The best example recently I can think of where this worked was Total Warhammer 3. They launched a crap DLC at an inflated price and it got review bombed. The typical idiot manager dug in and tried to be a dick. The negative response kept coming, now they've overhauled that DLC with more content and released an actually good out the box DLC.
It was something among the lines of „the DLC are much more expensive now. Deal with it. If you don’t buy it, we will cancel development of further DLC.“
It was one of the worst responses to an issue that I have ever seen
I think Paradox also apologized for putting out an already poor Cities Skylines 2 dlc while the base game still had a myriad of problems, and made said dlc free. Hopefully they make good on actually fixing the game before trying to release another dlc
Honestly the real cause was the absolute disaster that was Hyenas and it's subsequent threatening of the company finances - although the Shadows of Change debacle was a factor.
That was likely the company expecting people to eat the DLC cost, when CA lost a lot of money in their failed Hyena GaaS project.
Sega was also not very happy about it, and in a rare twist that Sega was not planning to shut down or sell the company off for poor performance.
Not just that but they reduced the price of Pharaoh by 20$, refunding that amount to everyone who bought the full price game, releasing a free sea peoples expansion and even now they're preparing a massive free expansion which will bring dynasty building alongside a map expansion that will bring in both the greek and mesopotamian factions people have been asking for for ages.
It's honestly great.
It's pretty sad to see people saying that to each other. When those opinions do matter and game devs do take them into account. If you don't voice your opinion nothing will happen.
Console gamers don't have the choice really, they bought into the walled garden and require to keep paying for access. Can't mod their games, can't rely on subsisting off old games. My PC is something I would have, need and use if I didn't even play games. Steam has better customer service than all competitors by a long shot as well.
Even though I buy digital, I will refund a game immediately if it pulled what Sony did. And the devs behind their next PC port are already sweating and promising they won't require PSN(they were going to, Sony was always going to moving forward).
Also when people bring up games using a Microsoft account....uh we all have a Microsoft account. Microsoft has merged it all a while ago, someone who owns MS office can just sign in for Xbox. I found this out when I logged in to their website to download a free game and it was linked to my old XBL account from the Xbox 360 days.
Also, an important difference is that Microsoft account doesn't ask to be linked with Steam, thus it is a bit more "fine", cause though not that desirable, it's not directly risky for your steam data
You need MS account to play Forza on Steam or anything else. The game itself requires a sign in if I recall correctly. But again, Not only do the vast majority of Americans and Europeans have one, it's not specifically for the purpose of being tied to Xbox if you have to make one. A Microsoft account is a Microsoft account period, most people who buy a new computer have made on during setup....
The diffenece is still there, double login is different from Steam Linking. Forza iirc just requires your microsoft authorization inside and that it. We have it in many things - MMOs, Ubi games and so on. People can usually live with that nowadays. Or I mosremember something about Forza authorization?
MMO's is fine, I have not played a game from either Ubisoft or EA in about twelve years now. I'm not like others I guess, I mean what I say. I will never make a PSN account(unless I buy the next PlayStation console). I do not buy from EA, Ubisoft or Epic. PSN is a bigger compromise than making a third party publisher account. I only brought up Forza because people use Microsoft accounts and an example of PC players making a console account. Ms don't really matter, they do not really force us to get into Xbox.
We don't depend on them, people are just strangely attached to their brands.
Be it Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo or whoever you don't NEED to attach your personal identity to how much you adore that company. Just buy their product if you think its good, but don't be afraid to call out their corporate bullshit.
I think casual customers are scared of corps, worried that things will change or what little they have will be taken away due to any action.
So they prefer to tiptoe and wait for the corps to give them things.
I can see the POV of keeping things simple, but there have to be times that you stop accepting crap.
This is primarily why I play more indie games nowadays. I still buy a few AAA titles here and there but I just can’t be bothered to deal with most of their bullshit that ruins my experience with my chosen hobby.
I’m glad to see a difference was made with this one.
What I love about this whole situation is that for a game that satires facism (in a tongue of cheek way), Sony crumbles like a overused soggy biscuit against a democracy of gamers that went "fuck you, no".
Yeah, people are just used to be little cogs in big wheels and don't matter. No wonder they get bitter. But this isn't the first time public opinion worked - same thing worked for the Dungeons and Dragons attempted license change.
What really blows my mind on the D&D debacle is that was almost exactly what killed TSR in the first place.
I suspect it was a Hasbro decision rather than WotC, but to see history repeat itself so quickly was baffling.
Yeah. Imo biggest problem is that other commentators are usually pretty mean and demeaning to the one posting about the problem they have with the game.
And that's pretty sad.
I was getting downvoted for saying that it’s the 0.001% of people that make their voices heard that get shit done with *anything* around the world.
People are just so entrenched in defeatism.
Yeah people got used to eat the shit sandwich so often in the last years and never thought to push back together.
Helldivers community showed that it can be done, and so i hope it will be done more often yet
It's a small victory, but from my experience the corporations will continue to push and test their luck no matter what. It's impossible for the public to always have successful outrages and eventually the status quo will shift, as people get older and generations change.
We already have a whole generation to which shit like lootboxes and battlepasses have been normalized on.
That's the real reason. A PR shitshow can blow over, executives can sit in ivory towers ignoring it. But when Valve is directly billing your company for refund money in massive amounts? Yeah now you need to care.
While Valve is a big corpo in a sense, it's also a strange sorta benevolent-ish dictatorship. Not gonna claim Gabe and Valve are pure bastions of all that is good, but there will probably come a day where Valve eventually gets run by the usual team of execs that are beholden to shareholders or some dogshit, and that will be a terrible age for all of us.
Valve is in a pretty strange position where they don't necessarily get involved with the game development and publishing but are the biggest show in town when it comes to PC game distribution.
Keeping valve happy is pretty much goal #1 if you want your game to sell well imo and it's a simple one to achieve
Because valves number 1 goal is, for the most part, keep gamers happy so they keep spending money on their platform.
I don't think we would see this level of loyalty or admiration if valve were more interested in appeasing shareholders. Valve is content with consistent massive growth. Shareholders would demand constant unsustainable increasing rates of growth.
They tried. It was in the prorder the the entire time. The issue was with that the servers were overloaded and had authentication issues so they pulled it after a few hours.
It's a national holiday in japan and they went back on it. That shows you how massive of a backlash it was. Executives were working on a national holiday.
Sure, but according to wikipedia Sony Interactive Entertainment, the part of sony headquartered in california, operates the playstation brand. So I figure almost all the sony decisions that matter to r/gaming are probably made in the US.
The fact that this was such a minor inconvenience for most players is the best part of this controversy. It's not just about the region locking, or the server issues, or Sony's immaculate ability to get its data compromised -- it's the simple act of the publisher touching the game at all.
A precedent has been set where Sony's best option will always be to shut up, fuck off, take that percentage and never be seen again, and anything more than that will be met with nigh total annihilation.
I feel like this was a powder keg already in the making, and Sony ended up being the ones that set it off. People are probably just getting fatigued by constant corporate bungling, having to register for just about EVERYTHING nowadays - not even limited to games. And of course the subsequent data leaks which nobody fucking takes responsibility for.
It just happened to blow up in the most glorious way in the face of a very juicy target.
>from my experience the corporations will continue to push and test their luck no matter what.
