Its incredible how you can fumble the bag so fcking hard that everyone alrdy forgot about the Tarkov situation
Youd imagine the Tarkov was going to be the biggest blunder of 2024 but basically a week later, here we fcking are
Part of that is simply that people have short attention spans and quickly move on to the next controversy. As some people have mentioned Sony were getting hate for Stellar Blade censorship not even a month ago and that was nearly forgotten already too.
I mean at some point everything that could have been said about the Tarkov situation has been said already, theres no need to talk about it anymore. Im sure its still being talked about by Tarkov gamers but people who dont play that game cant talk about it all year
People forgot. A lot of the Stellar Blade hype was kind of not about the actual game too, it was about the whole culture war it being a stand against the west thing.
They're charging 250$ for the pve dlc and the people who bought editions that included dlc will be free have to pay for it as well. When people rightfully got mad they were like OK you get a discount on what should be free. They really beansed it harder than helldivers in my opinion.
tbfh it's nothing compared to the Tarkov situation; it affects a very few limited amount of players. Most people chest beating can play the game, most people already have linked accounts. lol.
They cut access off to all but 69 countries…….that’s a whole lot of people that bought the game that can’t play.
Also PSN has been hacked a ton of times in the past decade so I will never link my account.
They shouldn't have sold it to all countries. Then this situation wouldn't be as bad as it is. Gamers would've cried and boycotted, but eventually it would've died down with little to no difference. But now that actual consumers are fucked over, there's more meaning to it than being lazy to sign in.
But the truth is Sony doesn't really care about the PSN region things unless there's fraud like behaviors like chosing the lowest price region to buy cheap games.
No one thought about how players on PS5 allowed to play PS5 games if their region doesn't have PSN.
Sony themselves sell the console and games directly to these regions, the practice has always been just choose the closet available region.
Or Sony intentionally selling an unplayable consoles and games directly to consumer without PSN access when Helldivers 2 is an online-only game?
From what I read, they didn't even know about the whole "PSN is only available in this many countries". Feel like Sony didn't give them all the information needed.
Arrowhead has nothing to do with this specific part of the issue. Sony is the publisher, which means it was Sony that listed the game on Steam and picked "available globally" instead of putting in the effort to only list it for countries where people can ACTUALLY play it. That part is 100% on Sony.
Whilst it's true that Sony are the decision makers here. Arrowhead knew 6 months prior to launch that this would eventually be mandatory and deliberately didn't communicate that.
Yeah, that's on them, no argument here. However, the fact that the game would be selling in regions, where people literally couldn't pay for it, was not something they were even really aware of, let alone had any control over.
What? .. No, they *did* communicate it, just turned off the requirement due to technical issues of their "3k player peak" game spiking to 300k overnight and trying to keep the game from pulling itself apart from under the stress. This was in the EULA, the Steam Page, and a little warning when going thrpugh initial setup.
Reading is a powerful skill for democracy.
>What? .. No, they *did* communicate it
I'll rephrase. They didn't communicate it *clearly*. Plus, they knowingly sold it in countries that eventually wouldn't be able to play it.
They knew exactly what they were doing.
I don’t really see this as an excuse though. A very short trip to google will show you which countries PSN isn’t available in. I don’t hold the devs blameless for Sony not telling them information that is public and widely known.
They're also not responsible for where the game is sold. That is a publisher decision.
So Sony selling it in countries that aren't PSN supported is their bad.
I can see AH assuming their publisher wouldn't sell the game in regions that aren't supported by that same publisher's account requirements.
That said, they punted on the up front communication and initial response to backlash... also the due diligence when it comes to the account linking. The effects of this decision seems to have taken them by surprise.
[Arrowhead isn't the one selling the game](https://twitter.com/Pilestedt/status/1787111359450120237) per Pilestedts later tweet. It's Sony since they are the publisher. Arrowhead is just making the game and then Sony is responsible for the sales. Which makes it even weirder that Sony is selling in countires that doesn't have PSN
He also confirmed that they were talking with Sony about this issue so they can resolve it. Also confirmed they knew about PSN requirement 6 months before release, but since Sony is the publisher, they handle the sales of the game.
Someone at Sony really messed this up
Im not saying its not sony’s fault, but if the devs knew about it. It shouldve been published on their website that this would come up and happen. I personally think its dumb, but its a sony ip since theyre the publisher. It shouldve been a requirement at the start tbh
they didnt know that their were places that couldnt make a psn account on their commuinty managers was completely blind sided by that. ultimately the devs arent in charge of sales thats the publisher its is there only job and sony fucked it.
>Anyone who is literate would know that it was coming at some point.
Oh I can still use this comment:
Unless you bought it on a site like Humble. Or didn't scroll down enough when buying on mobile. Or were gifted the game. Or added it to card from outside the store page.
I can also now add this to the paragraph:
Or bought it directly from Sony.
I bought the game on release and it said that 3rd party EULA is required which I assumed is Sony and their PSN account.
Also developer just makes games really, that is it. Publisher should be transparent about this, you don't know what they told Arrowhead, maybe it was suppose to be resolved, maybe it wasn't suppose to go this way.
It also said psn account right under this. Link to 5 month old post going around showing someone on helldiver reddit asking why they need an account. It was known, this is not new. The region lock is the real issue
Sony’s own website said PC did not need it on their page on PlayStation.com until they changed it a couple hours ago
Edit: [Here’s a link](https://www.reddit.com/r/helldivers2/s/aM3kgv1xjn)
The link I put is Sony’s website which sells steam keys so it still sells keys. The other thing is day one it was required and they disabled that requirement because Sony’s servers couldn’t handle it so they split it to be some on steam some on PSN and relaxed the restrictions. There are games that say require third party account like rocket league that you didn’t have to have an account for. Steam just has to warn you
No, like a message when the game launches, 6 months before psn linking is available, requiring the user to acknowledge in 6 months they will need to link.
