Helldivers 2 requires PSN account linking and creates a lot of backlash

[KnoT]

3 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

I appreciate that y'all worry about these things but I simply cannot be bothered. As I said, actual important things affecting my life I worry about. Video games are not it. 

 

 

They why are you even commenting in a topic about video games ? But good to know you dont care about your customer laws....

 

Quote

Can they not just select a different country? 

 

That would brake PSN EULA/TOS and they could get banned.

[GuiltySpark_]

Just now, KnoT said:

They why are you even commenting in a topic about video games ? But good to know you dont care about your customer laws....

Its a game I play and I'm going to keep playing because I took two minutes to link my account. My day has not been ruined. 

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

18 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

I appreciate that y'all worry about these things but I simply cannot be bothered. As I said, actual important things affecting my life I worry about. Video games are not it. 

That is totally fine, everyone has their own life and stuff to deal with. But just as you don't want to be judged for playing the game despite the change, accept that for others this might be a big deal and their they are willing to stop playing over this.

Not necessarily because of this change alone, but because it is Sony meddling with devs of a popular game again. Or because they have a poor track record of keeping user data safe.

Or simply because it might set another precedent and you have to draw the line somewhere at some point.

 

18 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

22 minutes ago, KnoT said:

 

Can they not just select a different country? 

You can either use a VPN (not great for online multiplayer though, and can cost extra money) or simply lie during account creation. Issue is, both are technically against TOS and are ban-able offenses afaik.

So people might not feel comfortable betting a 40$ game on that, especially considering that the countries not supported by PSN usually don't have the affluent populations found in the supported countries.

[nvhgamer]

4 minutes ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

That is totally fine, everyone has their own life and stuff to deal with. But just as you don't want to be judged for playing the game despite the change, accept that for others this might be a big deal and their are willing to stop playing over this.

Not necessarily because of this change alone, but because it is Sony meddling with devs of a popular game again. Or because they have a poor track record of keeping user data safe.

Or simply because it might set another precedent and you have to draw the line somewhere at some point.

 

You can either use a VPN (not great for online multiplayer though, and can cost extra money) or simply lie during account creation. Issue is, both are technically against TOS and are ban-able offenses afaik.

So people might not feel comfortable betting a 40$ game on that, especially considering that the countries not supported by PSN usually don't have the affluent populations found in the supported countries.

Exactly. The main issue isn't the linking in of itself, but the requirement/enforcement of it. Now people that invest in a game 40$ lose access to it or risk a ban for breaching TOS.

Even if they said that PSN will be required in the future, the fact that the game works without it and they removed the initial requirement is a bit bait and switchy. And the way Sony and some personnel of Arrowhead (not all of them) communicate and handled the situation made things just worse. 

Also this bait and switch like situation and the enforcement of PSN even not all countries can access it might cause issues with the law or is just void like discussed here: 

 

[IkeaGnome]

43 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

Thats just a theory, no ones confirmed it.

 

♥

 

Edit: Op was nice enough to share another post that had a quote too...

Quote

Now Sony kept the notification on the store page "you need a PSN account for this" and also had an ingame page that said "you need a PSN account for this". So the assumption that you need a PSN account for this seems well communicated and binding, right? It's not that simple.

Sony waived the requirement when HD2 blew up. Now why did they do that? Doesn't matter. What matters is that you could buy the game in a state that didn't line up with the stated requirements and obviously worked without them. And as far as I'm aware, the temporary void of the requirement was not communicated as being temporary, at least not where it would matter.

So you purchase HD2 on Steam, you get to the PSN account linkage screen and you get the message that a PSN account is required to play. But what is that? An engineer was asked to put a skip button in there. So you can, at this point, skip this step and continue to play the game.

Edited May 3 by IkeaGnome

[bizzlebazzle]

Im glad to see this is already being talked about here because I'm kinda hoping it might get picked up for WAN.

 

For me the biggest issue is that there is clearly no technical limitation requiring that you link to a PSN. I've had the game for a month or so, and at no point has it been clear that I would ever need to do so. Crossplay is working already (although a bit buggy at times), and you can moderate the game perfectly fine using a combination of PSN and Steam accounts, so I see no reason not to do so. Hell, if its all to enable crossplay then let me just disable it and just play with other Steam users and ignore this entire situation

 

I can understand and to an extent tolerate the "make yet another account" tactic for something I'm being provided free of charge, but I've paid good money for the game!

[StDragon]

Is this only for those that have enabled PC/Console Crossplay? Because I turned this off. Why would I need a PSN account just for PC?

