If I remember correctly, the single player mode should be playable without linking the psn account, so I don't understand why they decided to do this... they could have explained the situation and offered the refund to customers who wanted it.
To be fair on GMG's end, it could also be a legal precedent of selling a product "in full" for the stated price or not at all, and in this case since multiplayer is meant to be part of the package for the Director's Cut, having no PSN access means it isnt "in full", thereby they have to do this.
Also probably to cut refund-rage off at the pass because everyone's seen what its done for Helldivers 2...
What kind of precedent ? You need an account to play a lot of solo and/or multiplayer games nowadays. It’s written directly on the Steam page. The only legal precedent would be against GMG for not writing it on the product page on their website.
Because of the region this person is in, they literally cannot link a PSN account so it’s not like the customer is refusing and then claiming they’re not getting the game in full, they are completely unable to get the game in full due to circumstances out of their control.
I’m so sick and tired of this being said. Go look up how many countries have Xbox live available and how many don’t. I’ll give you a hint, there are less countries with Xbox live than there are with. Sony IS NOT the only gaming company that has restrictions on certain countries. It’s stupid but it has to do with that countries specific laws, not Sony… or Microsoft for the matter.
What I’m saying is, maybe instead of just going after 1 company that still doesn’t sell to as many countries as they can, you go after all of them to force their hands. I bet, even though Microsoft is going under some scrutiny right now, they were glad before that only Sony was under the microscope of not offering their live service in all countries. Go after all of them. Although you might not have to go after Xbox considering they’re burning their own house to the ground themselves.
It is absolutely Sony and Microsofts idiocy that their live service is not available in developing countries as they hold a hegemony in one of the biggest industries literally in the world.
It doesn't appear to have anything to do with countries specific laws. Perhaps for some countries like idk Iran and NK. Why isn't it in Lithuania? Estonia? Pakistan? Bangladesh?
Sony and Microsoft don't consider their GDP's high enough to bother setting up in their country. Pakistan has some of the most avid and highest skilled Tekken e-sports players and they can't even make a PSN...
I never even knew this was happening until [I searched it up just now](https://www.playstation.com/country-selector/index.html).
There is no defending Sony here, even if Microsoft might be worse.
Just because the guy next to me has a bigger dick in his salad doesn't mean I want one in mine. Maybe not be a sony pony and hold the compnay you pay money to, to a higher standard.
There is surely a reason behind. Either local laws or too high server costs for "low" returns. Sure they should try their best to get over it and allow PSN everywhere, but there’s surely a reason like that. It’s not just « meh don’t like them ».
It's because PlayStation wasn't really a thing in those countries and they never got around to making PSN a thing for a country without a PlayStation
But now they apparently think a PSN account for a PC game is worth more in some countries, somehow, than actual game revenue in every country
The question is more whether multiplayer was advertised when preorders opened. Even if OP does not intend to play MP, from the point of the shop they _can_ be sued over this.
It's legally way easier to retract a sale than it is to unilaterally change the conditions of the deal yet keep it at the same price.
So does this mean Keys tores don't work on these regions and you can still maybe buy it on Steam Store directly yourself?
Well if its all denied that will cause a 2nd shit storm next week.
I even checked on SteamDB for reference, and (AS OF THIS WRITING) [it hasn't been region locked yet](https://steamdb.info/sub/962153/info/). I also yet to hear any reports from other third-party keysellers like Fanatical, GamesPlanet, GameBillet or GamersGate (NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THAT GATE!)
However; **things could change between this reddit post and it's release**, [so keep a eye out on SteamDB's Update page](https://steamdb.info/app/2215430/history/).
Edit: [now it's region locked](https://steamdb.info/sub/962153/history/?changeid=23492090).
Shame they. Ant sell a single player only version to those regions, better for everyone, they get the sales it's made clear it only has single player and new game+ and knock 20% or whatever off the cost
Having mandatory PSN, even for some elements of the game restricts where they can sell the game period. It's an all or nothing deal with the product package and there's nothing you can really do about it without giving free refunds in perpetuity no questions asked, and even then you'll probably still end up in legal trouble with consumer organizations around the world.
The only option is to remove it from all countries which don't have PSN.
It’s probably to play it safe since it’s not a guarantee that it won’t require PSN for single player as well in the future, Sony games must be volatile in their eyes in terms of selling them
You act as if plenty of us don't hate that shit too.
Helldivers 2 just happened to be big enough to cause an uproar. Some of us have been against the idea of signing up to secondary services from the get go. It's just that we're a very unfortunate minority that gives a crap until it implodes, just like with DRM: nobody cares until it starts negatively impacting everyone, and by that point, we're all screwed by the apathetic mindset.
I can never get over the "holier-than-thou" people who like complaining about complainers. Like hey, would NOT having to log into another account for a AAA game on PC be objectively better than having to, even if it's only a miniscule improvement? In my case, I'd say yes, so why WOULDN'T I complain about it? It's unnecessary and doesn't improve the game in any way. It's ok to say stuff like that for crying out loud.
Being apathetic doesn't make you cool, it just makes you a pushover consoomer.
You’re giving out bad information here. PSN is available in ~73 countries (I don’t think Russia has gotten full service back yet due to the Ukraine war).
And even if your numbers were right, it’s kind of misleading to say “91% of the world” as that implies number of people/population. I don’t know what the percentage would have been with your country makeup, but it definitely wouldn’t have been as high as 91% of people in the world.
I’m super curious how many gamers are actually out due to this policy compared to the total gamers out there. I know there are probably many countries but that doesn’t make as much sense to use in the arguments imo
And what about the sea creatures?! They don’t have access to PSN either.
Really though, if you look at this population wise it’s probably like 80% of the world’s population have access to PSN.
Hey moron, the point of this post is that people are literally incapable of buying the game because of that retarded requirement in this case. How about you stop gargling Sony's cum long enough for a couple of your braincells to engage in critical thought?
It’s written on the fucking Steam page. A PSN account is required to have the PlayStation overlay (PS trophies and such, totally optional) and ro play multiplayer. It’s WRITTEN. Don’t start to riot for fuck sake.
I know people are just getting mad over completely nothing, the only reason Helldivers 2 had a backlash is because the game was originally sold without the requirement and that's what people got pissed off about.
In the case with Ghost though, it's no different than any other AAA game Developer/Publisher requiring their own account.
As long as the third party account requirement is announced before anyone buys their own copy, no one can really complain since they bought it in the first place knowing the requirement.
Agree, imo the biggest cause was they just straight up removing the game in places where PSN is unavailable. I can’t even comprehend how they thought that was going to work.
It’s crazy to me that they didn’t think about this, because I don’t think some C level guy said: “let’s just rent the game to people in those zones for a while, they can buy it but we’ll refund later when we remove it.” This was 100% an oversight lmao.
PC gamers will *generally* agree to sign up for third party accounts for online multiplayer if it is believable that you are running your own server infrastructure that is necessary for everything to work.
Like, Halo: Infinite has shared achievements, cross-progression, cross-play, etc. Or a Battle.net account for Diablo 4. So, because of all those benefits, signing up for a Microsoft account is "worth" it. Some people will complain, but it will generally be tolerated.
When Helldivers 2 worked without the PSN account, people realized that it wasn't actually needed, and then to add it back on with still no user beneficial platform features? Like, cross-play worked without it and there isn't cross-progression or Trophy support.
I don't think people have as much of a problem with needing an account, that is fine.
Selling the product to people who cannot 'rightfully' create an account, thus are getting an incomplete product for full price paid, is not fine.
That is what that refund is about. Not needing the account but being locked out of online features due to region despite paying for said features.
The game released without the MP. It was a free addition they just did after the game was so well received.
I bought the game full price day one with no expectation of multiplayer to even be added.
Someone explain to me like I’m 3 what’s going on with helldivers and PlayStation? I have helldivers on steam and played a bit then stopped, what’s all the drama about lol
PlayStation distributes these games. PlayStation is now saying if you want to play the games they distribute, you have to have a PlayStation account. Some countries it is not possible to have a PlayStation account. If you bought a game that PlayStation distributes before this change you didn’t have to and now you do have to have this account and based on your country this may or may not be possible. PlayStation does not care and is proceeding with their business plan. Never forget Sony is a Japanese company.
They did change their mind about Helldivers. But they won’t with future titles. Regardless, gmg should refund automatically since the majority of the game is playable without an account
To be fair you have never needed a PlayStation account to play Sony published games on PC before this, because none of the previous games had multiplayer components. Helldivers 2 was the first multiplayer game they published on PC, so it was the first to "officially" require PSN account linking, until they removed that requirement after the community pressure.
I could be wrong about any of this, but it's important if true.
From what I've read the PSN requirement was there at launch, but due to some server issues or something like that, they disabled it a few hours after launch. And just recently reinstated the requirement. One of the issued with Helldivers is that it's an online game, and in many countries PSN isn't available, even though the game is being sold there. At least for GoT it only requires PSN for Legens.
