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Helldivers 2 went from one of the most beloved Steam games to one of the most hated pretty quickly
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this post was submitted on 03 May 2024
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Can someone explain what is the big deal of creating a Playstation account? I know they've added the requirement retroactively, and I know everyone wants steam to be it's own thing, but this is not really a unique situation.. I have a lot of games across many publishers that have their own useless accounts tied to it. What makes this different?
its past the refund window, PSN only allows 69 countries to make an account, so 66% of the countries in the world are simply not able to make an account at all. Depending on how things shake out, those players will be locked out of hell divers.
If this hadn't been retroactive, then our gaming brothers from i.e. the Philippines would have bought the game, tried to run it, hit the wall, and refunded it... sucks but they wouldn't have lost time or money.... but now... they lose both.
Ah see, that's the context I needed. Thank you. Outside a refund window or not - if I were in a country that got locked out, steam had better be real gracious with their refunds. That scenario is unacceptable. Strange that PSN restricts themselves geographically.. they absolutely should have thought of that before allowing the game to be sold in those countries.
Yeah, I'm sure some executive is trying to pump up "active monthly" PSN users for some political, KPI, or share evaluation purposes. We kind of expect them to play these games, its the retroactive bit that's surprising here.
This isn’t something they tried to sneak past people, they were upfront about the issues and said there would be a grace period before they implemented the pairing originally planned at launch.
Edit for source jan it was part of steams requirements
So they sold it to people they knew couldn't comply with the TOS, then started enforcing the TOS four months later.
They know where their customers live. They know customers ignore system requirements if the game works.
Steams the one selling it, not Sony. And the restrictions were active for about a week.
You seem to missing quite a few extremely important details.
It’s up to the publisher to choose which countries Steam should let players buys the game
The big deal is that you are now forced to create an account with yet another service and give them analytics about your behavior, for literally no benefit to you.
Even though this is widely accepted, this is just not okay in any case. Not when Ubisoft did it, not now.
How can they enforce a ban if you don’t link your account?
They ban your steam id and you just family share it to another free account and do the same thing.
Get your tinfoil hat off.
Lol
I bet you $20 he made that comment either from his android phone or from chrome on a Windows PC. OH NO, I suddenly care about my gaming history being collected by Sony. You dont even have to install 3rd party software, it is an in-game link. No standalone launcher like most games nowadays.
This is no different than your other games with useless.one off accounts. That's the problem. They all are a problem. I bought red dead 2 and refunded it as soon as I was required to create a rockstar account. It serves no purpose to me, I don't need it or want it. If we don't push back these useless account things will keep being added.
And retroactive add is a massive problem. They took people's money then screwed them after. It sets the precedent that this is acceptable if people just take it.
What's next? Removing areas and features of games after release for something that you paid for?
It's scummy.
Yeah, Destiny 2...
PSN accounts, in particular, are pretty bad. In some places, they require a photo ID in order to make an account, and in many regions of the world, you can't make one at all. Something like 50 of the regions where the game was sold can't make PSN accounts, and using a VPN to make an account or lying about your region is a bannable offense.
It's a valid concern, both from paying for something that you can't even use and a privacy perspective.
I see other comments have covered some of the issues, I don't see this one.
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
Basically Sony's been caught before not securing anything. So people don't want to deal with them. So for this to be retroactively pushed on users months later is a solid concern. To be forced to give Sony more data than is actually required to run the game (as we've proven it isn't needed for months now). Is literally just handing it to the next hackers that access Sony's shit.
Yeah this is all fair. I don't give anyone or anything personally identifiable information, and wouldn't suggest it. Just fill it out with fakes and move on.
The big deal is that it's very obviously completely unnecessary.
It seems a lot of people did not realize that this was an initial requirement when the game first launched, but it was suspended while they figured out server and stability issues.
That was never mentioned in a meaningful way on my purchasing platform, or in the game. At no point was I told that I was only temporarirly allowed to play without a PSN account, and that the entire game would be locked down months later unless I created and linked one. Were that the case, I would have refunded on day 1.
Right above the buy button on Steam, in yellow highlighted text, it has always said
And yet we played for months without it... Looks like it was not required. Otherwise it would have been refunded immediately.
It was deactivated while they were trying to sort out the server instability issues in the beginning. They announced it would eventually return, and it's the main reason why the friends list has been messed up.