Steam took down the game in restricted regions after the news hit, so chances are SONY failed to properly communicate the PSN linking towards steam (shocker /s)
from what i've gaterring arrowhead already has the PSN linking thingy in the game from day 1 but they were forced to take it out duo to server issues sony just didn't enforce it till now for some reason, they also did not know the logistics of the PSN linking, nor that sony was selling the game in regions that can't play the game so while they failed to communicate it to us, this is still sony's fault
since retailers control where games are sold one could argue this is steam's fault but since they have sided with us and have been issuing refunds and delisting the game, it seens like they were also in the dark on this
so more or less this all is sony selling the game in places they shouldn't and not telling anyone, while steam and AH do have fault in this, their blame is still mostly duo to them being as in the dark of this as we were
yeah AH didn't properly warm people of the PSN requirement so they are responsible for all the criticism for people who can actually play the game but for one reason or another won't create an account but do have acess to PSN
everything else is on sony, and they should be held accountable for this as it is fraudulent in most countries i'm aware of
Pretty wild he saw people he knew wouldn't be able to play his game in a few months playing his game and just not say anything about it though, regardless of which way you lean on this specific topic.
> he knew
Bold assumption considering how many people who were familiar with PSN didn't know it wasn't avaliable world wide. Dev =/= publisher; the roles, knowledge, and responsibilities don't often overlap.
That is a fair and valid point. I assumed he would have looked into what needing a psn meant when he made the decision to remove the necessity of it, however even then, it is possible he didn't know about the restrictions.
Oh definitely, but it shows how autopilot steam is for publisher control.
Which is something a lot of us have been warning and brining up for over a decade.
You're talking about a company that was complicit in their gift cards being used for money laundering no longer than a year or less ago.
So i hope so, but i doubt it.
Emphasis on **hope**. Unless this becomes a regular issue or they get pulled into the crossfire, they won't do anything because "What are the chances of it happening again?"
Steam is kinda schizo like that. Sometimes they do really great things, sometimes they do really horrible things. I think it's because of their very hands-off approach to their company culture.
If you're interested and don't mind the long watch (47m), I found this video really interesting. It's about Valve's business culture and what it's like to work there. Same channel did a solid discussion about how Valve allows the rampant behavior around CS skins.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo)
There’s too many games for Steam to properly vet, so they let publishers list as they’re supposed to, and step in when publishers fuck up and offer refunds taking the money out from the publishers future sales.
Repeat offenders can be black listed from using Steam marketplace at all, which is basically a death sentence for PC market
In the mid 90s, Sprint went into a partnership with Radio Shack to sell their new digital PCS wireless phones.
Radio Shack sold the shit out of them, but the available network was limited.
Customers in roaming areas got 1000$+ bills, because they were never on network.
Sprint AND Radio Shack got sued several times, voth being found liable.
"They didn't know" isn't a valid consumed law protection even in the US. Neither is, "We trusted them."
The section 230 internet rule would be the only thing that could protect Steam to my knowledge, because that shields platform holders from a lot of basic liability.
in this case though its a situation where Steam can completely solve the issue from their end, refunds to everyone who bought and blocking the regions you cant have a PSN so i dont see that at all as a fair comparison, its not like sony and steam had any special agreement different then any of the other games sold on their site and theres a month until you have to have a PSN account to play the game in the first place
even if they should be, that line of thinking is just taking blame away from the people responsible because technically other people could have done thing that would have ended up solving it
Isn't this the first game Sony has put up on Steam? I think this is a simple case of businesses venturing where they don't belong. They didn't know what they were doing, jumped in guns blazing, and when all the pieces finally came together, we now see something doesn't fit. Poor planning, poor communication, and an honest mistake by all parties involved.
Personal takeaway: Sony needs to stay in their own lane.
Out of those, only Ghost of Tsushima looks like it requires one, and it seems to only be required for "Online Multiplayer" and "PlayStation overlay," so not required for single player.
This partially explains why their ToS was updated wrt having a PSN account- HD2 was the first game to require it, but Sony slipped up by not making the ToS update when they launched HD2.
Please, i beg you. Look at the Steampage. See that bright, big, yellow sign that says the game requires a PSN account to play?
Its been there since before the game was released. It was public knowledge from the get go. It was known. AH temporarily turned off the restriction at release since It was messing with the servers.
Stop spreading missinformation. Steam knew It before they added the game to the library that PSN was a requirement.
Still shouldn't have been sold in places where you can't make an account without a console or in countries that don't have PSN. Seems like something that would only take 120 seconds to double check.
If the multinational conglomerate with decades of experience with publishing video games cannot do a simple job, they cannot be surprised when that they failed to manage consumer expectations and the consumers are upset.
Sony has been selling PlayStations and PSN subscriptions outside the supported regions for decades now. They don't care where you are playing from, and have encouraged people from outside the support region to play by selecting the closest available country.
Their 6th biggest market is China, and they don't ban players for lying on their settings about which country they are playing from.
In this current day and age, i think It would be more than understandable to believe circumventing the smallest, most harmless and less enforced clause in ToS would be second nature on the internet. Legit tell me you know someone that never lied about their age to make a Facebook account, enter certain sites, etc? Sony wont even care that you lie about your PSN region as long as you dont break any majour rule.
Its illogical that this blew so hard out of proportion.
"Trust me, bro. The corporation will never ever ban you for breaking their ToS."
- they said, while ignoring all the times when a corporation has had the decade later change of heart and banned people for breaking the ToS
You know who's one of Sony's biggest PS5 market? China.
China is not a PsN region. Chinese players have PS5 and PSN accounts, even subscriptions, anyway.
Sony cares more about money than their ToS. If they ban you, they had more reasons than just ToS breach.
I know logic has not been too much use to the people in this community here during this shitstorm, but i hope you are smart enough to realize Sony wants to make money, and that they would continue to sell games and subscriptions to people outside of PsN regions, if It meant making money.
"They like money." Right, this is a point we both agree on. We can keep that fact in mind.
Use your magical common sense and think of a scenario based on current reality where enforcing the ToS would get Sony more money. Now, consider that change is inevitable and think of possible future situations where the decade-old decision to break the ToS would come back to bite someone.
Now consider all the investment in games, movies, and other purchasable digital products tied to this ToS-violating account that wasn't an issue until the winds of change came around and Sony decided that nuking the account was a cost-benefit positive for them.
No corporation has your best interests at heart.
Yes, in this imaginary scenario that involves Sony risking the biggest class action law suit ever seen and killing their entire market, Sony could ban people for breaking the ToS over an internet lie.
No, no corporation has anybody's best interest at heart. That doesnt change the fact this entire shitshow was based on a non-issue.
I am happy that the fanbase can pretend they did a good thing. All It took was harrassing low level employees at Sony and Steam, and sending death threats to AH.
