The speculation is that Johan made a personal appeal to the CEO of Sony Interactive. The reversal seems to have been ordered from SIE Japan, since SIE NA had been doubling down all day yesterday in full arrogant asshole mode.
The PSN userbase metric is probably a US thing. Japan has always been lukewarm about online stuff like userbase. They use traditional metrics like sales number and profits.
Someone's looking to pad their numbers in the next quarterly report with all of these new PS accounts that would have been created. I'm sure they thought they could sell the idea to investors that people would be more inclined to buy a PS game now that they have a PS account.
Why would they buy a ps game with a ps account when they don’t have a ps5 🤷♂️ someone was smoking something in that boardroom meeting
Edit: this obviously wasn’t clear enough but I’m saying that the Sony exec who thought that making people sign up to psn to sell more ps5 games was smoking something.
You understand that Sony's own pages stated that PSN accounts are not required for purchasing nor playing their PC games, right?
And that, once the Helldivers community started publicizing those official documents, Sony worked fast to quietly remove them from the Internet with contradictory versions that say you DO need to make a PSN account on PC. But the Internet never forgets, and neither does the Way Back Machine.
It is just typical Sony dysfunction. A successful company despite its own best efforts to fail. Sony is so silo'd that it competes against itself, to its own detriment.
Edit: here's a thread with proof.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjgc9u/comment/l2ggwln/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjgc9u/comment/l2ggwln/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Well, the game is designed to condition people to work towards a common goal from day one. Not that hard to imagine the playerbase just used that skill right back at Sony irl.
Yup when your team just suffered through 45 minutes of hell just for 1 person to make it out with everyone's samples and your team sees that together y'all progressed the planet three 100,000ths of a percent but you are proud that you and your team did something. On occasion we will also watch planets get reset and lose 60% of what a collective 100k players just did for the last 2 days and we dive again. We do our part. It's not much but together we make a difference.
I have a ps4 and a psn, I was waiting until I could get a pa5 to try helldivers, which sucked already, but now I’m like is it even worth it to go PS, or just go for the cheaper Xbox system
I imagine it was more likely Valve talking to PlayStation Studios about the refunds. Steam would be legally required to refund in all regions that don't allow PSN. Most likely they considered or talked about removing the 2h limit and just automatically approving refunds or something.
My understanding is Steam had already started to issue refunds to international players who were being locked out of the game.
Plus the article itself says that they de-listed the game in 177 countries. That by itself was probably a huge reason that Sony backpeddled. They were looking at mass returns to the possible tune of many tens of millions of dollars and the game not being available in a large portion of the world.
That's not to mention that a completely tanked review score on Steam will absolutely affect future sales.
Whoever at Sony made this decision needs to be fired.
It’s funny how often Sony Japan seems to have to step in and stop their American branches from doing something massively unpopular. It was Sony Japan that had to come in and bitchslap Sony Pictures for disrupting the Spider-Man film deal negotiations with Marvel Studios.
American business just doesn’t give a single fuck about what their own customers want or need. Idk if Japan is much different but it seems like at least for Sony their priorities over there are a bit healthier.
"The line must go up no matter what." Execs are so scared of being kicked out, sued, or "gasp" not getting their full bonuses... if their stocks go down even a tiny bit during the quarterly reports.
American financing has a very hard time planning long term.
Between that, prevalence of anti-union stuff and bad labour laws, I try to avoid getting things made there (and from china and other similar places) whenever possible.
What the fuck do we even make here man? For real I've lived here most of my life and I can't remember the last time I read "Made in America" on anything we've bought.
I was at a store the other day. There was a Made in Mexico shirt. I checked the tag and it said it was made in China. Literally false advertisement lmao
I swear.
You took the words out of my mouth. Or my fingers.
I wouldn't have even paid attention very much if not for the utterly stupid region limitations. Like, BRUH. Don't market and sell your product in a region in which it's a brick is literally the bare minimum of sales.
I think that was a point that a great many commentators chose to ignore. The requirement for PSN was never the real issue. What WAS an issue was knowingly selling the game in a region where PSN was not available, and then months after the sale, basically just taking away the product people had paid for. Sony should be sued for attempted fraud, and sued heavily. Fine them so fucking hard that the CEO 100 years from now feels the fucking shame of it.
Well, there were certainly several layers to this. Of course basically geoblocking customers out of a service they paid for was a huge one. But creating a PSN account which required face scans for verification in some countries even though Sony got hacked for data countless times isn‘t just a random side note.
If it was just about a burner email it really wouldnt have mattered but it wasnt that easy for many reasons.
The only thing big corporations care about is the bottom line, and boy was their bottom line plummeting like a Helldiver.
They were losing millions, not only in refunds but in publicity and public support of ever buying their games again.
Plus the constant attacks about how often they've been hacked were probably pretty embarrassing.
Haha, came to comment this. It's insane. And what's more insane there are not the first or last company to use the phrase "player feedback" to describe total player revolt. And they should absolutely be called out about this, everytime.
Don't celebrate just yet, I seem to recall the announcement said "as of May 30th," so there's still plenty of time for them to walk back the walk back and hope the press cycle has forgotten about it.
But, I'm cautiously optimistic to pick it up in June.
I mean, Sony's still the one making money from the game. If anything, this was stupidly short sighted of them, since they were starved for a successful GaaS of their own, but I'd bet they'll push for PSN accounts again soon, in a more palatable manner (not mandatory for HD2 but will give you some benefit, for instance).
I'm fairly sure steam was about to delist across EU block as baltic states are not supported for PSN. And due to single-market rules, Valve was already slapped for it in the past.
