I bought this game, installed it, then the next day the announced this bullshit. Refunded without even loading it up. Added Sony to my do not buy from list. Hard pass.
Wasn’t Valve the one who pointed out that Russia was always pirating games not because they were inherently pirates but because the game releases had zero support for Russia lol. Hence why Valve was the first foreign developer/publisher that gained an actual foothold in the Russian market.
This is kind of like the same thing. Sony will just say something dumb like “we don’t allow PSN accounts in these countries because they’re full of pirates”.
The second problem is absence of regional prices in other markets but Steam.
They are selling games two (!!) or so times cheaper in RU region. For example, AAA game might cost 60 dollars or 6000 rub in US but it will costs 35 or 3500 rub in russian steam.
Even though I couldn’t afford games in the past and pirated them - at some point I started buying stuff just because it gives much better, hustle -free experience.
I often took the same approach back when buying a game was a financial consideration. But even though now 4/5 times I already know hat I’m buying and just pay, there are still the 1/5 times I’ll pirate first as I’m really on the fence. Due to this I have a few games I ended up completing on pirate, but bought the game (and DLC if relevant) with 0 hours in my library because good work deserves recognition.
Otherwise we risk losing those good developers to other careers or into the AAA meat grinder.
For clarity I’m talking Indy titties here, I doubt I average much above 0.5/year AAA purchases anymore
Edit: actually I’ll go one step further. If I pirate your game and hate it, then its delete and forget. If I buy your game and hate it that’s a potential negative review, maybe even though me and that title we just a bad fit. This is why demos need to become ubiquitous again
And yet still in top ten sales per day. Last I checked was sixth for paid games. In the end most will just keep playing and do as the company tells them to do.
Countries whose exchange rate likely made the game even more expensive, and you’ve taken it from them just to dox PC gamers on the PlayStation network.
This isn’t even enshittification. It’s outright fraud.
OK, maybe I’m missing something in all this, as I have both Steam and PSN accounts already, but wasn’t it always on the Steam page, in a gold box, that a 3rd party (PSN) account was needed to play the game?
Yes. I also haven’t seen any confirmation that any of those countries listed had the game available to purchase without spoofing their location.
The bandwagoners are all getting upset over the implementation of the requirement that was always there, and now that they’ve been given like a month’s notice that they have to actually make a PSN account that was always a listed requirement, they’re all in a tizzy.
The requirement was a small bullet on the Steam page. And Sony’s own website says a PSN account is not required. So Sony has said both things, and for three months it was not required. There is also no actual functional need for the account. Additionally the game studio has said that the countries where the game was sold, but PSN was not available is an issue they are looking into. I don’t understand why anyone is defending this move from Sony. The users gain no benefit, and there is an obvious negative impact. So maybe stop sucking off corporations?
A gold bullet amongst other gold bullets, in a section that not everyone is going to look at. For a game that is sold globally when PSN is not available globally. This is anti-consumer behavior strictly meant to increase corporate power in the interest of corporate greed. Why defend Sony and their shitty behavior? This doesn’t help gamers. There is no benefit.
People don’t read the TOS, you know that. I didn’t read them either. If you want to say that’s my fault then that’s fine but I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect people to pay attention to something like that in this context. It’s a video game. Any restrictions or conditions like this are arbitrary and unnecessary.
I don’t have a Playstation, have no interest in one, and will not be creating a PSN account. I probably won’t refund the game but I’m not going to keep playing it if they keep this requirement, which is a shame because I’ve really enjoyed my time with it. If this is the hill they want to die on then my interest will die on that hill with them.
The 2 hour refund window is for automated refunds, you can still make a request if you’re past that - it’s just going to need a human to take a look at it. I’ve once succesfully returned a game I’ve played for about 5 hours because it had game-breaking bugs and ran like crap for no reason, and it got accepted within a day without an issue.
So Helldivers owners have a chance. I’m assuming that Steam’s Customer Support department is having some kind of an internal discussion right now on how to handle this case.
I haven’t seen anyone actually confirm the game was for sale in any of those countries. I know people from some of those countries have been playing, but did they buy the game by spoofing their country, or was the game ever actually available in any of them?
Thanks. I really don’t know why the hell all these Steve’s in here are downvoting me for wanting to know the answer to a question about all of this, but that’s gonna be pretty screwed up if everyone from any of those countries isn’t refunded.
You’re the only source that’s found an actual answer about it. +1
They’re mandating you have a playstation account to play on PC. That was always in the terms, and on the steam page, but you didn’t have to. Until very recently.
And if you don’t live in one of the 65 countries where PSN operates, you can go fuck yourself, because your game just stopped working.
Can’t you just use an US account though? I don’t mean to say that this isn’t a major issue as it is, but are you really blocked from linking it? I don’t live in the US but I have a us pen account since forever
I’m aware of this, but I’ve never heard of this being enforced outside of people trying to use credit cards of other regions, and they only resulted on temporary suspensions.
My question is on the enforcement of the linking. Does it stop you from doing something like this?
Also worth point out that up until yesterday, Sony said a PSN account wasn’t it required to play games games on PC. They changed it shortly after the backlash.
Sony dropped an announcement requiring PSN accounts, even for PC players with no cross play enabled, presumably because it makes the numbers look better to their shareholders. Apparently it was supposed to be a requirement at launch but the PSN servers were busted and it was preventing people from getting in so they ‘temporarily’ disabled it.
Something not rally being mentioned is that their monetization system has gotten predictably worse, for example nerfing a weapon in advance of a premium battle pass weapon that coincidentally fills the niche that was just nerfed away.
I mean, that’s not really so bad considering you can unlock the battle passes without spending a dime past your initial investment. The timing of the nerfs might be coincidental - I do also seem to remember a Breaker - Railgun - Shield Pack monoculture being a pretty big issue.