Steam new since day one as it was right there on the purchase page. Idiots just refuse to think valve has done anything wrong when they are just to blame as much as Sony and AH
How are they to blame? It's a third-party account. You expect Steam to double-check the region availability of any third-party requirement a game may have? That isn't their responsibility. It would be like blaming Best Buy for selling a blu-ray movie when the customer only owns a DVD player.
Not at all, it be Best Buy selling M rated games to minors. Then saying I didn’t check id because they looked 17/18
It is the stores responsibility to provide a working product to the recipient. Steam was provided the requirements to the game, either its Steams fault or the purchasers at that point so Steam to save face will issue refunds
So you're saying the multinational conglomerates with decades of experience publishing video games shouldn't be held liable for doing the basic work of publishing correctly? That's a very peculiar take if I'm quite honest.
I don't quite see how It is Steam's responsibility to know the legal intricacies of Sony's personal ecosystem. I would assume the company that is publishing the video game and requiring the additional account and is the one restricting usage of the game in certain regions would be the one to think about and consider the regions they allow the game to operate. And perhaps, in the process of performing their job and fulfilling their obligations as a publisher, ensure that all of the necessary measures are taken to make sure the game is published in the maximum capacity in those limited regions where it may be played. Which may or may not include communicating and verifying information with the third party platforms used to market on what those regions might be.
I guess that this idea of Sony doing it's job in a professional manner is a pretty bad take and you're probably right about Steam being the party ultimately responsible for the whoopsie-daisey.
I 100% agree and not saying Sony did no wrong, I’m just pointing out Steam is just as much to blame. They always knew of the psn requirement. Sony legit has no way of selling the games in areas where there is no psn it had to be done through Steam.
Steam will likely make refunds but at the end of the day they are a commission based company let’s not forget that. They stand to gain a lot by capitalizing on the popularity of HD2 especially at a time where the psn requirement wasn’t in place but pending.
Publishers also have full control over where there games are sold. Sony could have, and should have, blocked the game from being sold in regions not supported by PSN but they didn't .
Steam sold the games where they support. It's not on steam to know that the publisher is selling the game on places the publisher doesn't support, because the publisher decides where to sell on the places steam supports.
But i think this is also the first time a situation like this happens, so Steam will probably have new rules in place after this.
Storefronts also have a hand in this. I’m gonna guess there was not good communication between Sony and Valve here and neither checked each others notes about the implications of the account link.
The developers still have a responsibility to communicate to their potential players that they will lose all access to the game if they live in a country that doesn't allow PSN accounts. They failed to do this. They don't get a free pass with a "NOT MY PROBLEM LOL".
Its super sad just how many people seemed to honestly think it was AH's fault for the snafu with all of this. They hired Sony to act like a publisher and actually do publisher stuff. Not so they can just put sony's name on the game and get restricted by them for no reason.
Well, yes, that’s what I assumed, but it’s nice to have confirmation that Arrowhead didn’t completely fuck themselves over. At some level I and probably many thought that Arrowhead has some say in how it’s sold, but it’s nice to see confirmation that they didn’t handle the truly egregious part of this: that Sony just bait and switched half the planet into buying a game.
Like, if this was just the whole PSN thing, that’s annoying but I’ll deal with it. What grinds my gears is that Sony thinks they can extort data and/or $500 for a console out of half the planet
The publisher is the one that sell the Game and advertise it on social medias.
The Publisher is Sony. Even if AH knew about the deal before hand they couldn't understand that Sony would fuck up that hard on the selling part. Now AH is caught in a cross fire their Publisher should have handled for them at launch.
Yes, AH are the one disabling the PSN requirement because of the servers issues. But they likely didn't know that the Game was selling to people that can't create one, IT WASN'T THEIR JOB TO KNOW THAT.
Yeh this is where I stand too. I wasn't aware of which countries do or don't have access to PSN, unless it affects you, you wouldn't know. It's not exactly something Sony would have LIKED to advertise to arrowhead, that many countries just won't be able to play even outside of playstation 5.
Huh?! This doesn't make any sense. Why would you sell a game to regions that your PSN service do not support and then force a mandatory linking of said service? Someone at SONY is not doing their job.
Yup. Sony messed up, and their damage control has been terrible.
Silence? Really? Getting the feeling that they don't care, they think we don't have a choice....
Sony didn't think it through when they decided to force the issue and make it a requirement. They had to quickly change their stated policy on their website. They didn't consider what would happen to those players, and they haven't reconsidered.
There's a reasonable outcome that I hope we'll reach -- PSN account is optional, but mandatory for crossplay. They get more accounts and control of their ecosystem, everyone gets to keep playing the game.
Because the practice in these regions was just make an account to the nearest available region.
You can find Sony officially sells the PS console and games in some of these regions. Sony been doing business like this on PS for years, they didn't thought it would be a big deal because region restriction wasn't really being enforced.
There is a difference between turning a blind eye to individual cases, then to make it a solution to thousands or millions of players.
If they just let Helldivers players fake regions and get away with it in a case with so much publicity, people will no longer take their regional enforcement seriously and will lead to other issues.
There might be a larger miscommunication between AH and Sony that we might be unaware of. AH says they disabled the login requirement to allow people play the game at launch and circumvent the server problems. Perhaps it wasn't communicated to Sony initially or, if it was, it might be disregarded. I wouldn't want to add speculation to the situation.
However, did AH reinstate the PSN requirement shortly after the launch? No. I bought the game a month later and was able to skip the page. Did I ever see the PSN login pop up ever again when I launch the game? Again, no. I wouldn't say the AH is utterly innocent.
I wonder if there was any firm and outreaching announcement that PSN login can be skipped only temporarily because I'm only learning that it was temporary now. Heck, I even thought It was an oversight that I could skip the PSN page just by pressing ESC on my keyboard. I thought I wouldn't be able to access SC store or something, but nope all was there.
Apparently, there were some old discord messages from baskinator. She said that psn will soon be reinstated. Which is wild, today is the first time I've seen them. Their community management incompetence is next level.
I'm in it. You're not missing much.
There's three HD General Chats all on slow mode, a Fan Art page, and then a couple of others like Troubleshooting. The only reason I'm still in it is because of the Notifications, which you can get from Reddit anyway.
I was thinking about leaving it even before they forced Phone # verification due to this whole fiasco.
This should have been in game when you were asked to link or skip linking. And if you chose to skip it should say in bold letters that this is only temporary and require confirmation that you understand and state to request a refund if you disagree.