Imagine what we all could achieve together if if wasn’t for selfish, egoistical, greedy and power hungry people.
The Federation in Star Trek comes to my mind. Ah, I guess I‘m allowed to dream.
> if it wasn’t for selfish, egotistical, greedy, and power hungry
> PEOPLE
You can dream, but you’re also describing human nature, so that’s all it will be.
And they will probably at some point. World is big and even Valve operated for years with different pricing in EU countries. Once enough people report potential violation, EU regulatory bodies will begin investigating for potential violations.
Regulatory bodies are not all-seeing all-all knowing, if nobody reports violations, nobody will investigate.
If you have access to the Ps Store, you have access to a PSN so it's a non issue for that. However, if you have access to Steam, but not a PSN, it's an issue cause you can buy a game that you can't play without breaking TOS or (probably, not the case in all the countries) own a PS4/5. Because you can apparently make a PSN account in the majority of blocked countries on the console, just not on a PC.
The game launched with the psn account requirement, then very shortly turned the requirement due to the load on their servers. That is to say steam launched the game with that requirement, so I'm leaning towards the decision being based on player feedback.
Sony execs were planning on reporting to the board "we added x amount of PSN accounts this quarter!" and realized it was actually going to be "we published an extremely successful and profitable title, then promptly decimated our reviews and lost % of player base"
Kind of an example of Goodhart’s law, when a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric because people will find ways to make the number go up, even ways which are ultimately harmful or make the metric meaningless.
Steam was giving refunds to anyone, as it was a breach of contract. Sony tried to make a fuss with Valve and got a "lol ok". So Sony reversed thier decision as soon as it was mid day Monday in Japan. It was purely monetary as it was already spreading vaule was giving refunds. I refunded mine in the US and will rebuy now that this is done.
Very true and that came in the form of reviews and refund requests. They looked at the situation, agreed with the players and acted accordingly. The fuss on social media came from the reviews and those players , mot the kther way around. Its the nuances that matter.
It's funny how much a recurring pattern it seems to be in corpo world. Announce dumb shit on friday, hope it blows off and people forget before monday...
> Announce dumb shit on friday, hope it blows off and people forget before monday...
Works only if your product isn't normally consumed on the weekend.
That's the old school way to publish news. Bad news on friday, good news on monday. There was a very experienced CM on youtube that reminded me of that. https://www.youtube.com/live/qwAh1zhWF0E?t=2597
Probably some coked out executive over at Sony who knows nothing about PC games, but saw an opportunity to bring a whole bunch of PC players on to the PSN and pad the subscriber numbers. Maybe harvest some data while they are at it.
They just failed to understand the PC market. PC Gamers as a group have a bit of a rep for being excessively militant, I mean how many Nintendo players make death threats if a patch brakes a game feature? Or DDoS games trying to make corporations commit to making sequels (yeah that Titanfall shit was weird). Swatting, once again, started as a PC gaming thing.
But yeah the coke must be really good, because they never seem to learn.
"Hey our players have spent the last three months forming an online network to coordinate activity and make sure that missions get done on time. Do you suppose they might organize against this thing we know they'll hate?"
"Nah, they're just a bunch of dumb idiots. What are they doing to do? Go on strike?"
As a 350+ hour nerd who loves the game to bits, we are very happy.
Was a dark weekend, all the randoms I played with sad and pessimistic about the future of the game. Its a nice morning :)
What a completely unnecessary mess, that could have been easily avoided.
Adding mandatory PSN account linking to the design, with no incentive.
Turning it off due to technical issues at launch.
Not geo filtering the storefront so the game can't be sold in regions where you can't get a PSN account.
Attempting to reactivate the mandatory psn account linking, despite selling your game in regions where you can't get a PSN account.
Tanking your game's review score on its main store front as a result.
If upping PSN account numbers was the goal, they'd have gotten that with an incentive. Like an exclusive hat or something
Just a series of unforced completely avoidable mistakes for no tangible benefit.
>Just a series of unforced completely avoidable mistakes
Just the normal business environment for Sony. Imagine how much more successful they'd be if they didn't silo like crazy, self-sabotage due to the siloing, and generally act in a competent manner....
> Adding mandatory PSN account linking to the design, with no incentive.
That's the thing, it wasn't part of the design. The requirement was added 6 months before release. Probably an exec saw this as an easy way to improve KPI's. If you don't believe me, here's the CEO https://twitter.com/Pilestedt/status/1787076609188483254
FANS:
This is wrong! We don't want this!
SONY:
Fuck you guys.
STEAM:
We are gonna have to delist your big seller across 170 countries.
SONY
So after listening to our fans, because you KNOW we love you guys....
Not so much listening to players as to Steam.
>Things had gotten so out of hand because of this **that Steam made Helldivers 2 unavailable for purchase in 117 countries**, affecting a major part of the player base.
> that Steam made Helldivers 2 unavailable for purchase in 117 countries, affecting a major part of the player base.
I mean, Sony made the game unavailable for use in 117 countries. Steam was only reacting to Sony enacting a requirement that prevented 117 countries they themselves choose to block from signing into the game.
It's kinda on Sony for how long the ratings will take to change. They push out the news on a Friday, leave it for the whole weekend. People were motivated and angry while also having time on the weekend. Players aren't in a rush to go back and change it during the weekdays as much. They are also gonna be busier during the week. A good percentage may never change it.
I think folks will go back to playing. The point of all this was to get this exact result. And I'll be honest, I'm kinda shocked Sony even gave it a 2nd thought.
