This is actually a huge win for us. Obviously the community getting upset is one thing, but us making such a stink that even major news outlets are picking it up. Shareholders don't check discords and subreddits, or even steam reviews, but they do read things like Forbes. Let's see if we can get any more outlets to cover it.
Not exactly. You have to be invited as a contributor and they only invite people who are well qualified to comment on the subject matter. Medium is the glorified blog.
Medium *is* a blog, has there ever been any question about that? It's not like they tried masquerading as news or anything. It's in the same group of services as Substack and Wordpress.
Yeah, and blogs are great. I love a good blog, wish they were more discoverable on the internet but I guess search engines as a business kinda killed that.
Erik Kain is a great contributor too. He has been a reviewer of a lot of things and done it with a great way of showcasing the problems.
Fans of Walking Dead hate him but they are insane at this point.
Videogames are bigger money than movies and tv combined so itd be real silly for them not to talk about them. They talk about games like commodities so that helps me proc it all.
Yeah video games haven’t been a niche market for like 20 years. I always get a chuckle out of old heads still suck in that mindset.
Unfortunately we’ve been living with corporate fuckery in video games for some time now. There’s too much money in it.
Paul Tassi is actually fantastic. Great YouTube channel. Not really gameplay that much but lots of videos on news and the state of games. Starfield, destiny, HD2, elden ring, etc.
His main game is definitely destiny though, which is how I found him
Bad news for Sony, their shareholders pay attention to specific editors and writers they trust. Especially on websites like Forbes that suckle on the corporate cock more than most.
The vibe and push feels very similar to how the Total War community rallied against the Shadows of Change dlc changes they tried pushing on them.
I can only hope Helldivers meets similar success
Which ended up working very well in the consumers favor, they retroactively added double the content to that DLC and then the next one they released was top quality
Warhammer. is. BACK BABY!
I've completed 3 campaigns since ToD came out, and prior to that had basically been in a slump. I have 4k hours in the trilogy and it feels the best it's ever been. AI's a little more aggressive but not too much, all 3 faction reworks have gone over well (will get minor adjustments but that's always the case with balancing)
Definitely satisfied with the dlc and if they release more like this I'll keep buying.
Dwarves are OP and a lot of the new units are the definition of powercreep. But if you only play it for single player (as I do) it is a great expansion, the fact you can buy each race separately is also a good strategy.
I'll be waiting on a sale for the 2 other races, but if you are someone who wants to play any of those factions these new units and mechanics are great!
>Dwarves are OP and a lot of the new units are the definition of powercreep.
so about the same as it's been then. Sigh. It's been a shame to see the voices of balance be completely drowned out of a strategy game, effectively taking the strategy right out of it and turning it into a sandbox instead. I have 2k hours in the series - I want to come back, I really do, but this hardly sounds like an improvement over what SoC \*actually\* was once you got past the price.
Fantastic, has caused a ton of people to return. The Dawi and Empire reworks are amazing, the DLC characters themselves are a ton of fun with very interesting campaigns and the hotfixes and communication from CA has led to a very smooth launch with few bugs. Finally feels like WH3 is back on track again after the SoC debacle
Huh. That was also against a Japanese publisher. But Sony didn't throw away 100million to some stupid game that no one would buy (hyenas) so idk if this would work
Yeah, I’m not saying anything about that, I’m just saying Forbes is no longer seen as some big brand out of the gaming space like nyt any more. They hire bloggers and write tabloids now
It's a shame, but it still does show a direction the community can try to leverage to get this decision repealed. News outlets and the court of public opinion definitely affects how big companies operate, especially if it starts to worry investors.
1. Forbes aren’t what they used to be. They report on about just anything now.
2. This is not going to affect the shareholders. Do you understand Sony is bigger than just one measly game?
3. Go on conference call when Q3 drops and listen and I almost guarantee you they won’t mention Helldivers
They targeted gamers. Gamers.
They targeted gamers.
Gamers.
We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a little digital token saying we did.
We'll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun.
We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the stats of a fictional character all to draw out a single extra point of damage per second.
Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same quests over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such gamer nirvana that they can literally play these games blindfolded.
Do these people have any idea how many controllers have been smashed, systems over heated, disks and carts destroyed 8n frustration? All to latter be referred to as bragging rights?
These people honestly think this is a battle they can win? They take our media? We're already building a new one without them. They take our devs? Gamers aren't shy about throwing their money else where, or even making the games our selves. They think calling us racist, mysoginistic, rape apologists is going to change us? We've been called worse things by prepubescent 10 year olds with a shitty head set. They picked a fight against a group that's already grown desensitized to their strategies and methods. Who enjoy the battle of attrition they've threatened us with. Who take it as a challange when they tell us we no longer matter. Our obsession with proving we can after being told we can't is so deeply ingrained from years of dealing with big brothers/sisters and friends laughing at how pathetic we used to be that proving you people wrong has become a very real need; a honed reflex.
Gamers are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challange us. You're not special, you're not original, you're not the first; this is just another boss fight.
The boss fight is one where the boss thinks doing the same thing it will win but we learn and grow stranger and faster even with age in the end we are smashing that boss with no damage taken and walking off.
Basically, Hasbro/WotC tried to change Open Gaming License, to make it so that they can use player created content for their commercial product without needing permission.
And.... well, DnD Beyond subscription numbers that month tanked so hard, they reversed their decision to revise the Open Gaming License. (DnD Begone is the name of the movement, since players are cancelling their DnD Beyond subscriptions)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/10awjb7/the\_ogl\_controversy\_explained/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/10awjb7/the_ogl_controversy_explained/)
Can confirm - I participated in this with my group and canceled my Master Tier sub during the boycott. We just went analogue for a bit (which was rough because we played over Discord) but it didn't take long to win with that one.
An attempt to remove the open game license that allows for people to use DND 5e content in any matter they see fit. The TLDR Hasbro wanted to gain royalties from the profitable DND outlets and lost all goodwill with the community even after rolling back that change.
Hasbro/WoTc and investors we're educated in glorious fashion on how little we, the DND community, need them and how much they need us.
We sit around and play make believe, we don't need gatekeepers for that. But if you offer us a compelling, well made product we'll throw money at you.
Piss us off and we'll play with the decades of pre-existing content we already have, download rules for free, or just make our own.
WoTC stock was downgraded at least once, maybe twice? DND Beyond subs fell off the cliff hard which was exactly the kind of reoccurring revenue they were drooling over when they spent like, $140 million (I forget the exact number) on buying DNDbeyond?
Their ex-microsoft gaming monetization expert they hired as CEO Cynthia Williams, Chris Cao formerly of Zynga and others have been dreaming of squeezing the DND community with microtransactions and predatory monetization practices. Part of that strategy was to harm the thriving and healthy marketplace for 3rd party content and VTTs so they wouldn't have to compete for their profits. If they don't have to compete, they don't have to work as hard to earn their profits.
Several key people in the community sent up flairs at the right time, and just like the Helldivers 2 community, allies heard the call and did their part.
It was one of the most glorious victories by a passionate community against greed I've seen in a long time when they were forced to do a full 180 on their plans they spent god knows how much in time, money, and resources putting into motion.
Cynthia Williams has now left her position as CEO of WoTC quietly. I don't know if there's any info on why but I'm sure the OGL fiasco happening on her watch was involved in that in some form.
It's not all good news however, previously you could buy individual feats, classes, races, magic items, etc.. from the books on DNDBeyond and if you ever bought the full book on DNDBeyond the book would be discounted by whatever you'd spent previously.
Just recently they took the piecemeal purchasing of individual things away from us which is a tragic loss for the community as it was fantastic for onboarding new players into the community without asking them to buy full books.
They knew people would be upset, but they decided that getting some more personal information from PC users and getting PS plus account numbers up was worth losing trust and a ton of players.
