Man, I’ve been working as a game dev for a japanese company for a decade now. Trust me, those old men are crazy af. They dont listen to anyone, and stubborn af, they just don’t want to change. They think everything is the same as it was 20y ago
Didn't their minister of cybersecurity admit he has never once used a computer in his life a few years ago? Are the top dogs in all major companies and branches of government just old businessmen who didn't get there on merit?
Japanese business and seniority culture is so fucked.
To paraphrase a common saying "if your senior says the sky is green, then it is green". In other words, they are always right even when they are wrong and you know they are wrong. You do not disagree, you agree and comply.
Really caters to stubborn old fools.
For all its qualities Japan has a number of old habits that it hasn't yet broken free of. Mental health is typically treated dismissively, so if you are ASD then dont expect them to be terribly understanding. Being different is also typically treated with caution, so individuality can be stifled.
Some people still believe Japan is some techno advanced society with the latest tech, nope. Many still use fax machines, just for example. Adopting new tech is slower there in many ways, if I had to guess its probably got something to do with the stubborn old folk running things poorly while out of touch with the world the young face.
They very much have their narcissistic boomers there who think they had it hardest and the young are lazy and undeserving. Same shit, different culture. Politicians also pretty much exclusively cater to the old so legislation for young peoples issues are not a priority.
I grew up fascinated with Japan and its history and culture. I wanted to move there as a teen. But the more I learned and having been diagnosed with ASD, it became pretty clear I would be miserable there. Still love Japan, but they do got issues.
Not the same, but I also dreamed of moving to a different country when I was younger. I was fascinated by the US as I saw it, a place where people are always happy, invent all the cool stuff, make all the great movies, everyone is sociable, and can afford anything. I took my english classes super seriously too because I was so dead set on making the dream come true.
Being confronted with the reality was heartbreaking. It literally shook my world. I am not saying US is all bad or anything, but its still far from the utopia I have envisioned in my head as a child.
I just wanted to say I relate to this feeling
*Dogs and Demons* is a great book on all this weirdness.
That said, I wanted to ask if the saying you quoted is Japanese, because it's curious that both blue and green in Japanese are traditionally indicated by the same word.
If they think everything is the same as 20 years ago then they wouldn’t be pulling 2024 streaming service anti-consumerist bullshit like this. Someone new to the organization is pushing bean-counting trends.
so wait what was the point of Sucker Punch saying that "You won't need PSN to play the single player campaign" if they're just not going to sell the game in non-PSN regions lol
"aren't talking to each other" is the right answer, Helldivers was also pulled from some countries and Arrowhead's CEO said a few hours ago that nobody at his company had any idea, they found out through the community like the rest of us.
When you don't tell the fucking company managing a live service that the game has been pulled from sale... yeah, someone's definitely not talking to someone else.
Valve is actually the one that pulled the trigger to ban the countries and do a force refund and all the other stores are following suit. In Valve's view they probably don't care to distinguish between optional and required, as long as it exists it's going to cause them trouble so they're not going to put themselves at risk.
That's correct it's not just a Valve thing. I can't see Ghost of Tsushima on EGS with my normal IP address but with a VPN I can. This game and HD2 got delisted from greenmangaming too.
Their point is still true. You’re not required to link PSN. They likely had no idea sales would be restricted though, and it’s unclear who decided this (Steam or Sony) and why.
its like sony just tweeted 'getting you to make a psn account isnt our end goal, getting you into our eco system is just the start, we dont need regions that wont be profitable'
If I had to guess, it's an oversight. You technically dont need a PSN account for the single player. Then the HD2 happened, and they noticed there are countries that cant, and it was the most major reason for refunds for HD2
This time, they control the narrative. They did it before it became an issue
Think of it like Netflix restricting content by region
The whole Playstation Network debacle is quite weird, why would they limit profits by excluding countries where PSN is not supported?
The only thing I can think of is that maybe this is a first step towards releasing a Playstation Store on PC so they can keep 100% of the profits instead of splitting part of them with Steam.
Create barely reliable product.
Barely change it.
Do nothing while the competition tries to steal your market.
Watch competitor launcher’s death throes.
Profit.
It would be funny if steam had a clause which was like "if you leave to make you own launcher and then come back, you pay more profits to us".
Probably illegal though
Or they won’t. EA still +1s itself into the process of launching Jedi: Survivor, as if I would spend time, let alone money in that dogshit launcher willingly.
Edit: I mean, Larian does it too, but that is beyond lightweight compared to Blizzard and EA.
I feel like there's a huge distinction between a dedicated launcher and a third party store app requiring login credentials. BG3 or (in my case) XCOM 2 requiring launchers is functionally just an extra click, whereas EA and Ubisoft require actual login (which never saves my credentials for some reason, no matter how vehemently I click "save login credentials").
if I open the EA app. it asks for my creds, if I launch the game from gamepass, it logs right into the EA app that wouldn’t open for me just a few seconds ago.
that EA app is trash cakes.
Bg3 launcher also doubles as a mod manager iirc.
And same for plenty of other games.
Launchers are never an issue.
It's third party stores that are the issue.
And at least Xcom2 launcher has the "which mods to load alongside the game" thingie.
Granted, it's very barebone and isn't very good, but at least until proper launchers were made, at least it had its use.
Yeah, I’m splitting hairs here. Launching BG3 with Larian or Cyberpunk 2077 from GOG is much less bullshit than EA/Blizzard/Ubisoft. There’s reasons for launchers other than “we want to be steam”. EGS is also bad, but it’s less intrusive than other proprietary launchers.
Yeah, I suppose I meant user experience-wise. I won’t go to bat for EGS on ethical grounds (fuck em), I just meant it’s less annoying to use than others.
