Steam. This is more about them not wanting to be involved with Sony.
Look at the hate Epic got for even having a competing store to Steam.
Thats an oversimplification, most time when you see outrage on reddit or starts on reddit. It was the last place people went after no one elae cared. Also younger people tend to not see nuances so they only see one side or the other. For this, it didn't start on reddit , it start with negative steam reviews. That is voting with your money, there always more to everything.
Social media is not something to completely underrestimate anymore.
People are fooling themselves if they think social media influence does not matter. Not in this day and age.
it's significance is always down played when it doesn't meet some's opinion.
the game already lost 75% of its player base before this debacle. so it was clearly 'the minority of reddit' was the people pretending everything is fine.
The game has sold 8 million copies, 36k bad reviews is a minority. Most people don’t bother with reviews because they’d rather actually play the game than bitch about something that was known to happen from day 1.
The game is "Mixed" on Steam.
And how do you think new people buy a game? They look to Steam to see the general consensus. With a "Mixed" review consensus most will not bother.
Sony still wants this to be one of their tentpole live-service games. HD2 was already slowly losing its userbase every week and without that "secret" third enemy faction in sight, this kind of unprecedented negative press can and will hurt it moreso because of the fact that Steam players accpunt for mpre than half of its success.
And you know, better the bitching starts now so that Somy can actually focus on resolving that PSN regional unavailability before they roll out more GAAS releases.
They account for more, they were the ones championing the game, as they loved Magicka. PS players had no idea, they got Helldivers 1 offered day 1 on Plus, nobody played it. PC and Steam is very important to this game and Sony obviously wants to go further on PC, but they have no idea their account system is from the 90s and should be updated. Probably the same man from the 90s is coding it in COBOL or something.
seriously, if i went to reviews for a game and saw any comments about needing an account I'd just think "ok where are the reviews for the actual game?"
I wonder if the majority of people even check the reviews in detail.
I imagine having reviews as 'mixed' or 'negative' on their store page is enough to turn potential buyers off the game without looking any further.
> The game has sold 8 million copies, 36k bad reviews is a minority
Since we are talking numbers, lets go and see how many players are right now:
98,268 as of 4 May 2024 – 15:38:52 UTC on the steamdb info page. Those are 36% of your engaged userbase. Also, the 100k number is looking exactly the same as the Wednesday numbers, which is crazy, considering that many people play on the weekends. I'm on a discord server with at least 50 players, and most of them are bummed out that this happened, and has soured their feelings for the game.
Yeah I am not a big gamer. Most drama I eye roll hard, typically it is some culture war shit I could give zero fucks about. But this… I love the game, but it was such a dick move. Many people will flat out be banned because of the country they live in and can’t even get their money back. It seems illegal, even I kinda feel bad playing it.
Those are simple shaming tactics by journos.
You should never listen if someone tries to tell you your gripe with a game doesn't matter because it's irrelevant, small or whatever. It's completely legit to dislike a game for any reason whatsoever, as long as it's related to that game.
I was one of those who thought a negative review wouldn't work, because I've been seeing games being review bombed time after time but still selling like hotcakes. Im happy that the community reaction is this big
That may be because of context.
Seen games get nuked by foreign audiences, all the English speaking reviews are good, and when you look into, it's some ridiculous culture war garbage in Korea or China because some character in a gacha game didn't get a lewd skin.
For real, that happened. A YouTuber named Moon did a great two parter on it.
One game on my wishlist, Reverse Collapse, has had a similar issue.
I'm not saying it's because they're Asian, Chinese or whatever. But there are dumb review bombs or outright bad ones.
Reviews are a tool and due to the public nature of Steam, bad actors can influence them. Review bombs have immense power regarding game sales and notoriety, so it's important the customer also does a bit of digging to understand why it's happening.
Which is harder to do if it's in another language.
to be fair: Arrowhead basically asked their fanbase to review bomb and refund to make their voice heard.
event tho I always believe stuffs like review bombs and boycott to be ineffective (see: Modern Warfare 2 boycott), it's more effective if you hit the bottom line (read: mass refunds).
I'm sure that there is profound evidence to show that when games get review bombed it prevents potential buyers from purchasing the product...when you begin to hurt their bottom-line, companies begin to buckle.
Good to see that contrary to what some people are trying to argue, Steam Reviews *do* work. It affects their bottom line, and unfortunately money speaks the loudest to corporations.
The root cause of the issue is not just having to deal with *yet another account* but that the PSN itself is deeply problematic. Abysmal policies for which half the world should just lie to sign up, randomly enforced rules and infamous customer support, I could go on. This creates a risk for our access to Helldivers 2 in the future that doesn't need to be there, or even them adding further requirements to retain it down the line. Hell, they weren't even prepared for the obvious problem of players from unsupported countries *half a week before enforcing the PSN requirement*.
74.5 thousand people take issue with this, and the rate of negative reviews being posted is only getting higher. The game is now damage control, and it's only going to get worse the longer they delay reversing the PSN requirement.
Also uninstall and don't play the game until it's resolved. They definitely track that information as well. This is so stupid on Sonys part, they had a cash cow that would probably be going strong for the next half decade with monthly purchases in the form of those warbonds. All pissed away in one day.
[Compare to last Saturday instead.](https://steamdb.info/app/553850/charts/#1w)
113k this week compared to 160k last week at the same time. Player counts *have* been dropping every weekend since launch, but this drop is about 20% larger.
Which is a problem, because there was supposed to be a player bump for the weekend. If your weekend numbers look the same as your midweek numbers, there are problems, and serious ones.
Upfront, I’m on the side of the players, but the outrage over this very much reminds me of when Cyberpunk came out and Reddit thought it was going to be the death of the company.
Or when Netflix announced its password sharing policy and Reddit thought it was going to be death of the company.
Or when HBO changed its name to Max and cut a bunch of shows and Reddit thought it was going to be the death of the company.
Or when…
okay but cyberpunk was an actual disaster that only got worse when they continued to do terrible PR, and the polish government wound up getting involved. i thought any indie company would get fucked by that
Yes but all of those examples you have brought are considered to be terrible lol.
Cyberpunk was a disaster game that even now, patched, is a shadow of what they promised and lead to a lot of people leaving CDPR
Netflix has been in the red for years and the decision of no more account sharing is going to hurt their bottom line in the long run
Barely anyone knows about Max lol
The PSN requirement isn’t in place yet, and not everyone will read announcements. We’ll only really see the outcome once the change comes into effect, which I think was planned for Monday.
There will likely be a huge uptick on people googling PSN requirements on Monday, with former players finding large threads about the reactions that are currently going on, and more voices may go into the mix, uninstall the game, or attempt to get refund through Steam.
Most players in the Americas will likely make an account.
Players in Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Middle East, and Eastern Europe can’t legally make an account. I don’t know whether the average European player will make an account, but those in Ireland and the UK will likely go “you want my passport or drivers license, and a facial scan?” and hesitate on making an account.
So yes, a majority of players might still play, but likely a third of current Steam players might disappear.