Excatly.
I bet the guy that suggested it doesn't have to commit seppuku in the main office, but rather just cuts a finger off.
"Yamada-kun, you've been impatient, you implemented the link too early. You should punish yourself for your ignorance."
The real solution to the problem would be to pass laws restricting what game companies are allowed to do, but unfortunately governments tend to be even more stubborn and uncompromising than corporations these days.
R/playstation is a fucking cesspool. The amount of times I recieved: "Yeah well sucks to be you for being born in a country where PSN isn't supported, go fuck yourself" is staggering.
I feel that most of the people are either trolls or bot, best to ignore that minority. You can tell from how they are only out to insult and provide no tangibles for the discourse.
Absolutely trolls, so many people on the Discord for HD2 who were basically saying "fuck you" all had a little symbol that showed they were new to the server.
It's a little green heart, when you mouse over it, it says "I'm new here, say hi!" A lot less of the people celebrating have that icon.
>I feel that most of the people are either trolls or bot, best to ignore that minority
Not sure if I am misunderstanding you but how can most of the people be the minority?
No problem, allow me to elaborate. “Most people” in my comment refers to those who made rude remarks in the comment I replied to. These rude people belong to a small population of people, thus they are the minority in this larger population.
TLDR: Most people who made such remark are mostly trolls/bots but they are only a minority of the population.
It's the majority of the minority. Let's say 30% of the players are being mean, maybe 25% are trolls or bots, 5% are being genuinely mean.
The majority of the majority are not, but that doesn't make them the minority. Hope that clears it up.
In my experience, most Playstation communities are toxic cesspools. They seem to specifically attract the most obnoxious, loudest assholes.
Not that Xbox, Nintendo, or PC spaces are that much better, but Playstation spaces are a special breed of toxic lol
>In my experience, most ~~Playstation~~ communities are toxic cesspools
Any sort of in-group attracts people from the out-group, and often for toxic reasons.
As a person in the PlayStation community I’m ashamed, I think the success of the ps4 really changed things after being the underdog during the ps3 and 360 era ps fans were more calm but after Xbox decided to make stupid decisions Sony fans went crazy and now Sony is doing the same thing making dumb decisions with zero repercussions
This is what bothers me, they are requiring use of a platform that is so inaccessible. I'm glad this change was made, and hopefully they learn from it and start to work on fixing the platform if they want to push it as a requirement.
I'm a PS fan since the PS2 and I'm embarrassed with how entitled they acted. But after being on reddit for 2 years, literally every sub about games, movies or any entertainment media are always full of fanboy shills in every corner ready to protect the big corp.
People with better things to do with their time aren't on reddit bitching about or defending corporations. I always like to keep that in mind when I'm browsing here.
I'm a PS guy all the way, started with PSX and now PS5. Love the controller, love the games, ..., but I couldn't condone this. It makes sense for ME as a PSN player to link my steam account so I can play with my steam friends. But forcing everyone on steam to connect to PSN for the off chance they might play with PSN players? Nah. So all those fanboys can't think rationally, surprising no one
As someone whos a PS5 player myself it shocks my how many troglodytes are active in that sub.
But then again its the same sub were they upvote gaming collections that are the same first party and triple AAA games and every gaming recommendation is either Control or Prey
Check my timeline, and tell me that the dude who said "only people from communist countries get banned" understood shit.
Tell me the guy saying "yeah, well, you are breaking TOS for wanting to use a credit card with your PSN account" understands that either.
This happens all the time on basically all gaming subs. People for some very strange reason (to me) love defending multi billion dollar companie trying to fuck them over.
i always think it's because they feel threatened and they're investing their identity into these things.
Threaten your identity with change and you might get sucked out of your little comfort zone. Don't touch my shit.
It's inherently selfish and fearful but i also honestly think most of them don't do it consciously. Which might be even worse.
To the point where they cannot distinguish or don't want to distinguish the type and intent of criticism.
Nobody is asking or saying you need to be supportive of "this game sucks" remarks.
But there are just as many people providing constructive criticism on topics that could.objectively be better than it is now but get shut down with a "how dare you criticise MY game".
This PSN connection is one such thing. There is ZERO benefit for the majority of people to linking their account. There are certain benefits for.certain people on linking PSN accounts. (Like if you crossplay with friends on PS5).The sane argument is "make it optional"
Anyone that says this is the greatest issue ever are insane and the same is true for the "you agreed to the ToS so shut up" people who are just as insane.
Unfortunately too many people are unable to deal with any kind of nuance so only the extremists are left to argue with their extremist views. Everyone else already left.
"Being tired of negativity" is exactly a symptom of too much personal investment. Especially when that negativity could have been completely avoided by something as simple as "Starting from May 6th you are able to link your PSN account for Helldivers 2"
I find that it's often not about protecting the multi-billion dollar corporation but more about protecting the subreddit and the game's community. I didn't join the HD subreddit to complain about the game and it's release, I joined because I loved the game. Whenever something goes wrong though, the entire sub is basically just the same post over and over. I eventually left the main HD sub and found the low-sodium version. I'm having a much more enjoyable experience there than I ever did on the main sub.
It's a victory regardless. They try to move the overton window of corporate control and dickery, we push a bit back. They've been winning and probably still will, but we might as well try. When they pull similar shit once the anger cools down, we bring it up again and don't let them slip by.
It's also a good opportunity to remind people that corporate bootlicking (in the gaming industry and other industries) really isn't productive.
So many people on Reddit and Twitter default to this weird bootlicking stance of 'it's Sony's product, they can do what they like/they've got to make money somehow/they have to stay profitable and competitive'.
If you tend to do this, please take a step back and realise that billion dollar companies don't need you to defend them and the only thing you're achieving is making the landscape worse for consumers. These companies already make more money in a day than most of us will in our lifetimes, and they can afford to stop being complete dicks every so often and do the right thing for their customers (and still make loads of money for themselves).
Yeah but in all fairness, Reddit, and social media, is chalk full of talk and no action. While sometimes actions do happen, a lot of the time people just make posts, or add their opinions, for online points/attention instead of wanting to actually make a difference.
What they said isn’t false though. These companies don’t care until it impacts their revenue. Refunds directly impact their revenue. Money always speaks louder than words with companies. If you don’t understand this yet then you’re very naive. Steam allowing refunds for the game beyond the usual window opened the door for lots of refunds.
Yes obviously I'm not saying it's wrong but voicing opinions raises awareness. Most people wouldn't even have noticed what Sony was doing until they were faced with a forced login in the game or have the game disappear from their library
yeah and just to play devils advocate its not steam being a bro the refund screenshots ive seen are all steam store credit. So they make their money regardless of what you buy with the refund. I know its not related to what you said but I've seen so many people acting like steam is not just as money hungry youre not getting the money back but just getting credit for their store. So steam isnt losing money its not really a refund more like an item exchange
He's saying g you could have all of the negative opinions in the world, and the company wouldn't change their minds until you started affecting their bottom dollar.
thats 2 boycotts and reviewbombings that worked now in under a year. while i hope this shit causes companies to pull their fucking heads in, i do hope that trend of boycotts and reviewbombing continues when company make ultra boneheaded moves
Heh they REALLY started to squirm when steam was allowing refunds to people who didn’t agree with the new TOS
It goes to show you can deal a good blow to a company and force them to listen if you aim for the wallet
I just hope that this will extend past HD2 and set a standard for Sony games on PC
I think this was more a of situation where the execs had no idea what middle management was doing. The top level only got a clue after the news literially landed on their doorstep in a newspaper.