Unlocking the battle pass with grinding takes forever. With over 40 hours I only just made enough to unlock one. Except I didn’t because I spent a little along the way on armor. Playing normally does not get warbonds at a reasonable pace.
I mean, that’s the game, isn’t it? You either grind out the super credits, and the fact that’s an option at all is the Hallmark of a good game, or you pay for instant gratification. Live service doesn’t support itself.
i don’t play nor care about helldivers 2 but i can certainly emphasize with people that have had their favorite game linking to a service that is blocked/not supported. you either use a free VPN which good luck with shitty connectivity, high packet loss and ping, or use a paid VPN which basically converts all your games into a subscription that is most certainly not affordable for many 3rd world users, and at the end you are still probably dealing with the issues mentioned before since you are adding extra hops in your route. and that’s if you can get your hands on a working VPN which since most companies have their IP addresses known you get forced into shady VPNs automatically.
plus you are massively risking your data since you can’t trust the person at the other end, especially with free VPNs that could be loaded with viruses and spyware. in addition in most cases using a VPN can and will trigger false bot flags, causing either a temporary block or worse a ban, not to mention lying about your region when creating an account is in most cases is against TOS (although it’s unlikely you get banned for it).
for example i wanted to play titanfall 2 when it came out but couldn’t due to it being linked to EA account system which is definitely blocked here. never bothered with the official Ultima Online because EA. wanna play the free copy of GTA V? can’t download shit off Epic Games. wanna play any games made by Riot? you better get that DNS service ready cause otherwise you can’t get in. wanna update warframe? too bad the CDN service they use blocks your region (this was a long time ago i remember being pissed off about it).
so stop being an asshole online. we deserve to play games like other people without resorting to hacks in order to have a worse experience that was forced upon us. even ignoring all of my rant this decision is still against privacy of most users by handing their data over to yet another big company. i cannot imagine what would compel someone to make an ass out of themselves to call people that are against this cry babies.
Paid VPNs are dirt cheap worldwide… If you can already afford a PC capable of playing HD2, you can afford a few bucks a year for a reputable VPN.
You have actual clueless first-worlder logic
If 60 to 160 USD per year is “dirt cheap” to you, you have absolutely no place to speak. Hundreds of dollars over the course of 5 years just to circumvent stupid geolocation restrictions and nothing else – about the same cost to twice the cost of a low-to-mid range gaming PC BTW – is not affordable to most people. How do you compare basically throwing away hundreds of USD yearly opposed to a one-time purchase of an important utility in the modern age? How do you view that as cheap for people in countries where that could be a large chunk or most of their salary? Are people not allowed to buy expensive things for themselves rarely and actually enjoy them without having an unnecessary subscription expense tacked on just because they were born in a poorer county?
How would you feel if I told you there were a “fuck you” fee of 10% of the cost of your house every year just because you’re American or Canadian or British or some shit, on top of your income & property taxes? I mean you’re a homeowner so you can obviously afford it.
well nice job ignoring literally everything else i said but alright. my rule of thumb for comparing my purchasing power vs an american is to multiply the product’s value by 15. so you tell me that you wouldn’t feel annoyed if you had to pay 375$/year (ignoring the increased data cap costs that comes with using a VPN of course) for a service that might get blocked at any moment? never mind the scammers that are absolutely littered everywhere.
and the regions that are not supported by PSN probably don’t have regional pricing in steam as well, so we also have to pay that fuck you fee if we want to buy our games legit, unless of course you are willing to risk a ban (which actually isn’t that unlikely) in order to region hop, or get a CD key that was most likely bought with stolen gift card money of scam victims. and steam recently has been cracking down on both region hopping and the price disparity seen between different regions.
yes it’s not the most earth shattering issue on the planet, but at least we get to complain about it online right?
Why do people expressing frustration deserve your explicit lack of empathy? Why do you care so much? Why is “aha! Gotcha! You’re from Iran, so you’re neglected luxuries in other situations but not this one so your opinion doesn’t matter” sound like a reasonable response to you?
You sound like a bitter spiteful individual who’s more interested in finding a reason to be contrarian and angry with people than compassionate. Coincidentally with frustrations over corporations.
Go take a break from the internet if “why does a human deserve my empathy?” Seems like something that is ever reasonable to say or think. Empathy doesn’t mean you have to agree with someone, to preempt that lame excuse.
Good catch! Just a typo on my part. I used mapchart.com to make the map, and it was unfortunately an entirely manual process and the map builder I used didn’t include most microstates; the rest of the ones I listed weren’t on the map. Sri Lanka and Suriname are pictured though. :)
Community manager or not,he still has a Vested interest in the games success. I think this is pretty clearly a Sony being shitty thing. I hope they are trying to find a better answer because I like Helldivers but I’m also not willing to deal with Sonys bullshit.
My saying they’re a CM isn’t my giving them a pass. But dev vs CM is an important distinction regardless. A CM should know how to address people publicly and not incite even more rage by belittling people’s concerns. The only apology they gave so far was the most non-apology you could imagine too.
I don’t disagree, but they also can’t give a real apology without pissing off the publisher who can shut it all down period. They’re damned if the do and damned if they don’t.
Imagine being a Community Manager and having no idea how the bullshit your publisher wants to pull off affects your community but still initially siding with them lol
It’s no accident that many of these games are releasing their anti-features only after millions have purchased them and missed their return window.
EA did the same recently with Kernel anti-cheat in games they haven’t serviced in years, games that actively cannibalise their latest titles!
Less players means less server running costs. Helldivers 2 might turn back or end up with this disastrous policy (for consumers) but until we have regulations on this, many companies will see the benefit of rugpulling software.
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