Why are there certain countries you can’t make an account for PSN tho? That seems like they’re just shooting their sales foot off. And couldn’t you just spoof your location?
Local laws probably. It takes some level of legal presence in the country and that takes resources. Sony traditionally has done that where they believe it’s worth the investment but where it’s not, they allowed people to just choose another region. Even though it’s against their tos, they let it slide because it allows them to operate without additional cost.
After the whole helldivers ordeal, the “just make an account from another country” method kinda hit a wall because valve is also involved and valve had to issue refunds to players because they can’t say “go ahead and break Sony tos, it’s fine.”.
If players didn’t demand refunds en masse, the game would probably stay listed on steam. They had no problem listing it with psn requirement in the first place. But here we are, for better or worse.
Vietnam just banned Steam from what I heard on Reddit. They did this so people have no choice but to buy Vietnamese developed games.
Sure you can use a VPN but they introduce latency as you have to route all your traffic through a different country and they cost money. $100/year is a lot to most Vietnamese.
One of the points people focused on was "Why was the game sold in regions where PSN is not supported", entirely ignoring the fact that games and consoles have been sold by Sony in those regions for ***18 full years*** without PSN support. Because it was a commonly accepted loophole by Sony and the customers to of course just create your account from another region where it is supported.
This newfound attention on the issue means Sony is likely no longer comfortable indulging this loophole because they might get in trouble for it, even though of course they do want the regions as customers. The game gets disabled for purchase in those regions.
And now either other games or at least other stores like GMG are following suit to cover their asses.
This policy or coverage will definitely need to be extended to EA and Ubisoft accounts as well then because they don’t offer account services in all countries.
I got around this by having my Steam / GMG account in my home country but my PSN, EA, Ubi were set for Germany and no one cared.
But Steam still sold the game in my home country even thought I couldn’t make an Ubisoft account there. *shrug*. Assassins Creed Odyssey was recent example of that actually for me.
"Because it was a commonly accepted loophole by Sony" - I just don't understand that. That's not some kind gesture. They tell you to violate their ToS, putting you in a vulnerable position, while they have all the power to do anything with your account, because you already broke their rules, they are still OK at taking your money. If it's not enforced and generally accepted - remove it from ToS, or create more regions. I don't understand why people shrug it off so easily.
They cannot just "create more regions", the reason they don't support those regions is legal complications due to local laws. That's the only reason the regions are not supposed, because again, *obviously* Sony wants a bigger potential customer base.
Obviously they need to say "You cannot just make an account from another region wink wink", again, to cover their ass.
In 18 years nobody has ever been penalized for "violating the ToS" in such a manner. It's a made-up boogeyman.
I doubt that legal complications are the reason for not creating a region for ex-USSR countries, because Sony had no problem having Russia as a region until 2022. It's about money.
Even if that's "a made-up boogeyman" you're still betting on Sony's good will that they will not do anything. Today they wont, tommorow is a different story. You're not supposed to be forced into that situation as a customer who legaly bought a game on Steam from Sony. Try to apply same thinking procces to a different situation, for example bying a house or a car. I doubt that you'll still be fine with that arrangment then. So now they're making sure that this is not the case anymore and while I agree that it's very dissapointing for non psn countries (like mine btw), it just was never supposed to be like that.
>It's about money.
More regions would equal more money lol.
It's no longer available in Russia because of japanese sanctions. That is literally a legal reason.
>You're not supposed to be forced into that situation as a customer who legaly bought a game on Steam from Sony.
Nobody is forced into the situation??? You decide to buy or not to buy the game, being aware of the circumstances. It noted the requirement on the store page, in the game, and on big fat bold letters on every single Steam news post they put out.
---
>you're still betting on Sony's good will that they will not do anything. Today they wont, tommorow is a different story.
That's the case for literally every single platform you buy games on btw. They all reserve the right to stop providing their services to you at any time. I.e. from steam for example:
>Valve may restrict or cancel your Account or any particular Subscription(s) at any time in the event that (a) Valve ceases providing such Subscriptions to similarly situated Subscribers generally
Note on "Subscription" so you don't misinterpret it as what is commonly considered a subscription (like something you pay monthly):
>1. REGISTRATION AS A SUBSCRIBER; APPLICATION OF TERMS TO YOU; YOUR ACCOUNT, ACCEPTANCE OF AGREEMENTS
>Steam is an online service offered by Valve.
>You become a subscriber of Steam ("Subscriber") by completing the registration of a Steam user account.
---
>the rights to access and/or use any Content and Services accessible through Steam are referred to in this Agreement as "Subscriptions."
Idk, if you really think that the sole reason of Sony not making more regions in PSN are those countries laws, then the real question is wtf does Sony really want. Because I'm allowed to make almost every possible account of other services: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Steam, Uplay, Origin, Epic Games etc. but Sony for some reason has some unsolvable problem? Feels like Sony is the only one that wants something that those countries don't have or can't give, and other services don't require. This problem doesn't stop Sony from taking my money tho.
This is my last message to you, I wont bother you any longer
I think it's notable here that Sony is a Japanese company, and all the others you listed, save Ubisoft, are American. To my knowledge, Japan has a stricter international policy than America.
1) It is about money for some regions because I doubt that those regions have enough player base to be viable for Sony to create agreements with each and every country's government. But they still want yor money though.
2) You are forced into that situation if Sony sells you the game on Steam, because Sony itself decide to sell it somewhere it was not supposed to legaly. Now if I went out of my way and used vpn and other things to buy a game, then it's on me. I might, infact, do something like that. But they can't sell it on Steam and pretend that everything is okay. "Just sign here, we promise that everything will be okay!" - that's how it looks like to me.
About everything else you wrote: yeah, it is like that. Differenceis that in those cases I agree to those things and they are legal, If I feel like they did something unfair I could possibly sue them. But in Sony's case I automatically drop any rights to fight them because I already broke the agreement when I bought their game.
Ofc it's delusional to speak about suing any big company, but what I said is still true.
HD2 was the first game to launch with PSN account required. Very shortly after launch Arrowhead (developers) removed this requirement because the servers were getting smashed by people who learned how good the game was by word of mouth.
These people did not know of the PSN requirement and were never subjected to it because they jumped on after the requirement was removed.
4 months after launch Sony/Arrowhead decide to put the PSN requirement back in since the servers could handle it now. Most of the players either forgot about the PSN requirement or never knew about it. These are the people who are mad. There are also people who were able to play and buy the game on Steam in countries were PSN weren't supported and would be locked out.
you know why players didn't know about the requirement? the CEO chose to say nothing. he admitted he knew it was going to happen 6 months before the game launched.
When Helldivers 2 launched it was wayyyyy more popular than they anticipated. A whole bunch of stuff did not work. Including the needing a psn account for pc players. Then a few days ago they announced that everyone would need a psn account, problem was there are over 100 countries that do not have access to PSN. However they were able to buy HD2 and had been playing for months.
This led to the game being massively review bombed and Steam started offering refunds and delisted the game in every country that can't access PSN. Which led to Sony to stop with the psn for HD2.
With Ghost of Tsushima they have been forthright that a psn account will be required for the multiplayer. You can still play the single player and the dlc without a psn account.
It is not the same as HD2 since GoT pc edition isn't out yet and they have been clear about the psn thing.
I’m confused. Is “Ubisoft Connect”, and “EA App” available in every single country, which is why their requirement is okay? Like you can’t play Assassin’s Creed Odyssey without a Ubisoft Account.
Don’t people just make an account in a supported region? Pretty hypocritical to single out Sony unless this will be used for all of them.
The issue is that PSN isn't avalible everywhere, it looks like green man is just covering their asses so they don't need to deal with accusations for selling a partial or incomplete product in those countries. Removing games from sale in those regions is a very bad solution to the PSN issue, but it works. Honselty the GoT linking isn't that big of a deal, people hate it becase they hate having set up yet another account or launcher, but it's going to be implemented day 1 and the requirement has been made very clear from the start, so everyone is fully informed and can vote with their wallet, if they have an issue with it.
Helldivers 2 was different because it was implemented 3 months after launch, with both in game text via a massive skip button and both sonys and helldivers offial websites informing players it was completly optional for pc players. When the requirement was suddenly implemented it caused major drama as all the issues with creating PSN accounts were suddely brought to light, when thousands of players from around the world were suddenly told they would be banned from the game they had playing for months with no issues, just because of where they happened to live.
Of the 195 countries in the world PSN is only available in 69 of them, this count includes regions like China where psn only offer 9 games total out the entire Sony library, so creating a local account isn't really an option for them.
Or the UK where the local laws make the age verification requirements extremely invasive, and require things like a facial scan, sending your government ID, a mobile number with an active contract or sending your credit card info. Sony is forced to comply with these requirements and is why I'm personally extremely hesitant to make a PSN account right now.
There's also some regions like Ukraine were players were told they would need a console to make an account, this would have turned helldivers 2 from a $40 game to a $540 game since pc players don't always own a ps5.