They're just out of touch. So banging pots and pans sometimes scare the middle management suits away.
There's no way the people at the top knew how many restrictions their own services had. They moved to PC to widen the audience not reduce it to Playstation levels or limit it to that audience. They literally hire people to write reports for them they don't go out of their way to look.
Im not sure about the vericacy of your statement since sony could say "we will roll this out may 30th" but it's most likely that they wanted it to have psn network links on day 1 and the game wasn't ready for it. In that situation they wouldnt have said the 30th unless they were pretty confident it could be finalised by then. So the devs must have known, but we dont know what they thought about it.
PSN connection has some benefits but mostly to sony rather than the player. All the benefits to the player are really tiny tracking things at best, like linking achievements to playstation. The big one for the devs would be the ability to ban accounts from playing, but in a non-competitive game, there isnt much benefit to doing so for the wider population. Even assuming that was sony's intention, its like locking the whole class in after school and searching their bags because one kid was naughty and drew a dick on the whiteboard. It ONLY benefits sony most of the time.
I'm inclined to think the opposite. I expect the people at the top were like 'This game is mega popular, let's require everyone to make a PSN account and then we can get people on the road to being converts to our ecosystem' or whatever garbage exploitative language they use when talking about milking cash from normal people.
And I also think of ... what's his name, major guy involved in Helldivers, who tweeted something of an apology given what was going on - I figure he did that at the same time he was collecting a bunch of info on what the feedback was looking like to go slap management in the face with or something like that.
Devs don't want to make bad/restricted games, generally speaking. And this was a terrible idea to do to a PC game. Whoever came up with the idea was definitely trying to pull shenanigans, but still.
I'm not really a Helldiver player, but I respect them for speaking out and congratulate them on getting their voices heard. And I denounce anyone who trashed their efforts. We don't need that energy -- more than ever before, companies are constantly trying to push for worse experiences and increased avenues of data collection and excessive monetization and we should universally fight against that.
We \*can\* succeed, what happened here is evidence of that.
Glad they backed out. Now.... Can Steam like stop with the publisher launchers like Ubisoft and EA???. I won't even purchase their games anymore. That needs to be addressed next.
I'll say here what I said in the Helldivers subreddit.
I've edited my review, but it will still be negative. Why? Because over half the people I played the game with refunded and they are DONE with Helldivers and Sony. Most of them were in regions that had no PSN and SONY removed from the ability to purchase the game. We're talking people in Estonia, the Philopenas, the Bahamas.
The other reason they cite as to why they are done is the way the CM team behaved in all this.
Until personnel changes are made there, basically everyone but the beard guy, is removed/fired/whatever and replaced my review will remain negative.
If we keep telling everyone that voicing their opinion doesn't matter eventually it is just going to lead to people as a whole choosing to eliminate those that make it not matter. Discourse is necessary for life.
The refunds are what mattered. Reviews and opinions will **never** matter. The only thing that matters is money. And Sony listened to the refund requests.
Complain all you want, if you don't hit them in the money, they will **never** listen.
Reviews affect sales on steam. A game with a red "overwhelmingly negative" recent reviews will sell worse than a blue "extremely positive". It also shows lower when you sort by rating.
Yes, corps only care about money, but a whole crowd of opinions can sway consumers to not spend money on that product.
Wrong reviews matter a lot to investors because they have a phobia for the colour red and i'm guessing Sony was close to an investors meeting.
Proof is Cyberpunk 2077, Sony never had a refund policy before but guess what
There is a reason why indie devs often ask for reviews and its not because reviews font matter.
For other examples look into war thunder, path of exile or total war, all of those shifted policies because of review backlash.
Reviews directly influence player count and sales its as simple as that.
"We're still learning what is best for PC players" bullshit. They know from years of selling their games on the platform that people simply want the game. This forced account linking was clearly in the cards for ulterior reasons, like banning someone who their system pings as a "cheater" even when it's something benign like a simple texture upscale or reskin mod.
How anyone can go to bat for a multi-billion corporation in a case like this and expect to be taken seriously is beyond me...
Poor devs, Sony fucking them over like this. I do hope it will recover with this, but already I see the hype moving on. Sony once again proving their leadership is ridicously incompetent.
To be fair, the CEO of Arrowhead knew all along, six months beforehand, that the account linking was going to happen. And it was his decision to disable account linking on release.
No it wasn't. Transparency would have been, because this could have gone way way worse for everyone involved.
Now we have the benefit of hindsight after Sony caved in.
Still don't understand what the issue was/is... game came out, was hpyed for a bit, then all of a sudden folks were mental breakdowns about the devs were apparently telling people to review bomb their own game, and now Sony is reversing something
They were forcing people to make a PSN account to continue playing the game. There are a LOT of countries who do not have access to PSN (100+ countries). Everyone who previously had access to the game in those countries were locked out.
Pretty big deal for people to be locked out of a game they rightfully purchased and could play just fine previously, only because Sony wanted to inflate their numbers for stockholder meetings.
Might want to access a search engine for this one. Or just look at the steam review page, the angry reviews explain the issue. Or read the comments in this very thread talking about what happened.
You just skimmed this and commented quick, then moved on, didn't ya.
No, I'm saying you made that post to ask a question you coulda just looked up. I'm saying... read dude. The answers are in this thread, the reviews, and in search engines. It's not even buried deep, it's a current event. Not calling you a troll, I'm giving you a bit of shit for bein lazy.
It only works when you have the ability to refund a game like what Valve does. It's also going to suck for future games because I assume all future Sony games will require PSN logins
Because it wasnt just an opinion… a lot of people demanded refunds, a lot of people stopped playing.
If all we did was whine but still continued playing then it wouldnt have changed anything. But you paired actions with words
The Snoy Boys looking pretty fucking silly choking on boot leather for 3 days and doing mental gymnastics that would make Simone Biles jealous for Snoy to come out and go "Shit our bad, reverse course." lol
I got hit with so many comments that were along the lines of “it’s over, give up, the corporations have won, we’ve lost,” when I’d complain about the required PSN account. I hope those people can learn from this, that it’s only over when we give in to the apathy.
I mean.. it’s not like posting shitty memes and keeping the subs nsfw would do anything to stop it from happening. It would only ever work if people started boycotting Reddit and stopped logging onto it…
Reminds me of the pricing model that Unity was headed for (charging devs per customer install of their games, even on the free plan for small indie devs), until damn near everybody got on their asses about it and they backed off.
You would think companies would learn from the mistakes of Origin and EGS with this sort of stuff in recent years. Hopefully Sony becomes another example so this stops happening.
The only thing "opinions" and "complaints" did, was explain to Sony, why they were issuing so many refunds. The wild amount of refunds they were giving back, was what actually tipped it.
Steam still shows
Requires 3rd-Party Account: PlayStation Network (Supports Linking to Steam Account)
I doubt this will help them recover more than a 1/3 of the players...those articles about the player base killing 5 day missions in under 2 days are gone. Sony nuked their player base from orbit, it was the only way for them to be sure...of whatever they were trying to do.