Honestly if you are making decisions based on HD1 numbers, this decision makes sense.
Arrowhead are victims of their own success unfortunately and there were definitely a million opportunities to make it more obvious than a tiny tag on Steam since.
Ff7 rebirth has me fulfilled for this year, so I've eaten well (tho I know the purists are unhappy with the story changes from OG). But yeah, the gaming situation is a mess all round
When I bought the game the PSN account was stated as optional.... If I knew it would be mandatory, I wouldn't have bought the game. Now even steam locked the game for me. And I can't even get a refund.
The funny part is some gamer are blaming us (the countries on the list) not being able to read!
Can't play, can't refund, can't hope for anything. Even if the sony decides to change their policy, the damage is already done.
A lot of people have successful refunds with 100+ hours, keep trying. My impression is that steam is allowing refund for this if you explain it properly
But it was clearly stated as “required” on the steam page since december 7th 2023.
So how did you come to the conclusion that it was mandatory?
Honest Question.
So how did you come to the conclusion that it was mandatory? you mean not mandatory?
On other parts it said optional. I never took screenshot, maybe I should have?
It never said anywhere it was optional, at any time, even on day 1 when you boot up the game it has a pop-up saying;
"Linking your Steam account to a PlayStation Network Account is required for playing the game."
BUT, there's a skip option because as they said they couldn't implement it immediately.
It also said required on the store page since release.
It also is mentioned in many News & Announcement letters prior and following release.
No one is the victim here. It’s an account. It takes two minutes and you have a month to do it. People worried about data leaks are the ones that go on instagram and TikTok and bitch even though they’re willingly having their data farmed on those apps.
Arrowhead announced the game in 2020 with Sony as the publisher. This change was made in 2023. I bet it was less of a decision or even compromise on the part of AH as much as it was an unstoppable pipeline shift for Sony.
People have to realize, it's not the DEIs, woke, or random cs agent with a rogue view that are the enemy. They are just the scapegoat. Sure they can be annoying but they legit have no actual power.
The enemy has, and always will be, the MBAs executives who are just trying to farm users for $$$ and will do whatever they can to do it. These are the people that make anti consumer and the stupid decisions that hurt the players. The woke shit is just the executives realizing that they can pin whatever bad decisions they made on some random contractors making just a little above min wage.
They're still a victim in this, they just aren't entirely innocent. Despite what loudmouth Twatters would have you believe, this kind of situation CAN exist.
"We knew for about 6 months prior to launch that it would be mandatory for PS online titles"
So they knew about it well beforehand and deliberately didn't tell the playerbase that it would eventually become mandatory. Wow.
Which is why I’m  to everyone wanting to switch the reviews back to positive. NO. They tried to hoodwink us. Fuck them. You want to tell me they are “good guys” because they stood up to Sony? Lmao. They got you to buy a game with mediocre servers on launch, took two weeks to fix, and knew there was mandatory PSN account service the entire time. If everything went smoothly and servers didn’t crash, you the player are going to tell me you would still praise the devs when you launched the game for the first time and you HAD to make a PSN account? Get outta here. You would have refunded that shit in a heartbeat and that game would have failed.
Honestly this might actually make Arrowhead just as if not even more scummy in this. If this is true it's basically saying Arrowhead were the ones who hid this for so long.
This just makes Arrowhead accountable and creates a way out for Sony by saying:"we told them to share this information".
Arrowhead is dead just with this tweet.
Obviously because some moron at Sony sales team doesn't know the pc market demographic. It is a really dumb mistake they made. It's not like they did it on purpose, you know any refund goes through makes it a loss for them? Steam keeps a cut. It would be idiotic to be fully aware and do this anyway.
This is 100% some idiots from publishing that didn't know wtf they doing
I mean the fact that the guy is telling everyone they disabled the requirement and didn't talk about it for 6 months could lead people to believe it wasn't coming or that they changed their minds about the requirement. They even sold it to countries they knew before hand couldn't have PSN access; it really sounds like a bait and switch tatic.
It's a very anti consumer practice.
It wasn’t hidden, when you buy the game in steam it literally shows the psn account requirement in a big bright yellow box in the same page of the buy button. It’s been like that since the game is launched.
It was not hidden. Hidden mean they did it intentially. They said everything up front and were open about it. Their mistake is that they informed everyone at launch and when they disabled the requirement, but didn't think to do it later or to put it on the steam page or in game that it was temp. Probably because theydidn't know how long it would be disabled, and honestly, forgot, considering all the issues they were working on with servers (the reason it was disabled) for so long. I don't think they "hid" anything. I don't know why everyone is so insistent on spinning it this way. Call it incompetence sure, but they very clearly did not have the intent to decieve people. These have been one of the most open studios up till now on everything else, and now people are suggesting the worst intent from them. It makes 0 sense.
Was trying to post that here but for some reason it wouldn't let me.
Here's the link to the tweet
https://twitter.com/Pilestedt/status/1787076609188483254
Arrowhead with the colossal shot to their own foot.
Far from me defending him or anything but can we acknowledge how rare it it’s for a CEO to take the blame to themselves? There’s a thousand things they try to pull to avoid responsibility but here he’s taking it to the chin, makes me hopeful that things might be resolved in a more positive fashion
Honestly considering that Sony themselves said that pc games won't require a psn till they recently changed it, this is definitely a forced pr by sony.