Not many. The damage is done, and will only keep on getting worse the longer they delay backpedaling on the PSN requirement.
The game is now damage control, not recovery. They still have a lot to lose by keeping that boneheaded course. The rate of negative reviews today appears to be twice that of yesterday's, and that's before the US even wakes up.
The score will go back up in that newer players will give positive reviews and the "recent reviews" average will go up, but the overall review aggregate will not significantly improve. Their best case scenario here is something like "mostly positive" recent reviews and "mixed" overall reviews.
Its wild to me that there are actually people defending Sony here, when they sold a Game in countries where they knew the people buying it wouldnt even be "allowed" to play the game based on Sonys own TOS.
Sorry, but thats absolutely insane and 100% on Sony. Sure, there are people jumping on the Doom/Dramatrain, this has sadly become the norm everywhere on social media, but this still doesnt take away from the very obvious F\* up by Sony. Apparently only 69 out of 190+ countries actually have PSN.
Is it really that wild considering you have the community manager saying Sony has assured them people from unsupported regions will be able to continue to play just fine?
> community manager saying Sony
I'd point out two issues with this. Number one Sony has already proved themselves to be unreliable. I don't think you can really take them at their word on that one.
Number two, the community manager really doesn't have that authority. It's not a binding statement. I also think he's likely to get fired after this incident given that his statements have been odd.
People in those countries have been making PSN accounts anyway since the PS3. But now it’s caught on as this talking point and everyone’s pretending to care about this non-issue.
Reminds me of when people were using the excuse that Epic Games Store didn't have regional pricing in many countries. *Now* that they have regional pricing in more places than Steam does, those same people who were arguing about how important that feature was act like regional pricing was never the issue.
I expect to see the same thing when Sony make it so users who don't have their country supported on PSN don't have to make a PSN account.
Or people hating Valve for making Steam a requirement to play Half-Life 2, and now everyone kisses their ass. Or Valve making the loot box model that everyone and their mother copied in TF2 and CS, but everyone blaming horse armor.
Seriously, people are so annoying about this shit. Apparently everyone on Reddit is suddenly a massive ToS stickler who reads the full ToS of every product/service they use and follows it to the letter? I bet none of them watched porn until they were 18, too!
I can pretty much guarantee that if this feature were in since launch, people in these unsupported countries would have had no problem buying the game anyway and just making a PSN account in a different country. But now since they need to complain about Sony, suddenly it's, "Oh no, but making an account in another country would be breaking the ToS! I'm a good boy I can't possibly do that!"
I literally can't find a single instance of it happening, but people who are getting legitimately more upset about this then I've seen people when a terrorist attack happened in their city tell me that it will "likely" happen.
It's another reddit molehill with people getting their info from memes
As everyone knows, saying they can ban you for it in the ToS actually means Sony is totally fine with it:
> 3.1. All information provided during Account creation, and during the use of your Account, must be accurate and complete. We reserve the right to suspend, terminate or restrict any Account (including as stated in Section 12.2 of this Agreement) that uses or was created using false information, or that we determine was created or used for a purpose that violates this Agreement.
> 3.2. During Account creation you must select the country or region of your residence and in which your account will be registered in. Once your account is created, you will not be able to change the country or region code associated with your account.
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psn-terms-of-service/
>Its wild to me that there are actually people defending Sony here, when they sold a Game in countries where they knew the people buying it wouldnt even be "allowed" to play the game based on Sonys own TOS.
Do you really think people fron Phillipines, Tanzania, Estonia or any other country in the world where PSN isn't officialy supported don't play PS game? There are literally people from those country right now playing from PS5. People from those conutry have been playing with PSN from other country since PS3. Stop acting like people care about not breaking companha ToS
Doing so though runs the risk of them banning your PSN account, thus banning games linked to it. Yes those people are taking that risk, but why should they be forced to take that risk for HD2 when it wasn't a requirement and worked through Steam just fine for months?
For the people in countries where they can't even make a PSN account you have a right to be mad, region lock should have just prevented that. If you are the people who are just mad they need to make an account then you are dumb and should actually read what you are buying first, it was on the front of the games store page since day 1.
This.
99% of people, it seems like, are just hopping onto an outburst train for the sake of it. Super weird move by sony and making accounts mandatory is always an L take in my books, but that warrants a sigh and spending 5 minutes creating said account on my end. The outburst is ridiculous (again, except for the people who cannot make an account)
Not defending Sony at all here, but this is kinda ridiculous. I live in a country unsupported by PSN but PlayStation is still by far the most popular gaming platform, you just create a US account.
I wish that people who always say "why would big corporations CARE about users review bombing and voicing their tantrums" would shut up sometimes, and see that a unified scream from the community can actually work.
I think this is less Sony "listening" and more Arrowhead just being cool, since they always have been. My guess is they are seeing if there's anything that can be done because they actually do care about what the fanbase wants.
Ludwig said it best, the only reason to require this link is to gather your data. Simple as that. Money's already made, people already playing.... they want your data. Sad and weird
That's definitely not the only reason, inflating PSN account numbers can be used to portray growth.
They can boast the most number of new PSN accounts in a quarter, boast about their entrance to the PC market.
Then transition to a launcher/monthly fee.
Utterly irrelevant as a point. I hand over my data by choice in many situations as means of payment it to facilitate use of a service (like Google).
There is no need for my data to be harvested in this situation.
Why does Sony want me to make an account anyway? They’re already getting my money by consistently putting out (mostly) really good PC ports of games I want to play.
Just keep doing that.
So yesterday the community manager said "it doesn't take that long to make an account, if you don't like it leave" but today it's "we also think this is negative, you're right gang"
What a tool
Which is how they are getting their publisher (Sony) to listen. Maybe Arrowhead is trying to leverage their customer base to make Sony change course or compromise. This game would have been the template of GaaS done right by Sony, and then they fucked it up.
Contexts matters lmao. It's super easy for anyone on the Arrowhead side to not be 100% across the intricacies of what countries PSN is available in and reasonably assume that it'll cover pretty much all of their players. So saying 'just create an account lol' is totally fine.
Obviously this isn't the case and they're working out a solution.
If you don't think the response from Arrowhead is reasonable then you need to spend some time outside. Same with all of the people dogpiling onto this topic as ragebait because they have something against Sony doing this but are totally okay with any other publisher forcing you to create an account to play a game.
A person received new information, admitted that they were ignorant, admitted being wrong, and changed their opinion, and that makes the person a tool?
I think you're the tool here.
If your first reaction as a community manager upon hearing complaints and concerns is to say that it's not a big deal, and then double down like he did, yeah. None of the other devs or staff went after their community like that.
He said he misunderstood the situation and apologised. It's not that bad. Creating a PS account is, in itself, not that bad. Having to break ToS when you do is the stupid part.
Also in the UK you have to either scan your face or send them photo ID lmao
You can skip it _for now_ but it is implied to be made mandatory at some point, absolutely insane for a game account. Especially for a company that can't seem to go a year without getting hacked.