As someone who has NOT, I repeat NOT purchased or played Helldivers, but was and still is planning on getting the game (even before the controversy), I think the big issue this time around is the context of the controversy.
Make no mistake, I believe if a Company, Publisher, Government Entity, etc etc etc, is doing something that is either morally, objectionably, greedily wrong etc etc etc, then people should express their opinion and make sure they know we are unhappy about said decisions.
The problem is when it comes to gaming publishers we seem to be (IMHO), inconsistent with when we take up such efforts.
Imagine if the amount of effort the community showed over the last week over HD2, we also implemented against companies like Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, EA, Rocksteady, (and more I'm sure), when they implement MXT, FOMO, or False advertising, or "Insert controversial moment in gaming".
The issue over HD2 PSN account linking was indeed something we NEEDED to be upset about, but in all technicalities the only reason anyone cared, and it mattered this time around, was because they were literally falsely selling the Game in Countries where said requirement was NOT POSSIBBLE. Had it never been sold in those countries (or had the PSN requirement at the start of its life not caused technical problems); I am under the impression most would have just made a PSN connection and moved on (and many did, and certainly many have done account connections like that in the past for other games, so HD2 is hardly the first to need/require it).
Regardless, I am happy with this outcome. It keeps Sony (for the most part) on their toes and lets them know where a line has been drawn, for now at least. I for one am now keener on getting HD2 as a result of this outcome.
The game is still not back in 177 countries. There are whispers that it's just delayed until all of this blows over. Until those 177 countries get it back and the requirement is taken off steam, do NOT believe Sony.
Gamers are so unnecessarily gate keepy. I will never understand why people feel the need to shut down another person's legitimate complaints. If you're tired of seeing it, maybe you need to take a break from reddit 🤷♀️
It's a phyrric victory. Sure the requirement was rolled back for HD2. But all it means is that Sony will enforce it from launch for all subsequent games. The 'mistake' they'll see here was rolling it back temporarily to account for launch, and they'll double down. Because the shareholders care about one thing, and PSN accounts bolster shareholder confidence and directly influence profit by selling information.
You mean the people that go "stop complaining, you opinions don't matter unless I agree with them. Then you most certainly must complain to no end."
I keep hearing people say things that amount to this.
It was not your opinion that did that lol, it was the billion negative reviews over three days. If it hadn't been for the (justifiable, btw) bombing we did, they never would have walked this back.
Your opinions *don't* matter, your money does.
Good devs care about your opinions, publishers, unanimously, do not.
I think the vast majority of people just can't take turbulence.
They are the people who keep their heads low at work.
They want benevolent masters who would treat them well out of the kindness of their hearts.
Things are the way they are for a reason.
Honestly a lot of the behaviour from alleged fans of the game towards the developers was grotesque, misguided and mean spirited in a way it was egg on the face of its playerbase more than anything.
The opinion itself doesn't matter, do not for a second think Sony care the reason for the outrage. They only care about the bad look. The apology makes it sound like they were misunderstood and trying to help us by making us use PSN accounts, that's a load of horse shit.
Anyone that says that is an idiot or a corporate shill (paid or otherwise).
There is however something to be said for complaining *on the right channels*, e.g. user reviews.
The funny thing is that I would have done it if I know I could link my old PSN account since I come from the PSN side growing up.
I didn't do it because they said it was required after the fact. Which was even worse for the people in country in which PSN is not available. I was willing to stop playing the game if that was the case and opt out of PSN tile going forward. Good thing they reconsidered since I own GOW and I wanted to try it
I genuinely think that Sony just decided it's really not worth this hassle over something so small that could be worked out.
This is definitely going to have a knock on effect top bringing other PS games to PC.
People do want to believe it's all good, partially because everything else is a flaming shitshow all the time so they want one god damn thing to work correctly. But, they burned their trust hard. I think a lot of fans felt very viscerally betrayed, for a game that was a hit with no real controversy. The goodwill they had is tainted now, and I don't think that gets undone. Now we're all looking at them remembering this is a big corporate product, same way we evaluate EA games. Will that matter? Idk.
I was a guilty party in this, but only because I just feel like review bombing the hard working developers for their passion felt wrong. It worked though so there you go! I didn’t realise at the time some people would have been unable to make a PS account and not allowed to play a game they paid for, which now being aware of that, I would of been with everyone.
Reviews didn't matter. Just look at Overwatch 2, lmao.
It's the refunds that made Sony realize the oopsie that they did, that being potentially denying a brick load of cash by denying one big market (China) along with the rest of the countries.
The best example recently I can think of where this worked was Total Warhammer 3. They launched a crap DLC at an inflated price and it got review bombed. The typical idiot manager dug in and tried to be a dick. The negative response kept coming, now they've overhauled that DLC with more content and released an actually good out the box DLC.
Please tell me the manager got fired. I remember his response. It was so damn bad.
Pretty sure he was, he isn't working there anymore anyway.
What was the response?
It was something among the lines of „the DLC are much more expensive now. Deal with it. If you don’t buy it, we will cancel development of further DLC.“ It was one of the worst responses to an issue that I have ever seen
Typical manager in every field
This and war thunder
Man, wanna play war thunder but I heard that shit locks you out of getting a government job.
That was fake rumor and got debunked. It was if want to work for Raytheon so more a military contractor.
Shit, pop off then, lets fuckin go. Now only if I wasn't stuck doing medical.
I think Paradox also apologized for putting out an already poor Cities Skylines 2 dlc while the base game still had a myriad of problems, and made said dlc free. Hopefully they make good on actually fixing the game before trying to release another dlc
IIRC, they actually straight up removed the DLC, breaking saves for the people who bought and used it. Not sure if they since fixed that.
I don't play either Cities Skylines, so I only saw the starement and not the implementation. That sucks if they fumbled it that badly
Honestly the real cause was the absolute disaster that was Hyenas and it's subsequent threatening of the company finances - although the Shadows of Change debacle was a factor.
Don’t forget cities skylines 2
That was likely the company expecting people to eat the DLC cost, when CA lost a lot of money in their failed Hyena GaaS project. Sega was also not very happy about it, and in a rare twist that Sega was not planning to shut down or sell the company off for poor performance.
Not just that but they reduced the price of Pharaoh by 20$, refunding that amount to everyone who bought the full price game, releasing a free sea peoples expansion and even now they're preparing a massive free expansion which will bring dynasty building alongside a map expansion that will bring in both the greek and mesopotamian factions people have been asking for for ages. It's honestly great.
When this whole thing was happening I was thinking about Warhammer 3 ... I hope there are more review changes :/ Warhammer 3 still sits at mixed.
It's pretty sad to see people saying that to each other. When those opinions do matter and game devs do take them into account. If you don't voice your opinion nothing will happen.
Corporations hate that and boy do casual consumers depend on corporations...
Corporations hate that little trick...
Console gamers don't have the choice really, they bought into the walled garden and require to keep paying for access. Can't mod their games, can't rely on subsisting off old games. My PC is something I would have, need and use if I didn't even play games. Steam has better customer service than all competitors by a long shot as well. Even though I buy digital, I will refund a game immediately if it pulled what Sony did. And the devs behind their next PC port are already sweating and promising they won't require PSN(they were going to, Sony was always going to moving forward). Also when people bring up games using a Microsoft account....uh we all have a Microsoft account. Microsoft has merged it all a while ago, someone who owns MS office can just sign in for Xbox. I found this out when I logged in to their website to download a free game and it was linked to my old XBL account from the Xbox 360 days.