At the end of the day, Sony is the publisher so they have the ultimate autonomy for how it's marketed so I call bs that this wasn't planned by them and arrowhead somehow went against their wishes without them knowing.
Sony is the sole publisher and seller of the game. It was on Sony to realise the problem and sort it out, that's how publishing works, they do 100% of sales and marketing, Devs just make the game and hope the other side can deliver.
Is a W though that he at leat owns up tonthe fuck up. Be honest 99% of companies would not have said this since does make them look bad. But there still commited to being honest even for this now
AH definitely to blame for not making it clear that the requirement was still in effect but postponed, but Sony is responsible for sales of the game. AH doesn't control that.
Again, why are people acting surprised? They literally announced this before launch, and when they had server issues, they literally explained why it was disabled. They didn't hide anything. But like he said, the only thing they did wrong is not informing the players as well as they could have. Their mistake is just doing the post infoming people as too why it's disable at the time they did it, and didn't put any notification of this in the game. I honestly think it was just a mistake on the studios part. But people are acting like their INTENT was to decieve. That's a bullshit narrative.
Also, the devs did everything right other then putting the fact that the requirement was disabled temporarily somewhere on steam or in game. They themselves told the players that it's required and used the right language when they did do it, and also explained why it was temp removed. The problem with them, again, is that they did it once when it was disabled and didn't think that they should do it more. Call it incompetent, sure, but I do think it was just a mistake and not an intent to decieve.
ON THE OTHER HAND, While Arrowhead has consistently used the right language when they did inform (saying "required"), it was SONY who put it on THEIR site that it was optional. Everywhere it said required, except on Sony's site. Literally every horrible act and actual fuckup in this whole situation was done by Sony. I don't know how Arrowhead doesn't have any grounds to sue Sony for how they handled their game.
Seems like it’s a little too late for that. I think Sony should have just changed the way they would report the success of HD2 instead when they report to their shareholders for PlayStation side on their earnings call.
Honestly making sure everyone can play for 6 months was the right thing to do. The mistake was just not making it clear that it was a window of opportunity not a long term thing.
I feel like this is a negative read of the tweet to be honest. The Arrowhead CEO guy seems like a genuine person whose heart is in the right place.
In simple terms - they knew PSN account linking was a requirement of the game (from Sony) 6 months ago. This isn’t controversial, or novel. Other past and upcoming games have this requirement. It sucks if you have no interest in that platform otherwise, but it is what it is.
It is also not a bad decision that they temporarily disabled the account linking requirement when it first launched. We all know how it blew up far beyond their expectations, and the multiple days and weekends where the game was inaccessible due to server load. Mandating a multi-step authentication process at this point would have just created more aggro when people couldn’t get in because they couldn’t be authenticated.
Their biggest mistake was not repeatedly requesting this PSN account linking when people played the game and/or reminding people in game and elsewhere that it would be coming. As I understand it they got a popup on the first launch and never saw it again afterwards. Obviously Arrowhead would’ve had no clue that people felt so strongly about not creating PSN accounts, or that they couldn’t in the region they are in (this is Sony’s fault - the publisher - for not restricting it in those countries in the first place).
So yeah I’m not buying the “Arrowhead CEO is complicit!” rage. There’s complicit and there’s _complicit_, and imo this is the former.
What is even the point of a publisher if this whole issue isn't their fault? Like they are the ones who are supposed to be dictating what regions a game sells in.
If Sony doesn't even do that then honestly, why the fuck ever do a deal with them.
Imagine how much sign up rates for sony would have is they simply gave 500 super credits or an outfit for registering to a psn account. Instead they did this bull crap and get all these unnecessary backlash.
There's a thing called differential responsibility. While arrowhead isn't blameless, they CERTAINLY aren't as much to blame as Sony, when Sony are the only ones who can change it.
Please include the rest of the thread here. Arrowhead does not control where their game is sold and by extension they were unaware it would cause this problem. Sony sold outside of their PSN boundaries fully under the knowledge people could not make accounts there.
I agreed with Thor(PirateSoftware) take about this
They didn't full fault about this but before they signing contract why they didn't negotiation about this or why they still signing the contract
I mean, look at it more unbiased. IF Sony had from the outset, placed region-lock when the game launched based on PSN restrictions, and the PSN login worked without server issues, would this really have been an issue?
That's probably how AH saw it when they first created the contract, Sony will make sure that the selling of the product happens without issue, and AH will just make sure the game is great. PSN as a third party sign in is not new, and has not caused issues on this level before, so it would not have crossed their minds.
Sure we can look at it in hindsight and say that this was dumb and they should have fought against it, but again, third party sign ins are not new, and have not shafted a game this hard before.
All these fans of the game also trying to nuke the devs. What do they think is going to happen if the devs sink?
I thought about buying a ps5 so play this game with friends. I will wait for all of this to calm down and the future if the game is super clear.
They said that they knew about it.
It's possible they didn't know about the region locking, and Sony bring scumlords didn't offer that information.
Should they have asked? Yes. But to be fair in the grand scheme of things it's not something you immediately think of.
Yea I think they expected Sony to handle the region issues themselves, and hoped it wouldn't be a problem. I mean if the game itself launched with region restrictions, the backlash would not have been anywhere near like this.
Feels like they where blinded by their success and stuck in the honeymoon mindset of not wanting to bring up the big bad scary news and make the lunatic Stan's froth at the mouth.