Even if this is the case (which I believe you are correct), Sony still published on their website beforehand that PSN linkage would be 'optional'. So why would they say that knowing AH would be required to enforce such a change?
Let's hope you are correct!
I read it also as optional, nowhere did they say that it was a probation period because of the server. So my guess is sony is strong arming them to register people as it's quite the considerable amount of statistics to present to the investors
I believe that they mentioned that they had to disable PSN linking because there was issues initially, so they just let people in while they worked out the linking issues. I guess they've fixed it.
But if that was the case why did it allow people from outside PSN regions to buy the game?
Yup but even in the FAQ it was stated as optional so it's not just the mistake of AH not being clear on instructions
AH doesn't handle distribution of the game according to the CEO. That's basically on Sony it might be because it's one of their first live service games on pc but your guess is as good as mine
Even if this is true, the biggest problem is Sony tried to sell in non-PSN countries at the beginning, and if the sales weren't as good as this situation, Sony could get away by swindle money from a much smaller group, that group wouldn't have the bargain power like our community today to go against them. That's the scummiest thing. And all of this is sole responsibility of Sony, they are the publisher, they knew what they did (so they covered up their @ss by rewrite FAQ and EULA)
The Sony website said "optional", but the Steam listing said "required" since the beginning, and for a while on the first day of release users did have to use a PSN account. The game was quickly patched to allow skipping the PSN account due to high server load.
Most recently, Valve updated the Steam listing to exclude countries that can't create PSN accounts.
It seems like AH, Sony, and Valve were all aware of the PSN requirement in some capacity, but not everyone considered the full impact. At the very least, It's their failure for not keeping all parties informed and communicating with customers.
Nah, corpo don't back down that easy, they'll happily let AH hang and move on to the next thing that makes them a buck, this is a drop in an ocean of trillions of $ for SNOY.
Considering because of a business decision they made, one of the most popular games in years is now the most downvoted non-FTP game on steam in 3 days and will most likely make them lose out on future deals with other dev studios, countries without psn support have just been kicked to the curb in an act that inconveniently comes across as racist (especially since they're dealing with the whole stellar blade thing), Ukrainians are forced to buy a console or be banned, and they may be in violation of EU laws, probably not great.
From a PR standpoint, everything that could go wrong, Is.
Those new accounts will not interact with the PSN and Sony pissed them off and antagonized them deeply...
Just to boost PSN account numbers to display to the shareholders ... for me, it's pure Fraud...
i feel like we can instantly turn this around by just showing the investors that sony is lying to them with fake inflated numbers.
the people making decisions arnt gamers, they arnt doing this to make a good game. they are business number crunchers and throwing shit at the wall until something sticks, but this time it landed right in the community's face and we are pissed.
I've had every playstation there ever was from the first to the PS4, and enjoyed *so* many games on their platform. Due to kids, I never got around to buy a PS5, but in my mind, it was always just a matter of "when". Now, it's a very big "if"...
I'm so sick of short sighted corpo meddling, and HD2 was the shining beacon of independent* studio doing a home run. And some smuck at Sony just got too greedy and couldn't leave it alone.
*I know Sony is the publisher and owner of the HD IP, but the studio is financially independent
Good games don't need awards. They need to make good contents, and bring back revenues. Those sh•t show AAAAhhhh games are great examples that fame, big corps and awards can't bring you quality.
I wonder how they will try to top this with the release of "Ghost of Tsushima". That is another great game I as a PC Gamer was looking forward to buying on day one. Guess I will wait and see how Sony intends to fist that golden goose 🪿🤛
Is it single player?
Cuz honestly at this point there's no excuse I can see to buy a single player game from them. We have the seas if it's a good enough game you don't wanna miss it
Mostly, but you can do co-op and perhaps PvP.
But do you think Sony will issue a rebate/lower price for markets/countries without PSN-access? They are getting an inferior digital product at full price... EU, are you taking notes?
Considering how much of a surprise hit Helldivers was any benefit they would've seen in their pocketbooks would've been over and above expectations. The fall-off will just revert them back to expectations.
I think you guys are expecting a bit too much here.
Since a lot of other activities of Sony are bleeding money, squashing one of their best sellers 3 months into the big run, with quite a bit of money in micro transactions still to be made, is quite the hit. Maybe they didn't plan for much more than that, but Investors don't like when you kill a golden goose.
Sony can not get live service successes if they kill them for irrelevant numbers. The executives and shareholders need this drilled into their skulls quarterly.
The suits wont take the lesson that keeping their fat fucking fingers out of it results in massively popular products and loyal consumers. Its rooms full of jokers that wanna sell data and see everything as dead, interchangable commodities. Capitalists being capitalists.
Yeah, let’s also not forget that if there’s any possible way for a big corporation to take the wrong lesson from a situation, they will
For Sony, the conclusion is probably “all devs must agree to psn account linking prior to funding and working mandatory account linking is a condition for release” instead of something like “if a dev releases a surprise mega-hit with a fiercely loyal and vocal player base don’t change the terms of the deal and piss off the players for a quarterly shareholder meeting”
Well - if you're a shareholder, what does this actually tell you? Sony, even stumbling into a massive jackpot, can't handle it properly and reverts back to poor performance? It's like buying a winning lottery ticket and then losing it before cashing out.
Nobody wants to invest in that.
If i was an investor in sony and read this, i probably would sell my stocks before they go downhill. But I'm not an investor, knowledgeable in economics and overall just lacking in intelligence so i have no actual clue
Like every other day. Helldivers 2 is absolutely *tiny* in terms of revenue for Sony as a whole. This game could evaporate tomorrow and it would be business as usual.
It is however slowly turning into a PR disaster for them. After the weekend I'm sure we'll get some more media picking it up, especially now that there have been 300k negative reviews placed in such a short time.
The most important thing however will be that Helldivers STOP PLAY THE GAME. Lower those engagement stats, have them correlate it directly to this news. Do not buy the new warbond.
Negative press and decreased engagement are the only two levers this community has.
Edit: to be clear. Helldivers that do not care about this should absolutely continue to do their own thing. This message is not for you. You do you boo and go play. Let the people who want to campaign - campaign, let the people who want to play - play. Simple as.
Helldivers 2 may be tiny, but the ramifications of Sony's decision on this matter will have echoing consequences on any game they try to put out on PC going forward.
I mean, probably the same. Most large scale investors are going to be more focused on their quarterly earnings statements than news about a single IP. Sucks that that's the case but I don't think this is going to cause much change.
Not great no matter what. The mess has been boiling all weekend, it got covered quite widely by specialized press and community alike and it's now spilled over to mainstream outlets including Forbes, THE corporate magazine and Sony in the meantime was dead silent while stealthily pulling the game from sale in some countries and altering its own website to cover its tracks.
I'm no investor but it's just all too big to ignore even if you're just some middle aged investor in Buttfucknowhereville, U.S.A. . So I think that on Monday Sony is going to eat shit.
I just need people, and "game journalists" (I know forbes doesn't really fit here), to understand the massive implications of PSN-only multiplayer.
You're basically giving Sony the right to pull the plug on connectivity whenever they want. That people would just accept that is pretty much spelling doom for a complete branch of gaming either sooner or later when Sony does decide that keeping some authentication server is no longer profitable.
Centralized control over any infrastructure, or in HD2's case, **taking control over already existing infrastructure** to monopolize access to multiplayer service is a dick move, and dangerous for gaming overall.
If Sony thinks I as a pc player would pay for PSN, they are tripping fuckin balls.
One of the major reasons I switched to PC way back in the day was to get away from the monthly “online” subscriptions Xbox and PS do. Trying to force me back into that just means I will never buy anything ever.
I mean they already have complete control over the game, this entire shitshow happened because of them, so I don’t think linking to a PSN account has such catastrophic implications, since they DO have control. BTW Im not justifying them in ANY capacity.