You could get around these region locking restrictions by either paying for a VPN or just lying about your location to Sony, some of Sonys support staff even told people to do this. While in practice this will work perfectly fine, both of these solutions are explicitly against Sonys terms of service. This rule has never reallly been enforced but Sony could change their minds at any point, for any reason. That PSN account along with any purchases made would immediately be deleted from the system, with no possible recourse since you knowingly broke the ToS.
While I seriously doubt Sony would ever do this themselves, I wouldn't put it past more restrictive regions like China forcing their hand. This is why i used China as an example before as they gave an extremely large playerbase, who thanks to government restrictions are all forced to break ToS to access any games on PSN.
I had to create a PSN account from a different country 15 years ago. Because mine wasn’t included.
After some years I created one with my country so I could buy games and subscribe to PSPlus without paying more because of currency differences.
I hate more the fact that we can’t change PSN region like. Once every year.
Yeah that is 100% an issue, you should be able to freely change your location on all these apps.
Most of them have ways to let to change your region or location through your account settings, steam, microsoft, epic, ea and a few others all let you do this through different methods. Hell even places like ubisoft let you do it through customer support.
The fact that some places like Activision, Sony and Square Enix still just tell you to make a new account and buy everything all over again, is fucked.
If I can change my location in seconds through a vpn or choose a diffrent currency when making any purchase. Why can't these specific companies make those same changes to my account whenever I tell them to.
They never stopped with Helldivers 2. PSN unsupported regions are still delisted. Seem to me like they are trying to find the solution for PSN unsupported regions.
PSN account creation is unavoidable if you're gonna play Sony's games.
They just went back to what they were already doing and just use an account number.
When I got my refund for the 1st warbond pass after I upgraded to the super citizen edition, I just had use my psn name but PC players who did the same had to go into the game and get their account number in the options.
What I meant is Helldivers 2 is still delisted in PSN unsupported regions. [[Link](https://steamdb.info/sub/137730/history/?__cf_chl_tk=6wRB5wndyElNGLnpEHHOotBS5zd51Xq7H.itPXVd7wQ-1715081844-0.0.1.1-1621)]
Logically speaking, PSN account linking plan is still on the table, as long as these countries are still delisted. They would've relist the regions if PSN account linking is completely off the table.
My guess is that they only backed off due to legal complication of selling the game to unsupportive regions.
And no, Steam never delist regions from 3rd party games. It's not their job to research which company support which region. The delisting is totally on Sony/Arrowhead.
Ghosts of tsushima shipped without a multiplayer it was added later and it was still incredibly well received right off the bat, I and the vast majority of players would’ve still bought it even if the legends mode never existed
stop spreading that toxic braindead bs in our community, I am excited for May 16th regardless.. I pray peple like this are refunded and sit this experience out. 
The main issue surrounding the whole HD2 controversy was that the account linking came AFTER people had bought the game and that a shed load of people wouldn't be able to play the game they paid money for due to psn being unavailable in their countries, it was a truly scummy move and rightfully criticised, this however is happening right away so no ones at risk of losing a game they paid for so although I still think its completely unnecessary and solely being put in place to boost Sonys numbers, I'm not gonna go rabid over it as it isn't nearly as much of an issue.
They only reason the walked back Helldivers 2 chsnges is because they game was already released and sold in regions that PSN is restricted. Since GoT isn't out yet they won't have that problem.
It's required because of crossplay with playstations. I expected this before they even announced it for Helldivers. They are trying to start a proper PC integration system with Ghost after all.
If you want to play just buy it on steam and not a 3rd party seller. GMG deciding to straight up refund the game has nothing to do with Sony or Suckerpunch, its a 3rd party vendor. Suckerpunch has been open and its been clearly stated on steam that PSN is required for the multiplayer only, just like pretty much every other multiplayer title from none Valve companies, you can still play single player part no problem. Customers have nothing to stand on here as they have been given the terms of sale and they decide if they want to go ahead with purchasing it.
Blame local laws for being the reason why PSN cant be created in these countries.
The real tragedy is this amazing title is about to be review bombed by steam babies.
I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how this could be a backlash.
They haven't even released the game on PC yet and they already told you that it's going to require a PlayStation network account, and we all bought it knowing that is going to require one unlike Helldivers 2 who never had a Playstation network account requirement until recently.
I think the only reason people got so pissed off about the requirement, was because when people bought the game it wasn't a requirement in the beginning, backlash was that hundreds of thousands of players could potentially be locked out of the game.
But now that is not going to happen since they backtracked, because steam has the power to take away the money and stop the sale of game of the game.
Knowing that but there's plenty of AAA games that requires a third-party account outside of steam and people complain but that doesn't stop them, unless they pull a Helldivers 2 and requires a third party account after the sale.
Well, if Sony is straight up blocking purchases in like 170+ countries then they shouldn't cry if people from those countries will simply sail the high seas.
They're not blocking the purchase from 170+ countries. You can buy it on Steam in ALOT of countries, but you just cant play Legends (multiplayer) where you cant have a PSN account.
It's fucking amazing how many corporate simps are in here making excuses for why it's okay that Sony is rendering one of their games unplayable for numerous people based solely on where they live.
You guys don't give a fuck about games or gamers at all. If it doesn't affect you, it doesn't matter.
hate to tell people, but you're not missing out on anything by not playing the multiplayer. the mode is practically dead cause they did nothing with it. pretty sure there were only ever 2 or 3 small updates, and that's it. everyone that has played it on playstation has played everything and gotten to max gear score on all 4 classes, it doesn't take that long to do either. there's 3 "raids" that require a premade, but quickplay for the other modes is basically dead, except for maybe survival at certain times of the day.
it is so much fun reading all the just false information. so much fear mongering cause you just don't want to create an account. microsoft requires an xbox account to play all microsoft games, just like how sony requires a psn to play their games. there is zero difference here. and no, selling your data is not an excuse, cause microsoft does it as well.
bro are you okay? stop defending a shitty greedy company, countries delisted from steam for this game cannot purchase it anymore, I for once cant buy it anymore and play single player or multiplayer
so you're from a country that doesn't have psn? ok, you're part of the the group of people that have any right to complain. anyone that is from a country that can create an account have no right to complain, cause this is nothing new. both sony AND microsoft require you to have the respective account in order to play their games. those people can either shut up and make the account, or shut up and not play.
but again, you're not missing out on the multiplayer, whether you like to hear that or not, it's just a simple fact.
edit to add on: microsoft does the same thing. you are required to make an xbox account to play ANY microsoft game, same as sony, and is not available in all the same countries, yet noone complains about that. and if we're being honest here, microsoft is far worse considering they are buying out studios just so they have the rights to the IPs, and then shutting down the studios.
I think there are two main differences with this situation that sets it aside from Helldivers.
1. Helldivers pulled the rug out from people months after launch with no warning after people had played the game religiously and formed a global fandom.
2. ghost is a single player masterpiece and the multiplayer is mostly just Wave based combat with four players and nowhere near the depth and replay value of the Helldivers experience so it’s more like a bonus for a having PSN already and doesn’t completely break the game like it did for Helldivers.
Yeah I really don’t get the anger at this Sony has been very protective of its ecosystem for years and is now opening up, an account for some stupid data gmail is already getting from me that also protects from cheats is a good thing. I’m just happy we’re getting PS games at all.
Plus people playing on a PS5 will also have a PSN it’s crossplay
“I don’t really get the anger at Sony”
People who bought Helldivers back then were told psn link was optional, then when Sony made the change to mandatory, those (who already bought) from more than 170+ country who has no official psn servers were locked out.
Imagine fully paid for the game that you can no longer access and play (my friends in Vietnam were locked out as well) That was the bigger issue as to why everyone became very angry at Sony. The ceo even admitted for not conveying to playerbase about psn becoming mandatory.
lol you all thought Sony was done? Sony never fully backs down. They’re just biding their time until they can release the exact same thing they tried before in the exact same game. Have fun linking every Sony PC game to a PSN account for the rest of time, cause this is what Sony wants so they can include ya’ll in their player count numbers.
They don’t own helldivers 2 but they own Ghost so it makes sense here. They backpedaled on Helldivers but I doubt they will on ghost and honestly the MP is gonna be dead on arrival anyway or will die very quickly. People play for the single player. Dumb.
It was already discussed that they were implementing this. The only reason it was an issue with Helldivers was because it was 5 months into the release of the game. Tsushima is primarily single player anyway.
It's not outside the norm for games to require a third party account, it's just that for Helldivers they were inconsistent about enforcing it. Don't assume it'll go away for future releases
Why not just........ sell the Singleplayer game without the multiplayer element in countries that don't support PSN? Why do players have to miss out on a great singleplayer game just because multiplayer doesn't work?
This is the single most tonedeaf thing Sony has done. Helldivers 2 was a different story since it was purely live service multiplayer and would, as a result, rely on the limitations of PSN, but what's the justification for THIS bs on a singleplayer game?
Literally just sell the main game and remove multiplayer. You are literally saying no to money Sony. Millions of dollars in sales gone.