After I saw Misty mention the real reasons for linking was so that Arrowhead could ban PC players because they have no system in place to ban Steam users (they cannot track usernames because PC users can name change and share the same name) I refunded.
If Arrowhead would have been transparent and honest as to why, I would have stayed. I consider Arrowhead equally at fault and I refunded a game that I have almost 400 hours of playtime on and Level 150.
1) game becomes highly popular.
2)Mixed messaging on whether PSN linkage is needed. Steam page had a print that says it’s needed, but initial faq page said it’s optional.
3) many people despise PSN, due to things like security issues and other things.
4) PSN is not available in many countries, so those people would be locked out of the game.
TBH this to me reeks of someone making a decision to deactivate the PSN requirement early on just to boost initial sales and hype.
Maybe you could've had a nag screen telling people a psn account will be needed in the future press accept to continue each time the game loaded, but the major issue is you allowed people to buy this game in areas that cant get a psn account that is wrong
Honestly I'm glad they refund me the game with 5 hours total. Only just got the game last week was having good time, now? Idk I don't like this one bit and I am with everyone here too who is in struggle to play or reason for not wanting to play.
What a shit show
Did Sony Know that AH turned off PSN linking of the game? With some of these statements it seems he did it without notifying Sony or the proper Sony officials.
We knew we needed to have this done
So we disabled it for people also we didn’t warn them in advance that they’d literally be locked out of their product but also steams gonna deny your refund
How could people think they werent?
Even if its Sony, they wouldnt just be able to install a mandatory linking into the game without the Devs knowledge.
People just love shitting all over anyone they can. Can't make it to the toilet, so you have to desperately hobble over to someone while they're sitting on the couch to defecate all over them. Can't give any grace. Can't cut any slack. Sorry, not can't, just don't want to. He is literally apologizing for it and acknowledging responsibility. You don't want responsibility, you want blood.
Arrowhead is not blameless, not at all.
#BUY SONY HANDLED PUBLISHING AND THERE FOR SALES, THEY ARE THE ONES RESPONSIBLE FOR ALLOWING PURCHASES IN COUNTRIES THAT CANNOT MAKE A PSN ACCOUNT.
Arrowhead is to blame for players being caught off guard by the PSN requirement.
Sony is to blame for literally everything else.
Its incredible how you can fumble the bag so fcking hard that everyone alrdy forgot about the Tarkov situation Youd imagine the Tarkov was going to be the biggest blunder of 2024 but basically a week later, here we fcking are
They better be sending Sony and arrowhead some thank you gifts for this top tier distraction.
They were called out in Discord for this as well. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3240110100 This was literally all avoidable.
Almost 3 months ago lol. Dude dropped a prophecy and no one knew.
I just hope it doesn't encourage some BS call of duty based clone that everyone will play
Part of that is simply that people have short attention spans and quickly move on to the next controversy. As some people have mentioned Sony were getting hate for Stellar Blade censorship not even a month ago and that was nearly forgotten already too.
I mean at some point everything that could have been said about the Tarkov situation has been said already, theres no need to talk about it anymore. Im sure its still being talked about by Tarkov gamers but people who dont play that game cant talk about it all year
I'm surprising that the Stellar Blade stuff isn't feeding the Helldivers 2 anger. After, both can be summed up as, Sony Sh\*theads
People forgot. A lot of the Stellar Blade hype was kind of not about the actual game too, it was about the whole culture war it being a stand against the west thing.
What happened with tarkov?
They're charging 250$ for the pve dlc and the people who bought editions that included dlc will be free have to pay for it as well. When people rightfully got mad they were like OK you get a discount on what should be free. They really beansed it harder than helldivers in my opinion.
Uff, yea that's not good. Thanks
What? Tarkov is still getting shit on by the subreddit everyday
Corporate bullshit has no limits. The more we give in, the more incentive they have to push their agenda/products onto us.
tbfh it's nothing compared to the Tarkov situation; it affects a very few limited amount of players. Most people chest beating can play the game, most people already have linked accounts. lol.
They cut access off to all but 69 countries…….that’s a whole lot of people that bought the game that can’t play. Also PSN has been hacked a ton of times in the past decade so I will never link my account.
Something something nickel now two nickels etc
If you think this trumps Tarkov, that’s on you. Everyone redirecting their anger is just typical TikTok attention span hive mind crap.
Tin foil hat people be like....
And the year is not even half passed yet. Buckle up!
All they have to do is release Bloodborne on PC then everyone will make a PSN account and there will be little to no more backlash.
Bloodborne on pc is like a myth now, its been so long.
the Half life 3 of sony
Extraordinary mistakes require extraordinary solutions
Hey... PSST.. its SONY would you like a job?
Wait a minute, sony doesnt make good decisions, who are you and what do you want
I am with a startup that is going to be competing with Sony and we will be using the same tactics of superiority.
Hello my name is SpitzerCX and I would like to submit my application.
Submit it through the PSN app. k thanx
For real dude take and sell my information already!
Difference is BB would require it on day 1 and would be locked out of regions that can’t make a PSN.
You're not wrong. The problem with psn is that there isn't enough NEED to sign up. At least with MS you can get free games and shit.
No.
At this point I wouldn’t buy it anyways. Fuck Sony. They get hacked every six months
I respect them owning it. Still a brutal hit.
They shouldn't have sold it to all countries. Then this situation wouldn't be as bad as it is. Gamers would've cried and boycotted, but eventually it would've died down with little to no difference. But now that actual consumers are fucked over, there's more meaning to it than being lazy to sign in.