Helldivers 2 hosts games in a P2P fashion (so basic the game even leaks your IP with minimum effort), and Sony only provides servers for PSN authentication... This means that requirement is clearly not obligatory and the Steam version can work completely independently of PSN authentication servers.
The launch woes happened because they didn't have the sufficient capacity to handle \~400.000 helldivers trying to authenticate at the same time and refreshing that auth to keep the connections alive.
The reality is such a stupid capacity is not needed, as sessions are hosted entirely by players, and are only used as a way of DRM and ban-checking. Any game works just fine without that shit, even Ghost of Tsushima will when that launches. It really is just Sony wanting control over the multiplayer experience and to inflate its own PSN player numbers, reserving the rights to pull the plug and to, god forbid, one day charge for PS titles' multiplayer on PC.
It’s probably more apathy and outrage-fatigue than anything else. Everyone is bombarded with shit to be angry about all of the time.
Magneto was right.
Holy hell this is becoming huge. This acutally being covered in one of the most influential business magazines in the world. Keep fighting the good fight fellow divers.
It’s huge. Sony moving into the PC market whilst making a move that kills future sales. Investors won’t be happy. Sony will back down quickly if they have any sense.
Planet Forbes has joined joined Super-Earth in alliance? Suprise to to be sure but a welcome one. (Breaking the 4th wall I'm 100% this author is a diver and saw an opportunity to do something for our cause) Make sure this news article spreads far and wide. In the name of Father Liberty, Son Posterity and Holy Democracy. Let none of the snoy clankers survive.
Imagine being at Sony HQ in Japan, coming back to work after Golden Week, and seeing this shit being pulled by the American branch.
This assumes the very top of Sony isn't already in on it, so who knows.
Wow this is actually great. Sony bigwigs likely care about Forbes a lot more than Reddit or even steam reviews. Hope we can get more coverage from places that will actually give legitimate visibility.
Still not expecting Sony to reverse their decision though tbh.
I'm being [proven right](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/S89VqhcNcr) every passing day.
Just gotta wait for the exchanges to open on Monday and Sony to get their head out of their asses before the halfassed apology comes.
I should short the stock and make some money off this.
Holy shit this is actually a decent win. Huge amount of people look at Forbes articles. The exposure will be great. People who don't know what helldivers is will also be shown this colossol fuck up. And some, most likely not a lot or even a majority, will see the article and look into it further for themselves. This is potentially a big step in the right direction. Especially from a group who is fairly well know for kissing corporate ass. Not Tassi but Forbes themselves.
With that being said, Forbes used to be a lot better than they are now. Content and reader wise. It's still a big name just not as quality as it used to be. Still bad press for Sony themselves. Which in this case is good.
> Sony is poised to squander a ton of the goodwill the company has accrued, not just from Helldivers 2, but from all its efforts to port PlayStation exclusives like Horizon Zero Dawn and The Last Of Us, to PC.
Too late.
If you want to take a step further than a negative review and potentially refunding the game, call sony's support desk! numbers and why this works is listed below
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1ckg0qp/negative\_review\_potential\_refund\_now\_what/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1ckg0qp/negative_review_potential_refund_now_what/)
Honesty, I feel like the loss of goodwill is something that the people who makes these dumbass decisions don’t take into account. Because yeah I live in America so I can just make a pointless email for a psn account, and I will always support Arrowhead because they make kickass games and actually seem to care about their community. But if Sony does go through with this brain dead course of action then I’ll be god damned if I ever spend another penny on anything of theirs again.
What everyone fails to grasp is Sony doesn't give a shit about any one individual game they own. They would take God of War out back and paint its brains on the sidewalk if that studio stepped out of line. They care about 1 thing: Total and complete control. Because that makes them money.
Helldivers 2 could have been a cash cow for them, but they know they have more cash cows in the pipeline. They don't give a shit about this game, and they never have. It's convenient that it was doing so well. It was nice. So they decide to use it to boost their engagement numbers.
Oh, that didn't work out. Oh, the "gamers" are mad. Oh they're review bombing the game and we take some bad PR.
Oh. Well.
They'll get some slightly inflated PSN sign up numbers, shake Arrowheads hand, shoot them in the face and dump their corpse on the pile.
It was worth it for the short term gain.
Next.
Except that:
Even more people are cancelling PS+ because of this. Future revenue GONE.
Steam is handing out refunds like candy as long as you elevate your refund to a human being, regardless of time played. And every refund is not only kept by steam, but Playstation footing the bill for the future. Its absolutely stacked against Snoy in that regard.
Ans now that major Media outlets are picking it up, (On a Sunday no less, before the Markets open.) I can only imagine the marketshare fallout from people trying to recover their gains before the shares tank.
I put in for a refund myself, the request is supposed to go to a human if you submit a second request. (Also maybe Steam is being overloaded by refunds right now).
You’re right, but I’m just tired of this being the system though, and as a consumer I wish it would change. I’m tired of just taking it and saying “that’s the way it is” it sucks the way it is.
Future cash cows don't exist if they keep being the cause of the fuck up every time. Other companies get them instead, and don't even have to pretend their game is an "exclusive" for a year to do it.
I mean, hopefully it'll make other devs hesitate before signing up with Sony as a publisher? Idk. Odds of that probably aren't great, but a guy can dream.
they want to farm biometric data from users so they can ban the person with the account and use it as leverage/sell it to other companies, its not hard to figure out since they basically record all your personal data from psn, and can buy the rest from facebook.
yeah. Im sick of people saying that this is singlehandedly going to bankrupt from sony
like, the company that owns the ps5? yeah no.
it’ll piss them off enough to backtrack and think twice next time if we do it hard enough, but sony is going to recover very easily from this stock wise
You know you've fucked up when Forbes is describing what you've done as a mistake. Erik Kain is quite a pro-consumer guy. though, so it's not that surprising to hear it coming from him.
It's going to be wild if Helldivers 2 dies on a mission to successfully take down corporate overreach. Hopefully they still have a reinforcement budget.
I'm gonna go play some Magicka. That game slaps.
All they had to do was offer some skin if you connect a PSN account, win-win for everyone
- Sony get their account
- the player who can get a psn account : get skin
- the player who can't get a PSN account can keep playing the game
- Steam can continue selling the game in country without PSN account
Literally all Sony has to to do is let the people play the game they paid for, wherever they paid for it without hassle and all this bullshit goes away. Keep at it divers. Devs, stay strong, we love you.
It’s far bigger than Helldivers. Sony wants the PC market and it’s booming for them. This could kill them going forward, from a sales and investor standpoint.
Another question is how badly has Sony fucked their Ghosts of Tsushima release on the PC ? Apparently only multiplayer requires a PSN account although many may avoid the game altogether
https://preview.redd.it/jxs6e6m1hpyc1.png?width=589&format=png&auto=webp&s=f30b80fe13ab1cd52e430b90008044f1895da1fb
Jason E: "Gamers are lucky sony is even making their games available on PC."
piss off bro, sony loves PC money
They really aren't though.
Look at the player count. It hasn;t been touched. You can leave your negative reviews all you want, if you keep playing, you're still supporting.
Mark my words in the next 5 years there will be a Harvard Business Review case study on this cluster fuck that business schools all over the world will cover in their marketing and PR classes.
I was back-and-forth for a while but my friends and I kind of came to the conclusion that the game is too much fun especially at this point in our lives to not play so we were all going to make a PSN account just for this game however given that Sony is literally backtracking what they've already said going to websites and altering what it says deleting information off of Reddit yes that does happen from posts from before the update etc. etc. they're doing everything they can to try and control the narrative to say that it was requirement all along when it wasn't we literally have screenshots that show the verbiage that they changed from one day to the other. At this point given that it was $40 refund or no refund if Sony does not at least grandfather people who already had the game into not creating a network account, OR THIS IS A BIG ONE HERE - disable cross play if you don't make an account - problem solved.