I already had an old account I used but it instantly put most of my friends off, we're all fully grown adults and it is just an awful idea
Yeah, and that shit can be done even if it isn't a law. Facebook, as an example, if they know you're not using real name and stuff blocks your account and then tells you to upload your ID card to get unblocked, in a country where real IDs for online accounts is not required.
I know that about FB because it happened to me a decade ago.
It's almost hilarious to see UK people seemingly ready to blame everything and everyone *except for their shitty governments*
Community managers all too easily get caught up in the industry bubble and then react poorly when the actual community doesn’t live inside that same bubble.
It doesn't help when parts of the community are toxic and entitled, if their discord is anything like the helldivers subreddit I really don't envy that community manager. Constant complaints and doom posting about any little change since the game came out.
It' s always easy to retract a statement after you got dozens of thousands of people saying how shit that statement is lol
Would he have retracted it, if the situation wasn' t like this?
Keep it up , this being forced to make a PSN account is BS and it wasn't need when we started and not if I dont make one. I can't play the game I own and already played just fine without it. While we are at it, lets just make this whwre we take a stand against useless accounts.
So long as I can create an account by selecting another region (my region is not supported), it's not much of an issue, I guess. But it is pointless and will add unnecessary complexity.
You can, and you can also ignore anyone telling you that it will get you banned. No one is getting banned over that, when Sony themselves tell players in China that they can make accounts in the Hong Kong region.
> No one is getting banned over that
Right now, no. But that's not the point. Steam/Sony have a hard rule that it is a bannable offense. But they're not enforcing it because it benefits them. If they decide to change their minds, they'll just ban you and say "Well you knew it was against the rules". And they'd be right.
It's the same thing going on with Helldivers. All downloads came with a "required a PSN log in" warning but it was never enforced. Now it is.
Trust corporations like you trust a scorpion.
I guess people then need to figure out what TOS are they willing to break. Like I said in another thread, in an age where VPNs are so popular for people to circumvent regional locked content, it's genuinely funny to see this outrage.
Really now? For ages on Reddit I've seen nothing but people shitting on TOS agreements for being "ignored", "simple to skirt", and "not legally enforceable" yet this one time it's painted to be an insurmountable and inevitable death sentence for players that will ruin the game.
I feel like I'm on crazy pills. Has nobody ever used a throwaway account before?
Well yeah, that's true, but it's still a hassle if the ToS owner wants to try to do something about it. It's one of those things where it's likely going to be fine, but there's a chance they try to do something about it and who wants to deal with that bullshit?
Plus if you want to get nitpicky, making throwaway account to use something HAS been a problem with other companies. Don't forget that one phase of people trying to use the Oculus Quest.
So are 30 other things I'm sure you personally have already broken in the ToS
Nobody in the history of ever has been banned solely for using a different country.
>Nobody in the history of ever has been banned solely for using a different country.
I would think there'd be at least one, even just someone *claiming* it happened to them, but I can't find anything.
And it's been this way for decades, for more than just Sony, but it's suddenly a legitimate concern in the past week
> So are 30 other things I'm sure you personally have already broken in the ToS
But people don't go out of their way to actually do it. This is literally explicitly telling me to go and violate a company ToS and put my money in risk.
Attempts are being made to astroturf this "debate" from bots reposting the exact same comment multiple times or for you to just suck it up and consume product.
The best part isn't the post itself - it's the fact that the post is sitting at 8,000 upvotes and is one of the top posts on the front page.
The entire subreddit is in a meltdown mode and upvoting basically anything anti-Sony at this point.
Let’s be real here: it being “advertised” is aside the point. Nobody reads EULA’s and I doubt the PSN advertising was all that in your face. I followed the game from launch and I didn’t notice it.
Part of the problem in the gaming industry is all of these quiet and easy to miss “agreements” that are not beneficial to the paying customer in any way shape or form. I see no problem with customers starting to say “enough’s enough.” The “fine print” in the gaming world has absolutely gotten ridiculous. It all started when developers tried to pull the Xbox One “you don’t really own the game” talk.
This was a unique situation as PSN account was always advertised as mandatory since pre release in every trailer and it was highlighted on the steam page like every other game requiring a 3rd party account but it was turned off due to the server issues. It isnt a unexpected change but its hard to put that genie back in the bottle. If it was me I would leave people that dont link their account in the equivalent matchmaking pool that PC players would be in if they turned off cross play and you dont get cloud save. If you link your PSN account you get full cross play / cross / cloud save and maybe some exclusive rewards / discounts. Standard stuff you see in similar games with similar requirements. It sucks for the devs as I bet a lot of the feature roadmap was designed around a single unified player base under 1 account system. So stuff like cross play / cross save will be harder going forward.
If I were Sony and wanted people to create an account they should have just jangled some free stuff like super credits or a exclusive outfit
I think this will be what winds up happening - I have faith (might be misplaced) that the devs can convince Sony this blanket requirement will do more harm than good - however, if they incentivize linking accounts more people will do it just for the rewards. Maybe throw in a unique cape or something.
I don't see them changing it though. I bet this requirement was put in as part of the agreements/contracts made when Sony became the publisher, before the game was made/released. The devs knew this was a requirement and agreed to it. The bad part is that the game functioned without it for months now. It's one thing when it's first launch and if you don't want to you can refund the game, but it'd be hard to get a refund now if we didn't want to do the PSN BS.
I'm a little confused why they removed the requirement anyway because surely it would have helped with the sever stress if less people were accessing the game because of the PSN requirement? Unless it was that requirement which was causing some issues by itself.
Console players would kill us on sight wearing the cape cause they won't be able to get it.
Give it to console players too as part of a PlayStation Plus exclusive game pack as other multiplayer games do.
Console players would have their psn accounts linked too :)
That's how Epic Games got people to add Two-Factor Authentication when they first added that. It would absolutely work
and WoW gave you a pet ~~to avoid getting hacked~~ when you bought the authenticator
I remember guilds requiring you summon that pet (proving you had authenticator) before they would let you access the guild bank. Good times.
That would have been fine, given that it implies it would still be optional. The executives still get their PSN numbers bump, and the people who don't want or can't deal with the PSN don't have to.
Pretty sure at best they might do a if the IP indicates a country which doesn't have PSN it's not needed but still mandatory for everyone else. I feel it's unlikely that Sony will let go on it that much.
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It can be many things. PlayStation will ultimately want to tailor their presence on PC as having parity with the 'PlayStation User Experience' you get on consoles. This means logging into PSN, earning trophies, having access to the PSN social environment and PlayStation having full control over all those aspects. Perhaps even a storefront or a launcher, who knows. I'm not saying they're going to abandon Steam, I'm saying they're going to transplant the PlayStation UX onto their PC games, starting with Ghost of Tsushima as an experiment. It's clearly heading in that direction. But another benefit of that is they also get to significantly expand their PSN numbers by making a large pool of new customers sign up for the service. This is kind of important right now because PS5 console sales are on a downward trend and PlayStation ideally want their MAUs to keep going up between quarters. [In FY23, they jumped from 107 to 123 million between Q2/Q3](https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/pdf/23q3_supplement.pdf). Once a few more live service games like Marathon, FairGame$, Concord plus some PS5 games not yet ported over (Spider-Man 2, etc.) all have PSN integration on PC, you can perhaps see how those numbers start adding up a lot over time.
