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dlpkl , in Helldivers 2 went from one of the most beloved Steam games to one of the most hated pretty quickly

still enjoying it lol

SmilingSolaris ,

You know your not being snarky big dev defender saying this right? You are aware the actual devs, the creators of the game have asked people to review bomb it. This is the major order right now. It’s to give the devs leverage to get Sony to back the fuck off.

Omniraptor ,

Do you have a source on the devs endorsing review bombing for leverage? I only see posts about the CEO apologizing for the policy.

LordKitsuna ,
Draedron ,

Spitz is also the pos who told people to just refund and leave. Now they wre doing damage control acting like they are on the players side. The devs are not the good guys here just smart enough to act like they are

Rakonat ,

Did you read the comment? He told them to refund it if they are unhappy because the review scores and revenue are all sony sees or cares about

dlpkl ,

I really couldn’t care. It’s as easy as using making an account. People really have nothing else better to do with their lives. In fact, most people do, that’s why steam charts haven’t reflected any change.

ysjet ,

You realize about 1/3 of all players physically cannot make a PSN account, right? This isn’t just ‘gamers having nothing better to do with their lives’, it’s an actual legal and economic issue.

dlpkl ,

VPNs are free and easy to make, and where did you get 1/3 of all players?

Crampon , in Sony removed Helldivers 2 from sale in countries where PSN is not available. For example whole CIS region.

Their business plan is forcing people to create a free account and shut people out from sales?

Being an Executive in a huge Corp must be the easiest job in the world. How can you come up with this idea, and get paid for it?

TomAwsm ,

It’s nepotism all the way.

Numenor , in List of countries that cannot make a PSN account, following the Helldivers 2 controversy.

The combined estimated total population of those countries would be roughly around 4.6 to 4.7 billion people.

Jolteon ,

So, literally more than half the world.

jol ,

But corporations see $$ so it’s the half of the world that isn’t important.

SuddenDownpour ,

After taking a look at the map, this sounds very, VERY off.

Brosplosion ,

Only off about 3 billion or so, not that far!

elrik ,

Right? I was too lazy to double check, but yeah, the original claim seems absurd considering it’s missing at least the top 5 most populated countries representing nearly 4 billion people.

Numenor ,

Hehehe

ChrisHatesGeese ,

Counterpoint: no it isn’t.

AlexisFR , in List of countries that cannot make a PSN account, following the Helldivers 2 controversy.
@AlexisFR@jlai.lu avatar

Why are there so many overseas territories in there? No wonder so many people are pissed off

SuddenDownpour , in List of countries that cannot make a PSN account, following the Helldivers 2 controversy.

Andorra

Someone must stop this cruel oppression against the ethnic group of influencers.

wheeldawg , in what's going on with helldivers?

The requirement was always listed on the page.

It not being enforced seemed to make people think that now they have a right to be mad about it.

I just don’t see a case for this upset. What am I missing? The requirement was spelled out the whole time.

All I see is people not reading the not-fine-at-all print and then being upset when the rule starts being enforced.

I honestly don’t understand the problem here.

Now why it was offered for sale in regions that can’t use PSN is a mystery. Those accounts should definitely be refunded beyond the “normal” refund window and Steam needs to pay attention to that kind of thing a lot better than this. They wouldn’t have necessarily known that the account wasn’t possible for them, so that’s totally understandable.

But for those who are in a country that can get the account, I just don’t see a leg for them to stand on here.

If I’m missing something here please tell me. I love using my pitchfork. But I just don’t see justification here specifically.

secret300 OP ,

I saw someone else say that on their FAQ page it said the PSN account is optional but now that page was edited. So that’s a little scummy

wheeldawg ,

I’m talking about the store page. Not everyone will see the FAQ, but they do see the store page.

Cqrd ,

I just don’t see a leg for them to stand on here

Sony has been hacked half a million times, why should I give them more data when they’ve shown the game doesn’t need the link to function perfectly fine? This is all data collection bullshit and the more we allow it to happen, the more normalized it becomes, the more people like you “don’t see a leg to stand on here”.

mhague , (edited )

I don’t understand feeling those things and then choosing to buy a Sony game that requires a Sony account, normalizing and supporting such practices. Giving people money is far more of a normalization tactic.