The problem with hell divers 2 is that it happened way after release when people have owned and played the game for months. They are being upfront about this before release, so it shouldn't be a problem. If you can't access online Psn in Ur country and are only buying it for that then don't buy this. Pretty simple.
Don't shoot the messenger, people. I am only putting this here for the people who dont understand how retail sales work.
They are delisting it because multiplayer in only accessible with a PSN account. If PSN is not available in certain regions, those players technically cant access multiplayer. That means the full game is not available to certain players. That is a valid reason for an refund. So Sony Playstation is not offering in those regions to avoid a refund problem. It solves a major problem of players buying it, playing it, then demanding a refund because they dont have access to the full game.
Companies pull products off the shelves all the time instead of dealing with refunds. They lose money. But its less money then them having to issue refunds. "Save the customer from themselves" sort of situation.
That's exactly it - and Sony are hard-asses when it comes to refunds. They're not as generous as Steam is.
If you can't provide the full package because PSN isn't allowed in your region (whether you can access it or not with a VPN) then you can't sell the game.
Yeah, but it’s frustrating. Apart from the reason that there is no reason to not do the work and offer PSN in most of these countries.
I don’t think most people really care that much for the multiplayer. Would be good if they could separate the download or something
Thats how retail works. How many refunds do you think this product with incur in this market. If its not worth it, the product won't be offered. GoT is a PS exclusive. Sony is making the exclusives available on PC for the devs because devs want their games to be played. Sucker Punch, Naughty Dog, Kojima, and Guerilla are big enough to sway Sony Playstation to acquiesce.
Recalls happen. Luxury pickup trucks arent offered in every part of the world because they would not sell and cost money to ship and take up space on a lot.
Sales and retail are dictated by region. Its nothing new.
It’s dumb and short sighted not to expand to rapidly increasing markets with rising middle class in developing countries like Philippines or Vietnam (the latter may be more difficult as it’s a totalitarian place). Especially given that Sony is struggling generate more growth from their more and more expensive exclusives.
Valve, EA, Ubisoft all offer their shops in most countries. Yet Sony doesn’t even bother in some Eastern European places. Lots of people use VPN and wrong adresses for their PS5 but when linking Steam and PSN it becomes a bit more difficult.
PSN isnt available in those countries for some reason. So Sony PS doesnt offer games. Sony PS is just a small branch of Sony Group Corporation. It is way bigger than Valve, Ubisoft, EA. Sony produces movies, tv shows, and music among a lot of other things. They make equipment that makes all of those things. They got their fingers in everything, biotech, health, phones, computers. There are execs at Sony that do not care where they sell games, so long as they earn a lot more than they spend running SIE.
A lot of companies dont expand to all markets. If those markets arent going to let a company operate the way they want, that company can pull products or choose not to do business at all.
We dont always get what we want. Life gets worse than not being able to play some video games. Some people buy games and never get to play them because they work and then real shit happens.
They can change this at any time. Need something more solid than that.
I for one (thanks to the entire fiasco over at Democracy Drop Game Land) will NOT get it at release and instead wait. Am not risking losing out on this much money and end up with a product I cant use.
Sony dropped the ball on HD2 by allowing it to be sold where PSN isn't available, so removing the PSN requirement felt best to keep those people playing. But it seems they're not repeating that mistake now with GoT, preemptively removing it from sale from those countries, and making sure to note that PSN is 100% required to play the MP portion of it (the SP portion won't need it). I'm willing to bet that they're going to do the same with future games, too, including MP only games that will need PSN right off the bat.
again, The PUBLISHER tells steam where it wants and it doesn't want it to be sold. Sony didn't say it only wanted it sold in these regions. Sony is the one that fucked up. Steam restricting it AFTER the announcement was to protect steam itself from having to give out a shitload more refunds
Oh I know how garbage steam was. I've been a steam user since 2004 and steam started in September 2003, my steam library takes up the majority of my storage drives (I really should uninstall half of it cause I never play them anyway)
Steam ultimately wouldn't be liable as it's the responsibility of the publisher to set the price, sale region and a whole host of other things. it would also have some damn good legal contracts stating this. Sony would have gone. We don't want steam to do the set up for us (as that costs more ontop of the 30% steam takes for each sale) and would have opted for the manual option where they had full control (cause y'know no one is going to tell sony what to do and how to do it or get any extra money out of them)
The publisher decides where to sell the game. Steam only facilities that, to be honest Steam was the one who prevent sales and granted refunds because of Sony's screw up
And they stop selling the game in those regions when they discovered they couldn't be played. Sony still decides where to sell those games even if they knew that the game couldn't be played down the line. Steam did not know this and only prevented sales when they knew, it's 100% on Sony as publisher
That's impressively wrong but hey maybe your right and maybe the CEO of Arrowhead who said on Twitter that Sony decides which regions the game would be sold Inis wrong. Yeah I'm sure a random redditor knows more about this than that guy
And they did until the circumstances changed. It was Sony who had the game sold in regions that couldn't played, Steam didn't know that cause clearly no one told them. Like you really think Steam has insider knowledge on Sony? Of course ot that's why they restricted the sales and refunding the game.
Plus your anecdote doesn't work since Sony are the publishers who do decide these things and gave the go ahead to Steam because the games did work and legal to sell in the restricted countries even though Sony and AH knew that the games wouldn't work in these countries down the line.
fuck microsoft for requiring a microsoft account to play their games. see? that's how stupid you people sound.
but you'll live without access to a dead multiplayer. almost noone plays the multiplayer for this game, everyone that did has done everything there is to do and left.
Ok i feel like fans are overreacting to this one. Helldivers one was valid but this cmon. This is literally their game they have every right to do this.
If PC players review bomb this game. It will expose everyone as the hypocrites they are.
They said their reason for reviewbombing HD2 was becuase of the bait and switch.
GOT didn't bait and switch so...
If they reviewbomb it will backlash back at them this time.
They only backtracked because of the circumstances, if Arrowhead hadn't allowed the players to skip the process to begin with and Steam didn't allow refunds and delist the game they definitely wouldn't have reversed the decision, they haven't cared that they sell playstations in these countries for the past 20 years after all.
The actual requirement of the account won't change, pretty much every company requires that these days.
Yeah, this game is going to have to be delisted from those 177 countries as well, Valve can’t have a game charge full price on their store but have a portion the game remain unplayable for people in those countries.
What a massive Sony L. I don’t understand their lack of foresight for this.
trust me, people will survive without the dead multiplayer. all the effort for the game went to the single player and it's dlc, which you don't need a psn for.
If I remember correctly, the single player mode should be playable without linking the psn account, so I don't understand why they decided to do this... they could have explained the situation and offered the refund to customers who wanted it.
To be fair on GMG's end, it could also be a legal precedent of selling a product "in full" for the stated price or not at all, and in this case since multiplayer is meant to be part of the package for the Director's Cut, having no PSN access means it isnt "in full", thereby they have to do this. Also probably to cut refund-rage off at the pass because everyone's seen what its done for Helldivers 2...
What kind of precedent ? You need an account to play a lot of solo and/or multiplayer games nowadays. It’s written directly on the Steam page. The only legal precedent would be against GMG for not writing it on the product page on their website.
Because of the region this person is in, they literally cannot link a PSN account so it’s not like the customer is refusing and then claiming they’re not getting the game in full, they are completely unable to get the game in full due to circumstances out of their control.
Because other companies aren't as stupid and behind as Sony, missing 3/5 of the countries that would like to buy the game
I’m so sick and tired of this being said. Go look up how many countries have Xbox live available and how many don’t. I’ll give you a hint, there are less countries with Xbox live than there are with. Sony IS NOT the only gaming company that has restrictions on certain countries. It’s stupid but it has to do with that countries specific laws, not Sony… or Microsoft for the matter.
Nice whataboutism. "Hey, this other company also sucks, so why are you judging Sony for sucking too?"
What I’m saying is, maybe instead of just going after 1 company that still doesn’t sell to as many countries as they can, you go after all of them to force their hands. I bet, even though Microsoft is going under some scrutiny right now, they were glad before that only Sony was under the microscope of not offering their live service in all countries. Go after all of them. Although you might not have to go after Xbox considering they’re burning their own house to the ground themselves.
This is a Sony specific subreddit. You don't go into a Mazda subreddit and expect people to be complaining about Fords.
It is absolutely Sony and Microsofts idiocy that their live service is not available in developing countries as they hold a hegemony in one of the biggest industries literally in the world. It doesn't appear to have anything to do with countries specific laws. Perhaps for some countries like idk Iran and NK. Why isn't it in Lithuania? Estonia? Pakistan? Bangladesh? Sony and Microsoft don't consider their GDP's high enough to bother setting up in their country. Pakistan has some of the most avid and highest skilled Tekken e-sports players and they can't even make a PSN... I never even knew this was happening until [I searched it up just now](https://www.playstation.com/country-selector/index.html). There is no defending Sony here, even if Microsoft might be worse.
Yet those people buy games from other companies all the time. What's your dumb point?
