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
I’m not a big gamer so I’m not entirely getting this. It sounds like the issue is they want you to link your steam and PSN accounts, which people don’t want to do. And in some countries it’s even a TOS violation.
My question is, why would they have such a requirement to link the two accounts in the first place?
One RUMOR I’ve heard is so it looks like more people are registering with PSN, to make up for loss of PS sales? Doesn’t make the most sense, but I’m sure its a mixture of that and your data $$$
Edit: I’m sure they are using the increase of accounts to make theirs elves look more favorable. All around, it’s shitty, and helldivers will suffer for it. Steam has already allowed refunds from countries that can no longer play.
Which part? I’m sure it would be fraud to pad their numbers that way. Unless they used a seperate metric which looked favorable to shareholders since number of accounts goes up.
The data part I don’t think you meant to cast doubt on, thats a given.
The legitimate reason is for crossplay. Sony said in the announcement it was for player “protection”, so they could ban people. Plus there is no doubt some data tracking going on.
The publishet is Sony. This way Sony can harvest your data and has total control over bans. If they didnt force the links bans for pc players would go through steam and could be challenged over steam in the case of an unfair ban.
You obviously have to give them whatever data is required for a PSN account. You could give them fake personal data of course, but good luck remembering your fake info if you ever need to reset your password.
It explicitly said you do not need a PSN account to play, in a number of places. Both on the game page, on the Sony FAQ page, and the Steam page too I believe.
It was bait and switch, which is why so many people are upset.
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 not even an overseas territory, it’s a full-fledged department of France. They couldn’t exclude it even if they wanted. And it’s not excluded in the map, if you look closely, even while Guyana and Surinam are.
Im totally with arrowhead here. I wasnt aware of PSN being banned in countries either and at least theyre trying their best to make it right again. I dont think theyre burning goodwill, sony is though.
I’m with Arrowhead as well, none of this shit is coming from them, it’s coming from Sony. The most you can criticize them for is partnering with Sony in the first place.
I think it’s pretty shitty from Arrowhead as well, because they knew six months in advance that PSN requirement was going to happen and said nothing. That should’ve been stated front and center when people bought the game.
Came to the comments to say exactly this. The rootkit debacle was the end of the road for me and Sony. They’re still exactly the same company, and this move proves it.
It’s insane to me that this is a hill Sony is willing to die on. So much goodwill to throw away just to collect a bit more data on users.
Just remember, if they’re willing to enforce this nonsense, you can be sure that there will be more nonsense to come. “Sorry everyone, Sony decided we need lootboxes! But our team is on the side of the players!”
I hate modern AAA games, I’m gonna go try out that new Stardew Valley update.
Someone high up will probably lose a lot of face if it doesn’t go through. I’m assuming someone looked at numbers in a spreadsheet and asked why on earth do they have a huge pool of data they can’t legally use to enhance their ad targeting - when the developers said it might be a problem with our users they said fuck them, just ram it through. How do they backpedal without looking like out of touch idiots?
It’s not even much data at all. A game dev friend of mine took a look at what is shared through Steam’s own API, and it’s just a unique ID basically verifying that the steam account belongs to that steam user. The worst they can do with that is ask if the user already owns this or that game, likely just from the same publisher.
They probably just want the ability to better ban people if they are griefing other players (or make sure people can’t cheat their way to more super credits)
The whole thing is such a nothing burger from sony’s part, it makes it even more absurd that they’re doing this!
If I had to guess, I’m guessing it would add another layer that MOST griefers aren’t willing to go through, but let’s be honest… Look at the shit show here. No amount of ban control has to be worth getting your game delisted in 170 countries :P
Honestly I’m scared for Destiny 2. The game’s on the verge of death already and it’s just awaiting a nail in the coffin, which Sony could deliver at any time.
did you happen to miss when they made the original content and the first couple dlc’s unavailable to play and refused to give refunds for it? Bungie can fucking die in a hole and destiny 2 has been a trash fire for years already
Does goodwill even really mean anything? I keep seeing the arguments that say “X company is cashing in their goodwill” etc. But I honestly don’t think the average person who plays AAA games give a shit about a company’s track record. If that was the case Nintendo would’ve bankrupted by now. People will probably preorder the ultimate super deluxe edition of the PS6 or god of war as soon as sony announces them.
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