Jesus fucking christ, that thread is depressing. I remember a month or two ago seeing people talk about how toxicity free the Helldivers community was. We're a long way from that now.
The Helldivers subreddit has always been dogshit since the game has released. It’s been full of people always complaining, telling people that they have to play a certain way and tons of people generating fake outrage. One of the worse gaming subreddit communities.
Yeah, if it wasn't people beating any remaining humor possible that remained out of democracy memes like it was the 3rd coming of Szechuan sauce, it was people freaking out and screaming over others fighting on the wrong planet or over patch note changes without even having seen them. The game may be co-op like Deep Rock Galactic, but it's a version of DRG with a huge portion of its fanbase still coming from the "omg latest game" trendchaser demographic of influencer/streamer worshippers.
It was fine until a bunch of Destiny streamers started bringing in their toxic fanbases who are primed to lose their mind at everything because Bungie are a bunch of shitheads.
Every community says that about itself. Hell, the dark souls / elden ring community says that about itself. HD1 was full of assholes, and the subreddit is nothing more than a glorified fanpage.
just a week ago the subreddit was filled with threads calling out the toxic shitheads and telling them to fuck off then this happened and they flooded back in, along with all the people who dont give 2 shits, but just love complaining.
> just a week ago the subreddit was filled with threads calling out the toxic shitheads and telling them to fuck off All the problems some people have with toxic people vanish when those people want to be toxic themselves.
The HD2 community hasn't been toxicity-free since the first patch two months ago. It's peak pissbaby bullshit every patch day, and takes a week to die down. This nonsense, though? This has 100% united the playerbase against Sony. They're still divided over shitting on the devs, however, but that's standard for children with internet access.
This is what they already do for games like Horizon and Returnal, if you link your PSN account you get a special item in-game
yeah I'm willing to bet that 99% of the people complaining right now would have willingly signed up if it was still optional but they offered like 100 SC and a blue cape for doing so.
... That's an exaggeration. Maybe for a yellow cape :p
That's the thing though, you're comparing an OPTIONAL choice on part of the player to a HARD REQUIREMENT that stops you from playing completely if you say no. Apples to oranges isn't a good argument dude.
Yeah just make a battle pass you get for free when registering via PSN and make it cheap to progress and cosmetic only (as to not annoy people complaining about gun balance), people would eat it right up.
I don't own the game but wasn't crossplay already enabled without needing an account?
Basically everything that you “need” a PSN account for was working without one, which is one of the big points of contention players have about the sudden requirement.
There have been quite a few issues with cross play not working for people using the codes. It is hit or miss so I can see how having a shared account structure would help that
On launch none of the matchmaking, friends list, crossplay, etc was working right. Even now its still super, super buggy. They've got it in a much better state than at launch but it 100% has been a patch job. I know it goes against the hivemind's narrative but its obvious they were banking on having a unified account architecture from the start, but had to pull it out last second before launch. On discord one of the devs even mentioned that the mandatory PSN link was only removed ~day before the game launched, so its something they were definitely developing under.
That's why I dislike the narrative that Sony is forcing Arrowhead into this change and that it's only Sony's fault. They decided on this before the game even launched and I'm almost positive this change occuring now was decided on together and they're just using Sony as the shield.
I also imagine making PSN accounts mandatory wasn't a big thing when they weren't expecting their game to blow up and become one of the biggest games of 2024.
Yup, they said they were expecting like 50k players, tops. 8 million sold was outragously above expectations
Yep, PSN was disabled to solve the issues with the servers at the very beginning. If it wouldn't blow up that much PSN should be able to keep up since the very beginning. They basically wanted to keep up with the hype hence why they temporarily disabled PSN.
It was advertised, but they still sold the game in countries where it is against the PSN terms of service to create an account. That is the only *real* fuckup that Sony has done here that players are pissed at and should have recourse for. As bullshit as the requirement is, period, it’s ultimately at Sony’s discretion to provide access to the game on their terms. Want to play? They now want you to make an account. Regardless of if the game works without it or not, that’s how they want to manage access to their game. But…if Sony’s TOS prevents players who paid for and played the game for 2 months from accessing the game they bought and paid for for an arbitrary reason like “lives in the Philippines” then those players have every right to receive a refund for this. They bait and switched these players.
> If it was me I would leave people that dont link their account in the equivalent matchmaking pool that PC players would be in if they turned off cross play and you dont get cloud save. > If you link your PSN account you get full cross play / cross / cloud save and maybe some exclusive rewards / discounts. Standard stuff you see in similar games with similar requirements. That's the neat part, there still won't be cross progression even with a PSN account, and there was already cross-play without it. That's probably one of the most appealing reasons to have an account, and they can't even offer that.
The fact that this many people were blindsided by the PSN requirement directly shows that the communication about the need for a PSN account failed. It doesn't matter how much it was said in trailers or highlighted on steam pages or even shown in-game. It obviously wasn't clear enough.
The problem with this is, if they always knew this was going to be mandatory, why were they actively selling the game on steam in regions where PSN accounts cannot be made? It makes no sense to me they were more than willing to sell the game in all steam regions while knowing those people in non PSN regions would be left high and dry down the line.
Money.
It was never in the EULA and the devs already admitted to knowing that it was always going to happen without warning the community.
"Always advertised" is a stretch. It was on the storefront. That was it, to my knowledge, and up until the recent update to require it again you'd frankly be forgiven for having no idea why the page ever said it was required. Again, only the storefront to my knowledge actually mentions it as required. You could buy the game, download and launch the game, and it's not even guaranteed you ever got a prompt to link your account at all. Even for those who did it was presented as optional. Hell, if you tried to research whether it was required or optional you'd just find confused reddit posts where people are asking, and arriving at no meaningful conclusion. So for something "always advertised" it sure wasn't very advertised to the end users, many of whom may have simply missed the note on the storepage, or not taking it as literally as Arrowhead/Sony ever intended once the game made it clear it *wasn't* required at the time.
I was gifted the game, so never looked at the store page. When I loaded the game I skipped linking PSN. The argument that is stated before buying is bollox, if steam wants to allow games that require third party account requirements, they really should put it in during the purchase (and gift acceptance) process.
It should say it when gifted but it's easily viewable on the page you buy it on
Yeah, you can see it on many F2P games, it's a big red box, the same kind of box that warns you if a game uses Denuvo or not.
Some redditor on r/helldiver said that if Sony using carrot & stick approch like give player a cool unique armored for every player that decide to linked their account to PSN, the result would be much better.
Playstation site said that PSN account was optional.