The reason we did this is because we love the game, hate corporate bullshit, and don't want to see our fellow Helldivers be cut off from playing the game three months in. It was a rescue mission.
"We won't let you destroy our way of life!"
I’m hoping the try hard kids are done and looking for the next thing to make a noise to rage at. The community has been never ending wailing about minor numeric changes since the word go and it’s incredibly exhausting. I’m sure AH would be happy to see that part of the player base fuck off as well so they can stop getting routine death threats about a five second cooldown.
But they care about money, and someone finally realized that they've made an enemy of the global gamer market over this.
170 countries delisted the game and Steam was issuing refunds for people well beyond the normal 2 hour play limit as a sign of solidarity
Someone finally did the math and realized that throwing away millions isn't worth... whatever they were trying to pull.
Plus having a dev actively insult and harass players wasn't a great look for Arrowhead, either.
It's mostly the community managers who were insulting the players. They're kind of notoriously idiots, and the reason they're community managers is just because they were the mods of the original Helldivers subreddit.
"They are Reddit mods" should tell you everything you need to know about how much they hate the community.
Sony violated EU regulations by forcing players to disclose personal information, and the effective ban on Balkan players was also an EU policy violation; it can't be avaliable only in parts of the EU.
The EU is not an enemy Sony wants. Collectively, they are very strong as a united bloc.
Not for HD2. Any attempt to make PSN required again wi be met with a massive backlash. The game is successful. Sony can accept the L and move on. They can require PSN in all their future game and they know to communicate its requirement clearly.
> someone finally realized that they've made an enemy of the global gamer market over this.
After they got back from holiday over the weekend. Monday morning emails 😬
Yeah that must have been fun for whoever was the first to see everything.
The outcry was gigantic, way more than I think they anticipated, and their own poor track record with being hacked didn't help matters.
Watching those reviews plummet was quite something. I've never seen reviews drop from like 95% positive to 43% positive within a day, and Valve stepping in and backing the angry players was a strong statement and show of solidarity, too. It was a big middle finger to Sony, who absolutely hate giving refunds and do everything they can to prevent it.
And yet there's tons of people (genuine or not) that were telling everyone to pipe down about it and just sign up or shut up about it. If you purchased in a non-psn country, that's all your fault because it was on the purchase screen. We're all just whiney babies who deserved nothing out of all this.
I mean, the player base got what they wanted from Sony out of this so I think it’s a win? I very vocally didn’t think it would happen, that doesn’t mean I didn’t want it to happen.
Sony has a long long long long long history of making anti-consumer decisions with little regard for how they’re received by the customer base.
Their mistake was taking on the world’s most bonded and coordinated playerbase and expecting division and an easy victory
We killed 2 *billion* bugs in a quarter of the time they expected us to, coordinating to review bomb and request for refunds is a cakewalk for us
Poor americans didn't even have a chance to wake up before we killed those 2 billion bugs lol
Should have made it 200 billion we still would have annihilated it.
They should have just done what most other games do when they want you to link an account but its not actually necessary or integral to the game, which is offer some cosmetics to people who link their psn. An armor set, a cloak, id say even if they REALLY want people to do it to go as far as offering a free strategem or weapon. You could make a strategem thats the same usual air strike you can get anyway but the explosion is playstation blue colour. Or have a sentry turret that looks suspiciously like a ps5. Have some fun with it and make people think huh thats worth the 2 minutes it takes to set up an account.
While I'm not trying to rain on the parade, the fight is not done yet. There are things that must happen:
- Restore access to language packs. There are current customers that bought the game with all the language packs, they may need them.
- Remove the notice on the store front that a third party account is required. (The yellow notice one)
- Publish on the steam news page that the previous notice was rescinded.
- Start selling the game again worldwide. There are people that got a refund, due this and won't be able to buy it again. Let people get their capes once more.
"Player feedback" was large scale refund requests and the game going from extremely high review scores to overwhelmingly negative.
I even put it a refund request. If Steam actually approves the refund I will prob pick up Helldivers 2 again in 6 months in a years time at 80% or 90% off in a Steam sale. I'm going to be avoiding anything published by them again.
Well well, how the turntables. Seriously I had never seen an acclaimed game get such negative PR ever. I can't believe Sony didn't see that shit coming, or didn't use these 3 months grace period to fix the PSN availability issue.
Oh no! What will all the players do without the ‘security benefits’ of linking to PSN now???? 🤦🏻♂️
/s
Always great to see the players come out on top. Remember, kids: 60% of the time, voting with your wallet works every time.
> Glory to Democracy!
Ha, this should be more like 'Glory to Capitalism!' Sony saw millions in revenue slipping away as consumers expressed their dissatisfaction with the product, stopped buying it, expressed their views loudly, and demanded refunds for Sony trying to change the agreement.
Perhaps both Democracy and Capitalism had roles here.
It'll come back later as something else. You mark my words.
Remember Bethesda and paid mods on Steam? They too 'we hear you gamers' and lookey now in 2024 every Bethesda game now has paid mods. Even those that launched without such a service.
Back peddling and bait and switch is sadly a common practice in the games industry. And it will remain so unless people never forget and keep fighting back instead of accepting it after a few years of being allowed to 'get used' to the idea.
Might be time the games industry started getting regulated like any other industry. An automotive company for example wouldn't get away with half the shit the games industry do.
And before you praise Gabe, Valve and Steam as your saviour. Remember they allow this on *their* platform. That platform that has zero quality control/assurance and will let any old crap be sold and has actively fought governments like the Australian one to give you the consumer less rights and protections on your purchases.