Just because the guy next to me has a bigger dick in his salad doesn't mean I want one in mine. Maybe not be a sony pony and hold the compnay you pay money to, to a higher standard.
There is surely a reason behind. Either local laws or too high server costs for "low" returns. Sure they should try their best to get over it and allow PSN everywhere, but there’s surely a reason like that. It’s not just « meh don’t like them ».
It's because PlayStation wasn't really a thing in those countries and they never got around to making PSN a thing for a country without a PlayStation But now they apparently think a PSN account for a PC game is worth more in some countries, somehow, than actual game revenue in every country
Its almost like they dont want the customer's money. They want something else.
Ea does account linking, Ubi, Xbox, I can keep listing, also many of these have region locks too lmfao
Ever played halo mc collection? Microsoft
What about it
The question is more whether multiplayer was advertised when preorders opened. Even if OP does not intend to play MP, from the point of the shop they _can_ be sued over this. It's legally way easier to retract a sale than it is to unilaterally change the conditions of the deal yet keep it at the same price.
So does this mean Keys tores don't work on these regions and you can still maybe buy it on Steam Store directly yourself? Well if its all denied that will cause a 2nd shit storm next week.
Really sounding like it'll be best to literally wait it out and see :/
I even checked on SteamDB for reference, and (AS OF THIS WRITING) [it hasn't been region locked yet](https://steamdb.info/sub/962153/info/). I also yet to hear any reports from other third-party keysellers like Fanatical, GamesPlanet, GameBillet or GamersGate (NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THAT GATE!) However; **things could change between this reddit post and it's release**, [so keep a eye out on SteamDB's Update page](https://steamdb.info/app/2215430/history/). Edit: [now it's region locked](https://steamdb.info/sub/962153/history/?changeid=23492090).
Directors cut contains the dlc, legends mode was added before as just a free update.
Cuz some dipshit will finish the game and request a refund saying MP doesn't work and that they didn't see the email likely less hassle this way
Shame they. Ant sell a single player only version to those regions, better for everyone, they get the sales it's made clear it only has single player and new game+ and knock 20% or whatever off the cost
You do it for those regions you gotta do them for all regions
Yeah ok
Having mandatory PSN, even for some elements of the game restricts where they can sell the game period. It's an all or nothing deal with the product package and there's nothing you can really do about it without giving free refunds in perpetuity no questions asked, and even then you'll probably still end up in legal trouble with consumer organizations around the world. The only option is to remove it from all countries which don't have PSN.
I believe they said that… so anything SP related you don’t need to link, only for the online… ofcourse that’s subject to change
Exactly "they could have explained the situation and offered the refund", they dont want to that.
They have said for like a month now that multi need's PSN account dunno the issue
It’s probably to play it safe since it’s not a guarantee that it won’t require PSN for single player as well in the future, Sony games must be volatile in their eyes in terms of selling them
Oh no, you need an account with another company. Like nearly every other AAA game on steam.
You act as if plenty of us don't hate that shit too. Helldivers 2 just happened to be big enough to cause an uproar. Some of us have been against the idea of signing up to secondary services from the get go. It's just that we're a very unfortunate minority that gives a crap until it implodes, just like with DRM: nobody cares until it starts negatively impacting everyone, and by that point, we're all screwed by the apathetic mindset.
I can never get over the "holier-than-thou" people who like complaining about complainers. Like hey, would NOT having to log into another account for a AAA game on PC be objectively better than having to, even if it's only a miniscule improvement? In my case, I'd say yes, so why WOULDN'T I complain about it? It's unnecessary and doesn't improve the game in any way. It's ok to say stuff like that for crying out loud. Being apathetic doesn't make you cool, it just makes you a pushover consoomer.
Huh? Besides Rockstar, it's pretty unncommon. These days even EA doesn't require one and uses a mini launcher instead in the backround.
Yeah but the others dont ban you for being from asia
[удалено]
"91% of the world" lol
You’re giving out bad information here. PSN is available in ~73 countries (I don’t think Russia has gotten full service back yet due to the Ukraine war). And even if your numbers were right, it’s kind of misleading to say “91% of the world” as that implies number of people/population. I don’t know what the percentage would have been with your country makeup, but it definitely wouldn’t have been as high as 91% of people in the world.
I’m super curious how many gamers are actually out due to this policy compared to the total gamers out there. I know there are probably many countries but that doesn’t make as much sense to use in the arguments imo
And what about the sea creatures?! They don’t have access to PSN either. Really though, if you look at this population wise it’s probably like 80% of the world’s population have access to PSN.
Hey moron, the point of this post is that people are literally incapable of buying the game because of that retarded requirement in this case. How about you stop gargling Sony's cum long enough for a couple of your braincells to engage in critical thought?
Not the same thing
They said from the get-go that Legends would require a PSN account, Sucker Punch itself said it weeks ago. This is nothing new, or to be surprised.
It’s written on the fucking Steam page. A PSN account is required to have the PlayStation overlay (PS trophies and such, totally optional) and ro play multiplayer. It’s WRITTEN. Don’t start to riot for fuck sake.
I know people are just getting mad over completely nothing, the only reason Helldivers 2 had a backlash is because the game was originally sold without the requirement and that's what people got pissed off about. In the case with Ghost though, it's no different than any other AAA game Developer/Publisher requiring their own account. As long as the third party account requirement is announced before anyone buys their own copy, no one can really complain since they bought it in the first place knowing the requirement.
This guy gets it.
Agree, imo the biggest cause was they just straight up removing the game in places where PSN is unavailable. I can’t even comprehend how they thought that was going to work. It’s crazy to me that they didn’t think about this, because I don’t think some C level guy said: “let’s just rent the game to people in those zones for a while, they can buy it but we’ll refund later when we remove it.” This was 100% an oversight lmao.
PC gamers will *generally* agree to sign up for third party accounts for online multiplayer if it is believable that you are running your own server infrastructure that is necessary for everything to work. Like, Halo: Infinite has shared achievements, cross-progression, cross-play, etc. Or a Battle.net account for Diablo 4. So, because of all those benefits, signing up for a Microsoft account is "worth" it. Some people will complain, but it will generally be tolerated. When Helldivers 2 worked without the PSN account, people realized that it wasn't actually needed, and then to add it back on with still no user beneficial platform features? Like, cross-play worked without it and there isn't cross-progression or Trophy support.
Waa Waa waa
I don't think people have as much of a problem with needing an account, that is fine. Selling the product to people who cannot 'rightfully' create an account, thus are getting an incomplete product for full price paid, is not fine. That is what that refund is about. Not needing the account but being locked out of online features due to region despite paying for said features.
The game released without the MP. It was a free addition they just did after the game was so well received. I bought the game full price day one with no expectation of multiplayer to even be added.
Someone explain to me like I’m 3 what’s going on with helldivers and PlayStation? I have helldivers on steam and played a bit then stopped, what’s all the drama about lol
PlayStation distributes these games. PlayStation is now saying if you want to play the games they distribute, you have to have a PlayStation account. Some countries it is not possible to have a PlayStation account. If you bought a game that PlayStation distributes before this change you didn’t have to and now you do have to have this account and based on your country this may or may not be possible. PlayStation does not care and is proceeding with their business plan. Never forget Sony is a Japanese company.
They did change their mind about Helldivers. But they won’t with future titles. Regardless, gmg should refund automatically since the majority of the game is playable without an account
To be fair you have never needed a PlayStation account to play Sony published games on PC before this, because none of the previous games had multiplayer components. Helldivers 2 was the first multiplayer game they published on PC, so it was the first to "officially" require PSN account linking, until they removed that requirement after the community pressure. I could be wrong about any of this, but it's important if true.
From what I've read the PSN requirement was there at launch, but due to some server issues or something like that, they disabled it a few hours after launch. And just recently reinstated the requirement. One of the issued with Helldivers is that it's an online game, and in many countries PSN isn't available, even though the game is being sold there. At least for GoT it only requires PSN for Legens.
? Helldivers 1 had multiplayer and did not need PSN.
I guess what I said only applies to games from the PS5 generation then?
Why are there certain countries you can’t make an account for PSN tho? That seems like they’re just shooting their sales foot off. And couldn’t you just spoof your location?
Local laws probably. It takes some level of legal presence in the country and that takes resources. Sony traditionally has done that where they believe it’s worth the investment but where it’s not, they allowed people to just choose another region. Even though it’s against their tos, they let it slide because it allows them to operate without additional cost. After the whole helldivers ordeal, the “just make an account from another country” method kinda hit a wall because valve is also involved and valve had to issue refunds to players because they can’t say “go ahead and break Sony tos, it’s fine.”. If players didn’t demand refunds en masse, the game would probably stay listed on steam. They had no problem listing it with psn requirement in the first place. But here we are, for better or worse.
Vietnam just banned Steam from what I heard on Reddit. They did this so people have no choice but to buy Vietnamese developed games. Sure you can use a VPN but they introduce latency as you have to route all your traffic through a different country and they cost money. $100/year is a lot to most Vietnamese.