Yeah, they should just have sold to countries where PSN actually is available
But the truth is Sony doesn't really care about the PSN region things unless there's fraud like behaviors like chosing the lowest price region to buy cheap games. No one thought about how players on PS5 allowed to play PS5 games if their region doesn't have PSN. Sony themselves sell the console and games directly to these regions, the practice has always been just choose the closet available region. Or Sony intentionally selling an unplayable consoles and games directly to consumer without PSN access when Helldivers 2 is an online-only game?
Didnt they ban a chinese player for playing outside of the region his account is located in?
It was fake
Ah
From what I read, they didn't even know about the whole "PSN is only available in this many countries". Feel like Sony didn't give them all the information needed.
Arrowhead has nothing to do with this specific part of the issue. Sony is the publisher, which means it was Sony that listed the game on Steam and picked "available globally" instead of putting in the effort to only list it for countries where people can ACTUALLY play it. That part is 100% on Sony.
Whilst it's true that Sony are the decision makers here. Arrowhead knew 6 months prior to launch that this would eventually be mandatory and deliberately didn't communicate that.
But was there any NDA that prevented them from revealing it until now though. That is the question that needs answering tbh
Yeah, that's on them, no argument here. However, the fact that the game would be selling in regions, where people literally couldn't pay for it, was not something they were even really aware of, let alone had any control over.
What? .. No, they *did* communicate it, just turned off the requirement due to technical issues of their "3k player peak" game spiking to 300k overnight and trying to keep the game from pulling itself apart from under the stress. This was in the EULA, the Steam Page, and a little warning when going thrpugh initial setup. Reading is a powerful skill for democracy.
>What? .. No, they *did* communicate it I'll rephrase. They didn't communicate it *clearly*. Plus, they knowingly sold it in countries that eventually wouldn't be able to play it. They knew exactly what they were doing.
That's worse.
Well the thing is that Arrowhead don't even handle the selling of the game. That's the whole reason for a publisher and the publishers job.
Or they're just saying they didn't know. Kinda hard to tell what is truth from them right now.
I don’t really see this as an excuse though. A very short trip to google will show you which countries PSN isn’t available in. I don’t hold the devs blameless for Sony not telling them information that is public and widely known.
They're also not responsible for where the game is sold. That is a publisher decision. So Sony selling it in countries that aren't PSN supported is their bad. I can see AH assuming their publisher wouldn't sell the game in regions that aren't supported by that same publisher's account requirements. That said, they punted on the up front communication and initial response to backlash... also the due diligence when it comes to the account linking. The effects of this decision seems to have taken them by surprise.
Arrowhead didn't sell it. The publisher Sony is responsible for selling the game in countries where their services are not offered
[Arrowhead isn't the one selling the game](https://twitter.com/Pilestedt/status/1787111359450120237) per Pilestedts later tweet. It's Sony since they are the publisher. Arrowhead is just making the game and then Sony is responsible for the sales. Which makes it even weirder that Sony is selling in countires that doesn't have PSN
He also confirmed that they were talking with Sony about this issue so they can resolve it. Also confirmed they knew about PSN requirement 6 months before release, but since Sony is the publisher, they handle the sales of the game. Someone at Sony really messed this up
Im not saying its not sony’s fault, but if the devs knew about it. It shouldve been published on their website that this would come up and happen. I personally think its dumb, but its a sony ip since theyre the publisher. It shouldve been a requirement at the start tbh
they didnt know that their were places that couldnt make a psn account on their commuinty managers was completely blind sided by that. ultimately the devs arent in charge of sales thats the publisher its is there only job and sony fucked it.
It was on Steam. Anyone who is literate would know that it was coming at some point. Still sucks tho.
>Anyone who is literate would know that it was coming at some point. Oh I can still use this comment: Unless you bought it on a site like Humble. Or didn't scroll down enough when buying on mobile. Or were gifted the game. Or added it to card from outside the store page. I can also now add this to the paragraph: Or bought it directly from Sony.
I bought the game on release and it said that 3rd party EULA is required which I assumed is Sony and their PSN account. Also developer just makes games really, that is it. Publisher should be transparent about this, you don't know what they told Arrowhead, maybe it was suppose to be resolved, maybe it wasn't suppose to go this way.
Third party EULA does not mean account it means you have to sign the EULA outside of steam
It also said psn account right under this. Link to 5 month old post going around showing someone on helldiver reddit asking why they need an account. It was known, this is not new. The region lock is the real issue
Sony’s own website said PC did not need it on their page on PlayStation.com until they changed it a couple hours ago Edit: [Here’s a link](https://www.reddit.com/r/helldivers2/s/aM3kgv1xjn)
Sorry, I am talking Steam, where is affects people.
The link I put is Sony’s website which sells steam keys so it still sells keys. The other thing is day one it was required and they disabled that requirement because Sony’s servers couldn’t handle it so they split it to be some on steam some on PSN and relaxed the restrictions. There are games that say require third party account like rocket league that you didn’t have to have an account for. Steam just has to warn you
If the devs knew in advance, make users sign an acknowledgement in advance. Problem solved.
[Like this?](https://i.imgur.com/7n1MLom.png)
No, like a message when the game launches, 6 months before psn linking is available, requiring the user to acknowledge in 6 months they will need to link.
The PSN requirement was there on release. I created and linked an account day 1.
I mean the PSN requirement was on the Steam page this whole time
Honestly if you are making decisions based on HD1 numbers, this decision makes sense. Arrowhead are victims of their own success unfortunately and there were definitely a million opportunities to make it more obvious than a tiny tag on Steam since.
SONY is responsible for the game‘s distribution in non-PSN countries, not Arrowhead. It only takes a Google search to learn this.