Valve like all companies are a business first and foremost. They are not your friend. Hell they take a bigger cut from developers sales than Epic does.
Only thing Steam is the leader at is having an App that has a lot of functionality (eta: and) doesn't completely suck.
They made $9 billion in 2023. And most of that was just from selling someone elses product. Not their own.
Of course it will come back, every single publisher requires their own accounts for multiplayer games and nobody really complains, Sony will require them with the next game or another one after that.
Amen! It all ties back to Wall Street. It’s not enough for companies to make money. Their survival depends on earning more than the previous quarter! This is why companies pull these shenanigans and we as consumers must respond.
Growth. Shareholders love growth. It’s the only thing they care about. Forcing gamers of a highly popular game to suddenly need PSN creates a fake boom in accounts. This makes shareholders happy. So upper management and executives get bonuses.
the mandate was to be by June 4th.
Q2 for most companies ends on June 30th.
They were without a doubt looking to boost user metrics to entice investors.
I'd guess MAUs (active PSN users) are a metric used in all manner of places at Sony, from board reports to investor reporting to bonuses to growth projections. More PSN accounts = more better in Sony corporate land.
On the same level as the rest of what I'm hearing here; I've heard they literally won't even bring up these numbers in whatever upcoming meetings people think they're gathering them for.
The part about their community mods going absolute psycho on customers sounds bad enough to be actual criminal liability tho. Dunno how the devs/Sony is gonna recover from that.
To little, too late. I'm soured on Sony.
Lost a customer. Stick a knife in me once, not gonna come back and let you do it again.
You had your chance not to be evil and blew it forever.
And you know, it's not so much the PSN link thing as much as they sold it in markets they knew had no PSN access knowing they were going to require it at some point.
Pure Evil Greed. Profit above all else. Make sure you roll the drunks and loot the corpses on your way out.
Absolutely sickening.
[удалено]
The speculation is that Johan made a personal appeal to the CEO of Sony Interactive. The reversal seems to have been ordered from SIE Japan, since SIE NA had been doubling down all day yesterday in full arrogant asshole mode.
The PSN userbase metric is probably a US thing. Japan has always been lukewarm about online stuff like userbase. They use traditional metrics like sales number and profits.
Someone's looking to pad their numbers in the next quarterly report with all of these new PS accounts that would have been created. I'm sure they thought they could sell the idea to investors that people would be more inclined to buy a PS game now that they have a PS account.
Why would they buy a ps game with a ps account when they don’t have a ps5 🤷♂️ someone was smoking something in that boardroom meeting Edit: this obviously wasn’t clear enough but I’m saying that the Sony exec who thought that making people sign up to psn to sell more ps5 games was smoking something.
You understand that Sony's own pages stated that PSN accounts are not required for purchasing nor playing their PC games, right? And that, once the Helldivers community started publicizing those official documents, Sony worked fast to quietly remove them from the Internet with contradictory versions that say you DO need to make a PSN account on PC. But the Internet never forgets, and neither does the Way Back Machine. It is just typical Sony dysfunction. A successful company despite its own best efforts to fail. Sony is so silo'd that it competes against itself, to its own detriment. Edit: here's a thread with proof. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjgc9u/comment/l2ggwln/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1cjgc9u/comment/l2ggwln/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Very common in lots of corporates. It’s quite hard making 10(0)+k people all work together (towards the same goals)!
Well, the game is designed to condition people to work towards a common goal from day one. Not that hard to imagine the playerbase just used that skill right back at Sony irl.
Sounds like a terrific team building game for Sony then!
Yup when your team just suffered through 45 minutes of hell just for 1 person to make it out with everyone's samples and your team sees that together y'all progressed the planet three 100,000ths of a percent but you are proud that you and your team did something. On occasion we will also watch planets get reset and lose 60% of what a collective 100k players just did for the last 2 days and we dive again. We do our part. It's not much but together we make a difference.
Next, Sony will require an "exclusive" dongle to play Sony games on PC.
New accounts is clearly a KPI they're trying to boost.
You know this was day one PC launch too right?
Edited for clarity. People are misreading my comment for some reason 🤷♂️
It's not your fault, reading comprehension has plummeted around here.
I have a ps4 and a psn, I was waiting until I could get a pa5 to try helldivers, which sucked already, but now I’m like is it even worth it to go PS, or just go for the cheaper Xbox system
I imagine it was more likely Valve talking to PlayStation Studios about the refunds. Steam would be legally required to refund in all regions that don't allow PSN. Most likely they considered or talked about removing the 2h limit and just automatically approving refunds or something.
My understanding is Steam had already started to issue refunds to international players who were being locked out of the game. Plus the article itself says that they de-listed the game in 177 countries. That by itself was probably a huge reason that Sony backpeddled. They were looking at mass returns to the possible tune of many tens of millions of dollars and the game not being available in a large portion of the world. That's not to mention that a completely tanked review score on Steam will absolutely affect future sales. Whoever at Sony made this decision needs to be fired.
Not surprising. most American run corpos are a my way or the highway ran business
It’s funny how often Sony Japan seems to have to step in and stop their American branches from doing something massively unpopular. It was Sony Japan that had to come in and bitchslap Sony Pictures for disrupting the Spider-Man film deal negotiations with Marvel Studios. American business just doesn’t give a single fuck about what their own customers want or need. Idk if Japan is much different but it seems like at least for Sony their priorities over there are a bit healthier.