Cqrd ,

I didn’t, that mention said it was potential some games might have PSN linking on Sony’s side, and I didn’t see any such actual requirement on the game itself. That’s why I refunded my game when this started, this is nonsense and I won’t support it.

intensely_human , in List of countries that cannot make a PSN account, following the Helldivers 2 controversy.

So where is 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍?

pro_grammer OP ,

🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍 is everywhere <3

clb92 ,

Between Nepal and Nigeria, it seems.

KairuByte ,
@KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Someone didn’t realize Niger isn’t an offensive word.

HumbleFlamingo ,

No, racists can’t spell so steam has to censor both of them. :-/

pingveno ,

Or they were using Niger as a way to say the other word.

Gobbel2000 , in Helldivers 2 went from one of the most beloved Steam games to one of the most hated pretty quickly
@Gobbel2000@programming.dev avatar

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game on Steam with “Overwhelmingly Negative” reviews before. Usually “Mixed” is already a good indicator to leave your hands off a game.

Saledovil ,

That’s because there’s a review count requirement for both the extremely good and the extremely negative level. So you can’t buy your own game, review it, and have it be overwhelmingly positive because the only review is positive. Thing is, bad games tend to not get bought by many people, so overwhelmingly negative is rare. So yes, mixed reviews are already damming.

merthyr1831 , in Helldivers 2 went from one of the most beloved Steam games to one of the most hated pretty quickly

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.

barooboodoo ,

Supposedly steam is allowing returns no matter the playtime.

merthyr1831 ,

that’s good, surprising though because technically it’s not their policy

joe_cool ,

I guess they don’t like being sued. And I think they will just take the money for the refunds from Sony’s payout.

yamanii , in Helldivers 2 went from one of the most beloved Steam games to one of the most hated pretty quickly
@yamanii@lemmy.world avatar

Some countries like Ukraine are told that they need a console to make an account, you can’t make this shit up lmao

helenslunch , in Helldivers 2 now has the most negative reviews among all paid games
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Color me impressed that the gaming community actually cares about this. Certainly more egregious abuse has been levied at them in the past and ignored.

WhyDoYouPersist , (edited )

Yeah compared to rootkits, micro transactions, unfinished games at launch, publisher launchers, seems there’s no shortage of things to whinge about in the current gaming space.

This game has a couple of those things but generally has been the best co-op shooting experience since Left for Dead 2 to me. Helldivers 1 was a blast too though.

I feel like the level of whiplash this game is getting is similar to that of Cyberpunk but I could be exaggerating. If the game wasn’t so successful at checking people’s boxes at the outset, I think we wouldn’t be having this discussion today. It being so popular is why there are a ton of people freaking out. I’m not saying it’s not warranted, just observing.

Needless to say, Sony is never going to allow an account linking grace period in any of their games going forward. It looks like they gave the kids candy and then took it away, better for them to just not give the candy in the first place.

Edit to add: I also find it hard to stomach the amount of ire to some degree because the creative devs had nothing to do with this and clearly put a ton of energy and love into the game. They even have a unique connection to the community through the bespoke game master, Joel. I’m pretty torn about it: I want the gaming industry to stop this full speed charge toward enshittification like, literally, every other aspect of life now. But I don’t want developers to have to not only worry about mass layoffs and internal industry enshittification on top of reactionary blowback from the people they make the games for.

I will say I have the luxury of living in a country that’s supported by PSN and already have an account, so it colors my opinions.

just2look ,

If it makes you feel any better, one of Arrowhead’s community managers specifically said to take the anger to steam. It makes it very public that people are unhappy, and it’s more likely to get Sony to change the policy. So the devs are aware of why this is happening, and it appears that to an extent at least, support the negative reviews

match ,
@match@pawb.social avatar

oh, my God… the gamers… are rising up…

TheOctonaut ,

They targeted gamers.

Gamers.

Templa ,

If the gamers are pissed I am happy

liquidparasyte ,

They were gaming racists.

altima_neo ,
@altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

We are after all, the most oppressed group

Logh ,

Oh, rise up in that sense? I thought we were just sedentary. Now, where did I last see my sunglasses?

applepie ,

More like fools with their money...

