Nah, not for no reason. Microsoft also aggressively pushes for short term gain while damaging long term trust, and also harvests and sells user information, just like Sony. They are in fact, primary competitors.
u know what's even funnier? people still buying playstation and games from there despite this being a well known fact, you vote with your wallet/actions
Yeah but you agreed to the EULA that stats you don't own anything blah blah blah.....
Those agreements should be illegal and might be in the EU.. I donno. I live in shithole USA where companies can literally do what they want.
For Minecraft on my ps5 I have to have a Microsoft account. Which is fine. But if you like your Microsoft with your ps account and want to change it later..you can’t. They’re permanently together. Idk if I’m just slow but when I realized that I was so bummed bc the account I was going to temporarily use was a family member’s and now it’s just mine ig
They sold hundreds of thousands of copies of the game when they didn’t have the server space or even a queue system to accommodate all the players. This comes as zero shock.
I can confirm OP’s Baltic statement.
I am Turkish citizen living in Estonia. I couldn’t create my account in either regions. Called PlayStation Finland support (had phone support). They told me I have to use Finland if I live in Estonia or want to use Estonia as my region. At least I have this on record (thanks to GDPR).
Still, what the fuck Sony? Why offer it as a region if I can’t fucking use it? Also, why reject me from using Turkey? Even the representative could not answer the question.
Now I have an account in Finnish region with an Estonian address. What a fucking mess…
Well apparently Estonians are supposed to use Finland as their region. My friend who owns a PS says that’s what he had to do as well years ago.
But hey, at least I have it on the record thanks to GDPR.
Copyright enforcement in Baltics works exactly the same way as rest of EU. They just haven't woken up to Baltics having enough purchasing power to be bothered with, just like Disney didn't for quite a long while until recently.
No because terms of service is a license for use they can’t do shit to you unless they have actual damages. Punitive terms are not allowed in contract law
And they told you to do something that literally breaches the PSN ToS, so they can totally ban you for that in the future. Or refuse support if you have issues, and then ban you.
It's just mind boggling incompetence from Sony.
I'm going to be honest, the way that arrowhead has acted while the game has been out makes me think this was something forced onto them by sony wanting to make their shareholders happy and inflate their numbers without thinking about the consequences. And tbh i don't think that it is gonna end well for them.
This will unfortunately drag arrowhead down but sony will be fine overall due to its size.
Go read the sony leaked emails over the years. This isn’t new behaviour from their entertainment divisions.
Don’t get me wrong, Microsoft says similar or even dumber shit too. But Sony is super consistent. The anti merger lawsuit arguments highlighted this really well with the exclusives part. Sony who is known for exclusives, complaining someone else would take IP they’d own after the merger and keep it to themselves or away from competitors….like they did with bungie.
Sony are assholes and it’s been known,they are a super greedy organisation that could care less about their players and this proves it,locking out possibly thousands of players from playing for what?a boost in statistics?
Yup there’s no such thing as fair use in Japanese law.
Some Japanese movie reviewer got arrested and had to pay restitution to movie production. Even Nintendo keeps copyright strike people just from playing their games
its quarterly report season and the LINE MUST GO UP, so if your shortsighted idea will get you an extra % in good metrics then go for it champ. none of the shareholders consume the product so who cares about the customers.
this just happened a few days ago with KSP 2 owners cutting devs in order to improve their "margin profile" and now sony is doing their move.
Shareholders not shooting themselves in their feet challenge: impossible. Doing nothing instead of demanding companies to ruin their games earns you more money by not tanking the stock prices of every company they mess with.
Minor correction: the Friends system is what’s broken. Crossplay works in Quickplay, but their Friends system is completely bonkered and the main complaint.
I haven't had problems with the friend system in quite a while either, and I don't have a PSN linked. I've even got PS friends from work and for a month or so its been going pretty smooth
Then it would have been a soft requirement. They could have kept people that don't have PSN account on a separate, not crossplay server so to not light a napalm fire under their asses.
Issue is that means creating new unused server instances for the tiny minority that don't do cross play.
Makes no sense for a company to waste resources like that.
I suspect that it's more than a tiny minority at this point considering how many game crashes were fixed by disabling crossplay. Like that's not a setting you flip back unless you are playing with someone who uses a PS5.
PC players are the majority comparing to PS4/PS5 players.
Even by disabling crossplay you have around 70000~ players daily all over the frontlines.
Also crossplay was disappointing to majority of PC players due it bringing the crashes, disconnects and inability to join games.
Pretty sure crossplay is HIGHLY optional until they turn around the situation with bugs and crashes due to it.
Yes?
They might have a larger or more talented team. You can't play Deep Rock Galactic with people on Steam if you are on game pass. If I remmeber correctly it's the same with Vermintide 2. I don't know about now, but I think that while Chivalry 2 allowed you to play against people on Steam while you were on Epic, you couldn't actually create a party with them.
If PSN wouldn't have been a stated requirement from the beginning I would agree about it being a cop out. Now it just seems like they tried to pull it off without it, failed and now goes back to the original plan.
Of course, it would be helpful of Arrowhead was fully transparant if this change is due to some sort of technical requirment rather than something imposed by Sony.
I see solution in games like Sky: Children of Light, where you have dedicated account created for you the moment you join. It relies soley on your phone/PC data, but you can link any side-company account to work as universal identification to login into that universal account.
This leads to free crossplay between players as you add their ingame account, not the login one they use to log up.
It -was- a stated requirement from the beginning. It has said that a 3rd party account (psn) is required since the game went up for pre-order. Still fucked that it doesnt tell you that in game, or that they sold it in countries where theres no psn support tho
The announcement was signed by Sony, not Arrowhead. It's pretty clear that either Sony was trying to take the heat or Arrowhead said "we're not making that announcement"
There might be, there might not. It works perfectly fine now, why change it for some arbitrary reason. The saying "never change a running system" exists for a reason
As far as I know there have been a lot of issues with regards to blocks, friend requests and so on. They might have been fixed though, I don't really follow it. We do have issues with regards to DOT and some other damage stuff, that seems to be connected to the net-code.
The fact that this is supposed to be fixed at the same time as they make this mandatory tells me that it might be related. It's possible that they had work arounds before but that they never really got it to work well.
Remember. Deep Rock Galactic (or was it Vermintide 2? Might be both?) will not let players on Steam play with those on Game Pass (PC), because they use two different systems for the connection.
I don't know the status of those bugs, but there have been a lot of reports on bugs with regards to adding friends, blocking people and so on.
I guess it's possible that it's related to some other netcoding issues, such as DOT if you are not host and so on. That they are trying to use Sony's prebuilt solution for this, and tried work arounds but that this caused issues. We know that there have been issues linked to some PC vs Playstation players.
Having different platforms communicate properly with each other is actually harder than what a lot of people realize, which is why many games just don't bother. As I have pointed out in several answers, Deep Rock Galactic does not allow for Game Pass (PC) players to play with Steam players. There are other examples. Just because some game has pulled this off, that doesn't mean arrowhead can, right now.
Let's say that this is the actual issue. Well, you can go "wELl ArRoWhEaD hAs MaDe ToNs oF mOnEy sO HiRe PeOplE aNd mAkE iT hApPen". Well, IF this actually is the issue, then yes, they could do that. But it would take time. We are talking months. Meanwhile the players keep whining about the DOT situation.
But if it's just with regards to friend requests and so on, then yeah, I think they should just state that this won't work properly unless you get a PSN and then the players can decide for themselves. Though this might actually be an issue with regards to blocks.
Might also be issues connected to punishing people who use the chat to write hate speech and so on.