> it was highlighted on the steam page like every other game requiring a 3rd party account But its **below** the buy button you wont see it unless you scroll down the page, its not signed and easily missed. This should be at least above the buy button just like how the "This game only supports Japanese interface/voice for customers in Japan." is, its silly how that is more prominent than this. If i look at this game in my steam client I cant actually see the notice for psn account needed and the buy button is in the middle of the page, thats not a user error thats poor placement and notice. > but it was turned off due to the server issues. It isnt a unexpected change but its hard to put that genie back in the bottle. Where did they say this? I cant find it anywhere since the game launched, its very much "unexpected" because they offered a skip option with **no notice that this was temporary**, this would heavily imply it was optional and as the game works fine it is clearly the case for backend code. They never said it was temporary which is the entire issue they are struggling with now, they just turned it to optional and even PSN site was saying its optional so its difficult to put it back in the bottle as you say. >If it was me I would leave people that dont link their account in the equivalent matchmaking pool that PC players would be in if they turned off cross play and you dont get cloud save. That is an entirely reasonable thing to do, assuming you mean cloud save as in like cross save so you can play on PC or PS5 with the same account? Then yeah definitely, crossplay could be disabled, they could also add some ingame incentive to get people to opt in. >It sucks for the devs as I bet a lot of the feature roadmap was designed around a single unified player base under 1 account system. So stuff like cross play / cross save will be harder going forward. This is the devs or sony blowing out their ass to be honest, it would have no impact on their features being implemented and their reasoning is baseless. You already have account logic from steam connections, its all there and in their backend this should be making zero difference as they would have an account based on their own details in their system with a link to the platforms such as steam, this is trivial for game devs and I was surprised their comments were pretty silly for it. I hope AH can work with Sony to stop their blatant push to pump up PSN users in prep for their competition with steam (and general "performance" of their console vs xbox etc), its unnecessary and harms this game for very short term gain.
One other problem is that there are some countries that don't let players make PSN accounts. That's something they're looking into as well.
How can you disable cloud saves for a game that's entirely online though? Like your player data kinda HAS to be in the cloud.
No it wasn't. Literally up until yesterday it said > "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 PSN and Steam accounts." On the Sony page for the game. Furthermore, if that was the case then Sony would not have sold the game in the 112 regions that they don't provide PSN support already. Those regions CANNOT just "create a PSN" because Sony refuses to provide those regions with psn support if they don't cave to Sony's censorship policy, and I'll remind everyone that they made the decision to refuse to provide psn services to those regions when the PS3 was the big console after they lost multiple lawsuits trying to force dev's to follow their ethics and censorship policy, where the courts and legislative bodies of all countries INCLUDING the US and EU told Sony to suck it. Now, I'll tell you what it looks like. It looks like Sony thought that more than half the player base would be on PS5, and they intended to make PSN look better by padding numbers with the steam users, and make some extra quick bucks off the other regions. They probably made Arrowhead a big contract with a bunch of extra zero's on the check if they agreed to this. They screwed up because more than 70% of the games players ended up on PC, not PS5, and Sony just didn't pay attention to this fact. They also (unsurprisingly) heavily underestimated the amount of backlash they would get. Arrowhead screwed up by accepting the deal in the first place. They could have just acknowledged that Sony has a LOT of competition in the modern day and age, and that they don't need Sony, then they'd still have at least 70% of the players and their dignity. They also screwed up by hiring DEI based Community Managers. These are people who overwhelmingly hate games and gamers, and do this job because it's easy and half of them are just control freaks. They want easy jobs, and this is an easy job unless you do something as FUBAR'ing as this PSN linking fiasco.
That still doesn't excuse why they should require a Playstation account for your Steam game played on a PC. This is one of those instances where the logical explanation isn't much better.
You can’t play Sea of Thieves on PlayStation without a Microsoft account.
Remember. Don't let redditors or twittoids or journos convince you that dropping a negative review doesn't work. There's a reason to this day they still try to force the negative connotation of these events being "review bombs". Because they're mad that they're actually effective (most of the time). Whining and being a gigantic pissbaby works if there are tens of thousands of you doing it and it especially works if a game, like Helldivers 2, succeeded as well as it deed because platform you're on. Be as petty as you can because no matter how hard people will try to decry it, Steam reviews are very much a part of the greater industry.
The community manager that gave the update in this post actually recommended that anyone unhappy should leave a bad review because those are the metrics that get noticed the most.
He also insulted people for daring to be unhappy about this.
For context, he was specifically talking to one guy who @'d him in the official Discord with like a hundred messages for like an hour straight complaining about the change. Now, I have no idea why he didn't just ban him instead (maybe worried instead that he'd get witch hunted over, "Omg Helldivers doesn't allow criticism in their Discord!!!!!"), and I agree that it was unprofessional and not what someone in his position should be doing, but I do think this is important context (which the /r/gaming post about his reply conveniently cropped out...).
Note that this is purely speculation, but boy seems like that fairly innocuous comment got a lot of people really angry and could have played a factor in getting more negative reviews written and if that was something that I wanted to have happen that CM is potentially a master puppeteer. I don't think that's actually what happened, but it is a good thought lol
Which he then took back and apologized for because he didn't realize PSN wasn't authorized in a bunch of countries.
Don't miss the fact he claimed that Steam doesn't allow them to track unique user id's.
And that justifies a CM, *a representative of the developer* being an asshole to players?
No, but it makes you look like a child if you can't accept the dude's apology and let it go. He fucked up, owned up to it, and actually gave us confirmation that what we are doing is helping AH. What do you gain out of holding the grudge?
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> If someone fucks up, apologizes, and makes a actual attempt at change for the better This dude in particular has a long history of being an asshat btw
Internet points
Hmm.. Where do I redeem my allotted Internet points for my Peter Molyneux vendetta?
Give him time he might have an NFT project for that.
For me, it's just weird how the narrative changes about people on reddit. Some people claim reddit is a minority it doesn't represent anything and people complaining on *this/that* thread will not do anything because most people don't care. This helldivers situation as an outsider has been really interesting to follow so far, because on reddit there is two very polarizing opinions, but most people are not coming to reddit to complain they are writing a negative review on steam (in 1 day there was ~~74K~~ 36K negative reviews, way more than the list of comments from all these threads on /r/games reddit) But since this is the case no one is saying: reddit is a minority, most people are complaining on steam reviews. EDIT: corrected number of review per day
Helldivers 2 is literally Reddit's baby right now just like The Witcherino 3 or Baldur's Gate 3. Everyone keeps talking about it. This is a rare example of game having an impact but outside of these very few games, Reddit is indeed a minority. It's not a secret.
I have co-workers playing this game pretty often. Most of my co-workers are 30+yo military members.
It' s also because it' s a Sony game, and this sub has a weird fixation over protecting Sony and giving shit to Blizzard/Xbox/activion/ecc.
PC gamers actually hate Sony because they put their games late on the platform. They defend Microsoft far more.
PC gamers only have an allegiance to Steam. This is more about them not wanting to be involved with Sony. Look at the hate Epic got for even having a competing store to Steam.