MossyFeathers ,

I’ll have you know this is oppression worse than what people of color experienced during the antebellum south. By God it might even be worse than the Holocaust.

RvTV95XBeo ,

Honestly I’m more annoyed by the rootkit “anti-cheat” the game uses, than this Sony action. It’s easy enough to make a burner email account for Sony, and for better or worse, I’m not in one of the countries impacted.

They DEFINITELY need to refund all players that are from newly blocked countries - anything short of a full refund is unacceptable, but it’s not like people have cared that PSN is unavailable in Nigeria before this point.

All that said, I love seeing the community putting Sony’s feet on the fire for implementing even mildly anti-consumer BS. I just wish the outrage was more consistent

CommanderCloon ,

It’s easy enough to make a burner email account for Sony, and for better or worse, I’m not in one of the countries impacted

Some countries require an ID verification

Enkrod ,
@Enkrod@feddit.de avatar

With face scans! What the hell Sony?!

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Honestly I’m more annoyed by the rootkit “anti-cheat” the game uses, than this Sony action.

Exactly. Little/no backlash when the game was announced with these anti-features. It’s not even a competitive game. If one of my teammates was cheating I’d probably just laugh.

Not saying I don’t think they deserve to be upset, it’s just strange when and what they choose to be upset about.

It’s easy enough to make a burner email account

Except it is because you have to connect said account to your Steam account.

bountygiver ,

another one big thing is those of us who care just straight up don’t buy the game, and without buying the game we can’t leave a negative review, and we moved on and not talked about it anymore.

What happened here is affecting people who have spent money on this game, who can leave review and actually cannot just walk away without having your spent money thrown into the void.

Reaper948 ,

Yeah I was actually baffled by the lack of backlash for that, as that was much worse than the PSN account requirement issue, at least data/privacy wise.

ImplyingImplications ,

Right? This game requires users install a kernel-level anti-cheat in order to run. That’s a huge privacy and security risk just to play a non-competitive video game. Nobody seemed to care about that, but signing up for PlayStation Network? That’s where gamers draw the line!

I mean, I’m glad they’re finally pushing back against terrible corporate decisions but what set them off is puzzling.

eestileib ,

The people who cared about it never played the game.

Like me; I loved the first helldivers but noped out of this one.

Enkrod , (edited )
@Enkrod@feddit.de avatar

The difference is everyone CAN install a bad anti-cheat, or decide to not do it.

But if people who bought the game suddenly CAN’T legally play it anymore, because PSN doesn’t allow accounts in their country, they don’t even have a choice.

Selling the game in those regions in the first place was deeply wrong, but then taking away the ability to play AFTER they sold it to people, that’s a bridge too far.

And we’re not just talking about most of Africa (not that that would be less bad), we’re also talking about countries like Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, those are EU members, how is there no PSN available there?

stardust ,

People are already playing games with anticheat like Apex, Fortnite, Valorant, League, Genshin Impact, etc so that part is the least surprising.

NoisyFlake ,

It’s not about anticheat per se but about kernel-level anticheats, which are just overkill in a PvE game. I’m not sure about the other games you mentioned, but at least Apex has no kernel-level anticheat.

KittyCat ,

This is why I bought it on my ps5 only, at least there it doesn’t matter

Voyajer ,
@Voyajer@lemmy.world avatar

Better late than never I guess.

LoamImprovement ,

For me personally, it just got to me that Sony gave negative shits while Arrowhead was fighting an uphill battle getting their game playable in the face of overnight success, and now that everything is great and the hard work is done, Sony’s seeing dollar signs and pushing their fucking corpo bullshit on a studio that sees zero benefit and suffers all the fallout. They’re all too happy to shit where Arrowhead eats and it pisses me off.

veroxii ,

I think it’s because PC gamers are often anti console so having to sign up to PSN and you don’t even own a PlayStation feels very wrong.

It’s a branding issue. If they required you to have an “Arrowhead Network” account login no-one would bat an eye… Even if it was just rebadged PSN.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Yeah but it’s been said before: this is not the 1st or the 14th game to required 3rd party fuckin’ accounts for no reason and received very few complaints.

stardust ,

Usually it’s forced at launch so if people don’t like it they can refund immediately. This is an odd situation where it went from being skippable to suddenly a requirement. People got used to not needing another account for the game.9

helenslunch , (edited )
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

This is an odd situation where it went from being skippable to suddenly a requirement.