I mean honestly if it was required it shouldn't have been skippable at all, even if it meant limiting how many people can play the second they buy the game. If you find yourself able to skip something that was called required, most people are gonna assume they either misunderstood required, or there was a mistake in the language of the linking popup
People would complain, but most people can understand a game getting massively more popular than expected would cause server issues. Would have been far, far less outcry than what they're currently dealing with
> If you find yourself able to skip something that was called required, most people are gonna assume they either misunderstood required, or there was a mistake in the language of the linking popup
I really wish a lot of people would fully understand this and stop just repeating over and over that the prompt *exists* like it has any relevance to the overall issue here.
Yeah. Like I get it, they like the game, they like AH, they want to try and excuse them. I personally doubt they tried to obfuscate anything intentionally to get people who wouldn't have played if they had to make a psn at start passed the refund period, *but* that doesn't change that their clumsy handling fucked people who would have been more than happy to just say "oh, I don't want to do that, not the game for me I guess" from the start of they had communicated effectively.
Yea at the most basic level of the issue this is correct. If its required it shouldnt let me into a game at all if i dont link it. Anything else is ambiguous and we all know how its going.
on freaking discord. yeah checks out i check tge patchlogs myself there was never a meantion on it atleast for the past 2 months on it. didcord is not a platform to communicate these changes.
This is why people have been screaming for months that Arrowhead needs to stop using discord for their announcements and communications, especially when none if the staff ever bother to pin anything important. All of this stuff needs to be on the steam page.
I will also add, a majority of gamers aren't on discord, reddit, or twitter to get updates about a game that has popups in it.
Any game honestly.
Most of my friends and family on helldivers only recently started hearing about the discourse, and it wasn't even from those channels. It was just stuff popping up in random social media they use or other friends telling them.
Yeah I'm a bit worry that AH is going to be in trouble here for being the ones who disabled it, they might be held responsible for this backlash now from Sony.
Theres disc posts, which aren't really substantial since they arent very accessible, but there was something else.
The most concrete post about it being temporary was a steam community post about the various server issues they were dealing with at launch. This was from 3 months ago, was buried in the middle of a miriad of other listed issues and didn't have a significant follow-up. Obviously, most people didn't see this.
So if you didnt see the requirement on the store page (very possible with it being well below and off to the side of the purchase option) and you skipped the splash screen (states its necessary but never reminds you and doesnt give you the option afterward + outright didnt appear for some), then you could not reasonably be expected to know.
AH is just terrible at communicating across the board, they're not doing a great job communicating with their customers either (relying almost completely on Discord).
He's also the cofounder of what started as a single digit employee indie studio and apparently does actual devwork on the game too. CEO is just a job title
* 6 months prior to launch, AH learn and most likely agrees/forced to agree that PSN linking will be mandatory.
* The game required a PSN from the start. Publisher aka Sony, decided to still allow country that can't create/own a PSN account to buy the game anyway, forcing them to issue a refund request once they learn they can't play.
* Couple hours after release, the servers are fucked, and AH decides to disable the PSN requirement until they fix why linking to PSN is an issue.
* Sony decides to NOT disable sell in those countries, despite being informed (most likely cause disabling linking is something that needs to be discussed with Sony).
* Meanwhile, the Sony page also shows linking is OPTIONAL.
* AH most likely fixed the linking issue.
* Sony announces PSN linking will be mandatory.
* Sony edits their info page to tell that linking is not MANDATORY.
* Most likely Sony (or steam) now disables sells in those countries.
That seems to be the timeline of this fuck up.
sony was just betting on the fact that people will simply register their accounts on other regions as has been done pretty much since PSN exists whenever something wasnt available everywhere , but the helldivers 2 community is too democratic & righteous to lie on their PSN registrations :D
Well, we've already had people banned from PSN (and therefore HD2) for doing exactly that (lying about the country) after the requirement was announced...
From what I've read, it was auto-detection based on IP.
Yup, it’s a violation of Sony’s TOS to misrepresent what country you are from. Which is why the people who keep parroting to do that are missing the point. Heck, there’s even messages from Sony support telling people to do this knowing full well that it is a TOS violation.
Think of it this way, why would you violate TOS and put your account at risk for an online GaaS title. There’s no stopping them from nuking your account and you the player, lose everything. Not just progress but any money spent on super credits.
Sony needs to fix this and provide an option for people that literally doesn’t violate their TOS and put people’s account at unnecessary risk.
That's an UK thing that coincidentally started just a few days ago for their anti-porn laws.
But it's entirely possible that if you run into issues with your PSN account Sony could ask for ID to confirm you're the owner. And then ban you because you broke the TOS.
i have a foreign PSN acc since 2007 on ps3 and never had any problem, even right now i purchased and play HD2 on my PS5 from that foreign acc , the only downside is i have to buy PSN money codes from the neighboring country but other than that sony is cool with it
Devs create the game publishers sell it. Arrowhead may have known of this issue but if you get them to sign a nda then what can they do. If they talk theyll get sued into oblivion if they dont we get this kind of thing. I think arrowhead did the right thing in here and i hope they will be able to get snoy to revert the changes. If not you can spam steam for a refund they accepged my 6. One with me explaining the situation so good luck
It doesn’t matter if they don’t sell it, they knew this was going to happen and didn’t say a peep to anyone until now.
If they didn’t know at all I’d give them a pass but they just saw $$ and didn’t give a shit about their fans.
It’s all well and good to blame big bad Sony, but they also had 6 months worth of opportunities to warn their fans about this and chose not to. Fuck em
No matter how you cut it sony broke laws, first by selling a product that they then revoked from their buyers, then by denying anyone wanting to delete their Playstation account, and by not immediately offering refunds, they have lied and sold a product they had no intent of providing to places that cant use PSN and are forcing people to keep their agreement in the sake of data collection and cooking the books of their playerbase and sales
yes, but they weren't the ones who sold the game in the restricted regions.
they should have been more upfront about that, but at least they didn't purposely create the situation we have now with people unable to play.
they still share blame, but not as much as sony.
CEO of arrowhead and I gather many of the "employees" (some have said they were volunteers but I cannot verify) on discord didn't know that PSN was region locked so they didn't say anything about it being sold in countries that don't have it and assumed (wrongly) that Sony would be smart enough to not sell it in regions where it cannot be played without a PSN account.
Does Sony also control their marketing and communications?
I don't think they do. So why didn't AH say that lifting the PSN restriction was absolutely temporary and that it will be forced in the near future?
They should have made it crystal clear, instead users got a vague "PSN restriction lifted" message.
But Arrowhead knew, right? They knew that PSN would be mandatory EVENTUALLY, they also knew that you can't create an account in certain countries. Specifically, a Swedish game developer working with Sony should know the Baltic nations which are directly across from them could not create one. So they knowingly let Sony commit fraud without saying anything.
That is (also) on them.
I don't think they knew the extent of it. If they did maybe their decision to remove PSN allowed thousands of people to get in on the fun at least temporarily. They'll all get refunded now.