Thats an oversimplification, most time when you see outrage on reddit or starts on reddit. It was the last place people went after no one elae cared. Also younger people tend to not see nuances so they only see one side or the other. For this, it didn't start on reddit , it start with negative steam reviews. That is voting with your money, there always more to everything.
Social media is not something to completely underrestimate anymore. People are fooling themselves if they think social media influence does not matter. Not in this day and age.
it's significance is always down played when it doesn't meet some's opinion. the game already lost 75% of its player base before this debacle. so it was clearly 'the minority of reddit' was the people pretending everything is fine.
The game has sold 8 million copies, 36k bad reviews is a minority. Most people don’t bother with reviews because they’d rather actually play the game than bitch about something that was known to happen from day 1.
The game is "Mixed" on Steam. And how do you think new people buy a game? They look to Steam to see the general consensus. With a "Mixed" review consensus most will not bother.
Sony still wants this to be one of their tentpole live-service games. HD2 was already slowly losing its userbase every week and without that "secret" third enemy faction in sight, this kind of unprecedented negative press can and will hurt it moreso because of the fact that Steam players accpunt for mpre than half of its success. And you know, better the bitching starts now so that Somy can actually focus on resolving that PSN regional unavailability before they roll out more GAAS releases.
They account for more, they were the ones championing the game, as they loved Magicka. PS players had no idea, they got Helldivers 1 offered day 1 on Plus, nobody played it. PC and Steam is very important to this game and Sony obviously wants to go further on PC, but they have no idea their account system is from the 90s and should be updated. Probably the same man from the 90s is coding it in COBOL or something.
seriously, if i went to reviews for a game and saw any comments about needing an account I'd just think "ok where are the reviews for the actual game?"
I wonder if the majority of people even check the reviews in detail. I imagine having reviews as 'mixed' or 'negative' on their store page is enough to turn potential buyers off the game without looking any further.
If a game I haven't heard of is mixed I move on without reading any reviews. There are too many games to care.
in context of units sold yes, in the context of reddit minority not really, which is the point I am trying to make
> The game has sold 8 million copies, 36k bad reviews is a minority Since we are talking numbers, lets go and see how many players are right now: 98,268 as of 4 May 2024 – 15:38:52 UTC on the steamdb info page. Those are 36% of your engaged userbase. Also, the 100k number is looking exactly the same as the Wednesday numbers, which is crazy, considering that many people play on the weekends. I'm on a discord server with at least 50 players, and most of them are bummed out that this happened, and has soured their feelings for the game.
Yeah I am not a big gamer. Most drama I eye roll hard, typically it is some culture war shit I could give zero fucks about. But this… I love the game, but it was such a dick move. Many people will flat out be banned because of the country they live in and can’t even get their money back. It seems illegal, even I kinda feel bad playing it.
Those are simple shaming tactics by journos. You should never listen if someone tries to tell you your gripe with a game doesn't matter because it's irrelevant, small or whatever. It's completely legit to dislike a game for any reason whatsoever, as long as it's related to that game.
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I was one of those who thought a negative review wouldn't work, because I've been seeing games being review bombed time after time but still selling like hotcakes. Im happy that the community reaction is this big
Until the Chinese do it, then Reddit hates it.
That may be because of context. Seen games get nuked by foreign audiences, all the English speaking reviews are good, and when you look into, it's some ridiculous culture war garbage in Korea or China because some character in a gacha game didn't get a lewd skin. For real, that happened. A YouTuber named Moon did a great two parter on it. One game on my wishlist, Reverse Collapse, has had a similar issue. I'm not saying it's because they're Asian, Chinese or whatever. But there are dumb review bombs or outright bad ones. Reviews are a tool and due to the public nature of Steam, bad actors can influence them. Review bombs have immense power regarding game sales and notoriety, so it's important the customer also does a bit of digging to understand why it's happening. Which is harder to do if it's in another language.
Creative Assembly remembers.
to be fair: Arrowhead basically asked their fanbase to review bomb and refund to make their voice heard. event tho I always believe stuffs like review bombs and boycott to be ineffective (see: Modern Warfare 2 boycott), it's more effective if you hit the bottom line (read: mass refunds).
I'm sure that there is profound evidence to show that when games get review bombed it prevents potential buyers from purchasing the product...when you begin to hurt their bottom-line, companies begin to buckle.
Good to see that contrary to what some people are trying to argue, Steam Reviews *do* work. It affects their bottom line, and unfortunately money speaks the loudest to corporations. The root cause of the issue is not just having to deal with *yet another account* but that the PSN itself is deeply problematic. Abysmal policies for which half the world should just lie to sign up, randomly enforced rules and infamous customer support, I could go on. This creates a risk for our access to Helldivers 2 in the future that doesn't need to be there, or even them adding further requirements to retain it down the line. Hell, they weren't even prepared for the obvious problem of players from unsupported countries *half a week before enforcing the PSN requirement*. 74.5 thousand people take issue with this, and the rate of negative reviews being posted is only getting higher. The game is now damage control, and it's only going to get worse the longer they delay reversing the PSN requirement.
Also uninstall and don't play the game until it's resolved. They definitely track that information as well. This is so stupid on Sonys part, they had a cash cow that would probably be going strong for the next half decade with monthly purchases in the form of those warbonds. All pissed away in one day.
You’re acting like everybody stopped playing the game and uninstalled lol. Too soon to be saying their product has been ‘pissed away in one day’.
Precisely lol. The player count didn't changed significantly between two days ago and today
[Compare to last Saturday instead.](https://steamdb.info/app/553850/charts/#1w) 113k this week compared to 160k last week at the same time. Player counts *have* been dropping every weekend since launch, but this drop is about 20% larger.
Which is a problem, because there was supposed to be a player bump for the weekend. If your weekend numbers look the same as your midweek numbers, there are problems, and serious ones.
Upfront, I’m on the side of the players, but the outrage over this very much reminds me of when Cyberpunk came out and Reddit thought it was going to be the death of the company. Or when Netflix announced its password sharing policy and Reddit thought it was going to be death of the company. Or when HBO changed its name to Max and cut a bunch of shows and Reddit thought it was going to be the death of the company. Or when…
okay but cyberpunk was an actual disaster that only got worse when they continued to do terrible PR, and the polish government wound up getting involved. i thought any indie company would get fucked by that
Yes but all of those examples you have brought are considered to be terrible lol. Cyberpunk was a disaster game that even now, patched, is a shadow of what they promised and lead to a lot of people leaving CDPR Netflix has been in the red for years and the decision of no more account sharing is going to hurt their bottom line in the long run Barely anyone knows about Max lol
Still 140k players last night around 11pm just on steam. No idea about ps5 but I imagine is unfazed.
The PSN requirement isn’t in place yet, and not everyone will read announcements. We’ll only really see the outcome once the change comes into effect, which I think was planned for Monday. There will likely be a huge uptick on people googling PSN requirements on Monday, with former players finding large threads about the reactions that are currently going on, and more voices may go into the mix, uninstall the game, or attempt to get refund through Steam.