But yeah, I would prefer if arrowhead, not Sony, wen't out and explained if there actually is a technical background to this issue (as I suspect, though I'm not sure what it is), so people actually understand why. On the other hand, PSN was clearly stated as a requirement. The game is published by Sony. So even if this isn't a technical requirment my surprise is zero.
No they won't.
The steam page has a notice that the game requires a Playstation Network account since before release.
Sony and Arrowhead have their backs covered.
https://preview.redd.it/v7ukkt3g38yc1.png?width=427&format=png&auto=webp&s=2341d95cdea0413d5a2e4fc8ed98ae5921c6a99a
If the people that "don't want to make a Psn" yes.
For the people that legally can't and have been sold a product they cannot use and that should have been region-locked accordingly, not so much.
Those people should have never been given access to the game in the first place, and any lawyer will agree. You cannot sell a game to people that will not be able to access it in any way, and not region-locking the sale is a clear intent to sell people something they cannot use. The fact they could untill this point is irrelevant. Per their own EULA, THOSE PEOPLE COULD NEVER LEGALLY ACCESS THE GAME, as the Psn account was always required. Yet, it was sold to them.
Agreed. I feel for Arrowhead. They seem like great people over there being forced to do something they don't believe in because it was the only way they'd publish a game as ambitious as Helldivers 2.
I won't go along with all this just because I sympathize with them, though.
Tbh they shouldn't have offered the game in regions that cant use PSN then. It was listed as a requirement since before release but not everyone knows about psn tos. If they cant access the game anymore due to these changes that should have made it impossible to play since day one they should all be refunded.
> It was listed as a requirement since before release
It's still not listed as a requirement on third party sellers like gamebillet, and Wayback shows it as not having always been on steam either which can be deceptive if that influenced your purchase decision.
https://www.gamebillet.com/helldivers-2-pre-purchase
Refunds being offered if they try to force this would be good, but many countries will require it even if they don't.
This is a problem of third party sellers if anything; you can’t just not read anything, buy a game and then complain that you got scammed or whatever. It’s just how it is; doesn’t mean that it’s fair but it’s one reason to actually read what you are buying nowadays
There are rules and regulations which varies from country on how such "legally binding" contracts are to be presented and enforced. If you write something down, then contradict it (saying something is required but then offering to be able to skip the requirement), then that could be enough to invalidate the written warning.
Think of it like prenups. Just because both parties signed a written agreement, doesn't mean it is legally enforceable.
A EULA does not supersede common or statute laws. So it is only as binding as it is legal within the local jurisdiction.
For example, a EULA that says the manufacturer can waiver a warrant for whatever reason will not be legally enforceable in Australia.
Can steam do anything to protect players from this? Obviously steam's refund is 2 hours, but this game is being ripped from players. Not only is this obviously a bad look on Sony, but Steam will get some negativity as well and they are usually the most player friendly of the corporations.
The 2 hours is just the auto accept for refunds. You can still request one and steam will manually look into it. I'm sure this would be a good enough reason for players to get a refund.
If there are thousands requesting a refund due to being literally unable to play the game, I'd imagine they'd start going through before. Rare but similar things have happened
People always get confused the 2hr refound is a no questions asked refund period, steam can and will refound games past that period for serious issues such as this however the only problem I see is that the requirements for a PSN account were always listed on the store page so it's not a bait and switch, at the same time players were allowed to play without one which caused confusion on the requirements for the account, really curious how steam will handle this once we reach the deadline.
If the scenario was "I bought the game in an unsupported PSN region, tryed to login, being asked for a PSN account, seeing I cant actually made one (without straigth up lying and breaking the ToS), feeling sad for my geopolitical situation and asking for a refund in maybe an hour of failing to solve my issue". Well ok, kinda shitty but it happens. Now im in a situation with 150 hours of gameplay and not knowing what will happen with my progress and money. Yes, they will probably give more information and maybe even a solution as the date closes by. But how on earth they didnt saw this was going to be a huge problem?
Yeah apparently AH disabled the PS log in to allow players to play due some capacity issues but it's now going to cause a lot of trouble as if this was enabled from the start people from affected countries would have had the chance to refound right there with no issues, I know the one puling the trigger is Sony but still this grace period should have been something thrown into your face everytime you log in without a linked acount to avoid confusion and that is on AH, hopefully a good solution is found in the players favor.
To add onto this, depending on your country this could be illegal, for example my country this breaches fair trade laws, I have spoke to a representative of that department for the same behavior for another game, their response was that it breaches our laws, but if I want to fight them its out of my pocket, and for the amount its over is not worth
I could have made a mistake but I check before I purchase games for 3rd party requirements now, it wasn't displayed when I purchased it but not sure if that was due to a load error, old page version or simply my blind ass lol
Unfortunately that is the media market of this day and age, its not like AH has a say in this
I dont know enough about back end code and requiring the PSN network for crossplay, it would be nice to have a sub in and out to have access to it
I am not sure why so people are for bloatware/data milking, maybe younger generation not knowing of the golden age when you just buy a game and chuck it in then walla, play
At the end of the day its a good game, I have downloaded bloatware to play good games before, I have pirated content, if you like it enough, make an account, pirate, hack, whatever
If you cant accept and cant get a refund, downvote the game and warn others, move on
Sony banned my almost 20 year old account after I did a charge back because a digital game did not work on my PS5 and sony refused to refund the $10 game. Good thing I just bought the PS5, I returned the PS5 and did a charge back for 1 year of PSN. I won the dispute and I never will use a Sony product ever again.
Scummy or otherwise that's not even the only reasoning. I don't want to give my data to a third party, especially one with as poor security as Sony.
Also the whole thing feels like a bait and switch, I'm just not gelling with it at all.
That's valid point too.
But what they're doing with the unsupported countries is something that can (and probably will) cause legal problems for Sony.
Not to mention problems for Sony with Steam due to a flood of refunds that didn't need to happen, but did thanks to Sony's greed and incompetency. Even more so if this also brings legal problems to steam.
Yep, super agree. Treason against Super Earth. Just left a negative review, slapped down a refund request with this reasoning and uninstalled.
Sad day.
In all seriousness. What data? You don't provide name/address/credit card, nothing. Create an extra email create a psn account keep playing a fun game.
If Sony get nothing from me creating and linking a PSN account, you'd think they wouldn't be requiring it.
I'm pretty sure Arrowhead/Sony can't see all the details held by my Steam account, but feel free to demonstrate otherwise.
I guarantee if you look at their game history they have played a number of games that require a secondary account and they signed up for it without a thought. They’re just being reactionary here because it’s the trend right now. I get Fallout 76 on the PS5 I still gotta make a Bethesda.net account. This is not new territory at all in gaming.
they get more for the MAU metric for psn accounts. Since that is pretty much sole reason Sony and all these other companies want people to make an account with their service.
Yeah, that's the most likely motivation. They get a lot of newly registered users, they can boast that metric to show their growth potential.
This and probably the fact that now Sony can ban you bypassing steam, using their own rules and regulations that apply to PSN account.
It's not individual data they care about, it's the combined collective database they want. Consumer data linked to e-mail address. When do people $plurge, what do they spend on, what product can Sony begin developing that will sell to consumers.
Their anticheat has kernel level access to your system. Theoretically not only can they see everything on your steam account, but everything on your PC. That's a gold mine of sensitive data. I can see why people wouldn't want that anywhere near a PSN account.
Not only giving them data but we also have to accept their own ToS, which gives them more leverage
It’s best to play by their own rules than others’ rules
That makes no sense being intentional though. For what possible reason would they want to lock out players that paid for the game and could have a chance of buying in game currency in the future? Even if there was no igc, they paid for it, people love the game, what could be gained from locking it those regions with this account requirement? Just seems like a bone headed oversight to me, idk. Maybe I'm wrong, companies have made dumber decisions before.