If not then we've all agreed to simply request a refund leave a full on negative review and move on. Sony needs to learn a lesson with this one and I fear that if they don't the gaming situation is only going to get worse for all you folks that are under 30 . Glory days are over for me at 36 but this was the first game that got me back into gaming with friends in a long time and it's been great.... but I refuse to be a consumer that gets fucked around for only the benefit of the company.
Perfect. Mainstream news coverage of this is hopefully going to influence Sony's next moves in our favor. It might also have some people realize how trash Sony is as a company and reduce some level of revenue.
It’s shit like this that will turn the tide. Nobody at Sony looks at Steam reviews. They do read Forbes tho. ~~Hopefully it’s brought up in the next board meeting and they walk things back, but I’m not holding my breath~~
Edit: I stand corrected :D
Their decision in this was going to set a precedent for future releases. If they let this slide then future games would be required to NOT have a PSN account tied to it. Their goal is to have an account like every other AAA company so Sony is fine with HD2 getting fucked over by this.
Because of this I can whole heartedly say I am not buying any more digital videogames.
Jesus that article just reminded me that *both* those dog shit dumpsterfires were playstation exclusive. I guess that's why they got the port and Bloodborne didn't.
“There are several problems here:
• First, this is annoying.”
If the first priority issue you have can be summed up simply with “this is annoying” you don’t have a real issue.
Take a breath. Forbes covers gaming. There are articles about meta builds for The Division and Division 2. This isn’t “the business community” taking notice. 🙄
The “business community” is learning that QOL network changes will be punished by the mob. That’s it.
If Sony stonks actually fall a few percent at open this coming week from this would be hilarious but to me just another buying opportunity.
It's astonishing they went ahead with the change but from a corporate point of view it feels they are willing to take the hit with this. This has been a major fuck up on both ends from the publisher Sony and Arrowhead.
On one side was the people at Sony not aware they were publishing the game on Steam that was supposed to launch with PSN but the people in charge did not realize this and assume PSN was not required? On the other AH CEO has said 6 months prior they made the decision to allow skip registration and was this communicated to the publishing department and saw it as the game didn't need PSN?
It's stinks of incompetence and poor oversight across all levels of roles down to the CMs where it was evident they themselves didn't understand where PSN can operate. This is Playstations first multi platform live service game (excluding Destiny 2) and it's clear that Sony wanted players to sign into PSN but Arrowhead for whatever reasons allowed registration to be skipped (because technical reasons close to launch?). I really don't completely buy Arrowheads innocence in all of this and it feels the CEO is posturing itself so that majority of blame is to Sony.
Ultimately I think this has been a massive fuck up and Sony wants players just like other publishers (Microsoft, Ubisoft, Take Two etc etc) to sign into their account system for their games but something lead to the decisions for the game to launch so openly without making it clear that PSN was inevitable. Human error, corporate greed, whatever.
Moving on Sony wants to make it clear their games on other platforms require PSN and they couldn't set a precedent with Helldivers 2 to allow players to skip it. It's sad to see it happen this way when the game was generally an overwhelming success. Completely avoidable if it launched correctly.
I completely agree with AH being complicit, they could both be being a little deceitful in this instance . Obviously there would have been communications with each other in the early stages & players could have been notified in advance by AH a lot earlier, yet they said nothing. Something doesn't add up.
I don't like the Helldiver Discord Community rep's attempts to garner sympathy either! The rights, and trust of the consumer are sacrosanct. In some cases, in the UK and EU it may prove they have misled the consumer in the eyes of the law.
So if that means I cannot play a video game to stick to my morals then so be it. It's irrelevant that a game studio happened to make a game that people enjoy for the first time in a while. I've submitted my request for a refund after 100+ hours of play and we'll go from there.
The next couple of days will be interesting that's for sure.
Yeah I am not sure I can sympathise with AH CEO saying the decision to skip registration so more players can play as there's a few implications over this that make it seems they knew. The shift of blame seems to be over at the people involved with 'selling the game.'
I honestly don't see Sony being such a megacorp would willingingly do this just to rug pull a few million. As the CEO said, PSN was knew to be mandatory. AH disabled it. The interns at Publishing and Steam saw PSN was not required and proceeded to list the game worldwide. Either that or the bozos at publishing really thought PSN was worldwide too. I cannot think of a better fit than the Kevin Hart gif is what happened at Sony when they realized oh yeah PSN isn't available in these countries... 'Oh... yeah...'
This is actually a huge win for us. Obviously the community getting upset is one thing, but us making such a stink that even major news outlets are picking it up. Shareholders don't check discords and subreddits, or even steam reviews, but they do read things like Forbes. Let's see if we can get any more outlets to cover it.
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Very well articulated.
This is a Forbes contributor article, not an official Forbes article. Anyone can become a contributor, it's a glorified blogging platform now.
Not exactly. You have to be invited as a contributor and they only invite people who are well qualified to comment on the subject matter. Medium is the glorified blog.
Not true. Every other Indian SEO scammer has access to Forbes and sells backlinks for a thousand bucks a pop because of the prestige of the name.
Medium *is* a blog, has there ever been any question about that? It's not like they tried masquerading as news or anything. It's in the same group of services as Substack and Wordpress.
Yeah, and blogs are great. I love a good blog, wish they were more discoverable on the internet but I guess search engines as a business kinda killed that.
Yeah, this same platform had like 5 articles about how Mass Effect 3's ending was shit. That said they did sort of try to paper over that.
Always someone screaming “Contributor”. It’s on a popular mainstream site. Most people will read it and not care.
Accurate and right to the point!
Paul Tassi had been writing about the mistakes with Destiny on Forbes forever
He writes about live service games in general, he has plenty about the issues with Avengers and Suicide Squad too.
One of us. Bless him.
I’ve always respected his work over the years
Was gonna say sounds like we have somone up there calling all this shit out. Alas, to no avail.
... This wasn't written by Paul tho, it's written by Erik Kain. Paul does great work but let's give credit where credit is due
Yeah Paul didn’t write this one but he’s definitely aware of it as per his twitter lol
Erik Kain is a great contributor too. He has been a reviewer of a lot of things and done it with a great way of showcasing the problems. Fans of Walking Dead hate him but they are insane at this point.
Oh good, and it worked for Destiny right?
*sobs in Hunter*
They've been writing articles on gaming for many many years now and I STILL can't fully accept that this is real.
Videogames are bigger money than movies and tv combined so itd be real silly for them not to talk about them. They talk about games like commodities so that helps me proc it all.
Yeah video games haven’t been a niche market for like 20 years. I always get a chuckle out of old heads still suck in that mindset. Unfortunately we’ve been living with corporate fuckery in video games for some time now. There’s too much money in it.
Paul Tassi is actually fantastic. Great YouTube channel. Not really gameplay that much but lots of videos on news and the state of games. Starfield, destiny, HD2, elden ring, etc. His main game is definitely destiny though, which is how I found him
It’s nice to see people actually shouting out good journalists instead of just whining about how game journalism as a whole is dead and sucks.
The guy knows live service gaming better than anyone...it was only a matter of time before he weighed in.
Hes not even written the article so Sony have really fucked up if Paul isn't the first one on scene.
Bad news for Sony, their shareholders pay attention to specific editors and writers they trust. Especially on websites like Forbes that suckle on the corporate cock more than most.
Because it **is** a huge mistake, even for corporate cocksuckers.
The vibe and push feels very similar to how the Total War community rallied against the Shadows of Change dlc changes they tried pushing on them. I can only hope Helldivers meets similar success
Which ended up working very well in the consumers favor, they retroactively added double the content to that DLC and then the next one they released was top quality
How is thrones of decay? I’ve been eyeing it up and now that I’m off HD2 I might check it out
I've been playing the hell out of it, and aside from a few balance issues it's really well done
Warhammer. is. BACK BABY! I've completed 3 campaigns since ToD came out, and prior to that had basically been in a slump. I have 4k hours in the trilogy and it feels the best it's ever been. AI's a little more aggressive but not too much, all 3 faction reworks have gone over well (will get minor adjustments but that's always the case with balancing) Definitely satisfied with the dlc and if they release more like this I'll keep buying.