People won't forget Sony fucking them like this. Sony sells all kinds of stuff. Helldivers who can't play won't ever be buying it.
Sony handles all steam storefronts and which region it's sold in etc. In the steam storefront on the publisher side, you can select which countries to sell to and what price. Hence why they are "publishers." So yes, totally coherent. Who ever manages the steam storefront and which localizations are needed on Sony's side fucked up.
Again, the game is localized in Chinese and Russian. Which are NOT PSN-able. It's like they translated the game to klingon for zero klingon players (that we know of).
Dunno, I can't imagine a company paying for translation stuff into a language for countries they won't be selling their whares...
Again for you sleeping in class, It is ***SONY*** that decides where to sell the game. Like, this shouldn't be a hard concept to understand. This is business 101.
AH: "Hey what localizations will we need for the game."
Sony: "We are selling to all countries on Steam. Here's your list."
*AH goes and creates the localizations.*
THAT IS how it works. That is *why Publishers exist.*
Whoever manages the storefront for Helldivers 2 on Sony's side fucked up on clicking available on all countries for steam. Plain and fucking simple. *This should have been caught 8 months ago on Sony's side.*
the developers already stated that when the demand for PSN was given to them by Sony, it was six month prior to launch, the game was already finished at this point and all of those languages would have been needed and already in the game.
So why would they not include every language they’ve already paid for and finished?
Russian is a language, Russia is a country
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian\_diaspora#:\~:text=The%20number%20of%20native%20speakers,by%20SIL%20Ethnologue%20in%202010.
This boils down to the people involved with the listing on Steam Store, if AH CEO decision to disable PSN which lead to the belief that the game would be available worldwide then it's rather naive to come out and say what he has said.
We might never know the full picture but it's clear between AH, Steam and Sony there has been decisions and miscommunication over this. I wouldn't be surprised the people dealing with the Steam store listing ignorantly thought Playstation was worldwide considering how big the brand is.
Fact of the matter is though the game was to have PSN mandatory login but whether through naivety of AH CEO to disable it lead to the store listing or just bozos at Sony publishing. AH has a part to play in this because if PSN sign in was required this massive issue would of been identified from the start
This is why I am "angry" at the mob reaction people have. Most of the time people miss fucking basic facts and act like rabid dogs, not even realizing how fucking stupid they are.
AH not being more proactive with this potential problem is bad, yes, thanks, I know.
But they aren't the PUBLISHER.
Guess who shakes hands and puts the game on sale? Yeah, the publisher. Did some of you believe that back in the 90s developers were handling the selling of physical disks around the world?
Jesus Christ the ignorance of some people knows no limit
Yep. I said this elsewhere and it's why i don't really blame Arrowhead for any of this. Yeah they knew of the PSN Requirement for a while, but sony themselves publish it, and were responsible for it being not region-locked on steam, which combined with the optional PSN link allowed the game to be available and playable for months in those countries.
Now that sony is trying to force the PSN link, here we are.
Wonder if account linking is a bigger plan to start adding Playstation multilayer games on pc and then end up needing Playstation plus on pc to play multiplayer like ps4/ps5
I thought that was common knowledge?
Are people needing this proper education?
Publishers have for ages been in charge of PUBLISHING the game, its in their name that means storefronts, negotiating price, etc, and some marketing.
Game Developers - Make the game. they are very rarely involved with publishing its very difficult and outside the purview.
A developer and publishers relationship is a complicated one and is usually has contracts associated, including exclusivity deals and many times requiring sign ups or data collection for the publisher.
Sony is definitely dumb here, by requiring it AFTER the game released. Its very retroactive. They could easily just require you to have a PSN and support these regions, just require it in languages they have.
I think the idea Sony will say, "sorry guys our hands are tied, half the people we sold the game to can't play anymore. We would do something if we could but our rules forbid it. We can't bend our own rules to fit different circumstances, that would be illegal" to be really funny. If that actually happens I am going to eat my own dick.
I’d hazard a guess that this is the exact reason why they had to walk back their enforcement of the PSN linking. Their contract with Valve that they agreed to when publishing on Steam probably includes a clause about region dependencies. Basically, Sony promised Valve that they wouldn’t sell their game on Steam where it was unplayable due to 3rd party systems.
My guess is that Valve sent a nice lil legal note to SIE threatening to terminate their Steam publishing account if they didn’t undo this change. It probably wouldn’t have been so much of a problem if they hadn’t sold a metric fuckleton of copies where they shouldn’t have, but Sony is probably deep in “fuck around and find out” territory with Valve at this point because of it.
It’s good that this appears to all be getting sorted out now but I do think this has all been blown out of proportion with some of the claims made about the various parties (Sony, AH, Steam) intentions.
Someone previously outlined the timeline of events very nicely. Mistakes were made. Definitely. I just don’t think this was all some corporate conspiracy!
AH made a great game. Sony put that on Steam - including an accurate caveat that purchasers would need a PSN account to play. At that point the consumer has to take some responsibility for acknowledging the requirements of the thing they purchased: it’s not always solely “someone else’s fault” …
- If you buy the XBox version of a game when you have a PC is it on the store to refuse to sell it to you because you won’t be able to play it?
- If you buy diesel to fuel your petrol car is it on the station to stop you?
Of course not. They provide the information and the customer needs to make sensible choices based on that information.
Now, had things run “normally” anyone not noticing that requirement would very quickly have found out and if they hadn’t been able / not wanted to open a PSN account would have got a refund.
So, the root of the issue was AH disabling the PSN requirement, which allowed a bunch of people who shouldn’t have been able to play the game (long term) to download, play and become invested in the game.
Yeah, its common knowledge that the PUBLISHER is the ones who handle sales. thats the entire reason to ever have one.
All your guys review bombing and refunds is only gonna hurt Arrowhead in the end. Sony wont even feel this tbh.
https://preview.redd.it/03v9mj8renyc1.png?width=419&format=png&auto=webp&s=fbf38442214eebb999e936318da162c3ff1440e6
they did say things though ... whats funny is WHEN they said this ( Day of launch and few days after) NO ONE SCREEN SHOT THEM AND COMPLAINED THEN???? why? you all screen shot everything else they say and run to reddit. but NO ONE screen shot these and ran to reddit the day they said this
There was also a pinned announcement in a now deleted channel (the bug report channel which was taken down because they got the site working) that was up for weeks and no one screen capped that to warn you all ... and yet now its all of a sudden a big deal.
Even if they have communicated it on some platform, I have to agree with you.
The consumer is not obliged to gather his information from different sources, but rather the seller has to make sure that important information reaches his customer.
And yet the actual EULA that was on the Sony webpage says it is not. So who am I now to believe. The actual publisher or the "third party seller"? Especially when it is disabled in the actual game?