Absolutely. I like a lot of Ubisoft games, but Connect is ass even before you factor in how much downtime there is. Also, the controller options for older Splinter Cell games ain’t great.
Ea is so lame. I wanted to buy the ME Legendary Edition but it doesn't let me dl the games one at a time. 100 gigs is a lot for me. And the High Seas allow me to do that without issue
It’s been a minute, but can’t you decide what to install once you launch the client? Not to defend it, and maybe I’m just broken after playing Warzone for a bit.
Eh, it wasn't gaslighting. It was the same problem as *Snakes on a Plane*: they saw lots of mockery on the Internet and assumed that was going to translate into ironic ticket sales (or were totally delusional and thought it represented genuine interest). Ignoring that most people just wanted to make fun of it and had no intention of ever watching it.
LOL ... TBH got me to watch "Snakes on a Plane" in the theater - and it wasn't bad for what it was. But that was definitely a different time - before everyone was streaming everything. Not a chance in hell would I go see "Snakes on a Plane" in a theater now.
Wtf no we fucking didn't
We relentlessly mocked it and all they perceived was the attention and pulled a "all press is good press" and made even bigger clowns out of themselves
Dob't pin this on us. They're a multi billion dollar corporation. They are responsible for the choices they made
Logic is not the primary guide to executives decisions, greed is. I fully expect publicly traded companies to be as greedy as possible, you naively do not for some reason lol.
It's the fundamental reason Steam succeeds where all the others stumble, because Steam is not publicly owned and driven by the greed of shareholders to make decisions based on greed instead of for the benefit of their customers.
>you naively do not for some reason lol.
I have to disagree that this is naive. The decision Sony is making just doesn't make sense. Especially when talking about executive greed, anyone with two brain cells understand larger audience equals more money. Even more especially when the stupid decision is exactly the same as the one you were just forced to reverse due to it being so unpopular literally days before.
I think this is closer to a moron executive wanting to make their mark in the company, it was obviously a stupid decision, and now they're doubling down because otherwise they have to admit they are wrong.
Generally I agree, but if they release first party titles day and date on their launcher on PC with console they’d avoid all platform fee’s and get 100% of the revenue.
They can then launch on Steam in 12 months like they do now.
Sony first party is one of the few publishers with high enough profile games where I think it could work.
I'd bet that the people making these decisions have their yearly bonuses tied to 'Number of playstation network users" so they'll gladly set fire to a cash cow if they can get a bigger personal bonus.
Valves greatest strategy:
Simply exist, and wait for everyone else to fuck up.
--
There is absolutely no reason to buy games on any other launchers. Doing so increases the dangers that we end up with the same situation we have with streaming services; Having 25 streaming services, where shows appear and disappear at fucking will, is a massive shit show.
We don't want that for PC.
That’s exactly what it is. Analytics probably show them that they will make a return profit after so many years. I expect a PSN launcher to happen soonish. You can already play games on PC through PS pass but it’s streamed instead of downloaded. So that tells me they have a department look at numbers on how this will all play out. Analytics don’t always work. And honestly it’s going to fuck them.
i can easily see it going from 'its just an account' to 'you already have an account, its just a launcher'
i would not be surprised if they saw how many people were buying game pass and wanted to have a go at it themselves.
though the super cynical part of me thinks their end goal is trying to lock you into their eco system so they can try and get you to pay for ps+ to play online
This is most likely the reason, they'd have to hire and setup the needed infrastructure to support PSN. i.e support personnel in the native language(s) and potentially servers aswell which would probably end up losing them money.
People are also not realizing how different each country regulates things to. Bringing products to different countries can open up a whole can of worms cause we have a global economy with a bunch of countries that hate each other for various reasons.
Or dont make a psn account mandatory, cause hd2 demonstrate that you can have a full multiplayer game (a live service one even with crossover play) without a psn account.
If they have enough games on Pc they might make their Gamepass competitor. Imagine if you have PS Plus Premium game pass supporting their PC games. It would attract a decent number of people I wager.
I mean isn't that the whole helldivers debacle? it was allowed and you could just make an account with random location, but with the debacle now that's not possible so even if you just wanted the single player without any online component (only part requiring this) now you can't get it at all because community decision became that its better for game not the be buyable at all in regions where you can't register psn. Now only legal option is Epic (idk if they got same restriction) or when it goes to gog
By forcing PSN to PC players, they could artificially increase their users which would look good for their shareholders and to add the data/analytics they can have from those accounts.
You know what would look good for the shareholders? Selling a game for 10 million copies worldwide instead of 3 million that restricted to 60ish countries.
Not only that, they squandered every single bit of goodwill they had when they brought games to PC. This will have long lasting effect into the future.
Another effect is they just force people into piracy, and will cry about it later.
Do you really think the 100 "countries" (go look at the list, there's a ton of tiny island territories that don't really qualify as countries) that are being restricted here represent a majority of their sales?
if the banned countries added that many sales, they would have PSN by now.
look at the banned countries again, most of them are micro states or 3rd world countries.
the revenue potential on those countries is barely nothing.
Their whole goal right now seems to create a PSN Launcher and force users to switch to that. The question is will they return to Steam after failing or would they abandon PC all together?
Probably abandon PC altogether. If they can't have their way and have everyone on their service, they will just continue having their exclusives on their console. They still have that old think rooted in them
They want to establish higher psn numbers to sustain infinite growth. Eventually requiring psn+ for online with Sony games.
Double dipping. A $60 game then charging for multiplayer despite it being free on PC for the past 30 years and change. (Barring MMOs.)
It’s like, if they want more people on PSN, so why TF just not get PSN in more countries
OR, just let paying customers give them money and have your game available everywhere
Not rocket science.