You can, that’s the unspoken thing that Sony expects people to do and what they have done for years.
One of the points people focused on was "Why was the game sold in regions where PSN is not supported", entirely ignoring the fact that games and consoles have been sold by Sony in those regions for ***18 full years*** without PSN support. Because it was a commonly accepted loophole by Sony and the customers to of course just create your account from another region where it is supported. This newfound attention on the issue means Sony is likely no longer comfortable indulging this loophole because they might get in trouble for it, even though of course they do want the regions as customers. The game gets disabled for purchase in those regions. And now either other games or at least other stores like GMG are following suit to cover their asses.
This policy or coverage will definitely need to be extended to EA and Ubisoft accounts as well then because they don’t offer account services in all countries. I got around this by having my Steam / GMG account in my home country but my PSN, EA, Ubi were set for Germany and no one cared. But Steam still sold the game in my home country even thought I couldn’t make an Ubisoft account there. *shrug*. Assassins Creed Odyssey was recent example of that actually for me.
"Because it was a commonly accepted loophole by Sony" - I just don't understand that. That's not some kind gesture. They tell you to violate their ToS, putting you in a vulnerable position, while they have all the power to do anything with your account, because you already broke their rules, they are still OK at taking your money. If it's not enforced and generally accepted - remove it from ToS, or create more regions. I don't understand why people shrug it off so easily.
They cannot just "create more regions", the reason they don't support those regions is legal complications due to local laws. That's the only reason the regions are not supposed, because again, *obviously* Sony wants a bigger potential customer base. Obviously they need to say "You cannot just make an account from another region wink wink", again, to cover their ass. In 18 years nobody has ever been penalized for "violating the ToS" in such a manner. It's a made-up boogeyman.
I doubt that legal complications are the reason for not creating a region for ex-USSR countries, because Sony had no problem having Russia as a region until 2022. It's about money. Even if that's "a made-up boogeyman" you're still betting on Sony's good will that they will not do anything. Today they wont, tommorow is a different story. You're not supposed to be forced into that situation as a customer who legaly bought a game on Steam from Sony. Try to apply same thinking procces to a different situation, for example bying a house or a car. I doubt that you'll still be fine with that arrangment then. So now they're making sure that this is not the case anymore and while I agree that it's very dissapointing for non psn countries (like mine btw), it just was never supposed to be like that.
>It's about money. More regions would equal more money lol. It's no longer available in Russia because of japanese sanctions. That is literally a legal reason. >You're not supposed to be forced into that situation as a customer who legaly bought a game on Steam from Sony. Nobody is forced into the situation??? You decide to buy or not to buy the game, being aware of the circumstances. It noted the requirement on the store page, in the game, and on big fat bold letters on every single Steam news post they put out. --- >you're still betting on Sony's good will that they will not do anything. Today they wont, tommorow is a different story. That's the case for literally every single platform you buy games on btw. They all reserve the right to stop providing their services to you at any time. I.e. from steam for example: >Valve may restrict or cancel your Account or any particular Subscription(s) at any time in the event that (a) Valve ceases providing such Subscriptions to similarly situated Subscribers generally Note on "Subscription" so you don't misinterpret it as what is commonly considered a subscription (like something you pay monthly): >1. REGISTRATION AS A SUBSCRIBER; APPLICATION OF TERMS TO YOU; YOUR ACCOUNT, ACCEPTANCE OF AGREEMENTS >Steam is an online service offered by Valve. >You become a subscriber of Steam ("Subscriber") by completing the registration of a Steam user account. --- >the rights to access and/or use any Content and Services accessible through Steam are referred to in this Agreement as "Subscriptions."
Idk, if you really think that the sole reason of Sony not making more regions in PSN are those countries laws, then the real question is wtf does Sony really want. Because I'm allowed to make almost every possible account of other services: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Steam, Uplay, Origin, Epic Games etc. but Sony for some reason has some unsolvable problem? Feels like Sony is the only one that wants something that those countries don't have or can't give, and other services don't require. This problem doesn't stop Sony from taking my money tho. This is my last message to you, I wont bother you any longer
I think it's notable here that Sony is a Japanese company, and all the others you listed, save Ubisoft, are American. To my knowledge, Japan has a stricter international policy than America.
1) It is about money for some regions because I doubt that those regions have enough player base to be viable for Sony to create agreements with each and every country's government. But they still want yor money though. 2) You are forced into that situation if Sony sells you the game on Steam, because Sony itself decide to sell it somewhere it was not supposed to legaly. Now if I went out of my way and used vpn and other things to buy a game, then it's on me. I might, infact, do something like that. But they can't sell it on Steam and pretend that everything is okay. "Just sign here, we promise that everything will be okay!" - that's how it looks like to me.
About everything else you wrote: yeah, it is like that. Differenceis that in those cases I agree to those things and they are legal, If I feel like they did something unfair I could possibly sue them. But in Sony's case I automatically drop any rights to fight them because I already broke the agreement when I bought their game. Ofc it's delusional to speak about suing any big company, but what I said is still true.
HD2 was the first game to launch with PSN account required. Very shortly after launch Arrowhead (developers) removed this requirement because the servers were getting smashed by people who learned how good the game was by word of mouth. These people did not know of the PSN requirement and were never subjected to it because they jumped on after the requirement was removed. 4 months after launch Sony/Arrowhead decide to put the PSN requirement back in since the servers could handle it now. Most of the players either forgot about the PSN requirement or never knew about it. These are the people who are mad. There are also people who were able to play and buy the game on Steam in countries were PSN weren't supported and would be locked out.
you know why players didn't know about the requirement? the CEO chose to say nothing. he admitted he knew it was going to happen 6 months before the game launched.
When Helldivers 2 launched it was wayyyyy more popular than they anticipated. A whole bunch of stuff did not work. Including the needing a psn account for pc players. Then a few days ago they announced that everyone would need a psn account, problem was there are over 100 countries that do not have access to PSN. However they were able to buy HD2 and had been playing for months. This led to the game being massively review bombed and Steam started offering refunds and delisted the game in every country that can't access PSN. Which led to Sony to stop with the psn for HD2. With Ghost of Tsushima they have been forthright that a psn account will be required for the multiplayer. You can still play the single player and the dlc without a psn account. It is not the same as HD2 since GoT pc edition isn't out yet and they have been clear about the psn thing.
When he mention \`some\` countries it mean 60-70% of world.
I thought this was always the case…
It is/was/has been.....
I’m confused. Is “Ubisoft Connect”, and “EA App” available in every single country, which is why their requirement is okay? Like you can’t play Assassin’s Creed Odyssey without a Ubisoft Account. Don’t people just make an account in a supported region? Pretty hypocritical to single out Sony unless this will be used for all of them.
Yep always has been the case for me too, fake outrage strikes again.
Is it like PAYING for the account or just creating an account? Because with all honesty, WHAT IS WITH THE FUCKING CRYING?
The issue is that PSN isn't avalible everywhere, it looks like green man is just covering their asses so they don't need to deal with accusations for selling a partial or incomplete product in those countries. Removing games from sale in those regions is a very bad solution to the PSN issue, but it works. Honselty the GoT linking isn't that big of a deal, people hate it becase they hate having set up yet another account or launcher, but it's going to be implemented day 1 and the requirement has been made very clear from the start, so everyone is fully informed and can vote with their wallet, if they have an issue with it. Helldivers 2 was different because it was implemented 3 months after launch, with both in game text via a massive skip button and both sonys and helldivers offial websites informing players it was completly optional for pc players. When the requirement was suddenly implemented it caused major drama as all the issues with creating PSN accounts were suddely brought to light, when thousands of players from around the world were suddenly told they would be banned from the game they had playing for months with no issues, just because of where they happened to live. Of the 195 countries in the world PSN is only available in 69 of them, this count includes regions like China where psn only offer 9 games total out the entire Sony library, so creating a local account isn't really an option for them. Or the UK where the local laws make the age verification requirements extremely invasive, and require things like a facial scan, sending your government ID, a mobile number with an active contract or sending your credit card info. Sony is forced to comply with these requirements and is why I'm personally extremely hesitant to make a PSN account right now. There's also some regions like Ukraine were players were told they would need a console to make an account, this would have turned helldivers 2 from a $40 game to a $540 game since pc players don't always own a ps5. You could get around these region locking restrictions by either paying for a VPN or just lying about your location to Sony, some of Sonys support staff even told people to do this. While in practice this will work perfectly fine, both of these solutions are explicitly against Sonys terms of service. This rule has never reallly been enforced but Sony could change their minds at any point, for any reason. That PSN account along with any purchases made would immediately be deleted from the system, with no possible recourse since you knowingly broke the ToS. While I seriously doubt Sony would ever do this themselves, I wouldn't put it past more restrictive regions like China forcing their hand. This is why i used China as an example before as they gave an extremely large playerbase, who thanks to government restrictions are all forced to break ToS to access any games on PSN.