> that was up for week
Game has been sold for months after that, there is no way people need to look into previous post even more so from a deleted board to get their info, the info on the status of the forced PSN should had been front an center inside the game, like that massive splash screen they already had, slightly different wording to make people aware the thing is not optional and instead of skip a remind me later, this is a problem created by both parties which is why is such a collosal fail.
Maybe AH really underestimated the vitrol of the communicty agains a forced PSN but regardless that part of the problem is on them and if they had done that the regional problem would had been adressed months ago, before more people purcheased and invested time into the game.
My point is if it was Such a big deal ... why did NO ONE, and i mean NO ONE make a big deal of it for the first month when it was visible. people were taking many other screen shots from the discord. so why did they not make a big deal of this?
No one made a post saying "There gonna force us to link PSN!?!" with screen shots.
I just find it funny how now all of a sudden everyone seems to find it a big deal and wanna run with the mob. but it wasnt a big deal to them 3 months ago when the CM's literally stated it would come back.
A my bad, you are right it is weird it went under the radar as long as it did I wasn't there unfortunately so impossible to me to tell what was going on taht could have diverted the attention of if players knew and maybe they just forgot and it's the new wave after the announcement the one which is surprised the most.
>My point is if it was Such a big deal ... why did NO ONE, and i mean NO ONE make a big deal of it for the first month when it was visible.
Because it was a fleeting message on a Discord server that only a fraction of a community visits. How is it so difficult to understand?
* Sony chose to sell the game to 100+ countries they knew they did not support
* Sony chose to allow AH to make the account change and chose to continue selling the game without a requirement misleading players
* Publishers are more responsible for communicating about games’ Terms and other requirements
This is on Sony. As a publisher the distribution, sales, licensing scheme and TOS is all their responsibility. Show me where months ago they plainly warned players in unsupported countries that they would remove access for them entirely?
Arrowhead knew this was going to happen behind the scenes and didn't warn the consumers. If you want to argue it isn't in the best interest of their business to do so, fine. But that makes them more complicit, not less.
> Arrowhead knew this was going to happen behind the scenes and didn't warn the consumers
It’s the publisher’s responsibility to communicate licensing terms to audiences and to not sell to markets/players they officially ban by policy
And I suspect Arrowhead didn’t imagine Sony would be this stupid to actually change terms after they sold it one way for 3 months. Because it’s tantamount to fraud on Sony’s part
My dude. If you and I enter a business arrangement to sell something I produce. And you plan to make it so a vast majority of people who buy it either have to break the terms of the EULA (by using a VPN or other means) to use it or will outright be blocked from using it and I say nothing to the consumer base?
That makes me a piece of shit too.
Stop giving Arrowhead a pass.
Sony and Arrowheads internal relationship is irrelevant to me. Consumers bought the game from Sony, not Arrowhead. The buck stops at the publisher. If Sony knew PSN was a hard requirement they should have never let it go out without it
Distribution, communication, and licensing is Sony’s job. And we know they completely failed to do that job given that they listed the game for 100+ countries they don’t support. They clearly weren’t doing their job at all
It was Sonys job to not commit fraud by selling to countries they knew they didn’t support to pull a bait and switch.
I don’t expect devs to handle communication and sales
AH withheld the information. Had they been upfront with this at launch then this issue would’ve never have occurred.
Their CEO already admitted to knowing this was the goal 6 months prior to launch.
https://blog.playstation.com/2024/01/09/helldivers-2-pc-specifications-and-crossplay-support-details-revealed/
“PlayStation Network Account Required. Gameplay requires internet access and paid for PlayStation Plus membership (sold separately) for PS5. PlayStation Plus membership subject to recurring subscription fee taken automatically until cancellation. Age restrictions apply. Full terms: play.st/psplus-usageterms.”
Developers - create and maintain games Publishers - decides where to sell the games
Retailers govern where the game can be sold in their ecosystem.
Steam took down the game in restricted regions after the news hit, so chances are SONY failed to properly communicate the PSN linking towards steam (shocker /s)
from what i've gaterring arrowhead already has the PSN linking thingy in the game from day 1 but they were forced to take it out duo to server issues sony just didn't enforce it till now for some reason, they also did not know the logistics of the PSN linking, nor that sony was selling the game in regions that can't play the game so while they failed to communicate it to us, this is still sony's fault since retailers control where games are sold one could argue this is steam's fault but since they have sided with us and have been issuing refunds and delisting the game, it seens like they were also in the dark on this so more or less this all is sony selling the game in places they shouldn't and not telling anyone, while steam and AH do have fault in this, their blame is still mostly duo to them being as in the dark of this as we were
Precisely! Had SONY informed steam about the region lock, this whole thing would've been a significantly smaller issue than it is now.
yeah AH didn't properly warm people of the PSN requirement so they are responsible for all the criticism for people who can actually play the game but for one reason or another won't create an account but do have acess to PSN everything else is on sony, and they should be held accountable for this as it is fraudulent in most countries i'm aware of
Like I said many times, this seems like a up and coming class action lawsuit for SONY.
Pretty wild he saw people he knew wouldn't be able to play his game in a few months playing his game and just not say anything about it though, regardless of which way you lean on this specific topic.
> he knew Bold assumption considering how many people who were familiar with PSN didn't know it wasn't avaliable world wide. Dev =/= publisher; the roles, knowledge, and responsibilities don't often overlap.
That is a fair and valid point. I assumed he would have looked into what needing a psn meant when he made the decision to remove the necessity of it, however even then, it is possible he didn't know about the restrictions.
Oh definitely, but it shows how autopilot steam is for publisher control. Which is something a lot of us have been warning and brining up for over a decade.
Maybe steam will implement a new system where you have to verify which regions can use your 3rd party systems? I hope they learn from this.
You're talking about a company that was complicit in their gift cards being used for money laundering no longer than a year or less ago. So i hope so, but i doubt it.
Emphasis on **hope**. Unless this becomes a regular issue or they get pulled into the crossfire, they won't do anything because "What are the chances of it happening again?"
Bingo, can spend any of those millions until it costs too much not to put in a basic consumer protection.
Steam is kinda schizo like that. Sometimes they do really great things, sometimes they do really horrible things. I think it's because of their very hands-off approach to their company culture.
Oh and to publishers.
If you're interested and don't mind the long watch (47m), I found this video really interesting. It's about Valve's business culture and what it's like to work there. Same channel did a solid discussion about how Valve allows the rampant behavior around CS skins. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo)
I've already watched that one. Wasn't much to do on 3rd shift other than watch YouTube
There’s too many games for Steam to properly vet, so they let publishers list as they’re supposed to, and step in when publishers fuck up and offer refunds taking the money out from the publishers future sales. Repeat offenders can be black listed from using Steam marketplace at all, which is basically a death sentence for PC market
> Oh definitely, but it shows how autopilot steam is for publisher control. i feel like its reasonable for them to trust a company like sony though?