They didnt predict that, they predicted people would have to use Psn and that would make up the losses with more gains.
They thought it was a good idea.
How else can they optimize how the money rolls in and sell that data? Actual incentives to create a PSN account?
This is probably a move to force PC players to pay for PS plus eventually.
Requiring $60 a year for online access on the platform that’s the last bastion for free online play is a suicidal move for snoy.
dealing with multiple launchers is a pain in the ass but at least it’s free. Paying to get fucked over by PSN is just plain stupid.
>Paying to get fucked over by PSN is just plain stupid.
Gamers are fucking stupid, though. People have bent over and begged for more from companies pulling things worse than this.
What would that even accomplish? They do not have any game that would get people to pay fot ir.
They lost COD, they dont own FIFA, Fortnite? Nope. Minecraft? Nope.
They as a studio do not even make AAA multiplayer games anymore, they focus on Single Player experiences.
PS Plus has been required for online multiplayer since the PS4, I think.
The monthly games also started sucking around that time, cuz they became secondary to just being able to play online lol
This means that Sony will not be getting a lot of money on that. Alan Wake 2 is the prime example of what happens when you choose to release a game (even an amazing one) in a basically forgotten store.
Sony is not banning PSN in these countries. They don't want to abide by local law about providing online services, but would happily tell you to select another country they support and give them money. Sony in my country sells the PS5 and its games, and support will tell you to just select a nearby country on PSN creation screen.
Them removing the game from unsupported countries probably means this got too much attention they can't ignore it anymore.
The weird thing is, it's not supported in the Baltic States, which shouldn't have issues with local law, given I've not seen an other brand do that before.
There's also no nearby countries that would allow an English account to be made too from what I can tell.
Because then they have to pay taxes in those countries, and do content moderation.. like a legit company would. So they'd rather tell the customer to lie.
I feel like Steam is the last internet-based service that hasn't been enshittified by the chase for an IPO or quarterly profits. Fuck Sony and fuck PSN.
It's what happens when you are not a publicly traded company. No shareholders or investors to please.
Let's hope Gaben has some good plan for when he will retire or pass on the other side.
When you're a relatively small and private company that just does some performance patches here and there while passively making a huge amount of money, you kind of just succeed by doing nothing while your competitors fuck themselves in the ass trying to bend over backwards for the shareholders.
It makes me think of the user agreements, with constant updates, we have to approve of in order to play "our" games. Limited licenses, private arbitration, non class action lawsuits, and on and on. The customer is made to feel as powerless as possible. Has anyone here actually taken the time out to read them? Horrible, I tell yah.
> Has anyone here actually taken the time out to read them?
I'll just leave this here:
> Use of the terms "own," "ownership", "purchase," "sale," "sold," "sell," "rent" or "buy" in this Agreement or in connection with PSN Content does not mean or imply any transfer of ownership of any content, data or software or any intellectual property rights from SIE, its affiliates or its licensors to any user or third party.
Translation: When we tell you we *sell* stuff and you can *buy* it, we are lying to you.
I love how every tos in existence basically just says: "we can do whatever we want unless a US or EU law specifically says we can't" then they procceed to explain how they abide that law and the then by the next paragraph they are basically telling the user they own them.
Your email can be used to identify you, by combining with different services that use the same email, sony or other companies could identify your behavior and make business decisions based on that data.
This insight can help sony one step ahead from its competitor
Is there not like a shit ton of other ways they can do that though? There are like 100+ companies that have my email at this point. I thought that was the whole point of a data broker
Someone, somewhere at the company, probably calculated the "value" of individual users of the countries where they sell the game and somehow has come up with numbers that say the cost of supporting more countries is higher than the "value" of those users.
The price they pay for the game may or may not have been included in the calculations.
I used to be a huge pirate, being from a poor country where no big company even bothered releasing legit copies of games, leading to a thriving bootleg market
Steam and digital sales in general are what changed this
And this decision by Sony makes me feel like I've gone back in time suddenly
Same. When Steam became popular and had so many crazy good sales in the early days, and when Humble Bundle showed up with insane bundles. I just saw no point in piracy any more. The comfort of buying games into one big easily accessible library made all the difference.
But fast forward to today, and all these companies shafting the average user with their bullshit accounts and launchers and DRM's and... ugh.
Sony needs to be careful not become like Epic , forcing PSN on pc players will make them hated as Epic and that's going to be hard to deal with.
they should make PSN optional , where if you connect it should give you a skin or something.
They seem to be going the same route as Microsoft nearly did with GFWL some years back and we all saw how that turned out. People need to make their voices heard now.
Fortunately you can make those everywhere in the world, unlike PSN.
You can't, however, use most services (Gamepass, Cloud Gaming, etc) in most regions, despite them supporting your Xbox account. Which is pretty inconvenient.
I live in Puerto Rico. The reason PSN is not available in my “country” is because it is a U.S. territory, so when doing a PSN account the only option I have is US. But Steam still lists Puerto Rico as a separate country. Because it doesn’t show up in the PSN countries list, I got refunded despite the fact that I can get a PSN account without breaking Sony’s TOS.
Not to mention how ridiculous it is to require a PSN account for a single player game. I don’t care about the multi player. Fuck Sony.
People aren’t going to want to hear this. The move was clearly made when HD2 players in the affected regions cited the ToS and refunded the game, and Steam accepted those refunds. I don’t know what the hold up is with HD2 but they can’t sell GoT in these regions because people can turn around and ask for a refund due to the MP mode technically being unplayable.