Its a Sony decision, and Sony is a Japanese mega-corporation. They have a looooooooooong history of making boneheaded moves that do nothing but piss off the consumers (see: Nintendo and all the dumbass shit they pull).
Its honestly a miracle that AH has been able to skirt around other publisher bullshit as well as they have. Given how it is implemented, I don't doubt for a second that they have been doing some malicious compliance with the warbond system. It has fake currency and filler items like most battlepasses, but the currency can be reasonably easily farmed/found while playing, and the filler items are so cheap and easy to bypass that most people don't even think about it (seriously, how many of us have actually cared to buy the playercards?).
I just think this is a box that no matter how it gets ticked, it is going to fuck over a large portion of the playerbase. I don't think for a second this will kill the game, but it certainly is taking a lot of the wind out of people's sails.
I just rly don't get how they even let the game be sold in on those regions if they intended this from the beginning, none of it makes sense to me. Like a take the money and run scenario doesn't make sense because why not just let the ppl that live in those regions buy the game and get to play it bc you will make more money that way, than by tricking ppl into thinking they could get a game, taking the money, and locking them out after the refund period ends. But if you didn't intend that, it's such a massive oversight if it isn't that, like no one in the chain caught this? No one saw "oh we're requiring psn accounts to be linked to play, these regions are barred from doing this, let's not sell it to them at all". Idfk it's just so stupid
I do think the one area where AH deserves criticism is that they didn't make it super clear that they only made the ability to skip the PSN account pairing a temporary measure to deal with launch day bug fixes. That should have been a pop-up that occurred when you hit the skip button on the first time launch screen.
Although, that's more of a stupid proof thing, and is a minor error on the devs in the grand scheme of things. At the end of the day, it was always listed on the Steam page that you would need a third party account to play, and the launch screen did say that PSN pairing would be a requirement. I still think 99% of the blame for this stupid measure is on Sony, there really isn't any need for them to require it, and they are the ones in charge of sales and distribution. They should have made it such that Steam could not sell the game in regions where it would be against ToS to have a PSN account.
Easy solution for developers that's already in the game settings (iirc) - Crossplay: Disabled
There, PSN account not required for steam users.
There's deffo some ulterior motive at play. 'Keeping the community safe' sounds like misdirection, there's plenty of means to achieve the same results via native steam tools.
And that's a choice made by them as developers. My comment still stands. The sheer fact that the game in its current form works for people without a PSN account is proof that it works fine without PSN.
There's no reason it has to be required. If you've opted out of Crossplay there's no reason your client should have to interact with PSN whatsoever unless they've decided to enforce it.
Beyond that, at least in my region, Sony demand frankly absurd age verification requirements to make a PSN.
I can either give them my phone number and permission to ask my provider for my account details (including name, address, all that jazz), I can give them a facial scan or I can give them actual ID.
I'm not doing any of these, fuck off Sony.
All arrowhead has to do is clarify that Sony changed the requirement on them and everyone on Steam will probably join a class action lawsuit against Sony. We already know they violated at least German laws in changing the requirements…
Yeah, this and the issues others highlighted are a real problem. When the game people paid for becomes inaccessible because they can't even access the service from their country, that is plain wrong and I hope Sony gets sued over this.
What happens to my linked Steam account if my PSN account (which I won't ever use for anything else, and therefore, won't be monitoring) gets hacked?
Can my Steam library get compromised? My Steam account is over 20 years old, and has thousands of dollars worth of games on it. If there is a non-zero chance Sony's terrible security can compromise my Steam account, it's a hard no.
The good news is that it shouldn’t do much, if anything. Linked accounts are typically more about tracking shit between accounts than sharing information. A hacker most likely couldn’t know whatever card/payment you use on Steam through your PSN.
This isn’t to say that the concern isn’t real, but they, unless they coded it very poorly, sensitive information on steam should be safe.
Linked accounts don't work this way. You're not giving them access to your account. It's a limited API that shares specific information. A lot of the whole thing around "Authorizing linked account xyz" is not because they can hack your Steam, it's about saying you're giving the linked account things like your online status, game you're playing atm, maybe even sharing achievements or screenshots, etc.
It is like a single-sign-on system. Sony will get verification that the account on your end is owned by the same person that owns this "X" steam account. They'll see basic shit like your Steam ID, Name, and probably games you own (to verify for instance that you own Helldivers on Steam).
>It's very scummy behavior from Sony (and also Arrowhead to some degree) to say the least.
Why is this AH's fault? they didnt decide to sell in certain countries, thats all sony's problem.
Knowing Sony, it is an average move from them, they have done WAY MORE ulgier.
And i wouldn't be surprised if AR do not have the choice because of their contract with Sony.
For sure, it is only pure hypothesis for now, we have to wait a little bit to see what AR will communicate about this.
Hello all, not a helldiver, but I’ve been appreciating from afar. Just stopping in to say I’m supporting y’all because I just disagree with the entire premise. I flat out don’t play games that require me to create some bulshit account. I’ve downloaded games, made it through 5 screens of TnC acceptance, gotten to the point where they require login or account creation, and just uninstalled.
Call it dumb, say everyone already has my data, call it trivial. I don’t care. I’m not giving sega, EA, Ubisoft, or Sony my info for a single game. Not when we don’t go a month without some big data breach. They don’t need to have my data to sell or lose. I pay for the game, you give me the game, my data doesn’t need to be involved.
Wait for this particular issue to blow up and try again. Steam will almost certainly reopen no-questions-asked refunds once Sony effectively yanks access from tens of thousands of players for no real reason.
Hmm, Might have to wait until it is mandatory and then tell them that you can't play the game on your region due to the PSN requirement that is now being enforced.
The fact that there are countrys where you can’t create a PSN account is the only valid argument against it. But even if Sony is the only one who can solve this problem in one way or another, they are just one of three parties who are to blame, if that is the case with you.
1. Sony for not letting you create an acc in your country.
2. Steam for selling a game that needs a PSN acc in a country where you can‘t create an acc.
3. You for ignoring what the steam page (and the game when you boot it for the first time) is telling you.
Actually it's mainly one person's fault, since Steam will likely be more than happy to issue refunds once this blows up:
1 Sony for not letting you create a PSN account
2 Sony for not region-locking it on Steam accordingly
3 Sony for allowing a soft requirement then shifting gears to making it a hard one, with zero communication from the time they made it a soft req until now, which will effectively strip access from thousands of players who had no warning before this
It did *say* it is necessary to link the accounts, but still had a skip button. Back then I thought it is just necessary for crossplay or something so I just linked the accounts. But *saying* it is necessary while still having a skip button is very weird.
Weird calling a clear lie "weird" lol.
Either its required, or its not. The mere presence of a skip button in the first place is ground enough for a class action with the european laws.
Also the fact it was disabled in game totally can be argued as a bait and switch since it coherced players that shouldnt have been able to play _at all_ to play beyond the classic refund period.
Also the fact it was sold in thoses counties as well.
And to finish the fact its not said anywhere in the game.
This all sounds more like a deliberate scam by short-sighted-sony rather than a "weird" choice for a button...
> The fact that there are countrys where you can’t create a PSN account is the only valid argument against it.
My valid argument is that there's no reason to have the account, end of story. It's the same nonsense EA tried to pull when they said that SimCity "needed to be online to work".
If the game works fine without it and I don't log into the PSN account, what is it used for besides allowing Sony to scrape my data and then inevitably lose it as they race towards double digits on data breaches?
This is 100% sony directed and not Arrowhead.
As are probably a number of unpopular things like the monthly battle passes, or the no transmog thing. Milking us will always be more important than a ux improvement.