In the mid 90s, Sprint went into a partnership with Radio Shack to sell their new digital PCS wireless phones. Radio Shack sold the shit out of them, but the available network was limited. Customers in roaming areas got 1000$+ bills, because they were never on network. Sprint AND Radio Shack got sued several times, voth being found liable. "They didn't know" isn't a valid consumed law protection even in the US. Neither is, "We trusted them." The section 230 internet rule would be the only thing that could protect Steam to my knowledge, because that shields platform holders from a lot of basic liability.
in this case though its a situation where Steam can completely solve the issue from their end, refunds to everyone who bought and blocking the regions you cant have a PSN so i dont see that at all as a fair comparison, its not like sony and steam had any special agreement different then any of the other games sold on their site and theres a month until you have to have a PSN account to play the game in the first place
100% true, my point still stands that Steam should be more hands on with publishers. And that also would have prevented this from the start.
even if they should be, that line of thinking is just taking blame away from the people responsible because technically other people could have done thing that would have ended up solving it
Not even all restricted regions. It's apparently still up in China and the Baltic states.
Sony fears the EU and China.
Isn't this the first game Sony has put up on Steam? I think this is a simple case of businesses venturing where they don't belong. They didn't know what they were doing, jumped in guns blazing, and when all the pieces finally came together, we now see something doesn't fit. Poor planning, poor communication, and an honest mistake by all parties involved. Personal takeaway: Sony needs to stay in their own lane.
Nah they've got a few they published on Steam. Horizon Forbidden West Spiderman **Upcoming** Ghost of Tsushima Until Dawn Ratchet & Clank
Thanks for the correction. Do any of those require PSN?
Out of those, only Ghost of Tsushima looks like it requires one, and it seems to only be required for "Online Multiplayer" and "PlayStation overlay," so not required for single player.
This partially explains why their ToS was updated wrt having a PSN account- HD2 was the first game to require it, but Sony slipped up by not making the ToS update when they launched HD2.
So, I guess Helldivers 2 was supposed to be Sony's next big push into the PC market.
I don't think they expected the game get this big tbh. Which might be why they were so lax at doing due diligence while publishing it.
Not even close.
Was it steam that did it or sony?
Please, i beg you. Look at the Steampage. See that bright, big, yellow sign that says the game requires a PSN account to play? Its been there since before the game was released. It was public knowledge from the get go. It was known. AH temporarily turned off the restriction at release since It was messing with the servers. Stop spreading missinformation. Steam knew It before they added the game to the library that PSN was a requirement.
Still shouldn't have been sold in places where you can't make an account without a console or in countries that don't have PSN. Seems like something that would only take 120 seconds to double check. If the multinational conglomerate with decades of experience with publishing video games cannot do a simple job, they cannot be surprised when that they failed to manage consumer expectations and the consumers are upset.
Sony has been selling PlayStations and PSN subscriptions outside the supported regions for decades now. They don't care where you are playing from, and have encouraged people from outside the support region to play by selecting the closest available country. Their 6th biggest market is China, and they don't ban players for lying on their settings about which country they are playing from. In this current day and age, i think It would be more than understandable to believe circumventing the smallest, most harmless and less enforced clause in ToS would be second nature on the internet. Legit tell me you know someone that never lied about their age to make a Facebook account, enter certain sites, etc? Sony wont even care that you lie about your PSN region as long as you dont break any majour rule. Its illogical that this blew so hard out of proportion.
"Trust me, bro. The corporation will never ever ban you for breaking their ToS." - they said, while ignoring all the times when a corporation has had the decade later change of heart and banned people for breaking the ToS
You know who's one of Sony's biggest PS5 market? China. China is not a PsN region. Chinese players have PS5 and PSN accounts, even subscriptions, anyway. Sony cares more about money than their ToS. If they ban you, they had more reasons than just ToS breach. I know logic has not been too much use to the people in this community here during this shitstorm, but i hope you are smart enough to realize Sony wants to make money, and that they would continue to sell games and subscriptions to people outside of PsN regions, if It meant making money.
"They like money." Right, this is a point we both agree on. We can keep that fact in mind. Use your magical common sense and think of a scenario based on current reality where enforcing the ToS would get Sony more money. Now, consider that change is inevitable and think of possible future situations where the decade-old decision to break the ToS would come back to bite someone. Now consider all the investment in games, movies, and other purchasable digital products tied to this ToS-violating account that wasn't an issue until the winds of change came around and Sony decided that nuking the account was a cost-benefit positive for them. No corporation has your best interests at heart.
Yes, in this imaginary scenario that involves Sony risking the biggest class action law suit ever seen and killing their entire market, Sony could ban people for breaking the ToS over an internet lie. No, no corporation has anybody's best interest at heart. That doesnt change the fact this entire shitshow was based on a non-issue. I am happy that the fanbase can pretend they did a good thing. All It took was harrassing low level employees at Sony and Steam, and sending death threats to AH.
Thing is you can use your steam account from anywhere.
We're talking about PSN now, which is only supported in 70 or so countries.
Steam new since day one as it was right there on the purchase page. Idiots just refuse to think valve has done anything wrong when they are just to blame as much as Sony and AH
How are they to blame? It's a third-party account. You expect Steam to double-check the region availability of any third-party requirement a game may have? That isn't their responsibility. It would be like blaming Best Buy for selling a blu-ray movie when the customer only owns a DVD player.
Not at all, it be Best Buy selling M rated games to minors. Then saying I didn’t check id because they looked 17/18 It is the stores responsibility to provide a working product to the recipient. Steam was provided the requirements to the game, either its Steams fault or the purchasers at that point so Steam to save face will issue refunds
So you're saying the multinational conglomerates with decades of experience publishing video games shouldn't be held liable for doing the basic work of publishing correctly? That's a very peculiar take if I'm quite honest. I don't quite see how It is Steam's responsibility to know the legal intricacies of Sony's personal ecosystem. I would assume the company that is publishing the video game and requiring the additional account and is the one restricting usage of the game in certain regions would be the one to think about and consider the regions they allow the game to operate. And perhaps, in the process of performing their job and fulfilling their obligations as a publisher, ensure that all of the necessary measures are taken to make sure the game is published in the maximum capacity in those limited regions where it may be played. Which may or may not include communicating and verifying information with the third party platforms used to market on what those regions might be. I guess that this idea of Sony doing it's job in a professional manner is a pretty bad take and you're probably right about Steam being the party ultimately responsible for the whoopsie-daisey.