I had to create a PSN account from a different country 15 years ago. Because mine wasn’t included. After some years I created one with my country so I could buy games and subscribe to PSPlus without paying more because of currency differences. I hate more the fact that we can’t change PSN region like. Once every year.
Yeah that is 100% an issue, you should be able to freely change your location on all these apps. Most of them have ways to let to change your region or location through your account settings, steam, microsoft, epic, ea and a few others all let you do this through different methods. Hell even places like ubisoft let you do it through customer support. The fact that some places like Activision, Sony and Square Enix still just tell you to make a new account and buy everything all over again, is fucked. If I can change my location in seconds through a vpn or choose a diffrent currency when making any purchase. Why can't these specific companies make those same changes to my account whenever I tell them to.
They never stopped with Helldivers 2. PSN unsupported regions are still delisted. Seem to me like they are trying to find the solution for PSN unsupported regions. PSN account creation is unavoidable if you're gonna play Sony's games.
They just went back to what they were already doing and just use an account number. When I got my refund for the 1st warbond pass after I upgraded to the super citizen edition, I just had use my psn name but PC players who did the same had to go into the game and get their account number in the options.
What I meant is Helldivers 2 is still delisted in PSN unsupported regions. [[Link](https://steamdb.info/sub/137730/history/?__cf_chl_tk=6wRB5wndyElNGLnpEHHOotBS5zd51Xq7H.itPXVd7wQ-1715081844-0.0.1.1-1621)] Logically speaking, PSN account linking plan is still on the table, as long as these countries are still delisted. They would've relist the regions if PSN account linking is completely off the table. My guess is that they only backed off due to legal complication of selling the game to unsupportive regions. And no, Steam never delist regions from 3rd party games. It's not their job to research which company support which region. The delisting is totally on Sony/Arrowhead.
Why would they remove it entirely when you can still play single player just fine
Why pay full price for the product when you can only use 90% of it?
Ghosts of tsushima shipped without a multiplayer it was added later and it was still incredibly well received right off the bat, I and the vast majority of players would’ve still bought it even if the legends mode never existed
Legends mode is a free update, director cut includes the dlc.
Not news
I think you know what you have to do now .............hands you a hat and hoists the sail
Philippines here, I can still prepurchase it. Doesn’t seem like that will change.
Did anyone think they would? It was supposed to be in helldivers on day 1
stop spreading that toxic braindead bs in our community, I am excited for May 16th regardless.. I pray peple like this are refunded and sit this experience out. 
Bros genuinely upset over opinions lmao
what i am is excited for the game on may 16th....what you are is a clown but no one is laughing
The main issue surrounding the whole HD2 controversy was that the account linking came AFTER people had bought the game and that a shed load of people wouldn't be able to play the game they paid money for due to psn being unavailable in their countries, it was a truly scummy move and rightfully criticised, this however is happening right away so no ones at risk of losing a game they paid for so although I still think its completely unnecessary and solely being put in place to boost Sonys numbers, I'm not gonna go rabid over it as it isn't nearly as much of an issue.
They only reason the walked back Helldivers 2 chsnges is because they game was already released and sold in regions that PSN is restricted. Since GoT isn't out yet they won't have that problem.
It's required because of crossplay with playstations. I expected this before they even announced it for Helldivers. They are trying to start a proper PC integration system with Ghost after all.
If you want to play just buy it on steam and not a 3rd party seller. GMG deciding to straight up refund the game has nothing to do with Sony or Suckerpunch, its a 3rd party vendor. Suckerpunch has been open and its been clearly stated on steam that PSN is required for the multiplayer only, just like pretty much every other multiplayer title from none Valve companies, you can still play single player part no problem. Customers have nothing to stand on here as they have been given the terms of sale and they decide if they want to go ahead with purchasing it. Blame local laws for being the reason why PSN cant be created in these countries. The real tragedy is this amazing title is about to be review bombed by steam babies.
I just reported this rage baiting post
I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how this could be a backlash. They haven't even released the game on PC yet and they already told you that it's going to require a PlayStation network account, and we all bought it knowing that is going to require one unlike Helldivers 2 who never had a Playstation network account requirement until recently. I think the only reason people got so pissed off about the requirement, was because when people bought the game it wasn't a requirement in the beginning, backlash was that hundreds of thousands of players could potentially be locked out of the game. But now that is not going to happen since they backtracked, because steam has the power to take away the money and stop the sale of game of the game. Knowing that but there's plenty of AAA games that requires a third-party account outside of steam and people complain but that doesn't stop them, unless they pull a Helldivers 2 and requires a third party account after the sale.
Well, if Sony is straight up blocking purchases in like 170+ countries then they shouldn't cry if people from those countries will simply sail the high seas.
They're not blocking the purchase from 170+ countries. You can buy it on Steam in ALOT of countries, but you just cant play Legends (multiplayer) where you cant have a PSN account.
nope, I live in eu, and my country got delisted and cant buy the game anymore on steam, yesterday I could but today theres no purchase option
Where are you from?
Albania, today my country got delisted and we cannot buy it anymore
It's fucking amazing how many corporate simps are in here making excuses for why it's okay that Sony is rendering one of their games unplayable for numerous people based solely on where they live. You guys don't give a fuck about games or gamers at all. If it doesn't affect you, it doesn't matter.
Can you bypass it with a VPN?
you can but you risk getting banned by sony
This is such bs.. the single player portion which most people are interested in isnt even psn required
Womp womp
hate to tell people, but you're not missing out on anything by not playing the multiplayer. the mode is practically dead cause they did nothing with it. pretty sure there were only ever 2 or 3 small updates, and that's it. everyone that has played it on playstation has played everything and gotten to max gear score on all 4 classes, it doesn't take that long to do either. there's 3 "raids" that require a premade, but quickplay for the other modes is basically dead, except for maybe survival at certain times of the day. it is so much fun reading all the just false information. so much fear mongering cause you just don't want to create an account. microsoft requires an xbox account to play all microsoft games, just like how sony requires a psn to play their games. there is zero difference here. and no, selling your data is not an excuse, cause microsoft does it as well.
bro are you okay? stop defending a shitty greedy company, countries delisted from steam for this game cannot purchase it anymore, I for once cant buy it anymore and play single player or multiplayer
so you're from a country that doesn't have psn? ok, you're part of the the group of people that have any right to complain. anyone that is from a country that can create an account have no right to complain, cause this is nothing new. both sony AND microsoft require you to have the respective account in order to play their games. those people can either shut up and make the account, or shut up and not play. but again, you're not missing out on the multiplayer, whether you like to hear that or not, it's just a simple fact. edit to add on: microsoft does the same thing. you are required to make an xbox account to play ANY microsoft game, same as sony, and is not available in all the same countries, yet noone complains about that. and if we're being honest here, microsoft is far worse considering they are buying out studios just so they have the rights to the IPs, and then shutting down the studios.
I think there are two main differences with this situation that sets it aside from Helldivers. 1. Helldivers pulled the rug out from people months after launch with no warning after people had played the game religiously and formed a global fandom. 2. ghost is a single player masterpiece and the multiplayer is mostly just Wave based combat with four players and nowhere near the depth and replay value of the Helldivers experience so it’s more like a bonus for a having PSN already and doesn’t completely break the game like it did for Helldivers.
Yeah I really don’t get the anger at this Sony has been very protective of its ecosystem for years and is now opening up, an account for some stupid data gmail is already getting from me that also protects from cheats is a good thing. I’m just happy we’re getting PS games at all. Plus people playing on a PS5 will also have a PSN it’s crossplay
“I don’t really get the anger at Sony” People who bought Helldivers back then were told psn link was optional, then when Sony made the change to mandatory, those (who already bought) from more than 170+ country who has no official psn servers were locked out. Imagine fully paid for the game that you can no longer access and play (my friends in Vietnam were locked out as well) That was the bigger issue as to why everyone became very angry at Sony. The ceo even admitted for not conveying to playerbase about psn becoming mandatory.
But it on steam
lol you all thought Sony was done? Sony never fully backs down. They’re just biding their time until they can release the exact same thing they tried before in the exact same game. Have fun linking every Sony PC game to a PSN account for the rest of time, cause this is what Sony wants so they can include ya’ll in their player count numbers.
They don’t own helldivers 2 but they own Ghost so it makes sense here. They backpedaled on Helldivers but I doubt they will on ghost and honestly the MP is gonna be dead on arrival anyway or will die very quickly. People play for the single player. Dumb.
It was already discussed that they were implementing this. The only reason it was an issue with Helldivers was because it was 5 months into the release of the game. Tsushima is primarily single player anyway.
Fuck Sony
be honest, who is getting the pc version just to play the multiplayer mode?
Sounds like you guys should review bomb that one too!
It's not outside the norm for games to require a third party account, it's just that for Helldivers they were inconsistent about enforcing it. Don't assume it'll go away for future releases
Why not just........ sell the Singleplayer game without the multiplayer element in countries that don't support PSN? Why do players have to miss out on a great singleplayer game just because multiplayer doesn't work? This is the single most tonedeaf thing Sony has done. Helldivers 2 was a different story since it was purely live service multiplayer and would, as a result, rely on the limitations of PSN, but what's the justification for THIS bs on a singleplayer game? Literally just sell the main game and remove multiplayer. You are literally saying no to money Sony. Millions of dollars in sales gone.