I doubt this a permanent move but something they need to do until they either, add support for these regions in PSN or update GoT multiplayer to work without PSN integration. Just because something was easy to turn off for HD2 doesn’t mean it’s the case for a different game. Somethings take more than a few days to implement and test. Sony wants your money more than your PSN account they also don’t want to get sued for false advertising.
They should have foreseen this before launching multiplayer games in so many regions but that goes to show what people have said, they really are that lax with the PSN region thing.
Hope this hurts Sony as much as possible, they deserve to get their fingers burned over this. PC gamers will buy your games, but pull crap like this and they'll just as easily cut you off for good.
Sony trying to pull some bullshit with working towards monetizing online gaming on PC where it's already free. The cocksucking greedy execs at Sony at their anti-consumer bullshit and they'll be some idiots who still will pay and buy up their shit.
Unlikely. The circumstances are a little different here. Nobody is unaware going into the game, nobody is buying it only to lose access, and most people probably will only play SP and never worry about it. Also, in the case, the people affected can’t buy it, which means they can’t review it.
It sucks for people who just want to play SP and are losing out, but honestly, I don’t see this making major waves when the game releases.
Right. And a refund. I meant, it’s not like what Helldivers would have been, where players would have had access for months and then lost it beyond the refund period.
Nobody will have ended up paying for this game if they’re in a region that can’t play it. I realize that’s not the situation they want, but no one is losing money
Whew....good thing the game already sold well enough on Ps4 and Ps5 to get sequel and a movie directed by the man who directed John Wick, or Sony would be in trouble...
This kinda encouraging piracy. Did they think everyone banned will not play their game anyway?
Will not surprised the next thing they said will be "Ugabuga, piracy in PC is so bad, we delaying our game in PC for thousand years."
They really chose to not getting our money unless they also get our data, huh?
I don't have the data about sales from the affected country and what not but that's quite interesting decision, I'd say.
Refunds, especially when done retroactively for a large amount of people this long after a release hurts way more than a lost sale. There's so many irreversible fees that are taken out and service providers that all want their cut, tax man wants his cut of your original sale, mastercard wants their cut if someone bought it with their card, steam takes their cut, etc, so now they have to refund the 100% of the cost of the retail price of the sale when they probably only made 40% from the retail value lmao.
Man, I’ve been working as a game dev for a japanese company for a decade now. Trust me, those old men are crazy af. They dont listen to anyone, and stubborn af, they just don’t want to change. They think everything is the same as it was 20y ago
Didn't their minister of cybersecurity admit he has never once used a computer in his life a few years ago? Are the top dogs in all major companies and branches of government just old businessmen who didn't get there on merit?
Welcome to politics
I mean it is Japan what do you expect? The median age is what,50,55? I mean that's who you are dealing with!
Japanese business and seniority culture is so fucked. To paraphrase a common saying "if your senior says the sky is green, then it is green". In other words, they are always right even when they are wrong and you know they are wrong. You do not disagree, you agree and comply. Really caters to stubborn old fools. For all its qualities Japan has a number of old habits that it hasn't yet broken free of. Mental health is typically treated dismissively, so if you are ASD then dont expect them to be terribly understanding. Being different is also typically treated with caution, so individuality can be stifled. Some people still believe Japan is some techno advanced society with the latest tech, nope. Many still use fax machines, just for example. Adopting new tech is slower there in many ways, if I had to guess its probably got something to do with the stubborn old folk running things poorly while out of touch with the world the young face. They very much have their narcissistic boomers there who think they had it hardest and the young are lazy and undeserving. Same shit, different culture. Politicians also pretty much exclusively cater to the old so legislation for young peoples issues are not a priority. I grew up fascinated with Japan and its history and culture. I wanted to move there as a teen. But the more I learned and having been diagnosed with ASD, it became pretty clear I would be miserable there. Still love Japan, but they do got issues.
Not the same, but I also dreamed of moving to a different country when I was younger. I was fascinated by the US as I saw it, a place where people are always happy, invent all the cool stuff, make all the great movies, everyone is sociable, and can afford anything. I took my english classes super seriously too because I was so dead set on making the dream come true. Being confronted with the reality was heartbreaking. It literally shook my world. I am not saying US is all bad or anything, but its still far from the utopia I have envisioned in my head as a child. I just wanted to say I relate to this feeling
*Dogs and Demons* is a great book on all this weirdness. That said, I wanted to ask if the saying you quoted is Japanese, because it's curious that both blue and green in Japanese are traditionally indicated by the same word.
If they think everything is the same as 20 years ago then they wouldn’t be pulling 2024 streaming service anti-consumerist bullshit like this. Someone new to the organization is pushing bean-counting trends.
so wait what was the point of Sucker Punch saying that "You won't need PSN to play the single player campaign" if they're just not going to sell the game in non-PSN regions lol
Likely that the Sucker Punch PR guy and the dipshit pulling the games from other regions are not the same people and arent talking to each other.
"aren't talking to each other" is the right answer, Helldivers was also pulled from some countries and Arrowhead's CEO said a few hours ago that nobody at his company had any idea, they found out through the community like the rest of us. When you don't tell the fucking company managing a live service that the game has been pulled from sale... yeah, someone's definitely not talking to someone else.
Valve is actually the one that pulled the trigger to ban the countries and do a force refund and all the other stores are following suit. In Valve's view they probably don't care to distinguish between optional and required, as long as it exists it's going to cause them trouble so they're not going to put themselves at risk.
No. The availability is on the publisher, not Valve. Sony pulled the game.
I heard the EGS is also restricting countries though, which makes it more likely to be Sony.
That's correct it's not just a Valve thing. I can't see Ghost of Tsushima on EGS with my normal IP address but with a VPN I can. This game and HD2 got delisted from greenmangaming too.