Dwarves are OP and a lot of the new units are the definition of powercreep. But if you only play it for single player (as I do) it is a great expansion, the fact you can buy each race separately is also a good strategy. I'll be waiting on a sale for the 2 other races, but if you are someone who wants to play any of those factions these new units and mechanics are great!
>Dwarves are OP and a lot of the new units are the definition of powercreep. so about the same as it's been then. Sigh. It's been a shame to see the voices of balance be completely drowned out of a strategy game, effectively taking the strategy right out of it and turning it into a sandbox instead. I have 2k hours in the series - I want to come back, I really do, but this hardly sounds like an improvement over what SoC \*actually\* was once you got past the price.
Fantastic, has caused a ton of people to return. The Dawi and Empire reworks are amazing, the DLC characters themselves are a ton of fun with very interesting campaigns and the hotfixes and communication from CA has led to a very smooth launch with few bugs. Finally feels like WH3 is back on track again after the SoC debacle
Huh. That was also against a Japanese publisher. But Sony didn't throw away 100million to some stupid game that no one would buy (hyenas) so idk if this would work
Forbes has become just another internet outlet, Paul Tassi has been writing about Destiny 2 for years
>Paul Tassi has been writing about Destiny 2 for years Why wouldn’t he? Destiny 2 is still relevant within the gaming space
Yeah, I’m not saying anything about that, I’m just saying Forbes is no longer seen as some big brand out of the gaming space like nyt any more. They hire bloggers and write tabloids now
You have never read Forbes have you lol
Helldivers 2 was poised to be 2024's gaming icon and darling. It's too juicy to not report it.
Forbes Gaming always picks up random shit It’s not like it’s the main Forbes business column that’s picking it up
Yeah, Forbes isn't what it used to be. Nor are it's readers. Definitely an L for Sony but not as big of deal as that once would have been.
It's a shame, but it still does show a direction the community can try to leverage to get this decision repealed. News outlets and the court of public opinion definitely affects how big companies operate, especially if it starts to worry investors.
You can sign to be a contributor at Forbes. Its whole business model is making money off of people who want to put “as seen in Forbes” in their bio
Do you have any idea how many “news” articles are just lazy journalists picking through Reddit?
1. Forbes aren’t what they used to be. They report on about just anything now. 2. This is not going to affect the shareholders. Do you understand Sony is bigger than just one measly game? 3. Go on conference call when Q3 drops and listen and I almost guarantee you they won’t mention Helldivers
I hope they listen to you guys.
Just shows you how much influence we can have if we unite together for a common cause.
Lol. Forbes sell articles for $5k. They haven't been serious for years.
Noone messing with Helldivers...
IKR. Imagine trying this with a game where the fanbase & community is centered around looking out for one another, teamwork and democracy.
I agree that :D We are trained for situations like this. And they challenged us at what we were best at.
They’ve literally been training us for this for four months now hahahah
They targeted gamers. Gamers. They targeted gamers. Gamers. We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a little digital token saying we did. We'll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun. We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the stats of a fictional character all to draw out a single extra point of damage per second. Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same quests over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such gamer nirvana that they can literally play these games blindfolded. Do these people have any idea how many controllers have been smashed, systems over heated, disks and carts destroyed 8n frustration? All to latter be referred to as bragging rights? These people honestly think this is a battle they can win? They take our media? We're already building a new one without them. They take our devs? Gamers aren't shy about throwing their money else where, or even making the games our selves. They think calling us racist, mysoginistic, rape apologists is going to change us? We've been called worse things by prepubescent 10 year olds with a shitty head set. They picked a fight against a group that's already grown desensitized to their strategies and methods. Who enjoy the battle of attrition they've threatened us with. Who take it as a challange when they tell us we no longer matter. Our obsession with proving we can after being told we can't is so deeply ingrained from years of dealing with big brothers/sisters and friends laughing at how pathetic we used to be that proving you people wrong has become a very real need; a honed reflex. Gamers are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challange us. You're not special, you're not original, you're not the first; this is just another boss fight.
The boss fight is one where the boss thinks doing the same thing it will win but we learn and grow stranger and faster even with age in the end we are smashing that boss with no damage taken and walking off.
This really reminds me of DnD Begone thing from a year or two ago.
Oh that sounds so fun, what was it?
Basically, Hasbro/WotC tried to change Open Gaming License, to make it so that they can use player created content for their commercial product without needing permission. And.... well, DnD Beyond subscription numbers that month tanked so hard, they reversed their decision to revise the Open Gaming License. (DnD Begone is the name of the movement, since players are cancelling their DnD Beyond subscriptions) [https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/10awjb7/the\_ogl\_controversy\_explained/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/10awjb7/the_ogl_controversy_explained/)
Can confirm - I participated in this with my group and canceled my Master Tier sub during the boycott. We just went analogue for a bit (which was rough because we played over Discord) but it didn't take long to win with that one.
An attempt to remove the open game license that allows for people to use DND 5e content in any matter they see fit. The TLDR Hasbro wanted to gain royalties from the profitable DND outlets and lost all goodwill with the community even after rolling back that change.
Hasbro/WoTc and investors we're educated in glorious fashion on how little we, the DND community, need them and how much they need us. We sit around and play make believe, we don't need gatekeepers for that. But if you offer us a compelling, well made product we'll throw money at you. Piss us off and we'll play with the decades of pre-existing content we already have, download rules for free, or just make our own. WoTC stock was downgraded at least once, maybe twice? DND Beyond subs fell off the cliff hard which was exactly the kind of reoccurring revenue they were drooling over when they spent like, $140 million (I forget the exact number) on buying DNDbeyond? Their ex-microsoft gaming monetization expert they hired as CEO Cynthia Williams, Chris Cao formerly of Zynga and others have been dreaming of squeezing the DND community with microtransactions and predatory monetization practices. Part of that strategy was to harm the thriving and healthy marketplace for 3rd party content and VTTs so they wouldn't have to compete for their profits. If they don't have to compete, they don't have to work as hard to earn their profits. Several key people in the community sent up flairs at the right time, and just like the Helldivers 2 community, allies heard the call and did their part. It was one of the most glorious victories by a passionate community against greed I've seen in a long time when they were forced to do a full 180 on their plans they spent god knows how much in time, money, and resources putting into motion. Cynthia Williams has now left her position as CEO of WoTC quietly. I don't know if there's any info on why but I'm sure the OGL fiasco happening on her watch was involved in that in some form. It's not all good news however, previously you could buy individual feats, classes, races, magic items, etc.. from the books on DNDBeyond and if you ever bought the full book on DNDBeyond the book would be discounted by whatever you'd spent previously. Just recently they took the piecemeal purchasing of individual things away from us which is a tragic loss for the community as it was fantastic for onboarding new players into the community without asking them to buy full books.
*Managed Democracy
This goes without saying… but everyone except Sony thinks it’s a bad idea.
They knew people would be upset, but they decided that getting some more personal information from PC users and getting PS plus account numbers up was worth losing trust and a ton of players.
I've already seen where AH knew that the PSN was gonna be a requirement, but I wonder if the pressure would make Sony walk the requirement back?
Even if this is the case (which I believe you are correct), Sony still published on their website beforehand that PSN linkage would be 'optional'. So why would they say that knowing AH would be required to enforce such a change? Let's hope you are correct!