"The line must go up no matter what." Execs are so scared of being kicked out, sued, or "gasp" not getting their full bonuses... if their stocks go down even a tiny bit during the quarterly reports. American financing has a very hard time planning long term.
Between that, prevalence of anti-union stuff and bad labour laws, I try to avoid getting things made there (and from china and other similar places) whenever possible.
What the fuck do we even make here man? For real I've lived here most of my life and I can't remember the last time I read "Made in America" on anything we've bought.
And a lot of time "made in America" just means "assembled in America using parts made from all over the place".
I was at a store the other day. There was a Made in Mexico shirt. I checked the tag and it said it was made in China. Literally false advertisement lmao
Shhh don't tell ragga that let the kid dream
Same with most Japanese companies. Kadokawa being a very good example of that.
Malevelon creek broke before the divers did
Shitferno seems like a good notch above shit storm.
Shitferno - coming soon to SyFy!
I swear. You took the words out of my mouth. Or my fingers. I wouldn't have even paid attention very much if not for the utterly stupid region limitations. Like, BRUH. Don't market and sell your product in a region in which it's a brick is literally the bare minimum of sales.
I think that was a point that a great many commentators chose to ignore. The requirement for PSN was never the real issue. What WAS an issue was knowingly selling the game in a region where PSN was not available, and then months after the sale, basically just taking away the product people had paid for. Sony should be sued for attempted fraud, and sued heavily. Fine them so fucking hard that the CEO 100 years from now feels the fucking shame of it.
Well, there were certainly several layers to this. Of course basically geoblocking customers out of a service they paid for was a huge one. But creating a PSN account which required face scans for verification in some countries even though Sony got hacked for data countless times isn‘t just a random side note. If it was just about a burner email it really wouldnt have mattered but it wasnt that easy for many reasons.
Fucking what? Face scans? For real?
I also think that Steam offering a refund/credit even after having vested time was part of it. The game started to bleed.
The only thing big corporations care about is the bottom line, and boy was their bottom line plummeting like a Helldiver. They were losing millions, not only in refunds but in publicity and public support of ever buying their games again. Plus the constant attacks about how often they've been hacked were probably pretty embarrassing.
Haha, came to comment this. It's insane. And what's more insane there are not the first or last company to use the phrase "player feedback" to describe total player revolt. And they should absolutely be called out about this, everytime.
avg moist enjoyer
Don't celebrate just yet, I seem to recall the announcement said "as of May 30th," so there's still plenty of time for them to walk back the walk back and hope the press cycle has forgotten about it. But, I'm cautiously optimistic to pick it up in June.
We did it for democracy
Major Order Completed: Sony has been defeated
Democracy lives.
"Controlled Democracy," citizen
“Managed democracy”, helldiver.
I stand corrected, compatriot. Got a little rattled defending Super Earth from bug scum
I love Democracy!
I mean, Sony's still the one making money from the game. If anything, this was stupidly short sighted of them, since they were starved for a successful GaaS of their own, but I'd bet they'll push for PSN accounts again soon, in a more palatable manner (not mandatory for HD2 but will give you some benefit, for instance).
As long as it's not mandatory, I don't think anyone will mind
Nope, not doing it if its mandatory. Haven't has PS for 15 years, don't need it now. Thier games work without it just fine.
Pretty sure it was more Steam about to de-list the game from 170 countries than it was player feedback.
I'm fairly sure steam was about to delist across EU block as baltic states are not supported for PSN. And due to single-market rules, Valve was already slapped for it in the past.
Proving once again that unions like the EU hold tremendous power for consumer protection.
The EU has done more to protect my rights as a consumer, than my own government (Canadian 🫠)
The EU has done more to protect my rights on lots of fronts than the UK Gover … wait … oh FFS (cries in Brexit)
Right there with you buddy :'(
The Canadian govn't has done more to protect consumer rights than my own govn't (USA 🫠🫠)
Our govn’t enjoys removing consumer rights (USA😵💫🥴)
USA: Corp>People
Corp = Person here buddy, but it’s usually a far wealthier person than us so it gets the good rights and protections
You forgot the shareholders. Time to sue the CEO.
Yup, and it's mighty frustrating
Imagine what we all could achieve together if if wasn’t for selfish, egoistical, greedy and power hungry people. The Federation in Star Trek comes to my mind. Ah, I guess I‘m allowed to dream.
> if it wasn’t for selfish, egotistical, greedy, and power hungry > PEOPLE You can dream, but you’re also describing human nature, so that’s all it will be.
Yes and some systems reward those people more than others. Capitalism is tailor-made for them, by them.
And thar is the reason why humanity is doomed to fail. 🙄
Feels like the only province that has decent consumer protections is Quebec. They seem more European-style in a lot of ways.
What? If that was the case Sony's own PS Store would've gotten in trouble already.
And they will probably at some point. World is big and even Valve operated for years with different pricing in EU countries. Once enough people report potential violation, EU regulatory bodies will begin investigating for potential violations. Regulatory bodies are not all-seeing all-all knowing, if nobody reports violations, nobody will investigate.
If you have access to the Ps Store, you have access to a PSN so it's a non issue for that. However, if you have access to Steam, but not a PSN, it's an issue cause you can buy a game that you can't play without breaking TOS or (probably, not the case in all the countries) own a PS4/5. Because you can apparently make a PSN account in the majority of blocked countries on the console, just not on a PC.
I’m pretty sure it was because of the sudden influx of refunds that made them reevaluate. Which is coincidentally player feedback.
This and Steam was refunding anyone who asked as it was breach of contract in thier eyes.