Steam will have to refund the games for those people. I can't see why they wouldn't do that, even with the hours played. In that case, the player will get a 100% refund, Sony will only get 70%. If enough players do this, Sony WILL feel it.
Also mention 40 dollars in another country is not 40dollars that's expensive in many countries that psn doesn't support so they are fking over people who can't even defend themselves
This makes sense. I was wondering what the issue was about because I'm American and this doesn't affect me. Now it makes a lot more sense.
Super credit purchases are being halted until further notice.
Arrowhead isn’t at fault for this and frankly it’s not scummy behavior from Arrowhead because Arrowhead doesn’t have any say in this matter. Sony owns the IP and finances the game meaning they are strong arming AH to do this
It's wild how everyone just jumps on the worst possible outcome for this- banning people and preventing them from playing becuase of the region they are in.
This hasn't happened before. You don't know what's going to happen. The smart thing to do is not let your blood pressure get so high just based on a pile of 'maybes' and 'ifs'.
Well HELLO everyone me and my 2 friends are still on the fence about PURCHASING this game and WHAT AM I READING HERE SONY?? Are YOU DOING BAD THINGS TO YOUR PLAYERS???
Yeah, an arrowhead is now saying that it was always going to be required, but was only optional because of a technical difficulty where the fuck was that ever said before today?
Not a lawyer, but couldn't Steam just say screw it, you guys are forced to refund anyway? Like yes the refund window is within 3 months, but this is a huge breach and looks like bad faith, and purposefully circumvents the window.
I can't believe people would think Sony has anyone's best interest at heart, over than their stake/shareholders. Smallprint or not, they have said from the start that this was going to happen.
Important to note that CHINA is also cut out of helldivers 2. Yes there is psn, but the Chinese version of psn does not support helldivers. It supports literally 9 games total.
China, the world's arguably largest consumer of video games.
I'm on this boat. I live in the in a country not supported on PSN and when I try to "link" my psn and steam, it keeps saying "service is not available in your country". Steam is readily available in my country, PSN is not. I play only on steam. Bypassing this requires a VPN (which is a breach in the ToS), so why bother implementing this in the first place?
Well the game is about democracy.
Do we, the helldivers agree to not play and instead stand in solidarity with our fellow democratic brothers and sisters and not play until Sony changes course?
"Locking these players out of the game after the refund window is long over"
Has anyone on steam attempted to claim a refund with the reason "not available in my country"?
>This also hints at what the "grace period" was really about:
ehm, no it wasn't. it wasn't enforced due to a bug on the server side of things, but it was there from the very beginning. it was also mentioned on the steam page before the game was even sold...
>hundreds of thousands of steam refunds
they did not expect to sell the millions of copies they did, even servers weren't prepared for the player count that the game received.
I get you are angry, I don't like it either, but at least check your information before you start spouting nonsense...
Dude... arrow head is the developers of the game but this is a PUBLISHER imposed rule. Why is it so hard for people to understand the difference... Publishers have a day specially if they have invested capital in the development of the game... FFS all hate should be with Sony and their asinine requirements
This is fair but it also should act as a warning to the consumers, especially when consuming digital products. I don’t excuse Sony doing this but it was clearly indicated from day 1 that a PSN link would be required.
So if you live in a country that isn’t supported by PSN you have two options. 1. Don’t buy the game. 2. Make a PSN account using a different region and even use a VPN.
At the end of the day it is the consumer’s responsibility to consume responsibly.
Again this move by Sony and Arrow Head was extremely predatory. But as a consumer you must make sure to know exactly what it is you are paying for and if it's worth it.
That is a really stupid explanation, and a great way to spread misinformation. If that happens, all of those players can refund the game in steam.
Man, this subreddit is full of losers and crybabies, not even PvE games are safe from toxic people.
just a Friendly reminder of Sony Security!
Here is a list of the databreach's:
April 2011: Hackers Access Personal Data of 77 Million Sony PlayStation Network Users
May 2011: Personal Details on 25 Million Sony Online Entertainment Customers Stolen
June 2011: Sony Pictures Website Hacked, Exposing One Million Accounts
November 2014: Hackers Steal 100 Terabytes of Data from Sony Pictures
August 2017: Hacker Group Accesses Sony Social Media Accounts
September 2023: Sony Investigates Alleged Hack
October 2023: Sony Notifies Employees of Data Breach"
everyone here being super optimistic about their data not having been stolen and marketed all over the world already... what do you think happens to your phone number?
I'm sure there will be a solution for this. But i agree, how do they sell a game in countries where you have to break ToS to play?!
Wait, Sony is a massive organization that doesn't give a flying fck about the consumer only short sighted pushes to increase revenue?!
Just like Microsoft. Or any major corporation. Welcome to life.
Microsoft catching strays for no reason in this entire argument is wild to me.
Nah, not for no reason. Microsoft also aggressively pushes for short term gain while damaging long term trust, and also harvests and sells user information, just like Sony. They are in fact, primary competitors.
Microsoft also requires you make an account to play their games on pc/PS. And don’t forget the whole ‘games on windows’ fuckery lol
There are two industries that call their clientbase "users". Software, and drug dealing.
u know what's even funnier? people still buying playstation and games from there despite this being a well known fact, you vote with your wallet/actions
They exchange goods for cash. Then they steal the cash by taking back the goods. Its theft
Yeah but you agreed to the EULA that stats you don't own anything blah blah blah..... Those agreements should be illegal and might be in the EU.. I donno. I live in shithole USA where companies can literally do what they want.
Something Something, In Minecraft.
For Minecraft on my ps5 I have to have a Microsoft account. Which is fine. But if you like your Microsoft with your ps account and want to change it later..you can’t. They’re permanently together. Idk if I’m just slow but when I realized that I was so bummed bc the account I was going to temporarily use was a family member’s and now it’s just mine ig
If buying a game isn't owning it then piracy isn't theft.
That's a good line
They sold hundreds of thousands of copies of the game when they didn’t have the server space or even a queue system to accommodate all the players. This comes as zero shock.
Class action lawsuit.
I can confirm OP’s Baltic statement. I am Turkish citizen living in Estonia. I couldn’t create my account in either regions. Called PlayStation Finland support (had phone support). They told me I have to use Finland if I live in Estonia or want to use Estonia as my region. At least I have this on record (thanks to GDPR). Still, what the fuck Sony? Why offer it as a region if I can’t fucking use it? Also, why reject me from using Turkey? Even the representative could not answer the question. Now I have an account in Finnish region with an Estonian address. What a fucking mess…
It seems illegal for their support staff to suggest you violate their TOS and lie about your region
Well apparently Estonians are supposed to use Finland as their region. My friend who owns a PS says that’s what he had to do as well years ago. But hey, at least I have it on the record thanks to GDPR.
It’s just such a weird way for them to run PSN
Why doesn’t Sony allow PSN in these countries as well? Clearly, it must be good for them as they sell consoles there, no?
Lack of proper copyright enforcement is usually the reason.
Copyright enforcement in Baltics works exactly the same way as rest of EU. They just haven't woken up to Baltics having enough purchasing power to be bothered with, just like Disney didn't for quite a long while until recently.
The purchasing power argument doesn't really make sense. They do regional pricing in poorer countries all the time.
No because terms of service is a license for use they can’t do shit to you unless they have actual damages. Punitive terms are not allowed in contract law
And they told you to do something that literally breaches the PSN ToS, so they can totally ban you for that in the future. Or refuse support if you have issues, and then ban you. It's just mind boggling incompetence from Sony.
I'm going to be honest, the way that arrowhead has acted while the game has been out makes me think this was something forced onto them by sony wanting to make their shareholders happy and inflate their numbers without thinking about the consequences. And tbh i don't think that it is gonna end well for them. This will unfortunately drag arrowhead down but sony will be fine overall due to its size.