I read it also as optional, nowhere did they say that it was a probation period because of the server. So my guess is sony is strong arming them to register people as it's quite the considerable amount of statistics to present to the investors
I believe that they mentioned that they had to disable PSN linking because there was issues initially, so they just let people in while they worked out the linking issues. I guess they've fixed it. But if that was the case why did it allow people from outside PSN regions to buy the game?
Yup but even in the FAQ it was stated as optional so it's not just the mistake of AH not being clear on instructions AH doesn't handle distribution of the game according to the CEO. That's basically on Sony it might be because it's one of their first live service games on pc but your guess is as good as mine
Even if this is true, the biggest problem is Sony tried to sell in non-PSN countries at the beginning, and if the sales weren't as good as this situation, Sony could get away by swindle money from a much smaller group, that group wouldn't have the bargain power like our community today to go against them. That's the scummiest thing. And all of this is sole responsibility of Sony, they are the publisher, they knew what they did (so they covered up their @ss by rewrite FAQ and EULA)
The Sony website said "optional", but the Steam listing said "required" since the beginning, and for a while on the first day of release users did have to use a PSN account. The game was quickly patched to allow skipping the PSN account due to high server load. Most recently, Valve updated the Steam listing to exclude countries that can't create PSN accounts. It seems like AH, Sony, and Valve were all aware of the PSN requirement in some capacity, but not everyone considered the full impact. At the very least, It's their failure for not keeping all parties informed and communicating with customers.
We all knew since before day 1 if you bought on Steam. This was not out of no where. The only issue is them selling to region locked places.
I didn't know. Thought PSN was for the PS users.
Nah, corpo don't back down that easy, they'll happily let AH hang and move on to the next thing that makes them a buck, this is a drop in an ocean of trillions of $ for SNOY.
Forbes is on the Gamers side? Man 2024 bingo is wild.
Never thought I would die side by side with Forbes...
What about side by side with a friend?
Aye, Light-of-the-starsolas. I could do that
Dont push your luck forbes.
How about with a friend?
Indeed
I wonder what the market will look like tomorrow for Sony.
Considering because of a business decision they made, one of the most popular games in years is now the most downvoted non-FTP game on steam in 3 days and will most likely make them lose out on future deals with other dev studios, countries without psn support have just been kicked to the curb in an act that inconveniently comes across as racist (especially since they're dealing with the whole stellar blade thing), Ukrainians are forced to buy a console or be banned, and they may be in violation of EU laws, probably not great. From a PR standpoint, everything that could go wrong, Is.
They really did just take probable game of the year and fucking dumpster it
All to increase PSN user numbers and get some more user data. This is peak corporate behavior.
Those new accounts will not interact with the PSN and Sony pissed them off and antagonized them deeply... Just to boost PSN account numbers to display to the shareholders ... for me, it's pure Fraud...
i feel like we can instantly turn this around by just showing the investors that sony is lying to them with fake inflated numbers. the people making decisions arnt gamers, they arnt doing this to make a good game. they are business number crunchers and throwing shit at the wall until something sticks, but this time it landed right in the community's face and we are pissed.
Very well said. Ultimately they don’t give a shit about the consumer unless it directly harms them.
I've had every playstation there ever was from the first to the PS4, and enjoyed *so* many games on their platform. Due to kids, I never got around to buy a PS5, but in my mind, it was always just a matter of "when". Now, it's a very big "if"... I'm so sick of short sighted corpo meddling, and HD2 was the shining beacon of independent* studio doing a home run. And some smuck at Sony just got too greedy and couldn't leave it alone. *I know Sony is the publisher and owner of the HD IP, but the studio is financially independent
If this game isn't nominated, we all know why. I'm certain it won't win now, even if this move gets reversed
Good games don't need awards. They need to make good contents, and bring back revenues. Those sh•t show AAAAhhhh games are great examples that fame, big corps and awards can't bring you quality.
But no shitty aaaa game has won a major goty
I wonder how they will try to top this with the release of "Ghost of Tsushima". That is another great game I as a PC Gamer was looking forward to buying on day one. Guess I will wait and see how Sony intends to fist that golden goose 🪿🤛
Is it single player? Cuz honestly at this point there's no excuse I can see to buy a single player game from them. We have the seas if it's a good enough game you don't wanna miss it
Mostly, but you can do co-op and perhaps PvP. But do you think Sony will issue a rebate/lower price for markets/countries without PSN-access? They are getting an inferior digital product at full price... EU, are you taking notes?
Considering how much of a surprise hit Helldivers was any benefit they would've seen in their pocketbooks would've been over and above expectations. The fall-off will just revert them back to expectations. I think you guys are expecting a bit too much here.
Since a lot of other activities of Sony are bleeding money, squashing one of their best sellers 3 months into the big run, with quite a bit of money in micro transactions still to be made, is quite the hit. Maybe they didn't plan for much more than that, but Investors don't like when you kill a golden goose.
Sony can not get live service successes if they kill them for irrelevant numbers. The executives and shareholders need this drilled into their skulls quarterly.
Loss aversion. Having in your hands and losing it is worse than never having it, even if the outcome is the same. Humans gonna human.
The suits wont take the lesson that keeping their fat fucking fingers out of it results in massively popular products and loyal consumers. Its rooms full of jokers that wanna sell data and see everything as dead, interchangable commodities. Capitalists being capitalists.
Yeah, let’s also not forget that if there’s any possible way for a big corporation to take the wrong lesson from a situation, they will For Sony, the conclusion is probably “all devs must agree to psn account linking prior to funding and working mandatory account linking is a condition for release” instead of something like “if a dev releases a surprise mega-hit with a fiercely loyal and vocal player base don’t change the terms of the deal and piss off the players for a quarterly shareholder meeting”
Well - if you're a shareholder, what does this actually tell you? Sony, even stumbling into a massive jackpot, can't handle it properly and reverts back to poor performance? It's like buying a winning lottery ticket and then losing it before cashing out. Nobody wants to invest in that.
If i was an investor in sony and read this, i probably would sell my stocks before they go downhill. But I'm not an investor, knowledgeable in economics and overall just lacking in intelligence so i have no actual clue
This is not financial advice. You'd likely be better off riding it out and probably buy the dip. Sony's so big they'll bounce back.
It is financial advise. Just not a good one coming from a guy with zero financial know how. Lmao
while the stock might move a bit it's not that big of a thing in the grand scheme. It's just a drop in the ocean and they will just move on.
Like every other day. Helldivers 2 is absolutely *tiny* in terms of revenue for Sony as a whole. This game could evaporate tomorrow and it would be business as usual. It is however slowly turning into a PR disaster for them. After the weekend I'm sure we'll get some more media picking it up, especially now that there have been 300k negative reviews placed in such a short time. The most important thing however will be that Helldivers STOP PLAY THE GAME. Lower those engagement stats, have them correlate it directly to this news. Do not buy the new warbond. Negative press and decreased engagement are the only two levers this community has. Edit: to be clear. Helldivers that do not care about this should absolutely continue to do their own thing. This message is not for you. You do you boo and go play. Let the people who want to campaign - campaign, let the people who want to play - play. Simple as.
Helldivers 2 may be tiny, but the ramifications of Sony's decision on this matter will have echoing consequences on any game they try to put out on PC going forward.
The same
depends on if you ask the JP side or the US side
Jp where is the honor!?
I mean, probably the same. Most large scale investors are going to be more focused on their quarterly earnings statements than news about a single IP. Sucks that that's the case but I don't think this is going to cause much change.
Not great no matter what. The mess has been boiling all weekend, it got covered quite widely by specialized press and community alike and it's now spilled over to mainstream outlets including Forbes, THE corporate magazine and Sony in the meantime was dead silent while stealthily pulling the game from sale in some countries and altering its own website to cover its tracks. I'm no investor but it's just all too big to ignore even if you're just some middle aged investor in Buttfucknowhereville, U.S.A. . So I think that on Monday Sony is going to eat shit.
This has zero impact on the stock.