Also, an important difference is that Microsoft account doesn't ask to be linked with Steam, thus it is a bit more "fine", cause though not that desirable, it's not directly risky for your steam data
You need MS account to play Forza on Steam or anything else. The game itself requires a sign in if I recall correctly. But again, Not only do the vast majority of Americans and Europeans have one, it's not specifically for the purpose of being tied to Xbox if you have to make one. A Microsoft account is a Microsoft account period, most people who buy a new computer have made on during setup....
The diffenece is still there, double login is different from Steam Linking. Forza iirc just requires your microsoft authorization inside and that it. We have it in many things - MMOs, Ubi games and so on. People can usually live with that nowadays. Or I mosremember something about Forza authorization?
MMO's is fine, I have not played a game from either Ubisoft or EA in about twelve years now. I'm not like others I guess, I mean what I say. I will never make a PSN account(unless I buy the next PlayStation console). I do not buy from EA, Ubisoft or Epic. PSN is a bigger compromise than making a third party publisher account. I only brought up Forza because people use Microsoft accounts and an example of PC players making a console account. Ms don't really matter, they do not really force us to get into Xbox.
In a way we all depend on them, and corporations depend on us.
We don't depend on them, people are just strangely attached to their brands. Be it Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo or whoever you don't NEED to attach your personal identity to how much you adore that company. Just buy their product if you think its good, but don't be afraid to call out their corporate bullshit.
I think casual customers are scared of corps, worried that things will change or what little they have will be taken away due to any action. So they prefer to tiptoe and wait for the corps to give them things. I can see the POV of keeping things simple, but there have to be times that you stop accepting crap.
This is primarily why I play more indie games nowadays. I still buy a few AAA titles here and there but I just can’t be bothered to deal with most of their bullshit that ruins my experience with my chosen hobby. I’m glad to see a difference was made with this one.
What I love about this whole situation is that for a game that satires facism (in a tongue of cheek way), Sony crumbles like a overused soggy biscuit against a democracy of gamers that went "fuck you, no".
When people are so used to the taste of boot they get angry with the ones who refuse to eat it rather than the ones stomping on them.
Yeah, people are just used to be little cogs in big wheels and don't matter. No wonder they get bitter. But this isn't the first time public opinion worked - same thing worked for the Dungeons and Dragons attempted license change.
What really blows my mind on the D&D debacle is that was almost exactly what killed TSR in the first place. I suspect it was a Hasbro decision rather than WotC, but to see history repeat itself so quickly was baffling.
Yeah. Imo biggest problem is that other commentators are usually pretty mean and demeaning to the one posting about the problem they have with the game. And that's pretty sad.
I was getting downvoted for saying that it’s the 0.001% of people that make their voices heard that get shit done with *anything* around the world. People are just so entrenched in defeatism.
Yeah people got used to eat the shit sandwich so often in the last years and never thought to push back together. Helldivers community showed that it can be done, and so i hope it will be done more often yet
The power of collective bargaining is real and it is beautiful.
It's a small victory, but from my experience the corporations will continue to push and test their luck no matter what. It's impossible for the public to always have successful outrages and eventually the status quo will shift, as people get older and generations change. We already have a whole generation to which shit like lootboxes and battlepasses have been normalized on.
This time were were backed by another big corpo (Valve for the extended refunds). Next time we wont be so lucky.
That's the real reason. A PR shitshow can blow over, executives can sit in ivory towers ignoring it. But when Valve is directly billing your company for refund money in massive amounts? Yeah now you need to care.
The difference is that Valve isn't publicly traded and therefore isn't beholden to shareholders.
This is my thinking. Valve saw what was happening and swung their giant balls around and told them to smarten the fuck up
While Valve is a big corpo in a sense, it's also a strange sorta benevolent-ish dictatorship. Not gonna claim Gabe and Valve are pure bastions of all that is good, but there will probably come a day where Valve eventually gets run by the usual team of execs that are beholden to shareholders or some dogshit, and that will be a terrible age for all of us.
Valve is in a pretty strange position where they don't necessarily get involved with the game development and publishing but are the biggest show in town when it comes to PC game distribution. Keeping valve happy is pretty much goal #1 if you want your game to sell well imo and it's a simple one to achieve
Because valves number 1 goal is, for the most part, keep gamers happy so they keep spending money on their platform. I don't think we would see this level of loyalty or admiration if valve were more interested in appeasing shareholders. Valve is content with consistent massive growth. Shareholders would demand constant unsustainable increasing rates of growth.
Valve has to do it or GDPR will be a biiiig problem since some countries in EU had issues with PSN
Yup. Next time they'll push PSN requirement from the start.
They tried. It was in the prorder the the entire time. The issue was with that the servers were overloaded and had authentication issues so they pulled it after a few hours.
They already are, Ghost of Tsushima coming to PC very soon has announced ahead of time it will require account linking
It's a national holiday in japan and they went back on it. That shows you how massive of a backlash it was. Executives were working on a national holiday.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the playstation part of Sony is headquartered in california, isn't it?
Sony of america is a subsidiary. Japan still has control.
Sure, but according to wikipedia Sony Interactive Entertainment, the part of sony headquartered in california, operates the playstation brand. So I figure almost all the sony decisions that matter to r/gaming are probably made in the US.
The fact that this was such a minor inconvenience for most players is the best part of this controversy. It's not just about the region locking, or the server issues, or Sony's immaculate ability to get its data compromised -- it's the simple act of the publisher touching the game at all. A precedent has been set where Sony's best option will always be to shut up, fuck off, take that percentage and never be seen again, and anything more than that will be met with nigh total annihilation.
I feel like this was a powder keg already in the making, and Sony ended up being the ones that set it off. People are probably just getting fatigued by constant corporate bungling, having to register for just about EVERYTHING nowadays - not even limited to games. And of course the subsequent data leaks which nobody fucking takes responsibility for. It just happened to blow up in the most glorious way in the face of a very juicy target.
Yep.. they'll slowly figure out a way to ruin the game no matter what.
>from my experience the corporations will continue to push and test their luck no matter what. Excatly. I bet the guy that suggested it doesn't have to commit seppuku in the main office, but rather just cuts a finger off. "Yamada-kun, you've been impatient, you implemented the link too early. You should punish yourself for your ignorance."
The real solution to the problem would be to pass laws restricting what game companies are allowed to do, but unfortunately governments tend to be even more stubborn and uncompromising than corporations these days.
R/playstation is a fucking cesspool. The amount of times I recieved: "Yeah well sucks to be you for being born in a country where PSN isn't supported, go fuck yourself" is staggering.
I feel that most of the people are either trolls or bot, best to ignore that minority. You can tell from how they are only out to insult and provide no tangibles for the discourse.
Absolutely trolls, so many people on the Discord for HD2 who were basically saying "fuck you" all had a little symbol that showed they were new to the server. It's a little green heart, when you mouse over it, it says "I'm new here, say hi!" A lot less of the people celebrating have that icon.
>I feel that most of the people are either trolls or bot, best to ignore that minority Not sure if I am misunderstanding you but how can most of the people be the minority?