The Steam announcement about all this is signed by Sony, not Arrowhead.
That just proves my point then. What were they thinking with this.
Go read the sony leaked emails over the years. This isn’t new behaviour from their entertainment divisions. Don’t get me wrong, Microsoft says similar or even dumber shit too. But Sony is super consistent. The anti merger lawsuit arguments highlighted this really well with the exclusives part. Sony who is known for exclusives, complaining someone else would take IP they’d own after the merger and keep it to themselves or away from competitors….like they did with bungie.
Sony are assholes and it’s been known,they are a super greedy organisation that could care less about their players and this proves it,locking out possibly thousands of players from playing for what?a boost in statistics?
I mean, you're just describing any shareholder driven capitalism
IP and control over content is especially potent in Japanese corpo culture
Yup there’s no such thing as fair use in Japanese law. Some Japanese movie reviewer got arrested and had to pay restitution to movie production. Even Nintendo keeps copyright strike people just from playing their games
its quarterly report season and the LINE MUST GO UP, so if your shortsighted idea will get you an extra % in good metrics then go for it champ. none of the shareholders consume the product so who cares about the customers. this just happened a few days ago with KSP 2 owners cutting devs in order to improve their "margin profile" and now sony is doing their move.
>this just happened a few days ago with KSP 2 Tbh, KSP 2 is absolute failure and got cut down deservedly
Shareholders not shooting themselves in their feet challenge: impossible. Doing nothing instead of demanding companies to ruin their games earns you more money by not tanking the stock prices of every company they mess with.
Twinbeard said it directly on Discord. It was a 100% Sony decision.
I actually think there might be a technical reason. Friend requests, blocks and so on are probably meant to be handled through PSN.
yep...for shure its because of crossplay or something like that
Despite crossplay working perfectly well already...
[удалено]
Minor correction: the Friends system is what’s broken. Crossplay works in Quickplay, but their Friends system is completely bonkered and the main complaint.
I haven't had problems with the friend system in quite a while either, and I don't have a PSN linked. I've even got PS friends from work and for a month or so its been going pretty smooth
My point being PSN isn't required for crossplay to work, not that it's a flawless system.
There's crossplay? 
Then it would have been a soft requirement. They could have kept people that don't have PSN account on a separate, not crossplay server so to not light a napalm fire under their asses.
Issue is that means creating new unused server instances for the tiny minority that don't do cross play. Makes no sense for a company to waste resources like that.
I suspect that it's more than a tiny minority at this point considering how many game crashes were fixed by disabling crossplay. Like that's not a setting you flip back unless you are playing with someone who uses a PS5.
PC players are the majority comparing to PS4/PS5 players. Even by disabling crossplay you have around 70000~ players daily all over the frontlines. Also crossplay was disappointing to majority of PC players due it bringing the crashes, disconnects and inability to join games. Pretty sure crossplay is HIGHLY optional until they turn around the situation with bugs and crashes due to it.
If you needed a PSN account for the crossplay then it wouldn't be a tiny majority who don't do crossplay.
Cop out... Warframe has successfully done this
Yes? They might have a larger or more talented team. You can't play Deep Rock Galactic with people on Steam if you are on game pass. If I remmeber correctly it's the same with Vermintide 2. I don't know about now, but I think that while Chivalry 2 allowed you to play against people on Steam while you were on Epic, you couldn't actually create a party with them. If PSN wouldn't have been a stated requirement from the beginning I would agree about it being a cop out. Now it just seems like they tried to pull it off without it, failed and now goes back to the original plan. Of course, it would be helpful of Arrowhead was fully transparant if this change is due to some sort of technical requirment rather than something imposed by Sony.
I see solution in games like Sky: Children of Light, where you have dedicated account created for you the moment you join. It relies soley on your phone/PC data, but you can link any side-company account to work as universal identification to login into that universal account. This leads to free crossplay between players as you add their ingame account, not the login one they use to log up.
It -was- a stated requirement from the beginning. It has said that a 3rd party account (psn) is required since the game went up for pre-order. Still fucked that it doesnt tell you that in game, or that they sold it in countries where theres no psn support tho
The announcement was signed by Sony, not Arrowhead. It's pretty clear that either Sony was trying to take the heat or Arrowhead said "we're not making that announcement"
There might be, there might not. It works perfectly fine now, why change it for some arbitrary reason. The saying "never change a running system" exists for a reason
As far as I know there have been a lot of issues with regards to blocks, friend requests and so on. They might have been fixed though, I don't really follow it. We do have issues with regards to DOT and some other damage stuff, that seems to be connected to the net-code. The fact that this is supposed to be fixed at the same time as they make this mandatory tells me that it might be related. It's possible that they had work arounds before but that they never really got it to work well. Remember. Deep Rock Galactic (or was it Vermintide 2? Might be both?) will not let players on Steam play with those on Game Pass (PC), because they use two different systems for the connection.
Yeah because as we know it doesn't work currently.. right?
I don't know the status of those bugs, but there have been a lot of reports on bugs with regards to adding friends, blocking people and so on. I guess it's possible that it's related to some other netcoding issues, such as DOT if you are not host and so on. That they are trying to use Sony's prebuilt solution for this, and tried work arounds but that this caused issues. We know that there have been issues linked to some PC vs Playstation players. Having different platforms communicate properly with each other is actually harder than what a lot of people realize, which is why many games just don't bother. As I have pointed out in several answers, Deep Rock Galactic does not allow for Game Pass (PC) players to play with Steam players. There are other examples. Just because some game has pulled this off, that doesn't mean arrowhead can, right now. Let's say that this is the actual issue. Well, you can go "wELl ArRoWhEaD hAs MaDe ToNs oF mOnEy sO HiRe PeOplE aNd mAkE iT hApPen". Well, IF this actually is the issue, then yes, they could do that. But it would take time. We are talking months. Meanwhile the players keep whining about the DOT situation. But if it's just with regards to friend requests and so on, then yeah, I think they should just state that this won't work properly unless you get a PSN and then the players can decide for themselves. Though this might actually be an issue with regards to blocks. Might also be issues connected to punishing people who use the chat to write hate speech and so on. But yeah, I would prefer if arrowhead, not Sony, wen't out and explained if there actually is a technical background to this issue (as I suspect, though I'm not sure what it is), so people actually understand why. On the other hand, PSN was clearly stated as a requirement. The game is published by Sony. So even if this isn't a technical requirment my surprise is zero.
I don't know about the US, but consumer protection lawyers in the EU are going to buy mansions out of this
No they won't. The steam page has a notice that the game requires a Playstation Network account since before release. Sony and Arrowhead have their backs covered. https://preview.redd.it/v7ukkt3g38yc1.png?width=427&format=png&auto=webp&s=2341d95cdea0413d5a2e4fc8ed98ae5921c6a99a
If the people that "don't want to make a Psn" yes. For the people that legally can't and have been sold a product they cannot use and that should have been region-locked accordingly, not so much. Those people should have never been given access to the game in the first place, and any lawyer will agree. You cannot sell a game to people that will not be able to access it in any way, and not region-locking the sale is a clear intent to sell people something they cannot use. The fact they could untill this point is irrelevant. Per their own EULA, THOSE PEOPLE COULD NEVER LEGALLY ACCESS THE GAME, as the Psn account was always required. Yet, it was sold to them.
Dude... you can't let people play for weeks (i.e. past the Steam refund deadline) and then suddenly force them to have a PSN account.
Sir may I introduce you to Ubisoft's entire "steam" library of games
You are saying that every Ubisoft game lets you play for a couple of weeks and then forces you to create a Ubisoft account?