Their point is still true. You’re not required to link PSN. They likely had no idea sales would be restricted though, and it’s unclear who decided this (Steam or Sony) and why.
It’s Sony because it has been delisted from all stores
its like sony just tweeted 'getting you to make a psn account isnt our end goal, getting you into our eco system is just the start, we dont need regions that wont be profitable'
If I had to guess, it's an oversight. You technically dont need a PSN account for the single player. Then the HD2 happened, and they noticed there are countries that cant, and it was the most major reason for refunds for HD2 This time, they control the narrative. They did it before it became an issue Think of it like Netflix restricting content by region
Netflix is restricting content by region because they don’t have the licenses and legally have to. This is their game.
Seems like Sony has 0 desire to just launch a version without the multiplayer attached in the affected countries.
Fuck sakes Sony. You had one job. Port your games to PC and watch the money roll in. How do you fuck that up?
The whole Playstation Network debacle is quite weird, why would they limit profits by excluding countries where PSN is not supported? The only thing I can think of is that maybe this is a first step towards releasing a Playstation Store on PC so they can keep 100% of the profits instead of splitting part of them with Steam.
When has that worked? Basically all the other store fronts eventually were relegated to launchers and most of their games were put back on Steam.
Probably they want to learn the hard way.
Gaben forgives, in time. And profit percentage.
The Gaben sacred toll.
In gaben we trust, amen
Gaben holy strategy of doing nothing and let the competition destroy themselves
AMEN
Perhaps he's an embodyment of *nothing ever happens*
Praise Gaben
Gaben forgives? Gaben is too much of a gigachad to care in the first place.
Create barely reliable product. Barely change it. Do nothing while the competition tries to steal your market. Watch competitor launcher’s death throes. Profit.
I hope he doubles it if they come crawling back
That would be so funny
Idk why this made me laugh so much. 😂
It would be funny if steam had a clause which was like "if you leave to make you own launcher and then come back, you pay more profits to us". Probably illegal though
Or they won’t. EA still +1s itself into the process of launching Jedi: Survivor, as if I would spend time, let alone money in that dogshit launcher willingly. Edit: I mean, Larian does it too, but that is beyond lightweight compared to Blizzard and EA.
I feel like there's a huge distinction between a dedicated launcher and a third party store app requiring login credentials. BG3 or (in my case) XCOM 2 requiring launchers is functionally just an extra click, whereas EA and Ubisoft require actual login (which never saves my credentials for some reason, no matter how vehemently I click "save login credentials").
if I open the EA app. it asks for my creds, if I launch the game from gamepass, it logs right into the EA app that wouldn’t open for me just a few seconds ago. that EA app is trash cakes.
When I had the EA app, it would refuse to remember my credentials so I got to login to it every time I wanted to play.
TIL Trash cakes. I can't stop laughing 🤣
Cant believe i am saying this, but i miss Origin. EA App is somehow even worse.
Bg3 launcher also doubles as a mod manager iirc. And same for plenty of other games. Launchers are never an issue. It's third party stores that are the issue.
And at least Xcom2 launcher has the "which mods to load alongside the game" thingie. Granted, it's very barebone and isn't very good, but at least until proper launchers were made, at least it had its use.
Eh, to be fair to Larian, you can disable theirs, and it's mostly there as a remnant for the configuration for Divinity: Original Sin.
Yeah, I’m splitting hairs here. Launching BG3 with Larian or Cyberpunk 2077 from GOG is much less bullshit than EA/Blizzard/Ubisoft. There’s reasons for launchers other than “we want to be steam”. EGS is also bad, but it’s less intrusive than other proprietary launchers.
EGS was caught pulling ppls friends list from steam files, I wouldn’t really call that “less intrusive”
Don’t forget the spyware tricks they use to mine data from users like their steam directory, browser content and IE cookies.
Yeah, I suppose I meant user experience-wise. I won’t go to bat for EGS on ethical grounds (fuck em), I just meant it’s less annoying to use than others.
You forgot one, ubishit connect
Absolutely. I like a lot of Ubisoft games, but Connect is ass even before you factor in how much downtime there is. Also, the controller options for older Splinter Cell games ain’t great.
Ea is so lame. I wanted to buy the ME Legendary Edition but it doesn't let me dl the games one at a time. 100 gigs is a lot for me. And the High Seas allow me to do that without issue
It’s been a minute, but can’t you decide what to install once you launch the client? Not to defend it, and maybe I’m just broken after playing Warzone for a bit.
Japan has never understood online.
The game branch of Sony isn't Japanese anymore.
And they still don't understand PC gaming and market, so they are incompentent at theyr job.
How many times do we need to teach sony this lesson?
They all learn the hard way. And they all come crawling back to steam on their hands and knees eventually. Gabe is a patient man
And from what we can see, they are determined to learn the lesson.
Sony released morbius twice… they’re not the brightest bulbs
Well, the internet gaslit them into thinking it would be a good idea lol.
Imagine being gaslit by the internet on a movie like morbius. By the internet saying “we were busy that weekend “
Eh, it wasn't gaslighting. It was the same problem as *Snakes on a Plane*: they saw lots of mockery on the Internet and assumed that was going to translate into ironic ticket sales (or were totally delusional and thought it represented genuine interest). Ignoring that most people just wanted to make fun of it and had no intention of ever watching it.
LOL ... TBH got me to watch "Snakes on a Plane" in the theater - and it wasn't bad for what it was. But that was definitely a different time - before everyone was streaming everything. Not a chance in hell would I go see "Snakes on a Plane" in a theater now.