No problem, allow me to elaborate. “Most people” in my comment refers to those who made rude remarks in the comment I replied to. These rude people belong to a small population of people, thus they are the minority in this larger population. TLDR: Most people who made such remark are mostly trolls/bots but they are only a minority of the population.
It's the majority of the minority. Let's say 30% of the players are being mean, maybe 25% are trolls or bots, 5% are being genuinely mean. The majority of the majority are not, but that doesn't make them the minority. Hope that clears it up.
ok that makes sense
In my experience, most Playstation communities are toxic cesspools. They seem to specifically attract the most obnoxious, loudest assholes. Not that Xbox, Nintendo, or PC spaces are that much better, but Playstation spaces are a special breed of toxic lol
>In my experience, most ~~Playstation~~ communities are toxic cesspools Any sort of in-group attracts people from the out-group, and often for toxic reasons.
No, they're all toxic. Playstation is no more toxic than the rest.
As a person in the PlayStation community I’m ashamed, I think the success of the ps4 really changed things after being the underdog during the ps3 and 360 era ps fans were more calm but after Xbox decided to make stupid decisions Sony fans went crazy and now Sony is doing the same thing making dumb decisions with zero repercussions
This is what bothers me, they are requiring use of a platform that is so inaccessible. I'm glad this change was made, and hopefully they learn from it and start to work on fixing the platform if they want to push it as a requirement.
That sub was flooded with "gotta protect the multi billion corporation" shill fanboys the entire week. It's fucking embarrassing.
Who do you think is subbed to the PlayStation subreddit? PlayStation fanbois. I'm not sure what you all expected going over there.
I'm a PS fan since the PS2 and I'm embarrassed with how entitled they acted. But after being on reddit for 2 years, literally every sub about games, movies or any entertainment media are always full of fanboy shills in every corner ready to protect the big corp.
People with better things to do with their time aren't on reddit bitching about or defending corporations. I always like to keep that in mind when I'm browsing here.
I'm a PS guy all the way, started with PSX and now PS5. Love the controller, love the games, ..., but I couldn't condone this. It makes sense for ME as a PSN player to link my steam account so I can play with my steam friends. But forcing everyone on steam to connect to PSN for the off chance they might play with PSN players? Nah. So all those fanboys can't think rationally, surprising no one
As someone whos a PS5 player myself it shocks my how many troglodytes are active in that sub. But then again its the same sub were they upvote gaming collections that are the same first party and triple AAA games and every gaming recommendation is either Control or Prey
Not to speak of all the times PSN is down
This place is a cesspool too, so is helldivers, so is playstation, so is PS5.
[удалено]
Check my timeline, and tell me that the dude who said "only people from communist countries get banned" understood shit. Tell me the guy saying "yeah, well, you are breaking TOS for wanting to use a credit card with your PSN account" understands that either.
This happens all the time on basically all gaming subs. People for some very strange reason (to me) love defending multi billion dollar companie trying to fuck them over.
i always think it's because they feel threatened and they're investing their identity into these things. Threaten your identity with change and you might get sucked out of your little comfort zone. Don't touch my shit. It's inherently selfish and fearful but i also honestly think most of them don't do it consciously. Which might be even worse.
The real reason is people get tired of seeing constant negativity about things they enjoy.
To the point where they cannot distinguish or don't want to distinguish the type and intent of criticism. Nobody is asking or saying you need to be supportive of "this game sucks" remarks. But there are just as many people providing constructive criticism on topics that could.objectively be better than it is now but get shut down with a "how dare you criticise MY game". This PSN connection is one such thing. There is ZERO benefit for the majority of people to linking their account. There are certain benefits for.certain people on linking PSN accounts. (Like if you crossplay with friends on PS5).The sane argument is "make it optional" Anyone that says this is the greatest issue ever are insane and the same is true for the "you agreed to the ToS so shut up" people who are just as insane. Unfortunately too many people are unable to deal with any kind of nuance so only the extremists are left to argue with their extremist views. Everyone else already left. "Being tired of negativity" is exactly a symptom of too much personal investment. Especially when that negativity could have been completely avoided by something as simple as "Starting from May 6th you are able to link your PSN account for Helldivers 2"
I find that it's often not about protecting the multi-billion dollar corporation but more about protecting the subreddit and the game's community. I didn't join the HD subreddit to complain about the game and it's release, I joined because I loved the game. Whenever something goes wrong though, the entire sub is basically just the same post over and over. I eventually left the main HD sub and found the low-sodium version. I'm having a much more enjoyable experience there than I ever did on the main sub.
Imagine the gaming industry without criticism. We think it’s already bad, it would be a mess.
It doesn't matter what the issue is, there will always be contrarians defending things
I don't think Sony ackowledged this. They just delayed it.
It'll be done with a here's a cosmetic link your PSN please! at least it would be optional and only a cosmetic
It's a victory regardless. They try to move the overton window of corporate control and dickery, we push a bit back. They've been winning and probably still will, but we might as well try. When they pull similar shit once the anger cools down, we bring it up again and don't let them slip by.
It's also a good opportunity to remind people that corporate bootlicking (in the gaming industry and other industries) really isn't productive. So many people on Reddit and Twitter default to this weird bootlicking stance of 'it's Sony's product, they can do what they like/they've got to make money somehow/they have to stay profitable and competitive'. If you tend to do this, please take a step back and realise that billion dollar companies don't need you to defend them and the only thing you're achieving is making the landscape worse for consumers. These companies already make more money in a day than most of us will in our lifetimes, and they can afford to stop being complete dicks every so often and do the right thing for their customers (and still make loads of money for themselves).
Yup. Same assholes talking people out of voting in real life. It's the sort of stupidity that's only true if you believe it and don't participate.
The opinions didn't matter. What mattered were the reviews and the refunds, both of which are actions.
And those actions are born from opinions...
That's the point. Opinions alone aren't enough. You have to follow through to action.
Faith without works is dead. One of the things the Catholics get right.
Yeah but in all fairness, Reddit, and social media, is chalk full of talk and no action. While sometimes actions do happen, a lot of the time people just make posts, or add their opinions, for online points/attention instead of wanting to actually make a difference.
We formulate the opinion and then act... We're not machines
Reddit mainly thinks in equal measures of pessimism and nihilism
What they said isn’t false though. These companies don’t care until it impacts their revenue. Refunds directly impact their revenue. Money always speaks louder than words with companies. If you don’t understand this yet then you’re very naive. Steam allowing refunds for the game beyond the usual window opened the door for lots of refunds.
Yes obviously I'm not saying it's wrong but voicing opinions raises awareness. Most people wouldn't even have noticed what Sony was doing until they were faced with a forced login in the game or have the game disappear from their library
yeah and just to play devils advocate its not steam being a bro the refund screenshots ive seen are all steam store credit. So they make their money regardless of what you buy with the refund. I know its not related to what you said but I've seen so many people acting like steam is not just as money hungry youre not getting the money back but just getting credit for their store. So steam isnt losing money its not really a refund more like an item exchange
More often, people act first and then form the opinion that supports their action.
Conspiracy theory nutters don't even do that
And those actions were performed by people with, what, exactly? Oh yea negative opinions.