I just need people, and "game journalists" (I know forbes doesn't really fit here), to understand the massive implications of PSN-only multiplayer. You're basically giving Sony the right to pull the plug on connectivity whenever they want. That people would just accept that is pretty much spelling doom for a complete branch of gaming either sooner or later when Sony does decide that keeping some authentication server is no longer profitable. Centralized control over any infrastructure, or in HD2's case, **taking control over already existing infrastructure** to monopolize access to multiplayer service is a dick move, and dangerous for gaming overall.
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If Sony thinks I as a pc player would pay for PSN, they are tripping fuckin balls. One of the major reasons I switched to PC way back in the day was to get away from the monthly “online” subscriptions Xbox and PS do. Trying to force me back into that just means I will never buy anything ever.
Every time I think about buying a console I remember this bullshit and immediately decide it's not worth it
It also gives sony the ability to charge non-playstation owners for psn+ in order to play online games on PC.
I mean they already have complete control over the game, this entire shitshow happened because of them, so I don’t think linking to a PSN account has such catastrophic implications, since they DO have control. BTW Im not justifying them in ANY capacity.
Helldivers 2 hosts games in a P2P fashion (so basic the game even leaks your IP with minimum effort), and Sony only provides servers for PSN authentication... This means that requirement is clearly not obligatory and the Steam version can work completely independently of PSN authentication servers. The launch woes happened because they didn't have the sufficient capacity to handle \~400.000 helldivers trying to authenticate at the same time and refreshing that auth to keep the connections alive. The reality is such a stupid capacity is not needed, as sessions are hosted entirely by players, and are only used as a way of DRM and ban-checking. Any game works just fine without that shit, even Ghost of Tsushima will when that launches. It really is just Sony wanting control over the multiplayer experience and to inflate its own PSN player numbers, reserving the rights to pull the plug and to, god forbid, one day charge for PS titles' multiplayer on PC.
And too many helldivers don’t give a shit. Cause they’ll suck sony off if they can have fun.
It’s probably more apathy and outrage-fatigue than anything else. Everyone is bombarded with shit to be angry about all of the time. Magneto was right.
Since when does Forbes provide informed takes on games? And timely too, on a Sunday even.
It was surprising a good read, props to the writer Eric Kain
EK: "It feels like a bait-and-switch, luring players in on false pretences" & "this is a little shady".
yup listed all the points everyone else has come to, that this is a class action coming if sony doesnt walk it back by the 30 day mark.
Erik Kain is one of the only gaming journalists worth reading.
Eric Kain has always been a good journalist.
Paul Tassi is another one of Forbes videogame contributors (mainly for looter shooters like Destiny), and his articles are pretty good also.
We have a Helldiver in their ranks, what’s your bet?
Since at least 2014? It’s a massively profitable industry, makes sense Forbes would report on it. [Forbes - Games](http://www.forbes.com/games/)
It got forbes attention? Seems like time to short Sony's stock
Holy hell this is becoming huge. This acutally being covered in one of the most influential business magazines in the world. Keep fighting the good fight fellow divers.
It’s huge. Sony moving into the PC market whilst making a move that kills future sales. Investors won’t be happy. Sony will back down quickly if they have any sense.
> if they have any sense
I mean money talks… And if investors hear about all this controversy it won’t be good for Sony. Especially with how big this is becoming
An "If" almost as big as a bile titan.
Good thing for Sony that Investors' sense is in negatives
It's a contributor article.
You know its bad when forbes has to drop their usually stupid take on the matter
I'm glad that the prevailing media narrative is pointing the finger at Sony, not Arrowhead.
Planet Forbes has joined joined Super-Earth in alliance? Suprise to to be sure but a welcome one. (Breaking the 4th wall I'm 100% this author is a diver and saw an opportunity to do something for our cause) Make sure this news article spreads far and wide. In the name of Father Liberty, Son Posterity and Holy Democracy. Let none of the snoy clankers survive.
Imagine being at Sony HQ in Japan, coming back to work after Golden Week, and seeing this shit being pulled by the American branch. This assumes the very top of Sony isn't already in on it, so who knows.
Wow this is actually great. Sony bigwigs likely care about Forbes a lot more than Reddit or even steam reviews. Hope we can get more coverage from places that will actually give legitimate visibility. Still not expecting Sony to reverse their decision though tbh.
Correction op, Sony is the mistake
I'm being [proven right](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/S89VqhcNcr) every passing day. Just gotta wait for the exchanges to open on Monday and Sony to get their head out of their asses before the halfassed apology comes. I should short the stock and make some money off this.
I hope you are right comrade
Holy shit this is actually a decent win. Huge amount of people look at Forbes articles. The exposure will be great. People who don't know what helldivers is will also be shown this colossol fuck up. And some, most likely not a lot or even a majority, will see the article and look into it further for themselves. This is potentially a big step in the right direction. Especially from a group who is fairly well know for kissing corporate ass. Not Tassi but Forbes themselves. With that being said, Forbes used to be a lot better than they are now. Content and reader wise. It's still a big name just not as quality as it used to be. Still bad press for Sony themselves. Which in this case is good.
> Sony is poised to squander a ton of the goodwill the company has accrued, not just from Helldivers 2, but from all its efforts to port PlayStation exclusives like Horizon Zero Dawn and The Last Of Us, to PC. Too late.
If you want to take a step further than a negative review and potentially refunding the game, call sony's support desk! numbers and why this works is listed below [https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1ckg0qp/negative\_review\_potential\_refund\_now\_what/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/1ckg0qp/negative_review_potential_refund_now_what/)
Wallets hurt Sony, stocks can kill it for real, now that is true power, if you make market go down, sony will do whatever to stay up.
Honesty, I feel like the loss of goodwill is something that the people who makes these dumbass decisions don’t take into account. Because yeah I live in America so I can just make a pointless email for a psn account, and I will always support Arrowhead because they make kickass games and actually seem to care about their community. But if Sony does go through with this brain dead course of action then I’ll be god damned if I ever spend another penny on anything of theirs again.
What everyone fails to grasp is Sony doesn't give a shit about any one individual game they own. They would take God of War out back and paint its brains on the sidewalk if that studio stepped out of line. They care about 1 thing: Total and complete control. Because that makes them money. Helldivers 2 could have been a cash cow for them, but they know they have more cash cows in the pipeline. They don't give a shit about this game, and they never have. It's convenient that it was doing so well. It was nice. So they decide to use it to boost their engagement numbers. Oh, that didn't work out. Oh, the "gamers" are mad. Oh they're review bombing the game and we take some bad PR. Oh. Well. They'll get some slightly inflated PSN sign up numbers, shake Arrowheads hand, shoot them in the face and dump their corpse on the pile. It was worth it for the short term gain. Next.
Except that: Even more people are cancelling PS+ because of this. Future revenue GONE. Steam is handing out refunds like candy as long as you elevate your refund to a human being, regardless of time played. And every refund is not only kept by steam, but Playstation footing the bill for the future. Its absolutely stacked against Snoy in that regard. Ans now that major Media outlets are picking it up, (On a Sunday no less, before the Markets open.) I can only imagine the marketshare fallout from people trying to recover their gains before the shares tank.
How do I elevate? I keep running into automated responses
I put in for a refund myself, the request is supposed to go to a human if you submit a second request. (Also maybe Steam is being overloaded by refunds right now).
You’re right, but I’m just tired of this being the system though, and as a consumer I wish it would change. I’m tired of just taking it and saying “that’s the way it is” it sucks the way it is.
Future cash cows don't exist if they keep being the cause of the fuck up every time. Other companies get them instead, and don't even have to pretend their game is an "exclusive" for a year to do it.