No, you have to do it immediately when you start the launcher. Helldivers should've done the same from the get-go.
So basically what Ubisoft does and what Helldivers 2 does is like completely different? Got it.
Agreed. I feel for Arrowhead. They seem like great people over there being forced to do something they don't believe in because it was the only way they'd publish a game as ambitious as Helldivers 2. I won't go along with all this just because I sympathize with them, though.
That and putting the skip button there was a bad move if they knew this was going to be the case
Twinbeard stated in the discord that it wasn't their decision and it was sony's.
Imma mad as hell if this is the beginning of the end for this game. There's already twinkles of problems
Tbh they shouldn't have offered the game in regions that cant use PSN then. It was listed as a requirement since before release but not everyone knows about psn tos. If they cant access the game anymore due to these changes that should have made it impossible to play since day one they should all be refunded.
> It was listed as a requirement since before release It's still not listed as a requirement on third party sellers like gamebillet, and Wayback shows it as not having always been on steam either which can be deceptive if that influenced your purchase decision. https://www.gamebillet.com/helldivers-2-pre-purchase Refunds being offered if they try to force this would be good, but many countries will require it even if they don't.
This is a problem of third party sellers if anything; you can’t just not read anything, buy a game and then complain that you got scammed or whatever. It’s just how it is; doesn’t mean that it’s fair but it’s one reason to actually read what you are buying nowadays
If you're a shady third party seller sure. But there are already rules and laws that apply here that Sony is blatantly disregarding as a AAA company.
There are rules and regulations which varies from country on how such "legally binding" contracts are to be presented and enforced. If you write something down, then contradict it (saying something is required but then offering to be able to skip the requirement), then that could be enough to invalidate the written warning. Think of it like prenups. Just because both parties signed a written agreement, doesn't mean it is legally enforceable.
Reread the EULA I’m sure there is a line somewhere in there that as a player you agree to any and all changes made to EULA in the future
A EULA does not supersede common or statute laws. So it is only as binding as it is legal within the local jurisdiction. For example, a EULA that says the manufacturer can waiver a warrant for whatever reason will not be legally enforceable in Australia.
I’m sure it works that way but I’m almost 100% sure that what they are doing is clean and lawful unfortunately
Do you have a source on the Wayback? Because it was definitely there during preorders
Maybe im confusing the requirement for the ability to link a psn account. Not sure anymore
Can steam do anything to protect players from this? Obviously steam's refund is 2 hours, but this game is being ripped from players. Not only is this obviously a bad look on Sony, but Steam will get some negativity as well and they are usually the most player friendly of the corporations.
The 2 hours is just the auto accept for refunds. You can still request one and steam will manually look into it. I'm sure this would be a good enough reason for players to get a refund.
If there are thousands requesting a refund due to being literally unable to play the game, I'd imagine they'd start going through before. Rare but similar things have happened
yep, remember the whole Cyber Punk Fiasco... they gave refunds up to 3 months after purchase
I got a refund for Rocket League a couple of years after buying it on Steam when Epic killed Linux support
Mine just got rejected due to the two weeks limit
People always get confused the 2hr refound is a no questions asked refund period, steam can and will refound games past that period for serious issues such as this however the only problem I see is that the requirements for a PSN account were always listed on the store page so it's not a bait and switch, at the same time players were allowed to play without one which caused confusion on the requirements for the account, really curious how steam will handle this once we reach the deadline.
If the scenario was "I bought the game in an unsupported PSN region, tryed to login, being asked for a PSN account, seeing I cant actually made one (without straigth up lying and breaking the ToS), feeling sad for my geopolitical situation and asking for a refund in maybe an hour of failing to solve my issue". Well ok, kinda shitty but it happens. Now im in a situation with 150 hours of gameplay and not knowing what will happen with my progress and money. Yes, they will probably give more information and maybe even a solution as the date closes by. But how on earth they didnt saw this was going to be a huge problem?
Yeah apparently AH disabled the PS log in to allow players to play due some capacity issues but it's now going to cause a lot of trouble as if this was enabled from the start people from affected countries would have had the chance to refound right there with no issues, I know the one puling the trigger is Sony but still this grace period should have been something thrown into your face everytime you log in without a linked acount to avoid confusion and that is on AH, hopefully a good solution is found in the players favor.
To add onto this, depending on your country this could be illegal, for example my country this breaches fair trade laws, I have spoke to a representative of that department for the same behavior for another game, their response was that it breaches our laws, but if I want to fight them its out of my pocket, and for the amount its over is not worth I could have made a mistake but I check before I purchase games for 3rd party requirements now, it wasn't displayed when I purchased it but not sure if that was due to a load error, old page version or simply my blind ass lol Unfortunately that is the media market of this day and age, its not like AH has a say in this I dont know enough about back end code and requiring the PSN network for crossplay, it would be nice to have a sub in and out to have access to it I am not sure why so people are for bloatware/data milking, maybe younger generation not knowing of the golden age when you just buy a game and chuck it in then walla, play At the end of the day its a good game, I have downloaded bloatware to play good games before, I have pirated content, if you like it enough, make an account, pirate, hack, whatever If you cant accept and cant get a refund, downvote the game and warn others, move on
try not to ruin a good product corporate overlords: impossible
Sony banned my almost 20 year old account after I did a charge back because a digital game did not work on my PS5 and sony refused to refund the $10 game. Good thing I just bought the PS5, I returned the PS5 and did a charge back for 1 year of PSN. I won the dispute and I never will use a Sony product ever again.
Scummy or otherwise that's not even the only reasoning. I don't want to give my data to a third party, especially one with as poor security as Sony. Also the whole thing feels like a bait and switch, I'm just not gelling with it at all.
That's valid point too. But what they're doing with the unsupported countries is something that can (and probably will) cause legal problems for Sony. Not to mention problems for Sony with Steam due to a flood of refunds that didn't need to happen, but did thanks to Sony's greed and incompetency. Even more so if this also brings legal problems to steam.
Yep, super agree. Treason against Super Earth. Just left a negative review, slapped down a refund request with this reasoning and uninstalled. Sad day.
In all seriousness. What data? You don't provide name/address/credit card, nothing. Create an extra email create a psn account keep playing a fun game.
Depending on the country, the account creation process can require a facial scan or a scan of your photo id
In Some countries you need a valid ID, UK for example.
It's their game. They already have all the data. What data exactly will they get from your PSN account?
If Sony get nothing from me creating and linking a PSN account, you'd think they wouldn't be requiring it. I'm pretty sure Arrowhead/Sony can't see all the details held by my Steam account, but feel free to demonstrate otherwise.
And you think Sony magically gets all your steam data if you link accounts? That's not how that works.
Exactly. These people are losing their minds over a non issue.
I guarantee if you look at their game history they have played a number of games that require a secondary account and they signed up for it without a thought. They’re just being reactionary here because it’s the trend right now. I get Fallout 76 on the PS5 I still gotta make a Bethesda.net account. This is not new territory at all in gaming.
100% The will be next to no drop in concurrent players.
they get more for the MAU metric for psn accounts. Since that is pretty much sole reason Sony and all these other companies want people to make an account with their service.
pretty numbers to show shareholders...that's it.
Yeah, that's the most likely motivation. They get a lot of newly registered users, they can boast that metric to show their growth potential. This and probably the fact that now Sony can ban you bypassing steam, using their own rules and regulations that apply to PSN account.
It's not individual data they care about, it's the combined collective database they want. Consumer data linked to e-mail address. When do people $plurge, what do they spend on, what product can Sony begin developing that will sell to consumers.
Their anticheat has kernel level access to your system. Theoretically not only can they see everything on your steam account, but everything on your PC. That's a gold mine of sensitive data. I can see why people wouldn't want that anywhere near a PSN account.