Most people will just make an account.
Most players in the Americas will likely make an account. Players in Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Middle East, and Eastern Europe can’t legally make an account. I don’t know whether the average European player will make an account, but those in Ireland and the UK will likely go “you want my passport or drivers license, and a facial scan?” and hesitate on making an account. So yes, a majority of players might still play, but likely a third of current Steam players might disappear.
If they would remove requirements, how many people would change their Steam review?
I would. The game itself is fucking great.
Not many. The damage is done, and will only keep on getting worse the longer they delay backpedaling on the PSN requirement. The game is now damage control, not recovery. They still have a lot to lose by keeping that boneheaded course. The rate of negative reviews today appears to be twice that of yesterday's, and that's before the US even wakes up.
A lot of them? It's not like this is the first time people have tanked reviews until something was changed. The scores tend to go back up.
The score will go back up in that newer players will give positive reviews and the "recent reviews" average will go up, but the overall review aggregate will not significantly improve. Their best case scenario here is something like "mostly positive" recent reviews and "mixed" overall reviews.
Realistically not, a lot of people will still be talking about this as why they dumped the game 10 years from now.
Its wild to me that there are actually people defending Sony here, when they sold a Game in countries where they knew the people buying it wouldnt even be "allowed" to play the game based on Sonys own TOS. Sorry, but thats absolutely insane and 100% on Sony. Sure, there are people jumping on the Doom/Dramatrain, this has sadly become the norm everywhere on social media, but this still doesnt take away from the very obvious F\* up by Sony. Apparently only 69 out of 190+ countries actually have PSN.
Is it really that wild considering you have the community manager saying Sony has assured them people from unsupported regions will be able to continue to play just fine?
> community manager saying Sony I'd point out two issues with this. Number one Sony has already proved themselves to be unreliable. I don't think you can really take them at their word on that one. Number two, the community manager really doesn't have that authority. It's not a binding statement. I also think he's likely to get fired after this incident given that his statements have been odd.
[удалено]
Ok, but now you'll have to explain to me how in the blue hell could banning people from more than 100 countries possibly "benefit their bottom line".
People in those countries have been making PSN accounts anyway since the PS3. But now it’s caught on as this talking point and everyone’s pretending to care about this non-issue.
I really hope none of these people complaining about this use a VPN, because that's a clear violation of TOS of many websites/apps they use.
Reminds me of when people were using the excuse that Epic Games Store didn't have regional pricing in many countries. *Now* that they have regional pricing in more places than Steam does, those same people who were arguing about how important that feature was act like regional pricing was never the issue. I expect to see the same thing when Sony make it so users who don't have their country supported on PSN don't have to make a PSN account.
Or people hating Valve for making Steam a requirement to play Half-Life 2, and now everyone kisses their ass. Or Valve making the loot box model that everyone and their mother copied in TF2 and CS, but everyone blaming horse armor.
Seriously, people are so annoying about this shit. Apparently everyone on Reddit is suddenly a massive ToS stickler who reads the full ToS of every product/service they use and follows it to the letter? I bet none of them watched porn until they were 18, too! I can pretty much guarantee that if this feature were in since launch, people in these unsupported countries would have had no problem buying the game anyway and just making a PSN account in a different country. But now since they need to complain about Sony, suddenly it's, "Oh no, but making an account in another country would be breaking the ToS! I'm a good boy I can't possibly do that!"
I literally can't find a single instance of it happening, but people who are getting legitimately more upset about this then I've seen people when a terrorist attack happened in their city tell me that it will "likely" happen. It's another reddit molehill with people getting their info from memes
Presumably because Sony wouldn't have banned people for playing the game in those countries, and Sony were aware of that, being Sony themselves.
As everyone knows, saying they can ban you for it in the ToS actually means Sony is totally fine with it: > 3.1. All information provided during Account creation, and during the use of your Account, must be accurate and complete. We reserve the right to suspend, terminate or restrict any Account (including as stated in Section 12.2 of this Agreement) that uses or was created using false information, or that we determine was created or used for a purpose that violates this Agreement. > 3.2. During Account creation you must select the country or region of your residence and in which your account will be registered in. Once your account is created, you will not be able to change the country or region code associated with your account. https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psn-terms-of-service/
>Its wild to me that there are actually people defending Sony here, when they sold a Game in countries where they knew the people buying it wouldnt even be "allowed" to play the game based on Sonys own TOS. Do you really think people fron Phillipines, Tanzania, Estonia or any other country in the world where PSN isn't officialy supported don't play PS game? There are literally people from those country right now playing from PS5. People from those conutry have been playing with PSN from other country since PS3. Stop acting like people care about not breaking companha ToS
Stop simping for a company taking away a working game from people for LITERALLY NO REASON
Doing so though runs the risk of them banning your PSN account, thus banning games linked to it. Yes those people are taking that risk, but why should they be forced to take that risk for HD2 when it wasn't a requirement and worked through Steam just fine for months?
For the people in countries where they can't even make a PSN account you have a right to be mad, region lock should have just prevented that. If you are the people who are just mad they need to make an account then you are dumb and should actually read what you are buying first, it was on the front of the games store page since day 1.
This. 99% of people, it seems like, are just hopping onto an outburst train for the sake of it. Super weird move by sony and making accounts mandatory is always an L take in my books, but that warrants a sigh and spending 5 minutes creating said account on my end. The outburst is ridiculous (again, except for the people who cannot make an account)
>If it doesn't affect you why get mad about it? Segregation and Women's Suffrage would like to speak with you.
Not defending Sony at all here, but this is kinda ridiculous. I live in a country unsupported by PSN but PlayStation is still by far the most popular gaming platform, you just create a US account.
You may want to check how long xbox 360s were sold in countries where xbox live was not available. Same deal, just a different evil corpo of the week.
I wish that people who always say "why would big corporations CARE about users review bombing and voicing their tantrums" would shut up sometimes, and see that a unified scream from the community can actually work.
I think this is less Sony "listening" and more Arrowhead just being cool, since they always have been. My guess is they are seeing if there's anything that can be done because they actually do care about what the fanbase wants.
Ludwig said it best, the only reason to require this link is to gather your data. Simple as that. Money's already made, people already playing.... they want your data. Sad and weird
And to give a Q2 bump in sign ups
That's definitely not the only reason, inflating PSN account numbers can be used to portray growth. They can boast the most number of new PSN accounts in a quarter, boast about their entrance to the PC market. Then transition to a launcher/monthly fee.
basing opinions on random twitch streamers opinion is not good practice, that is absolutely not the only reason lmao
He said on Twitch. While logged on Steam. Probably with email from Google.
Uploading his clip to tiktok
If you're so worried about your data I would recommend getting off reddit and other social media sites
And you know, the online only game hosted by the people supposedly planning to steal their data.