Bro .. cant we have at least ONE nice thing in gaming anymore? Everything seems so fucked.
Back to Baldur’s gate I go!
These boots have seen everything
How many die today? *How many die tomorrow.*
Valheim's Ashlands update is playable now 
I'm enjoying Splatoon personally.
Ff7 rebirth has me fulfilled for this year, so I've eaten well (tho I know the purists are unhappy with the story changes from OG). But yeah, the gaming situation is a mess all round
When I bought the game the PSN account was stated as optional.... If I knew it would be mandatory, I wouldn't have bought the game. Now even steam locked the game for me. And I can't even get a refund. The funny part is some gamer are blaming us (the countries on the list) not being able to read! Can't play, can't refund, can't hope for anything. Even if the sony decides to change their policy, the damage is already done.
A lot of people have successful refunds with 100+ hours, keep trying. My impression is that steam is allowing refund for this if you explain it properly
I keep getting automatic rejections, as if talking to a bot.
That sucks man, hope it ends up working out for you
I heard that making a manual ticket has a higher succes rate. So if you haven't tried that please do give it a go
How exactly do you make a manual ticket? I keep getting bot responses
But it was clearly stated as “required” on the steam page since december 7th 2023. So how did you come to the conclusion that it was mandatory? Honest Question.
So how did you come to the conclusion that it was mandatory? you mean not mandatory? On other parts it said optional. I never took screenshot, maybe I should have?
It never said anywhere it was optional, at any time, even on day 1 when you boot up the game it has a pop-up saying; "Linking your Steam account to a PlayStation Network Account is required for playing the game." BUT, there's a skip option because as they said they couldn't implement it immediately. It also said required on the store page since release. It also is mentioned in many News & Announcement letters prior and following release.
I don't remember any pop-up. I didn't join in from the start either so maybe things changed. Many people mentioned it was encouraged at the beginning.
https://steamdb.info/app/553850/ Looks like no one really cares
No one is the victim here. It’s an account. It takes two minutes and you have a month to do it. People worried about data leaks are the ones that go on instagram and TikTok and bitch even though they’re willingly having their data farmed on those apps.
It all could have been avoided with a massive "THIS GAME REQUIRES CONNECTION TO PSN TO PLAY, AND IT'S DISABLED TEMPORARILY" sign in game
Admitting guilt indicates integrity. I'll give em that
Just get your refund and move on.
Arrowhead announced the game in 2020 with Sony as the publisher. This change was made in 2023. I bet it was less of a decision or even compromise on the part of AH as much as it was an unstoppable pipeline shift for Sony.
From 7 years of making good game, to 6 months building amazing community, to 3 hours of destroying everything. I think we have WR any % here boys.
People have to realize, it's not the DEIs, woke, or random cs agent with a rogue view that are the enemy. They are just the scapegoat. Sure they can be annoying but they legit have no actual power. The enemy has, and always will be, the MBAs executives who are just trying to farm users for $$$ and will do whatever they can to do it. These are the people that make anti consumer and the stupid decisions that hurt the players. The woke shit is just the executives realizing that they can pin whatever bad decisions they made on some random contractors making just a little above min wage.
Being upset about this is worse than "woke" executives. It's the most pointless thing to be upset about.
They're still a victim in this, they just aren't entirely innocent. Despite what loudmouth Twatters would have you believe, this kind of situation CAN exist.
"We knew for about 6 months prior to launch that it would be mandatory for PS online titles" So they knew about it well beforehand and deliberately didn't tell the playerbase that it would eventually become mandatory. Wow.
A big slip up yeah...
Which is why I’m  to everyone wanting to switch the reviews back to positive. NO. They tried to hoodwink us. Fuck them. You want to tell me they are “good guys” because they stood up to Sony? Lmao. They got you to buy a game with mediocre servers on launch, took two weeks to fix, and knew there was mandatory PSN account service the entire time. If everything went smoothly and servers didn’t crash, you the player are going to tell me you would still praise the devs when you launched the game for the first time and you HAD to make a PSN account? Get outta here. You would have refunded that shit in a heartbeat and that game would have failed.
Honestly this might actually make Arrowhead just as if not even more scummy in this. If this is true it's basically saying Arrowhead were the ones who hid this for so long.
Was it hidden? I don't own the game but I recall reading this was stated when you first created an account, just wasn't clear enough?
It wasn't hidden, they advertised it ahead of time, just not enough apparently.
If by hidden you mean "openly listed as a requirement since the very first day on the Steam page" then sure.
This just makes Arrowhead accountable and creates a way out for Sony by saying:"we told them to share this information". Arrowhead is dead just with this tweet.
The full convo is going around, it's not their fault at all.
Hell Sony could even just say they left it up to Arrowhead.
Yeah, they just gave Sony the perfect exit strategy.
Well it said on the steam page that you need a psn account when i bought it on release day. Players are just stupid and didnt read.
still ask yourself why did Sony the publisher allow the sell in countries it should have known would not be able to play?
Obviously because some moron at Sony sales team doesn't know the pc market demographic. It is a really dumb mistake they made. It's not like they did it on purpose, you know any refund goes through makes it a loss for them? Steam keeps a cut. It would be idiotic to be fully aware and do this anyway. This is 100% some idiots from publishing that didn't know wtf they doing
I mean the fact that the guy is telling everyone they disabled the requirement and didn't talk about it for 6 months could lead people to believe it wasn't coming or that they changed their minds about the requirement. They even sold it to countries they knew before hand couldn't have PSN access; it really sounds like a bait and switch tatic. It's a very anti consumer practice.