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

8 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Is this only for those that have enabled PC/Console Crossplay? Because I turned this off. Why would I need a PSN account just for PC?

Nope, for everyone.

Basically, new players will be required to do so, whereas existing ones have until June 4th afaik.

 

And no, there is no good reason apart from Sony getting more control and doing the moderation/banning/appeals then. Plus better numbers for new accounts, more data to sell/lose, as well as the incentive to pull more shady stuff like this.

[Caroline]

1 hour ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

I appreciate that y'all worry about these things but I simply cannot be bothered. As I said, actual important things affecting my life I worry about. Video games are not it. 

 

Can they not just select a different country? 

 

If not, yeah, for those people this is terrible. (Though it seems it was advertised as requiring PSN at launch but not enforced due to a technical issue) 

Steam has the same limitations and I don't see anyone complaining. If you register an account it'll automatically link it to your IP address and sentence you to your local store and pricing, and you can't change it anymore, nor you can use payment methods from another country. This usually isn't a problem for people from countries that aren't a bad joke, but having games go for $150 ($60 base game plus a shitload of meaningless taxes) in a country where the average wage is $20 might be an issue.

But it's not Valve's fault that third world banana republics have 30000% CPI inflation a year.

You can use Steam this way but the games are much more expensive than for people who have wages that are 100x higher (and that's still low, 24k a year) - or be liimted to the F2P zone, that isn't that good tbh.

 

PSN isn't available where I live so if I wanted to play H2 (which I won't) I'd have to, what? use a VPN? for a single game. And then... have my PSN account banned because they'll detect the IP I'm using to play the game isn't the same as the one I used to make the account... so I get why so many gamers are mad at this nonsense.

[Moonzy]

So apparently you need to scan your face for users from UK and Ireland (due to local laws it seems)

Given Sony's previous data breach track record, I'm not entirely sure if this is a good idea.
Though some comments mention that the data is not being processed by Sony themselves, but a third party company affiliated with UK govt or smth smth

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

31 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

Given Sony's previous data breach track record, I'm not entirely sure if this is a good idea.

Screw the face scan, I am more worried about giving them my whole goddam passport.

[StDragon]

41 minutes ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

Screw the face scan, I am more worried about giving them my whole goddam passport.

You should worry. That's now a massive honeypot of PII.

 

"The only winning strategy is not to play"

[starsmine]

From what I can see, from day 1 they have said you will need to link your PSN account to run the game. So people are asking for or looking for refunds now that the linking that they told players about day 1 is being enforced to make some feature that has been planed on working from day 1, work?

[RejZoR]

4 hours ago, starsmine said:

From what I can see, from day 1 they have said you will need to link your PSN account to run the game. So people are asking for or looking for refunds now that the linking that they told players about day 1 is being enforced to make some feature that has been planed on working from day 1, work?

Some regions don't even support PSN but have Steam. People who bought HD2 there won't even be able to play the game they legally purchased. It's idiotic.

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

4 hours ago, starsmine said:

From what I can see, from day 1 they have said you will need to link your PSN account to run the game. So people are asking for or looking for refunds now that the linking that they told players about day 1 is being enforced to make some feature that has been planed on working from day 1, work?

True, PSN was apparently a requirement from day one. It also got dropped (suspended, but without an end date and never mentioned again) on day one.

Reason being that their servers died under the inrush of new players. So for three months people could buy the game and never really see anything about PSN apart from a small box on Steam.

Apparently even the PSN FAQ states that a PSN account is not required to play PS games on PC.

 

So why is this suddenly a requirement again, especially since they have players from places where PSN is not available? The game ran for three months without it, so surely there is no technical reason for it.

[williamcll]

Sony putting the managed in managed democarcy

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

OK, good luck to players in China:

 

[Thaldor]

14 hours ago, nvhgamer said:

While it's not the first time a game has required an account and certainly not the last time it will happen, the way their Community Manager handles things only makes things worse by adding fuel to the fire instead of calming things down. 

Still find it a horrible situation for players that bought the game and can't play them anymore because PSN is not available in their country and can't get a refund because they played a ton of hours of that game.

Just saying it. This is the moment people should just fuck off from the game and see if anything has changed in a week or two without getting microtransaction sales and whatelse and keep fucking off until the attitude of the devs (and especially the community manager) turn better. Even better, try to get your refund, it's probably denied but even if it's accepted, what you really loose? You would get the money to rebuy the game if the devs change their attitude, you would probably loose some progression but that's nothing you cannot redo.