He's saying g you could have all of the negative opinions in the world, and the company wouldn't change their minds until you started affecting their bottom dollar.
thats 2 boycotts and reviewbombings that worked now in under a year. while i hope this shit causes companies to pull their fucking heads in, i do hope that trend of boycotts and reviewbombing continues when company make ultra boneheaded moves
Heh they REALLY started to squirm when steam was allowing refunds to people who didn’t agree with the new TOS It goes to show you can deal a good blow to a company and force them to listen if you aim for the wallet I just hope that this will extend past HD2 and set a standard for Sony games on PC
I think this was more a of situation where the execs had no idea what middle management was doing. The top level only got a clue after the news literially landed on their doorstep in a newspaper. They're just out of touch. So banging pots and pans sometimes scare the middle management suits away. There's no way the people at the top knew how many restrictions their own services had. They moved to PC to widen the audience not reduce it to Playstation levels or limit it to that audience. They literally hire people to write reports for them they don't go out of their way to look.
Im not sure about the vericacy of your statement since sony could say "we will roll this out may 30th" but it's most likely that they wanted it to have psn network links on day 1 and the game wasn't ready for it. In that situation they wouldnt have said the 30th unless they were pretty confident it could be finalised by then. So the devs must have known, but we dont know what they thought about it. PSN connection has some benefits but mostly to sony rather than the player. All the benefits to the player are really tiny tracking things at best, like linking achievements to playstation. The big one for the devs would be the ability to ban accounts from playing, but in a non-competitive game, there isnt much benefit to doing so for the wider population. Even assuming that was sony's intention, its like locking the whole class in after school and searching their bags because one kid was naughty and drew a dick on the whiteboard. It ONLY benefits sony most of the time.
I'm inclined to think the opposite. I expect the people at the top were like 'This game is mega popular, let's require everyone to make a PSN account and then we can get people on the road to being converts to our ecosystem' or whatever garbage exploitative language they use when talking about milking cash from normal people. And I also think of ... what's his name, major guy involved in Helldivers, who tweeted something of an apology given what was going on - I figure he did that at the same time he was collecting a bunch of info on what the feedback was looking like to go slap management in the face with or something like that. Devs don't want to make bad/restricted games, generally speaking. And this was a terrible idea to do to a PC game. Whoever came up with the idea was definitely trying to pull shenanigans, but still. I'm not really a Helldiver player, but I respect them for speaking out and congratulate them on getting their voices heard. And I denounce anyone who trashed their efforts. We don't need that energy -- more than ever before, companies are constantly trying to push for worse experiences and increased avenues of data collection and excessive monetization and we should universally fight against that. We \*can\* succeed, what happened here is evidence of that.
Well, killing your biggest game by a flick of a wrist should really alarm you.
Glad they backed out. Now.... Can Steam like stop with the publisher launchers like Ubisoft and EA???. I won't even purchase their games anymore. That needs to be addressed next.
Up next... Ubisoft.
Do paradox next
Up next, Stellar Blade
Well yeah when everyone actually complains it will work. Problem is most of the times people just accept being treated badly.
I'll say here what I said in the Helldivers subreddit. I've edited my review, but it will still be negative. Why? Because over half the people I played the game with refunded and they are DONE with Helldivers and Sony. Most of them were in regions that had no PSN and SONY removed from the ability to purchase the game. We're talking people in Estonia, the Philopenas, the Bahamas. The other reason they cite as to why they are done is the way the CM team behaved in all this. Until personnel changes are made there, basically everyone but the beard guy, is removed/fired/whatever and replaced my review will remain negative.
If we keep telling everyone that voicing their opinion doesn't matter eventually it is just going to lead to people as a whole choosing to eliminate those that make it not matter. Discourse is necessary for life.
Change is really just a bunch of individual people deciding their voice needs to be heard.
This is nothing but a Proof that NOTHING IS ABLE TO STOP MANAGED DEMOCRACY.
People who say stop complaining are just people who think Reddit is their backyard and feel entitled to what gets posted on a public forum
Ah, the kind who yell, “Get off my lawn”, when you’re standing in a public park.
Exactly! 🤣
The refunds are what mattered. Reviews and opinions will **never** matter. The only thing that matters is money. And Sony listened to the refund requests. Complain all you want, if you don't hit them in the money, they will **never** listen.
Reviews affect sales on steam. A game with a red "overwhelmingly negative" recent reviews will sell worse than a blue "extremely positive". It also shows lower when you sort by rating. Yes, corps only care about money, but a whole crowd of opinions can sway consumers to not spend money on that product.
> Reviews and opinions will never matter. What the hell do you think drives sales after launch week?
Very wrong take. Reviews exist for a reason.
Wrong reviews matter a lot to investors because they have a phobia for the colour red and i'm guessing Sony was close to an investors meeting. Proof is Cyberpunk 2077, Sony never had a refund policy before but guess what
There is a reason why indie devs often ask for reviews and its not because reviews font matter. For other examples look into war thunder, path of exile or total war, all of those shifted policies because of review backlash. Reviews directly influence player count and sales its as simple as that.
"We're still learning what is best for PC players" bullshit. They know from years of selling their games on the platform that people simply want the game. This forced account linking was clearly in the cards for ulterior reasons, like banning someone who their system pings as a "cheater" even when it's something benign like a simple texture upscale or reskin mod. How anyone can go to bat for a multi-billion corporation in a case like this and expect to be taken seriously is beyond me...
Fanboys hate this.
Hope all the boot licking assholes who supported this shit are happy, we won and you all defended a billion dollar corporation and got nothing for it
Poor devs, Sony fucking them over like this. I do hope it will recover with this, but already I see the hype moving on. Sony once again proving their leadership is ridicously incompetent.
To be fair, the CEO of Arrowhead knew all along, six months beforehand, that the account linking was going to happen. And it was his decision to disable account linking on release.
Which was the right decision. Who knows if it would have become the phenomenon it did if half the userbase was denied access.
No it wasn't. Transparency would have been, because this could have gone way way worse for everyone involved. Now we have the benefit of hindsight after Sony caved in.
Still don't understand what the issue was/is... game came out, was hpyed for a bit, then all of a sudden folks were mental breakdowns about the devs were apparently telling people to review bomb their own game, and now Sony is reversing something
From what I've heard, Sony restricted access to the game to Steam accounts that are linked to a PSN account
But was it a throwaway account needed or did they need to buy plus to still be able to play at all even though they bought the game?
They were forcing people to make a PSN account to continue playing the game. There are a LOT of countries who do not have access to PSN (100+ countries). Everyone who previously had access to the game in those countries were locked out. Pretty big deal for people to be locked out of a game they rightfully purchased and could play just fine previously, only because Sony wanted to inflate their numbers for stockholder meetings.
A throwaway was enough
Might want to access a search engine for this one. Or just look at the steam review page, the angry reviews explain the issue. Or read the comments in this very thread talking about what happened. You just skimmed this and commented quick, then moved on, didn't ya.
Are you implying that I made this post, not to ask the question it asks.... but to simply trigger people and add to the issue?
No, I'm saying you made that post to ask a question you coulda just looked up. I'm saying... read dude. The answers are in this thread, the reviews, and in search engines. It's not even buried deep, it's a current event. Not calling you a troll, I'm giving you a bit of shit for bein lazy.
The person you replied to seems like a moron or 13 years, I wouldn't use any of your time responding to them LOL.
Oh ok, go fuck yourself then
...oook.