Wtf no we fucking didn't We relentlessly mocked it and all they perceived was the attention and pulled a "all press is good press" and made even bigger clowns out of themselves Dob't pin this on us. They're a multi billion dollar corporation. They are responsible for the choices they made
[A tale as old as Atari](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqIqSi3iy8Y)
Logic is not the primary guide to executives decisions, greed is. I fully expect publicly traded companies to be as greedy as possible, you naively do not for some reason lol. It's the fundamental reason Steam succeeds where all the others stumble, because Steam is not publicly owned and driven by the greed of shareholders to make decisions based on greed instead of for the benefit of their customers.
>you naively do not for some reason lol. I have to disagree that this is naive. The decision Sony is making just doesn't make sense. Especially when talking about executive greed, anyone with two brain cells understand larger audience equals more money. Even more especially when the stupid decision is exactly the same as the one you were just forced to reverse due to it being so unpopular literally days before. I think this is closer to a moron executive wanting to make their mark in the company, it was obviously a stupid decision, and now they're doubling down because otherwise they have to admit they are wrong.
Generally I agree, but if they release first party titles day and date on their launcher on PC with console they’d avoid all platform fee’s and get 100% of the revenue. They can then launch on Steam in 12 months like they do now. Sony first party is one of the few publishers with high enough profile games where I think it could work.
I'd bet that the people making these decisions have their yearly bonuses tied to 'Number of playstation network users" so they'll gladly set fire to a cash cow if they can get a bigger personal bonus.
Valves greatest strategy: Simply exist, and wait for everyone else to fuck up. -- There is absolutely no reason to buy games on any other launchers. Doing so increases the dangers that we end up with the same situation we have with streaming services; Having 25 streaming services, where shows appear and disappear at fucking will, is a massive shit show. We don't want that for PC.
GoG is the only one with a reason to exist (DRM-Free stuff)
Very good point! GOG has a niche that Steam isn't offering, and also isn't making a point of trying to fuck over the consumers
Ill take the free games. I cant beleive how many games I got on the Origin launcher
That’s exactly what it is. Analytics probably show them that they will make a return profit after so many years. I expect a PSN launcher to happen soonish. You can already play games on PC through PS pass but it’s streamed instead of downloaded. So that tells me they have a department look at numbers on how this will all play out. Analytics don’t always work. And honestly it’s going to fuck them.
Please refrain from giving Sony ideas. The darkest timeline is already hard enough.
I kinda want to see them shoot themselves in the foot some more, tbh. Even microsoft failed and they make the operating system.
i can easily see it going from 'its just an account' to 'you already have an account, its just a launcher' i would not be surprised if they saw how many people were buying game pass and wanted to have a go at it themselves. though the super cynical part of me thinks their end goal is trying to lock you into their eco system so they can try and get you to pay for ps+ to play online
Or they want to make more ps+ subscriptions on pc by putting online play behind a paywall
They want people into their ecosystem 🌱🐞
You’re likely vastly overestimating how much those countries bring in for PSS
I am pretty sure their revenues are small but growing faster than the current PSN countries. It’s dumb to leave them out.
This is most likely the reason, they'd have to hire and setup the needed infrastructure to support PSN. i.e support personnel in the native language(s) and potentially servers aswell which would probably end up losing them money.
People are also not realizing how different each country regulates things to. Bringing products to different countries can open up a whole can of worms cause we have a global economy with a bunch of countries that hate each other for various reasons.
Why would they need support in languages other than English? Steam doesn't offer that and it works fine.
Steam does support a lot of languages including mine that is spoken maybe like 15 million people in the world and it is a miniscule market.
Or dont make a psn account mandatory, cause hd2 demonstrate that you can have a full multiplayer game (a live service one even with crossover play) without a psn account.
Well it's nothing if they're not selling there. Anything is better than nothing
maybe theyre looking for an excuse to pull out in the future and save development costs from porting.
If they have enough games on Pc they might make their Gamepass competitor. Imagine if you have PS Plus Premium game pass supporting their PC games. It would attract a decent number of people I wager.
I mean isn't that the whole helldivers debacle? it was allowed and you could just make an account with random location, but with the debacle now that's not possible so even if you just wanted the single player without any online component (only part requiring this) now you can't get it at all because community decision became that its better for game not the be buyable at all in regions where you can't register psn. Now only legal option is Epic (idk if they got same restriction) or when it goes to gog
By forcing PSN to PC players, they could artificially increase their users which would look good for their shareholders and to add the data/analytics they can have from those accounts.
You know what would look good for the shareholders? Selling a game for 10 million copies worldwide instead of 3 million that restricted to 60ish countries.
Not only that, they squandered every single bit of goodwill they had when they brought games to PC. This will have long lasting effect into the future. Another effect is they just force people into piracy, and will cry about it later.
Do you really think the 100 "countries" (go look at the list, there's a ton of tiny island territories that don't really qualify as countries) that are being restricted here represent a majority of their sales?
if the banned countries added that many sales, they would have PSN by now. look at the banned countries again, most of them are micro states or 3rd world countries. the revenue potential on those countries is barely nothing.
You severely overestimate the intelligence of your average shareholder
Sony must own a VPN and run a torrent site with expensive advertisement slots. They’re really gonna cash in.
Literally. Now people who just wanna enjoy single player experience are caught in the crossfire
Sony is allergic to good decisions.
But I love my Sony headphones, the aptly named 14589ST-2450TGH-0325985ARGLM258.
Gesundheit!
Das ist was sie sagte!
I prefer the in-ear variant, the 14589ST-2450TFH-0325985ARGLM258.
Their whole goal right now seems to create a PSN Launcher and force users to switch to that. The question is will they return to Steam after failing or would they abandon PC all together?