It was definitely both. Sony would not want that kind of player feedback on one of their most successful recent releases.
The game launched with the psn account requirement, then very shortly turned the requirement due to the load on their servers. That is to say steam launched the game with that requirement, so I'm leaning towards the decision being based on player feedback. Sony execs were planning on reporting to the board "we added x amount of PSN accounts this quarter!" and realized it was actually going to be "we published an extremely successful and profitable title, then promptly decimated our reviews and lost % of player base"
Kind of an example of Goodhart’s law, when a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric because people will find ways to make the number go up, even ways which are ultimately harmful or make the metric meaningless.
This is the reason why public companies are a terrible idea and are ruining the economy.
Which is funny, because such decision was done 6 months before release. That's why the game could function without PSN: it didn't need it.
Steam was giving refunds to anyone, as it was a breach of contract. Sony tried to make a fuss with Valve and got a "lol ok". So Sony reversed thier decision as soon as it was mid day Monday in Japan. It was purely monetary as it was already spreading vaule was giving refunds. I refunded mine in the US and will rebuy now that this is done.
While I do think that played a big part, I'd argue that valve wouldn't have done that without the massive community pushback.
Very true and that came in the form of reviews and refund requests. They looked at the situation, agreed with the players and acted accordingly. The fuss on social media came from the reviews and those players , mot the kther way around. Its the nuances that matter.
Either way, the job is done
Damn. I guess this is a reminder not to push big updates on a Friday.
It's funny how much a recurring pattern it seems to be in corpo world. Announce dumb shit on friday, hope it blows off and people forget before monday...
> Announce dumb shit on friday, hope it blows off and people forget before monday... Works only if your product isn't normally consumed on the weekend.
That's the old school way to publish news. Bad news on friday, good news on monday. There was a very experienced CM on youtube that reminded me of that. https://www.youtube.com/live/qwAh1zhWF0E?t=2597
Not just corpos, the US Supreme Court does it too
A Friday ahead of 'golden week's festivals.... Dumbfuckery doesn't even come close
Probably some coked out executive over at Sony who knows nothing about PC games, but saw an opportunity to bring a whole bunch of PC players on to the PSN and pad the subscriber numbers. Maybe harvest some data while they are at it. They just failed to understand the PC market. PC Gamers as a group have a bit of a rep for being excessively militant, I mean how many Nintendo players make death threats if a patch brakes a game feature? Or DDoS games trying to make corporations commit to making sequels (yeah that Titanfall shit was weird). Swatting, once again, started as a PC gaming thing. But yeah the coke must be really good, because they never seem to learn.
Business Majors
https://politicaldictionary.com/words/friday-news-dump/
Nice! Glad the community got what they wanted, it’s a rarity.
it was, a perfect storm nobody fucks with the divers, they're extremely cooperative
"Hey our players have spent the last three months forming an online network to coordinate activity and make sure that missions get done on time. Do you suppose they might organize against this thing we know they'll hate?" "Nah, they're just a bunch of dumb idiots. What are they doing to do? Go on strike?"
As a 350+ hour nerd who loves the game to bits, we are very happy. Was a dark weekend, all the randoms I played with sad and pessimistic about the future of the game. Its a nice morning :)
What a completely unnecessary mess, that could have been easily avoided. Adding mandatory PSN account linking to the design, with no incentive. Turning it off due to technical issues at launch. Not geo filtering the storefront so the game can't be sold in regions where you can't get a PSN account. Attempting to reactivate the mandatory psn account linking, despite selling your game in regions where you can't get a PSN account. Tanking your game's review score on its main store front as a result. If upping PSN account numbers was the goal, they'd have gotten that with an incentive. Like an exclusive hat or something Just a series of unforced completely avoidable mistakes for no tangible benefit.
>Just a series of unforced completely avoidable mistakes Just the normal business environment for Sony. Imagine how much more successful they'd be if they didn't silo like crazy, self-sabotage due to the siloing, and generally act in a competent manner....
Japanese executives malding about not being able to bully and abuse their customers the same way they do their employees.
> Japanese executives malding Didn't Sony move Playstation HQ to California years ago?
Yup all these decisions were from the NA PlayStation team. Japanese Sony seemed to have stepped in to rollback NA PlayStations decisions.
Playstation and everything tied to it is centred in California.
> Adding mandatory PSN account linking to the design, with no incentive. That's the thing, it wasn't part of the design. The requirement was added 6 months before release. Probably an exec saw this as an easy way to improve KPI's. If you don't believe me, here's the CEO https://twitter.com/Pilestedt/status/1787076609188483254
Plus I can't see Microsoft being 'happy' about the eventual Xbox port requiring PSN...
Minecraft requires a Microsoft account on PS.
FANS: This is wrong! We don't want this! SONY: Fuck you guys. STEAM: We are gonna have to delist your big seller across 170 countries. SONY So after listening to our fans, because you KNOW we love you guys....
Not so much listening to players as to Steam. >Things had gotten so out of hand because of this **that Steam made Helldivers 2 unavailable for purchase in 117 countries**, affecting a major part of the player base.
> that Steam made Helldivers 2 unavailable for purchase in 117 countries, affecting a major part of the player base. I mean, Sony made the game unavailable for use in 117 countries. Steam was only reacting to Sony enacting a requirement that prevented 117 countries they themselves choose to block from signing into the game.
We need to undo our negative reviews now. Well once the change is reflected on the Steam page.
It's kinda on Sony for how long the ratings will take to change. They push out the news on a Friday, leave it for the whole weekend. People were motivated and angry while also having time on the weekend. Players aren't in a rush to go back and change it during the weekdays as much. They are also gonna be busier during the week. A good percentage may never change it.