Not only giving them data but we also have to accept their own ToS, which gives them more leverage It’s best to play by their own rules than others’ rules
You are posting this on reddit, you basically can't do any social media online if you don't want your data sold.
That makes no sense being intentional though. For what possible reason would they want to lock out players that paid for the game and could have a chance of buying in game currency in the future? Even if there was no igc, they paid for it, people love the game, what could be gained from locking it those regions with this account requirement? Just seems like a bone headed oversight to me, idk. Maybe I'm wrong, companies have made dumber decisions before.
Its a Sony decision, and Sony is a Japanese mega-corporation. They have a looooooooooong history of making boneheaded moves that do nothing but piss off the consumers (see: Nintendo and all the dumbass shit they pull). Its honestly a miracle that AH has been able to skirt around other publisher bullshit as well as they have. Given how it is implemented, I don't doubt for a second that they have been doing some malicious compliance with the warbond system. It has fake currency and filler items like most battlepasses, but the currency can be reasonably easily farmed/found while playing, and the filler items are so cheap and easy to bypass that most people don't even think about it (seriously, how many of us have actually cared to buy the playercards?). I just think this is a box that no matter how it gets ticked, it is going to fuck over a large portion of the playerbase. I don't think for a second this will kill the game, but it certainly is taking a lot of the wind out of people's sails.
I just rly don't get how they even let the game be sold in on those regions if they intended this from the beginning, none of it makes sense to me. Like a take the money and run scenario doesn't make sense because why not just let the ppl that live in those regions buy the game and get to play it bc you will make more money that way, than by tricking ppl into thinking they could get a game, taking the money, and locking them out after the refund period ends. But if you didn't intend that, it's such a massive oversight if it isn't that, like no one in the chain caught this? No one saw "oh we're requiring psn accounts to be linked to play, these regions are barred from doing this, let's not sell it to them at all". Idfk it's just so stupid
I do think the one area where AH deserves criticism is that they didn't make it super clear that they only made the ability to skip the PSN account pairing a temporary measure to deal with launch day bug fixes. That should have been a pop-up that occurred when you hit the skip button on the first time launch screen. Although, that's more of a stupid proof thing, and is a minor error on the devs in the grand scheme of things. At the end of the day, it was always listed on the Steam page that you would need a third party account to play, and the launch screen did say that PSN pairing would be a requirement. I still think 99% of the blame for this stupid measure is on Sony, there really isn't any need for them to require it, and they are the ones in charge of sales and distribution. They should have made it such that Steam could not sell the game in regions where it would be against ToS to have a PSN account.
Easy solution for developers that's already in the game settings (iirc) - Crossplay: Disabled There, PSN account not required for steam users. There's deffo some ulterior motive at play. 'Keeping the community safe' sounds like misdirection, there's plenty of means to achieve the same results via native steam tools.
PSN account is needed to play singleplayer too, you won’t be allowed to play **at all** without one.
And that's a choice made by them as developers. My comment still stands. The sheer fact that the game in its current form works for people without a PSN account is proof that it works fine without PSN. There's no reason it has to be required. If you've opted out of Crossplay there's no reason your client should have to interact with PSN whatsoever unless they've decided to enforce it.
It's a choice made by THEIR publisher... Developers don't have a say on what their publisher Sony demands... I wish people understood the difference.
It's plainly obvious Sony just wanted to capitalize on a massive playerbase that isn't integrated into their system.
Rocket League manages crossplay without PC players needing a PSN just fine. If they're claiming it's somehow necessary, they're lying.
It's definitely weird, would rather have crossplay taken out entirely if this is necessary (rip my friends on playstation I guess)
Greed is ruining everything good in this world.
It's clearly a dick move, but it's not AH's fault, but Sony's.
I just heard about this and am so confused. I don't even jave a Playstation, and play on PC. Do I still have to create a Sony account to link to?
You do!
Well what the fuck? I was just playing a few minutes ago and didn't even see an option anywhere to make one? This is bullshit.
Neither do I know where to do that, but I know it will be required for everyone to play the game eventually
I just hope I don't randomly lose my 400 hours. What a fucking joke.
You go to PlayStation.com and make an account. Then through steam you manage linked accounts, and add your new PlayStation account.
Its like making a microsoft account for a microsoft game. a PS5 is just a custom computer, lol.
Thats half the problem. The other half is sony has piss-poor data protection and often get hacked
Beyond that, at least in my region, Sony demand frankly absurd age verification requirements to make a PSN. I can either give them my phone number and permission to ask my provider for my account details (including name, address, all that jazz), I can give them a facial scan or I can give them actual ID. I'm not doing any of these, fuck off Sony.
All arrowhead has to do is clarify that Sony changed the requirement on them and everyone on Steam will probably join a class action lawsuit against Sony. We already know they violated at least German laws in changing the requirements…
Chances are that Steam will refund it anyway for people in those countries. They usually will for circumstances like this so hopefully thats the case
Which sucks for steam if so, because it ain't their problem. Absolutely piss poor management on Sony's/AH's part.
Yeah, this and the issues others highlighted are a real problem. When the game people paid for becomes inaccessible because they can't even access the service from their country, that is plain wrong and I hope Sony gets sued over this.
What happens to my linked Steam account if my PSN account (which I won't ever use for anything else, and therefore, won't be monitoring) gets hacked? Can my Steam library get compromised? My Steam account is over 20 years old, and has thousands of dollars worth of games on it. If there is a non-zero chance Sony's terrible security can compromise my Steam account, it's a hard no.
The good news is that it shouldn’t do much, if anything. Linked accounts are typically more about tracking shit between accounts than sharing information. A hacker most likely couldn’t know whatever card/payment you use on Steam through your PSN. This isn’t to say that the concern isn’t real, but they, unless they coded it very poorly, sensitive information on steam should be safe.
Linked accounts don't work this way. You're not giving them access to your account. It's a limited API that shares specific information. A lot of the whole thing around "Authorizing linked account xyz" is not because they can hack your Steam, it's about saying you're giving the linked account things like your online status, game you're playing atm, maybe even sharing achievements or screenshots, etc.
How the fuck would a PSN hack compromise your steam?
This is literally the question I am asking. What data does Sony get access to?
It is like a single-sign-on system. Sony will get verification that the account on your end is owned by the same person that owns this "X" steam account. They'll see basic shit like your Steam ID, Name, and probably games you own (to verify for instance that you own Helldivers on Steam).
>It's very scummy behavior from Sony (and also Arrowhead to some degree) to say the least. Why is this AH's fault? they didnt decide to sell in certain countries, thats all sony's problem.
Knowing Sony, it is an average move from them, they have done WAY MORE ulgier. And i wouldn't be surprised if AR do not have the choice because of their contract with Sony. For sure, it is only pure hypothesis for now, we have to wait a little bit to see what AR will communicate about this.
Hello all, not a helldiver, but I’ve been appreciating from afar. Just stopping in to say I’m supporting y’all because I just disagree with the entire premise. I flat out don’t play games that require me to create some bulshit account. I’ve downloaded games, made it through 5 screens of TnC acceptance, gotten to the point where they require login or account creation, and just uninstalled. Call it dumb, say everyone already has my data, call it trivial. I don’t care. I’m not giving sega, EA, Ubisoft, or Sony my info for a single game. Not when we don’t go a month without some big data breach. They don’t need to have my data to sell or lose. I pay for the game, you give me the game, my data doesn’t need to be involved.
I wouldn't be to worried about not getting a refund. Steam is usually pretty good about it when it comes to stuff like this.
mine got denied because i played more then 2 hours
Wait for this particular issue to blow up and try again. Steam will almost certainly reopen no-questions-asked refunds once Sony effectively yanks access from tens of thousands of players for no real reason.