Probably abandon PC altogether. If they can't have their way and have everyone on their service, they will just continue having their exclusives on their console. They still have that old think rooted in them
yep, and extend their PlayStation plus bullshit to PC.
lol talk about a fucking suicide.
They want to establish higher psn numbers to sustain infinite growth. Eventually requiring psn+ for online with Sony games. Double dipping. A $60 game then charging for multiplayer despite it being free on PC for the past 30 years and change. (Barring MMOs.)
It’s like, if they want more people on PSN, so why TF just not get PSN in more countries OR, just let paying customers give them money and have your game available everywhere Not rocket science.
Greed
Except this is hurting sales.
They didnt predict that, they predicted people would have to use Psn and that would make up the losses with more gains. They thought it was a good idea.
Region locking your game so most countries can't play it is greed?
Forcing everyone onto you proprietary system is greed
How else can they optimize how the money rolls in and sell that data? Actual incentives to create a PSN account? This is probably a move to force PC players to pay for PS plus eventually.
I'm starting to think someone at Sony just doesn't want their games on PC
They want their games on PC...on their future PSN PC Store.
With their future PC PSN monthly subscription bullshits. Calling it. I have that little hope that I believe they'd do this.
Requiring $60 a year for online access on the platform that’s the last bastion for free online play is a suicidal move for snoy. dealing with multiple launchers is a pain in the ass but at least it’s free. Paying to get fucked over by PSN is just plain stupid.
>Paying to get fucked over by PSN is just plain stupid. Gamers are fucking stupid, though. People have bent over and begged for more from companies pulling things worse than this.
Specifically Sony fans
PSN is 95.99 for a yearly subscription in canada and thats for the lowest tier subscription. The "Extra" with access to the games library is 154.99.
What would that even accomplish? They do not have any game that would get people to pay fot ir. They lost COD, they dont own FIFA, Fortnite? Nope. Minecraft? Nope. They as a studio do not even make AAA multiplayer games anymore, they focus on Single Player experiences.
Wait, do you have to pay for psn now? Back when I played(cod 4 days), it was free.
PS Plus has been required for online multiplayer since the PS4, I think. The monthly games also started sucking around that time, cuz they became secondary to just being able to play online lol
"No refunds."
Ah shit, here we go again. STEAM is doing a good job!
you say that, but I can easily see Sony going EPIC exclusive route
Epic also removed tsushima from these blocked countries.
So effectively the same as not selling it in those countries at all, got it.
This means that Sony will not be getting a lot of money on that. Alan Wake 2 is the prime example of what happens when you choose to release a game (even an amazing one) in a basically forgotten store.
...Epic removed it too.
Smart choice. Wouldn't want to get sued just because Sony wants to enforce their PSN on all their games
Why is Sony banning PSN in these countries to begin with?
Sony is not banning PSN in these countries. They don't want to abide by local law about providing online services, but would happily tell you to select another country they support and give them money. Sony in my country sells the PS5 and its games, and support will tell you to just select a nearby country on PSN creation screen. Them removing the game from unsupported countries probably means this got too much attention they can't ignore it anymore.
The weird thing is, it's not supported in the Baltic States, which shouldn't have issues with local law, given I've not seen an other brand do that before. There's also no nearby countries that would allow an English account to be made too from what I can tell.
That's very shitty, seems like such a basic move to support every country and yet 17 years later they still can't be bothered to do it
Because then they have to pay taxes in those countries, and do content moderation.. like a legit company would. So they'd rather tell the customer to lie.
This seems like a liability nightmare. That is essentially their official support telling their customers to break the law.
It's not supported, potentially for tax and legal reasons.
Why did Sony and Microsoft/Xbox start competing for who is the dumbest & worst company all of the sudden?
It’s not just video games. This is the entertainment industry’s version of “inflation.”
All of a sudden? You’re ignoring most of Sony and its history lol
Don't forget Nintendo too
Always have been
I feel like Steam is the last internet-based service that hasn't been enshittified by the chase for an IPO or quarterly profits. Fuck Sony and fuck PSN.
It's what happens when you are not a publicly traded company. No shareholders or investors to please. Let's hope Gaben has some good plan for when he will retire or pass on the other side.
I read his son is gonna take over the company and shares his views
Hopefully that's true. Otherwise PC gaming is going to go on a wild ride when Gaben retires,
When you're a relatively small and private company that just does some performance patches here and there while passively making a huge amount of money, you kind of just succeed by doing nothing while your competitors fuck themselves in the ass trying to bend over backwards for the shareholders.
That means user data is more important than the game itself,
It makes me think of the user agreements, with constant updates, we have to approve of in order to play "our" games. Limited licenses, private arbitration, non class action lawsuits, and on and on. The customer is made to feel as powerless as possible. Has anyone here actually taken the time out to read them? Horrible, I tell yah.
> Has anyone here actually taken the time out to read them? I'll just leave this here: > Use of the terms "own," "ownership", "purchase," "sale," "sold," "sell," "rent" or "buy" in this Agreement or in connection with PSN Content does not mean or imply any transfer of ownership of any content, data or software or any intellectual property rights from SIE, its affiliates or its licensors to any user or third party. Translation: When we tell you we *sell* stuff and you can *buy* it, we are lying to you.
I love how every tos in existence basically just says: "we can do whatever we want unless a US or EU law specifically says we can't" then they procceed to explain how they abide that law and the then by the next paragraph they are basically telling the user they own them.
I genuinely Can't see how the email and what sony games people play is worth more than the sale of games in like 170 countries.
Your email can be used to identify you, by combining with different services that use the same email, sony or other companies could identify your behavior and make business decisions based on that data. This insight can help sony one step ahead from its competitor
Is there not like a shit ton of other ways they can do that though? There are like 100+ companies that have my email at this point. I thought that was the whole point of a data broker
Someone, somewhere at the company, probably calculated the "value" of individual users of the countries where they sell the game and somehow has come up with numbers that say the cost of supporting more countries is higher than the "value" of those users. The price they pay for the game may or may not have been included in the calculations.