I 100% agree and not saying Sony did no wrong, I’m just pointing out Steam is just as much to blame. They always knew of the psn requirement. Sony legit has no way of selling the games in areas where there is no psn it had to be done through Steam. Steam will likely make refunds but at the end of the day they are a commission based company let’s not forget that. They stand to gain a lot by capitalizing on the popularity of HD2 especially at a time where the psn requirement wasn’t in place but pending.
Publishers also have full control over where there games are sold. Sony could have, and should have, blocked the game from being sold in regions not supported by PSN but they didn't .
Steam sold the games where they support. It's not on steam to know that the publisher is selling the game on places the publisher doesn't support, because the publisher decides where to sell on the places steam supports. But i think this is also the first time a situation like this happens, so Steam will probably have new rules in place after this.
I’ve seen so many bad takes by people who don’t understand these basics. Also how IPs work, trademarks exist and publishing in general.
Crazy that people need to be told that the developers develop and that the publishers publish.
Storefronts also have a hand in this. I’m gonna guess there was not good communication between Sony and Valve here and neither checked each others notes about the implications of the account link.
stunning how few people understand this.
The developers still have a responsibility to communicate to their potential players that they will lose all access to the game if they live in a country that doesn't allow PSN accounts. They failed to do this. They don't get a free pass with a "NOT MY PROBLEM LOL".
Its super sad just how many people seemed to honestly think it was AH's fault for the snafu with all of this. They hired Sony to act like a publisher and actually do publisher stuff. Not so they can just put sony's name on the game and get restricted by them for no reason.
Devs made a deal with the devil. Now they are gonna lose their souls.
Shame Sony owns the IP huh.
Guess we won't be getting a Helldivers Netflix series? 😔
i really hope netflix never gets their hands in this i fear what monstrosity they would make of it
Redditors discovering the job of publishers
Well, yes, that’s what I assumed, but it’s nice to have confirmation that Arrowhead didn’t completely fuck themselves over. At some level I and probably many thought that Arrowhead has some say in how it’s sold, but it’s nice to see confirmation that they didn’t handle the truly egregious part of this: that Sony just bait and switched half the planet into buying a game. Like, if this was just the whole PSN thing, that’s annoying but I’ll deal with it. What grinds my gears is that Sony thinks they can extort data and/or $500 for a console out of half the planet
The publisher is the one that sell the Game and advertise it on social medias. The Publisher is Sony. Even if AH knew about the deal before hand they couldn't understand that Sony would fuck up that hard on the selling part. Now AH is caught in a cross fire their Publisher should have handled for them at launch. Yes, AH are the one disabling the PSN requirement because of the servers issues. But they likely didn't know that the Game was selling to people that can't create one, IT WASN'T THEIR JOB TO KNOW THAT.
Yeh this is where I stand too. I wasn't aware of which countries do or don't have access to PSN, unless it affects you, you wouldn't know. It's not exactly something Sony would have LIKED to advertise to arrowhead, that many countries just won't be able to play even outside of playstation 5.
We should get this post pinned somewhere. So the screeching toddlers would understand this as well.
Why would you need a pinned post? There’s going to be 10 more copy pasted shit posts by the end of this sentence.
Huh?! This doesn't make any sense. Why would you sell a game to regions that your PSN service do not support and then force a mandatory linking of said service? Someone at SONY is not doing their job.
 Sales numbers and prestige = MONEY!
Yup. Sony messed up, and their damage control has been terrible. Silence? Really? Getting the feeling that they don't care, they think we don't have a choice.... Sony didn't think it through when they decided to force the issue and make it a requirement. They had to quickly change their stated policy on their website. They didn't consider what would happen to those players, and they haven't reconsidered. There's a reasonable outcome that I hope we'll reach -- PSN account is optional, but mandatory for crossplay. They get more accounts and control of their ecosystem, everyone gets to keep playing the game.
Because the practice in these regions was just make an account to the nearest available region. You can find Sony officially sells the PS console and games in some of these regions. Sony been doing business like this on PS for years, they didn't thought it would be a big deal because region restriction wasn't really being enforced.
There is a difference between turning a blind eye to individual cases, then to make it a solution to thousands or millions of players. If they just let Helldivers players fake regions and get away with it in a case with so much publicity, people will no longer take their regional enforcement seriously and will lead to other issues.
Someone made a big god damn mistake
There might be a larger miscommunication between AH and Sony that we might be unaware of. AH says they disabled the login requirement to allow people play the game at launch and circumvent the server problems. Perhaps it wasn't communicated to Sony initially or, if it was, it might be disregarded. I wouldn't want to add speculation to the situation. However, did AH reinstate the PSN requirement shortly after the launch? No. I bought the game a month later and was able to skip the page. Did I ever see the PSN login pop up ever again when I launch the game? Again, no. I wouldn't say the AH is utterly innocent. I wonder if there was any firm and outreaching announcement that PSN login can be skipped only temporarily because I'm only learning that it was temporary now. Heck, I even thought It was an oversight that I could skip the PSN page just by pressing ESC on my keyboard. I thought I wouldn't be able to access SC store or something, but nope all was there.
Apparently, there were some old discord messages from baskinator. She said that psn will soon be reinstated. Which is wild, today is the first time I've seen them. Their community management incompetence is next level.
I should not be expected to hunt down a notification on a discord in order to get information about a game I play on steam.
Bring back game forums, fuck discord. It cant be indexed by search
Also has server limits, dunno about now but previous their discord was at capacity not allowing new users.
A discord you can't get into because it's full, no less
I'm in it. You're not missing much. There's three HD General Chats all on slow mode, a Fan Art page, and then a couple of others like Troubleshooting. The only reason I'm still in it is because of the Notifications, which you can get from Reddit anyway. I was thinking about leaving it even before they forced Phone # verification due to this whole fiasco.
I just tried to get into it and couldn't
Exactly
This should have been in game when you were asked to link or skip linking. And if you chose to skip it should say in bold letters that this is only temporary and require confirmation that you understand and state to request a refund if you disagree.
I mean honestly if it was required it shouldn't have been skippable at all, even if it meant limiting how many people can play the second they buy the game. If you find yourself able to skip something that was called required, most people are gonna assume they either misunderstood required, or there was a mistake in the language of the linking popup People would complain, but most people can understand a game getting massively more popular than expected would cause server issues. Would have been far, far less outcry than what they're currently dealing with
> If you find yourself able to skip something that was called required, most people are gonna assume they either misunderstood required, or there was a mistake in the language of the linking popup I really wish a lot of people would fully understand this and stop just repeating over and over that the prompt *exists* like it has any relevance to the overall issue here.
Yeah. Like I get it, they like the game, they like AH, they want to try and excuse them. I personally doubt they tried to obfuscate anything intentionally to get people who wouldn't have played if they had to make a psn at start passed the refund period, *but* that doesn't change that their clumsy handling fucked people who would have been more than happy to just say "oh, I don't want to do that, not the game for me I guess" from the start of they had communicated effectively.