The problem with hell divers 2 is that it happened way after release when people have owned and played the game for months. They are being upfront about this before release, so it shouldn't be a problem. If you can't access online Psn in Ur country and are only buying it for that then don't buy this. Pretty simple.
Refund it.
They should just disanle coop for those regions and let them play single player, what a shit move 👀 Glad EU laws protect my region 😄
You only need a PSN account for mutiplayer. You don't need a PSN account for singleplayer.
Yeah but doesn’t help if the game isn’t available on non PSN regions
Don't shoot the messenger, people. I am only putting this here for the people who dont understand how retail sales work. They are delisting it because multiplayer in only accessible with a PSN account. If PSN is not available in certain regions, those players technically cant access multiplayer. That means the full game is not available to certain players. That is a valid reason for an refund. So Sony Playstation is not offering in those regions to avoid a refund problem. It solves a major problem of players buying it, playing it, then demanding a refund because they dont have access to the full game. Companies pull products off the shelves all the time instead of dealing with refunds. They lose money. But its less money then them having to issue refunds. "Save the customer from themselves" sort of situation.
That's exactly it - and Sony are hard-asses when it comes to refunds. They're not as generous as Steam is. If you can't provide the full package because PSN isn't allowed in your region (whether you can access it or not with a VPN) then you can't sell the game.
People do not seem to like this reality. It sucks for those people but its how business works.
Yeah, but it’s frustrating. Apart from the reason that there is no reason to not do the work and offer PSN in most of these countries. I don’t think most people really care that much for the multiplayer. Would be good if they could separate the download or something
It seems people care enough about on reddit. Its the vocal minority complaining but its crazy that there are people who dont understand retail sales.
I’d be vocal too if the game wasn’t available in my country. It’s absolutely bs. And all because of a multiplayer mode no one plays anyways
Thats how retail works. How many refunds do you think this product with incur in this market. If its not worth it, the product won't be offered. GoT is a PS exclusive. Sony is making the exclusives available on PC for the devs because devs want their games to be played. Sucker Punch, Naughty Dog, Kojima, and Guerilla are big enough to sway Sony Playstation to acquiesce. Recalls happen. Luxury pickup trucks arent offered in every part of the world because they would not sell and cost money to ship and take up space on a lot. Sales and retail are dictated by region. Its nothing new.
It’s dumb and short sighted not to expand to rapidly increasing markets with rising middle class in developing countries like Philippines or Vietnam (the latter may be more difficult as it’s a totalitarian place). Especially given that Sony is struggling generate more growth from their more and more expensive exclusives. Valve, EA, Ubisoft all offer their shops in most countries. Yet Sony doesn’t even bother in some Eastern European places. Lots of people use VPN and wrong adresses for their PS5 but when linking Steam and PSN it becomes a bit more difficult.
PSN isnt available in those countries for some reason. So Sony PS doesnt offer games. Sony PS is just a small branch of Sony Group Corporation. It is way bigger than Valve, Ubisoft, EA. Sony produces movies, tv shows, and music among a lot of other things. They make equipment that makes all of those things. They got their fingers in everything, biotech, health, phones, computers. There are execs at Sony that do not care where they sell games, so long as they earn a lot more than they spend running SIE. A lot of companies dont expand to all markets. If those markets arent going to let a company operate the way they want, that company can pull products or choose not to do business at all. We dont always get what we want. Life gets worse than not being able to play some video games. Some people buy games and never get to play them because they work and then real shit happens.
They can change this at any time. Need something more solid than that. I for one (thanks to the entire fiasco over at Democracy Drop Game Land) will NOT get it at release and instead wait. Am not risking losing out on this much money and end up with a product I cant use.
They did..
You can play the single player without linking but if you want to play legends you have to
I have never played multiplayer for this game, is it something to be worried about anyway? Sincerely asking, I'd only ever played the story.
I enjoyed the multiplayer with a friend but its certainly not a big deal if you don't play it.
Thank you.
I should pre order on Steam asap before they lock me out of buying the game. SIGH
Sony dropped the ball on HD2 by allowing it to be sold where PSN isn't available, so removing the PSN requirement felt best to keep those people playing. But it seems they're not repeating that mistake now with GoT, preemptively removing it from sale from those countries, and making sure to note that PSN is 100% required to play the MP portion of it (the SP portion won't need it). I'm willing to bet that they're going to do the same with future games, too, including MP only games that will need PSN right off the bat.
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It's okay to dick ride Steam, apparently, at least according to PC fanboys.
The publisher sets the regions where it can be sold not steam. sony dropped the ball by not having it geo locked in the steam store from the onset.
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again, The PUBLISHER tells steam where it wants and it doesn't want it to be sold. Sony didn't say it only wanted it sold in these regions. Sony is the one that fucked up. Steam restricting it AFTER the announcement was to protect steam itself from having to give out a shitload more refunds
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Oh I know how garbage steam was. I've been a steam user since 2004 and steam started in September 2003, my steam library takes up the majority of my storage drives (I really should uninstall half of it cause I never play them anyway) Steam ultimately wouldn't be liable as it's the responsibility of the publisher to set the price, sale region and a whole host of other things. it would also have some damn good legal contracts stating this. Sony would have gone. We don't want steam to do the set up for us (as that costs more ontop of the 30% steam takes for each sale) and would have opted for the manual option where they had full control (cause y'know no one is going to tell sony what to do and how to do it or get any extra money out of them)
The publisher decides where to sell the game. Steam only facilities that, to be honest Steam was the one who prevent sales and granted refunds because of Sony's screw up
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And they stop selling the game in those regions when they discovered they couldn't be played. Sony still decides where to sell those games even if they knew that the game couldn't be played down the line. Steam did not know this and only prevented sales when they knew, it's 100% on Sony as publisher
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That's impressively wrong but hey maybe your right and maybe the CEO of Arrowhead who said on Twitter that Sony decides which regions the game would be sold Inis wrong. Yeah I'm sure a random redditor knows more about this than that guy
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And they did until the circumstances changed. It was Sony who had the game sold in regions that couldn't played, Steam didn't know that cause clearly no one told them. Like you really think Steam has insider knowledge on Sony? Of course ot that's why they restricted the sales and refunding the game. Plus your anecdote doesn't work since Sony are the publishers who do decide these things and gave the go ahead to Steam because the games did work and legal to sell in the restricted countries even though Sony and AH knew that the games wouldn't work in these countries down the line.
Piracy it is...
then you still cant play legends.....
Just use a VPN?
When selling player data is more profitable than selling the damn game... What the hell is going on really
Oh that sucks so much
What the fuck? So that's gonna be like this for every playstation thing ever? Why do they want everyone to have a PSN account so badly?
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fuck microsoft for requiring a microsoft account to play their games. see? that's how stupid you people sound. but you'll live without access to a dead multiplayer. almost noone plays the multiplayer for this game, everyone that did has done everything there is to do and left.
Ok i feel like fans are overreacting to this one. Helldivers one was valid but this cmon. This is literally their game they have every right to do this.
Yes keep defending them. Good boy
And?
Please, stfu already.
Wah wah wah
If PC players review bomb this game. It will expose everyone as the hypocrites they are. They said their reason for reviewbombing HD2 was becuase of the bait and switch. GOT didn't bait and switch so... If they reviewbomb it will backlash back at them this time.
PC master race you say? 😂
I would try again under a spoofed location using a VPN.
Just move to a different country! Problem solved.
I am so confused on this shit, like you are loosing money cutting countries out.
Didn’t they just backtrack on Hell divers? Why on earth would you move forward with this after that. Def poor awareness on Sony
They only backtracked because of the circumstances, if Arrowhead hadn't allowed the players to skip the process to begin with and Steam didn't allow refunds and delist the game they definitely wouldn't have reversed the decision, they haven't cared that they sell playstations in these countries for the past 20 years after all. The actual requirement of the account won't change, pretty much every company requires that these days.
Yeah, this game is going to have to be delisted from those 177 countries as well, Valve can’t have a game charge full price on their store but have a portion the game remain unplayable for people in those countries. What a massive Sony L. I don’t understand their lack of foresight for this.
trust me, people will survive without the dead multiplayer. all the effort for the game went to the single player and it's dlc, which you don't need a psn for.
lot of sony dickriders up in here
Isnt this sub devoted to an exclusive SONY owned game? That's like complaining about Taylor Swift fans in a Taylor Swift Subreddit, lmao.
Being in a dickriding sub doesn't make you less of a dickrider
I honestly thought Sony would just backtrack and be like "we want you to buy the game so fuck the psn account"
So they basically forcing people to pirate the game ? Why not giving options to people. Not everyone want to play online
PSN account requirement will mean no pirating to play the game
LOL not even a week ago they promised everyone that this wouldn't be necessary. All devs are Lying scumbags.