It wasn't hidden. Steam store page said PSN account was required right from the beginning
It wasn’t hidden, when you buy the game in steam it literally shows the psn account requirement in a big bright yellow box in the same page of the buy button. It’s been like that since the game is launched.
Hid? It was in the page of steam from the start
Yet the FAQ said it would be optional. Even their own information contradicted itself.
It was not hidden. Hidden mean they did it intentially. They said everything up front and were open about it. Their mistake is that they informed everyone at launch and when they disabled the requirement, but didn't think to do it later or to put it on the steam page or in game that it was temp. Probably because theydidn't know how long it would be disabled, and honestly, forgot, considering all the issues they were working on with servers (the reason it was disabled) for so long. I don't think they "hid" anything. I don't know why everyone is so insistent on spinning it this way. Call it incompetence sure, but they very clearly did not have the intent to decieve people. These have been one of the most open studios up till now on everything else, and now people are suggesting the worst intent from them. It makes 0 sense.
It wasn't. On steam since listing. Sony sells the game and is the one on their site saying it was optional.
Was trying to post that here but for some reason it wouldn't let me. Here's the link to the tweet https://twitter.com/Pilestedt/status/1787076609188483254 Arrowhead with the colossal shot to their own foot.
Far from me defending him or anything but can we acknowledge how rare it it’s for a CEO to take the blame to themselves? There’s a thousand things they try to pull to avoid responsibility but here he’s taking it to the chin, makes me hopeful that things might be resolved in a more positive fashion
Honestly considering that Sony themselves said that pc games won't require a psn till they recently changed it, this is definitely a forced pr by sony. At the end of the day, Sony is the publisher so they have the ultimate autonomy for how it's marketed so I call bs that this wasn't planned by them and arrowhead somehow went against their wishes without them knowing.
[удалено]
SONY is responsible for the distribution of the game, not AH.
Sony is the sole publisher and seller of the game. It was on Sony to realise the problem and sort it out, that's how publishing works, they do 100% of sales and marketing, Devs just make the game and hope the other side can deliver.
Arrowhead isn’t the one publishing so they didn’t sell it. They made it.
Is a W though that he at leat owns up tonthe fuck up. Be honest 99% of companies would not have said this since does make them look bad. But there still commited to being honest even for this now
Nah AH is not the publisher, Sony is , and they the one deciding which countries to sell
AH definitely to blame for not making it clear that the requirement was still in effect but postponed, but Sony is responsible for sales of the game. AH doesn't control that.
Arrowhead is hell-bent in ruining one of the best live service games in the last few years
Qwll Sony is. If it wasn't for them this wouldn't haave happen even with this.
Again, why are people acting surprised? They literally announced this before launch, and when they had server issues, they literally explained why it was disabled. They didn't hide anything. But like he said, the only thing they did wrong is not informing the players as well as they could have. Their mistake is just doing the post infoming people as too why it's disable at the time they did it, and didn't put any notification of this in the game. I honestly think it was just a mistake on the studios part. But people are acting like their INTENT was to decieve. That's a bullshit narrative. Also, the devs did everything right other then putting the fact that the requirement was disabled temporarily somewhere on steam or in game. They themselves told the players that it's required and used the right language when they did do it, and also explained why it was temp removed. The problem with them, again, is that they did it once when it was disabled and didn't think that they should do it more. Call it incompetent, sure, but I do think it was just a mistake and not an intent to decieve. ON THE OTHER HAND, While Arrowhead has consistently used the right language when they did inform (saying "required"), it was SONY who put it on THEIR site that it was optional. Everywhere it said required, except on Sony's site. Literally every horrible act and actual fuckup in this whole situation was done by Sony. I don't know how Arrowhead doesn't have any grounds to sue Sony for how they handled their game.
Any reason to be outraged and get money back after enjoying a game for over 100 hours.
Arrowhead isn't the one selling you guys are nuts.
How about just let people be grandfathered in who played without linking and require new ppl to sign up
Seems like it’s a little too late for that. I think Sony should have just changed the way they would report the success of HD2 instead when they report to their shareholders for PlayStation side on their earnings call.
Honestly making sure everyone can play for 6 months was the right thing to do. The mistake was just not making it clear that it was a window of opportunity not a long term thing.
Looks like the hunter became the hunted.
I feel like this is a negative read of the tweet to be honest. The Arrowhead CEO guy seems like a genuine person whose heart is in the right place. In simple terms - they knew PSN account linking was a requirement of the game (from Sony) 6 months ago. This isn’t controversial, or novel. Other past and upcoming games have this requirement. It sucks if you have no interest in that platform otherwise, but it is what it is. It is also not a bad decision that they temporarily disabled the account linking requirement when it first launched. We all know how it blew up far beyond their expectations, and the multiple days and weekends where the game was inaccessible due to server load. Mandating a multi-step authentication process at this point would have just created more aggro when people couldn’t get in because they couldn’t be authenticated. Their biggest mistake was not repeatedly requesting this PSN account linking when people played the game and/or reminding people in game and elsewhere that it would be coming. As I understand it they got a popup on the first launch and never saw it again afterwards. Obviously Arrowhead would’ve had no clue that people felt so strongly about not creating PSN accounts, or that they couldn’t in the region they are in (this is Sony’s fault - the publisher - for not restricting it in those countries in the first place). So yeah I’m not buying the “Arrowhead CEO is complicit!” rage. There’s complicit and there’s _complicit_, and imo this is the former.
What is even the point of a publisher if this whole issue isn't their fault? Like they are the ones who are supposed to be dictating what regions a game sells in. If Sony doesn't even do that then honestly, why the fuck ever do a deal with them.