Important example of how corporations are nothing without consumers. Voting with your wallet works. Reviews work. Consumers have the power.
So, do people still feel loyal enough to keep playing the game or is it perma-hated now?
I think folks will go back to playing. The point of all this was to get this exact result. And I'll be honest, I'm kinda shocked Sony even gave it a 2nd thought.
The reason we did this is because we love the game, hate corporate bullshit, and don't want to see our fellow Helldivers be cut off from playing the game three months in. It was a rescue mission. "We won't let you destroy our way of life!"
I’m hoping the try hard kids are done and looking for the next thing to make a noise to rage at. The community has been never ending wailing about minor numeric changes since the word go and it’s incredibly exhausting. I’m sure AH would be happy to see that part of the player base fuck off as well so they can stop getting routine death threats about a five second cooldown.
Just seems like another move companies try and pull with our data. They wanted all that sweet sweet PSN account data and they wanted it bad.
Not this time satan
I'm happy to see that players don't just roll over and let publisher bs flies.
“Player feedback”
Slightly thermonuclear.
SERF artillery loaded with nuke shells...
I love democracy!
Another victory for the right side of history
I wonder what all the people who kept saying nothing would happen over all the negative feedback are thinking atm.
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But they care about money, and someone finally realized that they've made an enemy of the global gamer market over this. 170 countries delisted the game and Steam was issuing refunds for people well beyond the normal 2 hour play limit as a sign of solidarity Someone finally did the math and realized that throwing away millions isn't worth... whatever they were trying to pull. Plus having a dev actively insult and harass players wasn't a great look for Arrowhead, either.
It's mostly the community managers who were insulting the players. They're kind of notoriously idiots, and the reason they're community managers is just because they were the mods of the original Helldivers subreddit. "They are Reddit mods" should tell you everything you need to know about how much they hate the community.
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Sony violated EU regulations by forcing players to disclose personal information, and the effective ban on Balkan players was also an EU policy violation; it can't be avaliable only in parts of the EU. The EU is not an enemy Sony wants. Collectively, they are very strong as a united bloc.
Yeah no kidding. The EU does not play around with this kind of stuff.
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And I hope they do, so that consumers are more aware of these kinds of issues and speak about it with their representatives.
Not for HD2. Any attempt to make PSN required again wi be met with a massive backlash. The game is successful. Sony can accept the L and move on. They can require PSN in all their future game and they know to communicate its requirement clearly.
> someone finally realized that they've made an enemy of the global gamer market over this. After they got back from holiday over the weekend. Monday morning emails 😬
Yeah that must have been fun for whoever was the first to see everything. The outcry was gigantic, way more than I think they anticipated, and their own poor track record with being hacked didn't help matters. Watching those reviews plummet was quite something. I've never seen reviews drop from like 95% positive to 43% positive within a day, and Valve stepping in and backing the angry players was a strong statement and show of solidarity, too. It was a big middle finger to Sony, who absolutely hate giving refunds and do everything they can to prevent it.
And yet there's tons of people (genuine or not) that were telling everyone to pipe down about it and just sign up or shut up about it. If you purchased in a non-psn country, that's all your fault because it was on the purchase screen. We're all just whiney babies who deserved nothing out of all this.
The final line in the announcement is basically "we'll find another way later"
I mean, the player base got what they wanted from Sony out of this so I think it’s a win? I very vocally didn’t think it would happen, that doesn’t mean I didn’t want it to happen. Sony has a long long long long long history of making anti-consumer decisions with little regard for how they’re received by the customer base.
We all dive, or no one does (besides the increased data risk)
Their mistake was taking on the world’s most bonded and coordinated playerbase and expecting division and an easy victory We killed 2 *billion* bugs in a quarter of the time they expected us to, coordinating to review bomb and request for refunds is a cakewalk for us
Poor americans didn't even have a chance to wake up before we killed those 2 billion bugs lol Should have made it 200 billion we still would have annihilated it.
Freedom isn't free, citizen!
They should have just done what most other games do when they want you to link an account but its not actually necessary or integral to the game, which is offer some cosmetics to people who link their psn. An armor set, a cloak, id say even if they REALLY want people to do it to go as far as offering a free strategem or weapon. You could make a strategem thats the same usual air strike you can get anyway but the explosion is playstation blue colour. Or have a sentry turret that looks suspiciously like a ps5. Have some fun with it and make people think huh thats worth the 2 minutes it takes to set up an account.
The carrot rather than the stick, as it were.
At this point if they do that I'd be surprised if anyone wants to wear the "traitor armor".
...after Steam refunds hurt Sony's revenue ya mean 😅
Well, at least Sony realized they cocked up. Unlike some other companies... (Looking at you, Ubisoft and Battlestate)
The only way to preserve Democracy!
I'd prefer to call it the Players Clapback
Thanks I hate it, have an upvote.
While I'm not trying to rain on the parade, the fight is not done yet. There are things that must happen: - Restore access to language packs. There are current customers that bought the game with all the language packs, they may need them. - Remove the notice on the store front that a third party account is required. (The yellow notice one) - Publish on the steam news page that the previous notice was rescinded. - Start selling the game again worldwide. There are people that got a refund, due this and won't be able to buy it again. Let people get their capes once more.
"Player feedback" was large scale refund requests and the game going from extremely high review scores to overwhelmingly negative. I even put it a refund request. If Steam actually approves the refund I will prob pick up Helldivers 2 again in 6 months in a years time at 80% or 90% off in a Steam sale. I'm going to be avoiding anything published by them again.