Not entirely accurate. It was forced at launch. Then they made it skippable. Now it’s just being required again.

stardust ,

If people could play without it then it wasn’t required. Especially if the majority of the time the game has been active it hasn’t been. So in the eyes of consumers it wasn’t required. EULAs or whatever is only something companies clutch onto.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

If people could play without it then it wasn’t required

They couldn’t.

stardust ,

Not everyone buys a game immediately at launch. So doesn’t matter. There were enough people that could as their first play through that game wasn’t even region blocked.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Not arguing any of that. Just getting the facts straight.

Grobmobularb , in Helldivers 2 now has the most negative reviews among all paid games

People are fucking babies. I bought this on PS5 and it was so good I got it on Steam for my son. It asked me to sync to my PSN and I did. If we didn’t live somewhere that had PSN, that would be different. But those who do, who gives a flying fuck that you have to have a free PSN account….

Arkaelus , (edited )

Good for you, your circumstances lined up in such a way as for you to already have a PSN account through the console you own. But the issues you are ignoring are as follows:

  • it is predatory to impose such a major change (and, yes, it is major) on people AFTER they have purchased the game. The ease of creating a PSN account is an utterly moot point, a paying customer should not be forced to suffer changes to a thing they, supposedly, already owned, let alone a change which basically reduces the options to “you either give us your information, or you don’t play the game ON WHICH YOU ALREADY SPENT MONEY.”
  • the more accounts you have nowadays, the more your personal data is sold around. In addition, it’s a clear demonstration of encroachment by corporations who really should have no business forcing you to sign up to their shitty platforms.
  • it’s an extra layer of DRM, and DRM is exclusively a bad thing however you cut it (DRM means you don’t actually own the thing you friggin’ bought).
  • fuck Sony and their atrocious greed. Pure and simple.
fluckx ,

You forget their inability to guard personal data. It’s like telling your secrets to the town blabbermouth.

Or using lastpass. The only thing they needed to do was keep your passwords safe. And it happened so often its almost a meme. I dont even know why They’re still in business

Enkrod ,
@Enkrod@feddit.de avatar

And for so many people there isn’t even a choice. They bought the game, and now they can’t play it, because no PSN in their country.

And even for some countries with access to PSN, creating an account requires photo-id and a face scan. That’s complete bullshit.

poo ,
@poo@lemmy.world avatar

You seem pretty simple-minded

Kekzkrieger ,

mayb you will think differently when next time you get locked out for no reason

therealjcdenton ,

The issue is for people who don’t have a PlayStation so making an account does nothing, and a PSN account is yet another account they need to manage and will get spam emails from. The other issue is this was a bait and switch since people didn’t need to connect the accounts at first, and on top of that the sole reason why linking is now required is because Sony wants to artificially inflate their account numbers for investors, which is misinformation for investors and annoyance for users

SoleInvictus ,

“It’s not a problem until it happens to me.”

It looks like c/conservative is leaking again.

stardust ,

Sony seems like the babies to me blundering a nice surprise success and good will from the community with an unnecessary change. It’s more their issue than mine. I just lose out on a game. Them on the other hand have PR to work out and potential consequences for employees. All for a change that didn’t need to happen. Stupid business decision.

applepie ,

For some people it is a privacy issue for others extra work.

EdibleFriend , in Helldivers 2 now has the most negative reviews among all paid games
@EdibleFriend@lemmy.world avatar

It beat out ow2. Impressive.

gaael ,

Not in rating though, I didn’t know they fell so low - 18% !

EdibleFriend ,
@EdibleFriend@lemmy.world avatar

Notice how much lower numbers are for OW2 tho. Its so unpopular less people are even bothering to review it.

Ashyr , (edited ) in Helldivers 2 now has the most negative reviews among all paid games

Hate is just love getting all twisted up. You can’t get this kind of negativity from something that’s always been awful, it has to be deeply loved first in order for the hate to properly flow.

voodooattack ,

This is beautiful. I hate it.

jackmarxist , in Helldivers 2 now has the most negative reviews among all paid games
@jackmarxist@lemmy.ml avatar

FAFO

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