Hmm, Might have to wait until it is mandatory and then tell them that you can't play the game on your region due to the PSN requirement that is now being enforced.
Same.
The fact that there are countrys where you can’t create a PSN account is the only valid argument against it. But even if Sony is the only one who can solve this problem in one way or another, they are just one of three parties who are to blame, if that is the case with you. 1. Sony for not letting you create an acc in your country. 2. Steam for selling a game that needs a PSN acc in a country where you can‘t create an acc. 3. You for ignoring what the steam page (and the game when you boot it for the first time) is telling you.
Its also, a dick move. Nothing more and nothing less.
Actually it's mainly one person's fault, since Steam will likely be more than happy to issue refunds once this blows up: 1 Sony for not letting you create a PSN account 2 Sony for not region-locking it on Steam accordingly 3 Sony for allowing a soft requirement then shifting gears to making it a hard one, with zero communication from the time they made it a soft req until now, which will effectively strip access from thousands of players who had no warning before this
It did *say* it is necessary to link the accounts, but still had a skip button. Back then I thought it is just necessary for crossplay or something so I just linked the accounts. But *saying* it is necessary while still having a skip button is very weird.
Weird calling a clear lie "weird" lol. Either its required, or its not. The mere presence of a skip button in the first place is ground enough for a class action with the european laws. Also the fact it was disabled in game totally can be argued as a bait and switch since it coherced players that shouldnt have been able to play _at all_ to play beyond the classic refund period. Also the fact it was sold in thoses counties as well. And to finish the fact its not said anywhere in the game. This all sounds more like a deliberate scam by short-sighted-sony rather than a "weird" choice for a button...
> The fact that there are countrys where you can’t create a PSN account is the only valid argument against it. My valid argument is that there's no reason to have the account, end of story. It's the same nonsense EA tried to pull when they said that SimCity "needed to be online to work". If the game works fine without it and I don't log into the PSN account, what is it used for besides allowing Sony to scrape my data and then inevitably lose it as they race towards double digits on data breaches?
This is 100% sony directed and not Arrowhead. As are probably a number of unpopular things like the monthly battle passes, or the no transmog thing. Milking us will always be more important than a ux improvement.
Steam will have to refund the games for those people. I can't see why they wouldn't do that, even with the hours played. In that case, the player will get a 100% refund, Sony will only get 70%. If enough players do this, Sony WILL feel it.
Also mention 40 dollars in another country is not 40dollars that's expensive in many countries that psn doesn't support so they are fking over people who can't even defend themselves
This makes sense. I was wondering what the issue was about because I'm American and this doesn't affect me. Now it makes a lot more sense. Super credit purchases are being halted until further notice.
good post. upvote
Arrowhead isn’t at fault for this and frankly it’s not scummy behavior from Arrowhead because Arrowhead doesn’t have any say in this matter. Sony owns the IP and finances the game meaning they are strong arming AH to do this
It's wild how everyone just jumps on the worst possible outcome for this- banning people and preventing them from playing becuase of the region they are in. This hasn't happened before. You don't know what's going to happen. The smart thing to do is not let your blood pressure get so high just based on a pile of 'maybes' and 'ifs'.
Using profanity is against PSN TOS aswell
I feel like Steam will take pity on these people and allow for refunds after the 2 hour playtime window due to misadvertised features or whatever
Thank you for this explanation. I understand now why people are so upset.
Im coping that steam will do SOMETHING for the people who can no longer play the game at all.
Well HELLO everyone me and my 2 friends are still on the fence about PURCHASING this game and WHAT AM I READING HERE SONY?? Are YOU DOING BAD THINGS TO YOUR PLAYERS???
Yes. Go play Deep Rock Galactic.
I really am having trouble understanding the reason for it. "I dont want your money because you're from a meanie country waaaaah"
The worst is that Sony officially sells playstation consoles in countries they don't support on PSN.
Yeah, an arrowhead is now saying that it was always going to be required, but was only optional because of a technical difficulty where the fuck was that ever said before today?
Not a lawyer, but couldn't Steam just say screw it, you guys are forced to refund anyway? Like yes the refund window is within 3 months, but this is a huge breach and looks like bad faith, and purposefully circumvents the window.
I can't believe people would think Sony has anyone's best interest at heart, over than their stake/shareholders. Smallprint or not, they have said from the start that this was going to happen.
Important to note that CHINA is also cut out of helldivers 2. Yes there is psn, but the Chinese version of psn does not support helldivers. It supports literally 9 games total. China, the world's arguably largest consumer of video games.
I'm on this boat. I live in the in a country not supported on PSN and when I try to "link" my psn and steam, it keeps saying "service is not available in your country". Steam is readily available in my country, PSN is not. I play only on steam. Bypassing this requires a VPN (which is a breach in the ToS), so why bother implementing this in the first place?
Well the game is about democracy. Do we, the helldivers agree to not play and instead stand in solidarity with our fellow democratic brothers and sisters and not play until Sony changes course?
"Locking these players out of the game after the refund window is long over" Has anyone on steam attempted to claim a refund with the reason "not available in my country"?
I feel like arrow head has their hands tied a bit because sony is their publisher so they can’t really say no i imagine, but i don’t know
>This also hints at what the "grace period" was really about: ehm, no it wasn't. it wasn't enforced due to a bug on the server side of things, but it was there from the very beginning. it was also mentioned on the steam page before the game was even sold... >hundreds of thousands of steam refunds they did not expect to sell the millions of copies they did, even servers weren't prepared for the player count that the game received. I get you are angry, I don't like it either, but at least check your information before you start spouting nonsense...
[удалено]
Dude... arrow head is the developers of the game but this is a PUBLISHER imposed rule. Why is it so hard for people to understand the difference... Publishers have a day specially if they have invested capital in the development of the game... FFS all hate should be with Sony and their asinine requirements
Not to mention it breaches EU consumer protection
This is fair but it also should act as a warning to the consumers, especially when consuming digital products. I don’t excuse Sony doing this but it was clearly indicated from day 1 that a PSN link would be required. So if you live in a country that isn’t supported by PSN you have two options. 1. Don’t buy the game. 2. Make a PSN account using a different region and even use a VPN. At the end of the day it is the consumer’s responsibility to consume responsibly. Again this move by Sony and Arrow Head was extremely predatory. But as a consumer you must make sure to know exactly what it is you are paying for and if it's worth it.
Fuck sony
Legally. You were informed before now. They have done nothing wrong within the law
That is a really stupid explanation, and a great way to spread misinformation. If that happens, all of those players can refund the game in steam. Man, this subreddit is full of losers and crybabies, not even PvE games are safe from toxic people.
just a Friendly reminder of Sony Security! Here is a list of the databreach's: April 2011: Hackers Access Personal Data of 77 Million Sony PlayStation Network Users May 2011: Personal Details on 25 Million Sony Online Entertainment Customers Stolen June 2011: Sony Pictures Website Hacked, Exposing One Million Accounts November 2014: Hackers Steal 100 Terabytes of Data from Sony Pictures August 2017: Hacker Group Accesses Sony Social Media Accounts September 2023: Sony Investigates Alleged Hack October 2023: Sony Notifies Employees of Data Breach"
I mean, when has Sony ever just flatout KILLED a game studio through bad decision making? *\*sweats nervously\**
everyone here being super optimistic about their data not having been stolen and marketed all over the world already... what do you think happens to your phone number?
You can still refund. The time limit is just for automated refunds.
When you make a deal with the devil, You're not thinking about the endgame.
Kinda off topic but would I be able to get this on my pc and and use my current character from my ps5 account?
No, there's no cross progression. Dunno if there will be in the future.