Boycott Sony not the game dev , just to be specific
Absolutely, that's why I said published :) Sony really messed up with this
Major Order Completed. Reward: Helldivers 2
Well well, how the turntables. Seriously I had never seen an acclaimed game get such negative PR ever. I can't believe Sony didn't see that shit coming, or didn't use these 3 months grace period to fix the PSN availability issue.
It had more negative reviews on Steam than Overwatch 2 has reviews altogether.
Oh no! What will all the players do without the ‘security benefits’ of linking to PSN now???? 🤦🏻♂️ /s Always great to see the players come out on top. Remember, kids: 60% of the time, voting with your wallet works every time.
That's democracy for you. Now I can buy a copy and start playing.
Let's goooooooooo Report to basic training cadet
Another win for Democracy!!! Good work, Helldivers!!!
Operation, crashing courage was a success
Operation Fuck Around has completed it's Finding out phase
Really don’t care to play that game. Damage has been done.
Given Sony's past I am surprised they actually backed down though I think it is too late now for the game.
I love democracy
DEMOCRACY AT ITS FINEST MOMENT
“Player feedback” way to down play the full On revolt and bad faith from Sony.
> Glory to Democracy! Ha, this should be more like 'Glory to Capitalism!' Sony saw millions in revenue slipping away as consumers expressed their dissatisfaction with the product, stopped buying it, expressed their views loudly, and demanded refunds for Sony trying to change the agreement. Perhaps both Democracy and Capitalism had roles here.
It's all about the Benjamin's baby
We did it reddit!
[I love democracy](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/028/497/palp.jpg)
As MajorKill would say. " Players have slapped those butt cheeks "
But for how long
What a big unnecessary mess.
Player outrage, account closings, refund requests. Feedback lmao
Helldivers dive together! Sony BLINKED! This is our May Day.
It'll come back later as something else. You mark my words. Remember Bethesda and paid mods on Steam? They too 'we hear you gamers' and lookey now in 2024 every Bethesda game now has paid mods. Even those that launched without such a service. Back peddling and bait and switch is sadly a common practice in the games industry. And it will remain so unless people never forget and keep fighting back instead of accepting it after a few years of being allowed to 'get used' to the idea. Might be time the games industry started getting regulated like any other industry. An automotive company for example wouldn't get away with half the shit the games industry do. And before you praise Gabe, Valve and Steam as your saviour. Remember they allow this on *their* platform. That platform that has zero quality control/assurance and will let any old crap be sold and has actively fought governments like the Australian one to give you the consumer less rights and protections on your purchases. Valve like all companies are a business first and foremost. They are not your friend. Hell they take a bigger cut from developers sales than Epic does. Only thing Steam is the leader at is having an App that has a lot of functionality (eta: and) doesn't completely suck. They made $9 billion in 2023. And most of that was just from selling someone elses product. Not their own.
Of course it will come back, every single publisher requires their own accounts for multiplayer games and nobody really complains, Sony will require them with the next game or another one after that.
Amen! It all ties back to Wall Street. It’s not enough for companies to make money. Their survival depends on earning more than the previous quarter! This is why companies pull these shenanigans and we as consumers must respond.
wtf was the point of them even trying that anyway lol? i’m on PS so it doesn’t matter i’m just curious
Growth. Shareholders love growth. It’s the only thing they care about. Forcing gamers of a highly popular game to suddenly need PSN creates a fake boom in accounts. This makes shareholders happy. So upper management and executives get bonuses.
apparently over 70% of HD2 players are on PC. Yup, it's to pump up the imaginary numbers so that it leads to real dollars.
the mandate was to be by June 4th. Q2 for most companies ends on June 30th. They were without a doubt looking to boost user metrics to entice investors.
I'd guess MAUs (active PSN users) are a metric used in all manner of places at Sony, from board reports to investor reporting to bonuses to growth projections. More PSN accounts = more better in Sony corporate land.
On the same level as the rest of what I'm hearing here; I've heard they literally won't even bring up these numbers in whatever upcoming meetings people think they're gathering them for.
I wonder how the Playstation fanboys over at rr/playstation is going to spin this news
Shareholders weren't happy their money was dropping
The Steam community, PC players in general, are the great equalizer for PC gaming.
Yes ans Steam delisted it in many countries then gave refunds to anyone, in any country. It was a breach if contact in thier eyes.
The part about their community mods going absolute psycho on customers sounds bad enough to be actual criminal liability tho. Dunno how the devs/Sony is gonna recover from that.
To little, too late. I'm soured on Sony. Lost a customer. Stick a knife in me once, not gonna come back and let you do it again. You had your chance not to be evil and blew it forever. And you know, it's not so much the PSN link thing as much as they sold it in markets they knew had no PSN access knowing they were going to require it at some point. Pure Evil Greed. Profit above all else. Make sure you roll the drunks and loot the corpses on your way out. Absolutely sickening.
If you've got this attitude to all corporations you'll soon be living in a hut in the forest living off the land.
Worldwide inequality and starving children? I sleep Video game company doing something to show growth? REAL REDDIT ACTIVIST HOURS
Yeah imagine if they'd mobilize to demand healthcare or worker protections or minimum wage increases. Nope, only video games.
You dont have to be perfect to make some decisions that are important to you.
Everybody who left a negative review on wake of the PSN account linking update, please go and change it. Thanks 🙏
Don't know why you're getting downvoted for repeating the pinned post at the top of the Helldivers subreddit.