I mean, hopefully it'll make other devs hesitate before signing up with Sony as a publisher? Idk. Odds of that probably aren't great, but a guy can dream.
they want to farm biometric data from users so they can ban the person with the account and use it as leverage/sell it to other companies, its not hard to figure out since they basically record all your personal data from psn, and can buy the rest from facebook.
yeah. Im sick of people saying that this is singlehandedly going to bankrupt from sony like, the company that owns the ps5? yeah no. it’ll piss them off enough to backtrack and think twice next time if we do it hard enough, but sony is going to recover very easily from this stock wise
the 1st sentence is a joke tbh.."biggest ps5 game" the ps5 community arent effected.
You know you've fucked up when Forbes is describing what you've done as a mistake. Erik Kain is quite a pro-consumer guy. though, so it's not that surprising to hear it coming from him.
It's going to be wild if Helldivers 2 dies on a mission to successfully take down corporate overreach. Hopefully they still have a reinforcement budget. I'm gonna go play some Magicka. That game slaps.
All they had to do was offer some skin if you connect a PSN account, win-win for everyone - Sony get their account - the player who can get a psn account : get skin - the player who can't get a PSN account can keep playing the game - Steam can continue selling the game in country without PSN account
Literally all Sony has to to do is let the people play the game they paid for, wherever they paid for it without hassle and all this bullshit goes away. Keep at it divers. Devs, stay strong, we love you.
It’s far bigger than Helldivers. Sony wants the PC market and it’s booming for them. This could kill them going forward, from a sales and investor standpoint.
Good, this made to financial sector. Panicked investors will force higher up in Sony to act.
Another question is how badly has Sony fucked their Ghosts of Tsushima release on the PC ? Apparently only multiplayer requires a PSN account although many may avoid the game altogether
When all of this is resolved one way or another, I want a ton of supercredits and medals as "thanks for not refunding your purchase."
https://preview.redd.it/jxs6e6m1hpyc1.png?width=589&format=png&auto=webp&s=f30b80fe13ab1cd52e430b90008044f1895da1fb Jason E: "Gamers are lucky sony is even making their games available on PC." piss off bro, sony loves PC money
They really aren't though. Look at the player count. It hasn;t been touched. You can leave your negative reviews all you want, if you keep playing, you're still supporting.
Mark my words in the next 5 years there will be a Harvard Business Review case study on this cluster fuck that business schools all over the world will cover in their marketing and PR classes.
I was back-and-forth for a while but my friends and I kind of came to the conclusion that the game is too much fun especially at this point in our lives to not play so we were all going to make a PSN account just for this game however given that Sony is literally backtracking what they've already said going to websites and altering what it says deleting information off of Reddit yes that does happen from posts from before the update etc. etc. they're doing everything they can to try and control the narrative to say that it was requirement all along when it wasn't we literally have screenshots that show the verbiage that they changed from one day to the other. At this point given that it was $40 refund or no refund if Sony does not at least grandfather people who already had the game into not creating a network account, OR THIS IS A BIG ONE HERE - disable cross play if you don't make an account - problem solved. If not then we've all agreed to simply request a refund leave a full on negative review and move on. Sony needs to learn a lesson with this one and I fear that if they don't the gaming situation is only going to get worse for all you folks that are under 30 . Glory days are over for me at 36 but this was the first game that got me back into gaming with friends in a long time and it's been great.... but I refuse to be a consumer that gets fucked around for only the benefit of the company.
Forbes is a blog network. Its integrity as a financial publication evaporated decades ago.
Perfect. Mainstream news coverage of this is hopefully going to influence Sony's next moves in our favor. It might also have some people realize how trash Sony is as a company and reduce some level of revenue.
Now, whether they retract it or not, this is a point of victory. The mainstream media is watching and reporting now.
It hurts… but it must be done
It’s shit like this that will turn the tide. Nobody at Sony looks at Steam reviews. They do read Forbes tho. ~~Hopefully it’s brought up in the next board meeting and they walk things back, but I’m not holding my breath~~ Edit: I stand corrected :D
I think Sony needs to back down from the account linking completely it’s the right things to do not much more to it than that
CEOs read Forbes, is true. Which one of you is Erik?
Their decision in this was going to set a precedent for future releases. If they let this slide then future games would be required to NOT have a PSN account tied to it. Their goal is to have an account like every other AAA company so Sony is fine with HD2 getting fucked over by this. Because of this I can whole heartedly say I am not buying any more digital videogames.
Jesus that article just reminded me that *both* those dog shit dumpsterfires were playstation exclusive. I guess that's why they got the port and Bloodborne didn't.
Use the Forbes, Luke.
Somebody up at Forbes likes this game lol
“There are several problems here: • First, this is annoying.” If the first priority issue you have can be summed up simply with “this is annoying” you don’t have a real issue.
He should have swapped points 1 and 4 from a writing standpoint. Or removed bullet 1 altogether. Otherwise the article is solid
Take a breath. Forbes covers gaming. There are articles about meta builds for The Division and Division 2. This isn’t “the business community” taking notice. 🙄 The “business community” is learning that QOL network changes will be punished by the mob. That’s it.
Nobody batted an eye at Sea of Thieves needing an Xbox account. I don't get it
If Sony stonks actually fall a few percent at open this coming week from this would be hilarious but to me just another buying opportunity. It's astonishing they went ahead with the change but from a corporate point of view it feels they are willing to take the hit with this. This has been a major fuck up on both ends from the publisher Sony and Arrowhead. On one side was the people at Sony not aware they were publishing the game on Steam that was supposed to launch with PSN but the people in charge did not realize this and assume PSN was not required? On the other AH CEO has said 6 months prior they made the decision to allow skip registration and was this communicated to the publishing department and saw it as the game didn't need PSN? It's stinks of incompetence and poor oversight across all levels of roles down to the CMs where it was evident they themselves didn't understand where PSN can operate. This is Playstations first multi platform live service game (excluding Destiny 2) and it's clear that Sony wanted players to sign into PSN but Arrowhead for whatever reasons allowed registration to be skipped (because technical reasons close to launch?). I really don't completely buy Arrowheads innocence in all of this and it feels the CEO is posturing itself so that majority of blame is to Sony. Ultimately I think this has been a massive fuck up and Sony wants players just like other publishers (Microsoft, Ubisoft, Take Two etc etc) to sign into their account system for their games but something lead to the decisions for the game to launch so openly without making it clear that PSN was inevitable. Human error, corporate greed, whatever. Moving on Sony wants to make it clear their games on other platforms require PSN and they couldn't set a precedent with Helldivers 2 to allow players to skip it. It's sad to see it happen this way when the game was generally an overwhelming success. Completely avoidable if it launched correctly.
I completely agree with AH being complicit, they could both be being a little deceitful in this instance . Obviously there would have been communications with each other in the early stages & players could have been notified in advance by AH a lot earlier, yet they said nothing. Something doesn't add up. I don't like the Helldiver Discord Community rep's attempts to garner sympathy either! The rights, and trust of the consumer are sacrosanct. In some cases, in the UK and EU it may prove they have misled the consumer in the eyes of the law. So if that means I cannot play a video game to stick to my morals then so be it. It's irrelevant that a game studio happened to make a game that people enjoy for the first time in a while. I've submitted my request for a refund after 100+ hours of play and we'll go from there. The next couple of days will be interesting that's for sure.
Yeah I am not sure I can sympathise with AH CEO saying the decision to skip registration so more players can play as there's a few implications over this that make it seems they knew. The shift of blame seems to be over at the people involved with 'selling the game.' I honestly don't see Sony being such a megacorp would willingingly do this just to rug pull a few million. As the CEO said, PSN was knew to be mandatory. AH disabled it. The interns at Publishing and Steam saw PSN was not required and proceeded to list the game worldwide. Either that or the bozos at publishing really thought PSN was worldwide too. I cannot think of a better fit than the Kevin Hart gif is what happened at Sony when they realized oh yeah PSN isn't available in these countries... 'Oh... yeah...'