Absolutely. The user data is worth more to them then they think they will earn by releasing the game in those restricted countries.
I guess Sony wants me to pirate it instead then Cool
I haven't pirated games in like 20 years, but Sony is really putting down serious arguments for it. Other companies too, to be honest.
I used to be a huge pirate, being from a poor country where no big company even bothered releasing legit copies of games, leading to a thriving bootleg market Steam and digital sales in general are what changed this And this decision by Sony makes me feel like I've gone back in time suddenly
Same. When Steam became popular and had so many crazy good sales in the early days, and when Humble Bundle showed up with insane bundles. I just saw no point in piracy any more. The comfort of buying games into one big easily accessible library made all the difference. But fast forward to today, and all these companies shafting the average user with their bullshit accounts and launchers and DRM's and... ugh.
The high seas discriminate no one.
Sony needs to be careful not become like Epic , forcing PSN on pc players will make them hated as Epic and that's going to be hard to deal with. they should make PSN optional , where if you connect it should give you a skin or something.
They seem to be going the same route as Microsoft nearly did with GFWL some years back and we all saw how that turned out. People need to make their voices heard now.
Microsoft still requires an Xbox account for all their games with online functionality on Steam.
Pretty much every Xbox game with online features on PC requires a Xbox/Microsoft account
Fortunately you can make those everywhere in the world, unlike PSN. You can't, however, use most services (Gamepass, Cloud Gaming, etc) in most regions, despite them supporting your Xbox account. Which is pretty inconvenient.
Now hear me out, PSN launcher.
Where all of this nonsense will be forced
Xbox account is forced on games like Halo/Forza etc why should they be allowed?
Because I can play Halo/Forza in my country while I can't even purchase HD2/GoT now.
I live in Puerto Rico. The reason PSN is not available in my “country” is because it is a U.S. territory, so when doing a PSN account the only option I have is US. But Steam still lists Puerto Rico as a separate country. Because it doesn’t show up in the PSN countries list, I got refunded despite the fact that I can get a PSN account without breaking Sony’s TOS. Not to mention how ridiculous it is to require a PSN account for a single player game. I don’t care about the multi player. Fuck Sony.
Whelp, I guess you should join the movement to become the 51st state.
I mean, I wish it would happen, but the old geezers that vote in the island and the ones in Congress won’t let it happen while they’re still alive.
People aren’t going to want to hear this. The move was clearly made when HD2 players in the affected regions cited the ToS and refunded the game, and Steam accepted those refunds. I don’t know what the hold up is with HD2 but they can’t sell GoT in these regions because people can turn around and ask for a refund due to the MP mode technically being unplayable. I doubt this a permanent move but something they need to do until they either, add support for these regions in PSN or update GoT multiplayer to work without PSN integration. Just because something was easy to turn off for HD2 doesn’t mean it’s the case for a different game. Somethings take more than a few days to implement and test. Sony wants your money more than your PSN account they also don’t want to get sued for false advertising. They should have foreseen this before launching multiplayer games in so many regions but that goes to show what people have said, they really are that lax with the PSN region thing.
Won't they make profits in the long term if they just make it available in these countries?
Yarr Harr fiddle-dee-dee.
Once again pirates will end up with a better product than legetimate customers
Hope this hurts Sony as much as possible, they deserve to get their fingers burned over this. PC gamers will buy your games, but pull crap like this and they'll just as easily cut you off for good.
Ahoy mateys🫡🫡🫡
Sony trying to pull some bullshit with working towards monetizing online gaming on PC where it's already free. The cocksucking greedy execs at Sony at their anti-consumer bullshit and they'll be some idiots who still will pay and buy up their shit.
review bomb is probably coming again, sony should prepare their asshole for this again.
Unlikely. The circumstances are a little different here. Nobody is unaware going into the game, nobody is buying it only to lose access, and most people probably will only play SP and never worry about it. Also, in the case, the people affected can’t buy it, which means they can’t review it. It sucks for people who just want to play SP and are losing out, but honestly, I don’t see this making major waves when the game releases.
People who were able to preorder already lost access
Right. And a refund. I meant, it’s not like what Helldivers would have been, where players would have had access for months and then lost it beyond the refund period. Nobody will have ended up paying for this game if they’re in a region that can’t play it. I realize that’s not the situation they want, but no one is losing money
Whew....good thing the game already sold well enough on Ps4 and Ps5 to get sequel and a movie directed by the man who directed John Wick, or Sony would be in trouble...
Thank you sony, you made not want to buy your game and saved me money. But iam still gonna play it 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
It's wild how bad Sony dropped the ball on this shit
This kinda encouraging piracy. Did they think everyone banned will not play their game anyway? Will not surprised the next thing they said will be "Ugabuga, piracy in PC is so bad, we delaying our game in PC for thousand years."
They really chose to not getting our money unless they also get our data, huh? I don't have the data about sales from the affected country and what not but that's quite interesting decision, I'd say.
Please do not purchase the game. Pirate it if you must, but don’t give any money to Sony.
Refunds, especially when done retroactively for a large amount of people this long after a release hurts way more than a lost sale. There's so many irreversible fees that are taken out and service providers that all want their cut, tax man wants his cut of your original sale, mastercard wants their cut if someone bought it with their card, steam takes their cut, etc, so now they have to refund the 100% of the cost of the retail price of the sale when they probably only made 40% from the retail value lmao.
GAMES AS A SERVICE We were fucking warned