After all the point is to make a stance, not to just rage over it on the social media and continue doing what brings them money giving them the signal that you're a bit mad but not mad enough to give up feeding them and they should do something worse next to see at which point the camels back will break.

 

As it seems to be more Sony issue, don't buy anything Sony until their attitude changes. It's that simple. No need to get laws, no need to pool money, just stop it. There's around 75,000 games in Steam alone, if you take the Sony titles from that, hell, make it count and let's remove Ubisoft, EA, Activision, 2K and Embracer titles just for solidarity and making actually good choices and you probably still have probably 10,000-30,000 titles to choose from, if you can't find anything fancying your taste from that, you're in very sad state.

 

Same thing with Tarkov. And just about any game, if you don't 100% enjoy it, just fuck off. Especially if it's this kind of business bullshit, the devs speak only one language and that is profit numbers, as long as the internet rage doesn't touch their profitability, they won't change a shit because they don't have anything to change, money comes in and job is well done.

[nvhgamer]

Well the Community Manager just admitted he f*cked up and apologized:
 

https://clips.twitch.tv/GleamingQuaintWebStrawBeary-sNuSRDE5hgs6AF9i

Also Sony removed the "PSN account is optional" part form their FAQ:
 

 

[Salted Spinach]

Both Steam and Sony had willfully allowed sales of the game in countries where you cannot create a PSN account.

 

Refund the game or retract the requirement.

 

Or this will be escalated to the media and consumer protection authorities in the 190 or so countries where customers are about to get burnt. They will collectively send Sony to the depths of hell

[suicidalfranco]

Jumping off the PlayStation band wagon after the PS3 was a damn good decision. The less i have to deal with Soyny the better i am.

[sub68]

Ahh Sony America (Sony interactive entertainment is basically part of Sony America) you have do so much stupid stuff.

Stellar blade, Crunchyroll acquisition and killing of Funimation, along with censorship of crunchyroll.

 

Yes I do have a PS4 most know but linking PSN to a PC game is wack. Ok I do have to have a ea account to play ea games on a PlayStation kinda got used to it but gees what is Sony interactive entertainment doing.

[SansVarnic]

Sounds a like a lawsuit is the near future.

 

Don't own a playstation, therefore there is no reason to have a psn acct .... glad I didn't buy the game.

[CarlBar]

@IkeaGnome I came here from reading about it and seeing reactions elsewhere, (primarily reddit and steam) but they hadn't seen this yet apparently, so when i skipped to reading reactions ignoring the OP i missed that. Sorry. That said a lot of other people at the time i made the comment your responding to also hadn't heard this.

 

The anger now appears to be focused more on Sony, apparently the way Sony has changed some of their website wordings might also be running them afoul of GDPR.

 

26 minutes ago, SansVarnic said:

Sounds a like a lawsuit is the near future.

 

 

Someone in the US is allready putting together a class action and theres talk of another being put together over the GDPR issues from a quick look.

[IkeaGnome]

10 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

@IkeaGnome I came here from reading about it and seeing reactions elsewhere, (primarily reddit and steam) but they hadn't seen this yet apparently, so when i skipped to reading reactions ignoring the OP i missed that. Sorry. That said a lot of other people at the time i made the comment your responding to also hadn't heard this.

No need to apologize to me♥. I wasn't meaning to directly call anyone out, just give people reading some food for thought. I might have happened to start looking into all of this right as the facts about it being on Sony and not Arrowhead came out. That's also not your fault. 

I have literally no skin in the game(figuratively and literally). I haven't bought it. I had no intentions on it, and I still don't. 

 

I only posted what I did because especially since lockdowns there's been a whole lot of extra negativity pointed at wrong people in general and it gets a bit old to read. 

It's okay to be angry because someone somewhere changed how to play a game and requirements for it. I just personally don't see the reason to go up in arms at the wrong person. People were no where near this angry when it happened with many other games, GTA V included. 

 

Once again, my original post in this thread wasn't meant to get people to feel like they needed to apologize to myself directly. I just wanted to spark a little bit of a "look in the mirror" moment for people. 

 

My first reply directly to you probably came across a bit more snarky than I meant it to, I just didn't have much to add to the conversation besides facts that had come to light since the OP posted the thread. 

 

If I wanted to call out someone in particular, it'd be OP. There's some misleading comments in the OP that are just borderline completely false and taken out of context. That was what I had originally typed out in reply to this thread, but then figured I wouldn't go down that route for once. ♥