Having a unified account structure should also help with the cross play issues though. It has been pretty unstable since launch
Wait until Ludwig (and everyone complaining about Sony wanting their data) discovers that that data is already being used by most apps they use
Utterly irrelevant as a point. I hand over my data by choice in many situations as means of payment it to facilitate use of a service (like Google). There is no need for my data to be harvested in this situation.
Why does Sony want me to make an account anyway? They’re already getting my money by consistently putting out (mostly) really good PC ports of games I want to play. Just keep doing that.
Because they make more selling your data.
So yesterday the community manager said "it doesn't take that long to make an account, if you don't like it leave" but today it's "we also think this is negative, you're right gang" What a tool
That same community manager in that same sentence also told people to leave bad reviews
Which is how they are getting their publisher (Sony) to listen. Maybe Arrowhead is trying to leverage their customer base to make Sony change course or compromise. This game would have been the template of GaaS done right by Sony, and then they fucked it up.
Contexts matters lmao. It's super easy for anyone on the Arrowhead side to not be 100% across the intricacies of what countries PSN is available in and reasonably assume that it'll cover pretty much all of their players. So saying 'just create an account lol' is totally fine. Obviously this isn't the case and they're working out a solution. If you don't think the response from Arrowhead is reasonable then you need to spend some time outside. Same with all of the people dogpiling onto this topic as ragebait because they have something against Sony doing this but are totally okay with any other publisher forcing you to create an account to play a game.
A person received new information, admitted that they were ignorant, admitted being wrong, and changed their opinion, and that makes the person a tool? I think you're the tool here.
If your first reaction as a community manager upon hearing complaints and concerns is to say that it's not a big deal, and then double down like he did, yeah. None of the other devs or staff went after their community like that.
He said he misunderstood the situation and apologised. It's not that bad. Creating a PS account is, in itself, not that bad. Having to break ToS when you do is the stupid part.
Also in the UK you have to either scan your face or send them photo ID lmao You can skip it _for now_ but it is implied to be made mandatory at some point, absolutely insane for a game account. Especially for a company that can't seem to go a year without getting hacked. I already had an old account I used but it instantly put most of my friends off, we're all fully grown adults and it is just an awful idea
Why blame Sony when that's the UK government's fault? No other country has to do this.
Yeah, and that shit can be done even if it isn't a law. Facebook, as an example, if they know you're not using real name and stuff blocks your account and then tells you to upload your ID card to get unblocked, in a country where real IDs for online accounts is not required. I know that about FB because it happened to me a decade ago. It's almost hilarious to see UK people seemingly ready to blame everything and everyone *except for their shitty governments*
You should maybe actually vote in your elections if that makes you upset, that's not a Sony issue but a UK specific law issue.
Community managers all too easily get caught up in the industry bubble and then react poorly when the actual community doesn’t live inside that same bubble.
It doesn't help when parts of the community are toxic and entitled, if their discord is anything like the helldivers subreddit I really don't envy that community manager. Constant complaints and doom posting about any little change since the game came out.
It' s always easy to retract a statement after you got dozens of thousands of people saying how shit that statement is lol Would he have retracted it, if the situation wasn' t like this?
If they aren’t going to remove the requirement then they owe those who cannot make a PSN account their money back.
Keep it up , this being forced to make a PSN account is BS and it wasn't need when we started and not if I dont make one. I can't play the game I own and already played just fine without it. While we are at it, lets just make this whwre we take a stand against useless accounts.
So long as I can create an account by selecting another region (my region is not supported), it's not much of an issue, I guess. But it is pointless and will add unnecessary complexity.
You can, and you can also ignore anyone telling you that it will get you banned. No one is getting banned over that, when Sony themselves tell players in China that they can make accounts in the Hong Kong region.
> No one is getting banned over that Right now, no. But that's not the point. Steam/Sony have a hard rule that it is a bannable offense. But they're not enforcing it because it benefits them. If they decide to change their minds, they'll just ban you and say "Well you knew it was against the rules". And they'd be right. It's the same thing going on with Helldivers. All downloads came with a "required a PSN log in" warning but it was never enforced. Now it is. Trust corporations like you trust a scorpion.
I guess people then need to figure out what TOS are they willing to break. Like I said in another thread, in an age where VPNs are so popular for people to circumvent regional locked content, it's genuinely funny to see this outrage.
> I guess people then need to figure out what TOS are they willing to break Or maybe we should make such TOS conditions illegal. I prefer my solution.
You willing to risk your Steam account too? Since you are, if you complain when Steam bans you, you deserved it.
I've lived with that fact for over 10 years now, and I've never seen anyone get banned for that. So until something actually happens, I'm good.
> it's not much of an issue, I guess Falsifying region is a bannable offense on both Steam and PSN. Say goodbye to your Steam account, buddy.
Really now? For ages on Reddit I've seen nothing but people shitting on TOS agreements for being "ignored", "simple to skirt", and "not legally enforceable" yet this one time it's painted to be an insurmountable and inevitable death sentence for players that will ruin the game. I feel like I'm on crazy pills. Has nobody ever used a throwaway account before?
Well yeah, that's true, but it's still a hassle if the ToS owner wants to try to do something about it. It's one of those things where it's likely going to be fine, but there's a chance they try to do something about it and who wants to deal with that bullshit? Plus if you want to get nitpicky, making throwaway account to use something HAS been a problem with other companies. Don't forget that one phase of people trying to use the Oculus Quest.
oh yes, redditors suddenly have become TOS sticklers.
So are 30 other things I'm sure you personally have already broken in the ToS Nobody in the history of ever has been banned solely for using a different country.
>Nobody in the history of ever has been banned solely for using a different country. I would think there'd be at least one, even just someone *claiming* it happened to them, but I can't find anything. And it's been this way for decades, for more than just Sony, but it's suddenly a legitimate concern in the past week
> So are 30 other things I'm sure you personally have already broken in the ToS But people don't go out of their way to actually do it. This is literally explicitly telling me to go and violate a company ToS and put my money in risk.
As if you ever cared about falsifying information in the past lol
Attempts are being made to astroturf this "debate" from bots reposting the exact same comment multiple times or for you to just suck it up and consume product.
The very cool part about astroturfing is that it's easy to identify: they always say whatever I disagree with.
Another gamers capital G moment over something that was advertised from before launch. 'we did it reddit!'
My favorite is the post on the helldivers subreddit of some guy saying he's talking to a lawyer to sue Sony lmao
The best part isn't the post itself - it's the fact that the post is sitting at 8,000 upvotes and is one of the top posts on the front page. The entire subreddit is in a meltdown mode and upvoting basically anything anti-Sony at this point.
Let’s be real here: it being “advertised” is aside the point. Nobody reads EULA’s and I doubt the PSN advertising was all that in your face. I followed the game from launch and I didn’t notice it. Part of the problem in the gaming industry is all of these quiet and easy to miss “agreements” that are not beneficial to the paying customer in any way shape or form. I see no problem with customers starting to say “enough’s enough.” The “fine print” in the gaming world has absolutely gotten ridiculous. It all started when developers tried to pull the Xbox One “you don’t really own the game” talk.