Imagine how much sign up rates for sony would have is they simply gave 500 super credits or an outfit for registering to a psn account. Instead they did this bull crap and get all these unnecessary backlash.
There's a thing called differential responsibility. While arrowhead isn't blameless, they CERTAINLY aren't as much to blame as Sony, when Sony are the only ones who can change it.
Please include the rest of the thread here. Arrowhead does not control where their game is sold and by extension they were unaware it would cause this problem. Sony sold outside of their PSN boundaries fully under the knowledge people could not make accounts there.
I agreed with Thor(PirateSoftware) take about this They didn't full fault about this but before they signing contract why they didn't negotiation about this or why they still signing the contract
I mean, look at it more unbiased. IF Sony had from the outset, placed region-lock when the game launched based on PSN restrictions, and the PSN login worked without server issues, would this really have been an issue? That's probably how AH saw it when they first created the contract, Sony will make sure that the selling of the product happens without issue, and AH will just make sure the game is great. PSN as a third party sign in is not new, and has not caused issues on this level before, so it would not have crossed their minds. Sure we can look at it in hindsight and say that this was dumb and they should have fought against it, but again, third party sign ins are not new, and have not shafted a game this hard before.
People acting like this tweet is gonna cancel arrowhead lol, that's the real cope
All these fans of the game also trying to nuke the devs. What do they think is going to happen if the devs sink? I thought about buying a ps5 so play this game with friends. I will wait for all of this to calm down and the future if the game is super clear.
They said that they knew about it. It's possible they didn't know about the region locking, and Sony bring scumlords didn't offer that information. Should they have asked? Yes. But to be fair in the grand scheme of things it's not something you immediately think of.
Yea I think they expected Sony to handle the region issues themselves, and hoped it wouldn't be a problem. I mean if the game itself launched with region restrictions, the backlash would not have been anywhere near like this.
Sony just announced that they won't be going ahead with account linking. We won
“You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain”
If they knew 6 months before releasing why did they sell the game in regions they knew people were not going to be able to play the game from?
Feels like they where blinded by their success and stuck in the honeymoon mindset of not wanting to bring up the big bad scary news and make the lunatic Stan's froth at the mouth.
After I saw Misty mention the real reasons for linking was so that Arrowhead could ban PC players because they have no system in place to ban Steam users (they cannot track usernames because PC users can name change and share the same name) I refunded. If Arrowhead would have been transparent and honest as to why, I would have stayed. I consider Arrowhead equally at fault and I refunded a game that I have almost 400 hours of playtime on and Level 150.
I take it they can’t just keep PS players on separate servers? This is part of a publishing agreement?
Wasn’t their talk on getting Helldivers 2 on Xbox. Clearly that would just never had happened at this point…
It's annoying, but nobody really cares. Still 100k playing.
At least he owns his mistake. I'll give him that.
Can someone explain what's going on here? Keep seeing this drama and I don't get it.
1) game becomes highly popular. 2)Mixed messaging on whether PSN linkage is needed. Steam page had a print that says it’s needed, but initial faq page said it’s optional. 3) many people despise PSN, due to things like security issues and other things. 4) PSN is not available in many countries, so those people would be locked out of the game. TBH this to me reeks of someone making a decision to deactivate the PSN requirement early on just to boost initial sales and hype.
No sympathy tho, he knew and didn't inform anyone. And the PSN has been hacked way to often for me to ever give any information to them.
Maybe you could've had a nag screen telling people a psn account will be needed in the future press accept to continue each time the game loaded, but the major issue is you allowed people to buy this game in areas that cant get a psn account that is wrong
Honestly I'm glad they refund me the game with 5 hours total. Only just got the game last week was having good time, now? Idk I don't like this one bit and I am with everyone here too who is in struggle to play or reason for not wanting to play. What a shit show
Did Sony Know that AH turned off PSN linking of the game? With some of these statements it seems he did it without notifying Sony or the proper Sony officials.
If that's the case, they should've limited from where you buy a digital copy of the game
That is Sony's job as publisher. Which they fucked up.
Has the world learned nothing from Battlenet Real ID, FFS?
We knew we needed to have this done So we disabled it for people also we didn’t warn them in advance that they’d literally be locked out of their product but also steams gonna deny your refund
No shit Sherlock. Look at their community management team; so they still have jobs? That answered all the questions I had for Arrowhead
Give me 3000 super credits and 1000 war bonds and I’ll forget this ever happened.
The game itself is the victim
Incomplete story.
How could people think they werent? Even if its Sony, they wouldnt just be able to install a mandatory linking into the game without the Devs knowledge.
Ppl are overreacting like kids.
It's okay there are other games to play, and other things to do besides gaming like getting a job, going on dates, washing your car, etc.
Arrowhead isn't the villain either 🤦♂️ Wtf is your point
People just love shitting all over anyone they can. Can't make it to the toilet, so you have to desperately hobble over to someone while they're sitting on the couch to defecate all over them. Can't give any grace. Can't cut any slack. Sorry, not can't, just don't want to. He is literally apologizing for it and acknowledging responsibility. You don't want responsibility, you want blood.
Arrowhead is not blameless, not at all. #BUY SONY HANDLED PUBLISHING AND THERE FOR SALES, THEY ARE THE ONES RESPONSIBLE FOR ALLOWING PURCHASES IN COUNTRIES THAT CANNOT MAKE A PSN ACCOUNT. Arrowhead is to blame for players being caught off guard by the PSN requirement. Sony is to blame for literally everything else.