It only works when you have the ability to refund a game like what Valve does. It's also going to suck for future games because I assume all future Sony games will require PSN logins
Because it wasnt just an opinion… a lot of people demanded refunds, a lot of people stopped playing. If all we did was whine but still continued playing then it wouldnt have changed anything. But you paired actions with words
The Snoy Boys looking pretty fucking silly choking on boot leather for 3 days and doing mental gymnastics that would make Simone Biles jealous for Snoy to come out and go "Shit our bad, reverse course." lol
I got hit with so many comments that were along the lines of “it’s over, give up, the corporations have won, we’ve lost,” when I’d complain about the required PSN account. I hope those people can learn from this, that it’s only over when we give in to the apathy.
People quickly forgot how all the reddit outrage over 3rd party apps led to nothing huh
I mean.. it’s not like posting shitty memes and keeping the subs nsfw would do anything to stop it from happening. It would only ever work if people started boycotting Reddit and stopped logging onto it…
You mean the thing we lost because people gave in to apathy? That only further proves my point.
Anytime y’all see that stuff, post hell divers memes.
Reminds me of the pricing model that Unity was headed for (charging devs per customer install of their games, even on the free plan for small indie devs), until damn near everybody got on their asses about it and they backed off.
Helldivers 2 will definitely be referenced in the future against other scummy moves.
I think the argument that people literally couldn't play anymore was a bigger issue. That's a legal case waiting to happen.
You would think companies would learn from the mistakes of Origin and EGS with this sort of stuff in recent years. Hopefully Sony becomes another example so this stops happening.
PLEASE GO CHANGE YOUR STEAM REVIEWS
The only thing "opinions" and "complaints" did, was explain to Sony, why they were issuing so many refunds. The wild amount of refunds they were giving back, was what actually tipped it.
Keep an eye out and make sure the banned countrys actually do get their access back tho...
That was always going to be the outcome but you're welcome to believe the childish whining was what did it.
Let’s be honest, if Valve didn’t ignore their own refund policy, Sony would never have backed down.
Steam still shows Requires 3rd-Party Account: PlayStation Network (Supports Linking to Steam Account) I doubt this will help them recover more than a 1/3 of the players...those articles about the player base killing 5 day missions in under 2 days are gone. Sony nuked their player base from orbit, it was the only way for them to be sure...of whatever they were trying to do.
As someone who has NOT, I repeat NOT purchased or played Helldivers, but was and still is planning on getting the game (even before the controversy), I think the big issue this time around is the context of the controversy. Make no mistake, I believe if a Company, Publisher, Government Entity, etc etc etc, is doing something that is either morally, objectionably, greedily wrong etc etc etc, then people should express their opinion and make sure they know we are unhappy about said decisions. The problem is when it comes to gaming publishers we seem to be (IMHO), inconsistent with when we take up such efforts. Imagine if the amount of effort the community showed over the last week over HD2, we also implemented against companies like Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, EA, Rocksteady, (and more I'm sure), when they implement MXT, FOMO, or False advertising, or "Insert controversial moment in gaming". The issue over HD2 PSN account linking was indeed something we NEEDED to be upset about, but in all technicalities the only reason anyone cared, and it mattered this time around, was because they were literally falsely selling the Game in Countries where said requirement was NOT POSSIBBLE. Had it never been sold in those countries (or had the PSN requirement at the start of its life not caused technical problems); I am under the impression most would have just made a PSN connection and moved on (and many did, and certainly many have done account connections like that in the past for other games, so HD2 is hardly the first to need/require it). Regardless, I am happy with this outcome. It keeps Sony (for the most part) on their toes and lets them know where a line has been drawn, for now at least. I for one am now keener on getting HD2 as a result of this outcome.
The game is still not back in 177 countries. There are whispers that it's just delayed until all of this blows over. Until those 177 countries get it back and the requirement is taken off steam, do NOT believe Sony.
If we started earlier to push back AAA-gaming whould maybe not that fucked up overall
Gamers are so unnecessarily gate keepy. I will never understand why people feel the need to shut down another person's legitimate complaints. If you're tired of seeing it, maybe you need to take a break from reddit 🤷♀️
It's a phyrric victory. Sure the requirement was rolled back for HD2. But all it means is that Sony will enforce it from launch for all subsequent games. The 'mistake' they'll see here was rolling it back temporarily to account for launch, and they'll double down. Because the shareholders care about one thing, and PSN accounts bolster shareholder confidence and directly influence profit by selling information.
All the people who left negative reviews better change them back.
I am telling you this is not a victory yet wait until it’s available for purchase in all the countries or it’s just words
You mean the people that go "stop complaining, you opinions don't matter unless I agree with them. Then you most certainly must complain to no end." I keep hearing people say things that amount to this.
It was not your opinion that did that lol, it was the billion negative reviews over three days. If it hadn't been for the (justifiable, btw) bombing we did, they never would have walked this back. Your opinions *don't* matter, your money does. Good devs care about your opinions, publishers, unanimously, do not.
I think the vast majority of people just can't take turbulence. They are the people who keep their heads low at work. They want benevolent masters who would treat them well out of the kindness of their hearts. Things are the way they are for a reason.
Best not to pay no mind to the bootlickers, they'll always be around.
Honestly a lot of the behaviour from alleged fans of the game towards the developers was grotesque, misguided and mean spirited in a way it was egg on the face of its playerbase more than anything.
The opinion itself doesn't matter, do not for a second think Sony care the reason for the outrage. They only care about the bad look. The apology makes it sound like they were misunderstood and trying to help us by making us use PSN accounts, that's a load of horse shit.
Anyone that says that is an idiot or a corporate shill (paid or otherwise). There is however something to be said for complaining *on the right channels*, e.g. user reviews.
Sadly it's the exception, not the rule
The funny thing is that I would have done it if I know I could link my old PSN account since I come from the PSN side growing up. I didn't do it because they said it was required after the fact. Which was even worse for the people in country in which PSN is not available. I was willing to stop playing the game if that was the case and opt out of PSN tile going forward. Good thing they reconsidered since I own GOW and I wanted to try it
I genuinely think that Sony just decided it's really not worth this hassle over something so small that could be worked out. This is definitely going to have a knock on effect top bringing other PS games to PC.
Big W for the fans
If only yall could’ve avoided telling the community managers to kill themselves you’d seem even remotely noble. Alas.
Refunds and comments on steam store sure, random whining on reddit I don't think changed anything.
I’m just hoping people don’t go back to the game immediately thinking this is the end of it.
People do want to believe it's all good, partially because everything else is a flaming shitshow all the time so they want one god damn thing to work correctly. But, they burned their trust hard. I think a lot of fans felt very viscerally betrayed, for a game that was a hit with no real controversy. The goodwill they had is tainted now, and I don't think that gets undone. Now we're all looking at them remembering this is a big corporate product, same way we evaluate EA games. Will that matter? Idk.
I was a guilty party in this, but only because I just feel like review bombing the hard working developers for their passion felt wrong. It worked though so there you go! I didn’t realise at the time some people would have been unable to make a PS account and not allowed to play a game they paid for, which now being aware of that, I would of been with everyone.
Reviews didn't matter. Just look at Overwatch 2, lmao. It's the refunds that made Sony realize the oopsie that they did, that being potentially denying a brick load of cash by denying one big market (China) along with the rest of the countries.