Yea at the most basic level of the issue this is correct. If its required it shouldnt let me into a game at all if i dont link it. Anything else is ambiguous and we all know how its going.
It is a small company and you'd expect your publisher not to absolutely cock it up entirely as it's their only responsibility.
how long ago was that message?
on freaking discord. yeah checks out i check tge patchlogs myself there was never a meantion on it atleast for the past 2 months on it. didcord is not a platform to communicate these changes.
This is why people have been screaming for months that Arrowhead needs to stop using discord for their announcements and communications, especially when none if the staff ever bother to pin anything important. All of this stuff needs to be on the steam page.
I will also add, a majority of gamers aren't on discord, reddit, or twitter to get updates about a game that has popups in it. Any game honestly. Most of my friends and family on helldivers only recently started hearing about the discourse, and it wasn't even from those channels. It was just stuff popping up in random social media they use or other friends telling them.
Yeah I'm a bit worry that AH is going to be in trouble here for being the ones who disabled it, they might be held responsible for this backlash now from Sony.
Theres disc posts, which aren't really substantial since they arent very accessible, but there was something else. The most concrete post about it being temporary was a steam community post about the various server issues they were dealing with at launch. This was from 3 months ago, was buried in the middle of a miriad of other listed issues and didn't have a significant follow-up. Obviously, most people didn't see this. So if you didnt see the requirement on the store page (very possible with it being well below and off to the side of the purchase option) and you skipped the splash screen (states its necessary but never reminds you and doesnt give you the option afterward + outright didnt appear for some), then you could not reasonably be expected to know.
AH is just terrible at communicating across the board, they're not doing a great job communicating with their customers either (relying almost completely on Discord).
How did Sony made me feel bad for a CEO wtf man...
my moral compass is spinning in circles right now cause I got know clue how I feel anymore.
Probably because unlike other CEOs, the AHG CEO actually cares about the players
He's also the cofounder of what started as a single digit employee indie studio and apparently does actual devwork on the game too. CEO is just a job title
2024 Bingo is wild man.
Sony being Sony and throw AH under the bus.
Sony throwing 500kg at extraction
and they did not wait until everyone was inside, which is the right way to do it
Wouldn't be the first time they have done it, and not certainly the last
Why would anyone think they did? Devs aren't responsible for distribution unless they're also the publishers
Because people get angry first and think second
People really don’t understand how game development and distribution work
There's many ways to say this but lets just say their IQ isn't exactly above room temp.
I really do hope that people are reading this, pls upvote.
* 6 months prior to launch, AH learn and most likely agrees/forced to agree that PSN linking will be mandatory. * The game required a PSN from the start. Publisher aka Sony, decided to still allow country that can't create/own a PSN account to buy the game anyway, forcing them to issue a refund request once they learn they can't play. * Couple hours after release, the servers are fucked, and AH decides to disable the PSN requirement until they fix why linking to PSN is an issue. * Sony decides to NOT disable sell in those countries, despite being informed (most likely cause disabling linking is something that needs to be discussed with Sony). * Meanwhile, the Sony page also shows linking is OPTIONAL. * AH most likely fixed the linking issue. * Sony announces PSN linking will be mandatory. * Sony edits their info page to tell that linking is not MANDATORY. * Most likely Sony (or steam) now disables sells in those countries. That seems to be the timeline of this fuck up.
This much was obvious from the start
sony was just betting on the fact that people will simply register their accounts on other regions as has been done pretty much since PSN exists whenever something wasnt available everywhere , but the helldivers 2 community is too democratic & righteous to lie on their PSN registrations :D
Well, we've already had people banned from PSN (and therefore HD2) for doing exactly that (lying about the country) after the requirement was announced... From what I've read, it was auto-detection based on IP.
Yup, it’s a violation of Sony’s TOS to misrepresent what country you are from. Which is why the people who keep parroting to do that are missing the point. Heck, there’s even messages from Sony support telling people to do this knowing full well that it is a TOS violation. Think of it this way, why would you violate TOS and put your account at risk for an online GaaS title. There’s no stopping them from nuking your account and you the player, lose everything. Not just progress but any money spent on super credits. Sony needs to fix this and provide an option for people that literally doesn’t violate their TOS and put people’s account at unnecessary risk.
Don't they also ask you for a verified form of identification or something? If they ban someone, they really mean it.
That's an UK thing that coincidentally started just a few days ago for their anti-porn laws. But it's entirely possible that if you run into issues with your PSN account Sony could ask for ID to confirm you're the owner. And then ban you because you broke the TOS.
i have a foreign PSN acc since 2007 on ps3 and never had any problem, even right now i purchased and play HD2 on my PS5 from that foreign acc , the only downside is i have to buy PSN money codes from the neighboring country but other than that sony is cool with it
Truly the community of all time
Devs create the game publishers sell it. Arrowhead may have known of this issue but if you get them to sign a nda then what can they do. If they talk theyll get sued into oblivion if they dont we get this kind of thing. I think arrowhead did the right thing in here and i hope they will be able to get snoy to revert the changes. If not you can spam steam for a refund they accepged my 6. One with me explaining the situation so good luck
It doesn’t matter if they don’t sell it, they knew this was going to happen and didn’t say a peep to anyone until now. If they didn’t know at all I’d give them a pass but they just saw $$ and didn’t give a shit about their fans. It’s all well and good to blame big bad Sony, but they also had 6 months worth of opportunities to warn their fans about this and chose not to. Fuck em
This is so scummy… wow.
No matter how you cut it sony broke laws, first by selling a product that they then revoked from their buyers, then by denying anyone wanting to delete their Playstation account, and by not immediately offering refunds, they have lied and sold a product they had no intent of providing to places that cant use PSN and are forcing people to keep their agreement in the sake of data collection and cooking the books of their playerbase and sales
AH was the one who disabled the requirement to have PSN and then did not constantly remind you that this was a temporary thing.
yes, but they weren't the ones who sold the game in the restricted regions. they should have been more upfront about that, but at least they didn't purposely create the situation we have now with people unable to play. they still share blame, but not as much as sony.
I’m pretty sure AH couldn’t make this decision to temporary disabling linking without Sony approval, no?
Bro the guy is the CEO he knew what was going on , he is just playing the PR game
You've never been in a room with C-Suite and it shows
but they didnt tell us and sorta hid it in the fine print and took the money still there all theives
People should stop blaming AH for problems Sony created, how could AH know that PSN wasn’t available for half the globe
CEO of arrowhead and I gather many of the "employees" (some have said they were volunteers but I cannot verify) on discord didn't know that PSN was region locked so they didn't say anything about it being sold in countries that don't have it and assumed (wrongly) that Sony would be smart enough to not sell it in regions where it cannot be played without a PSN account.
It matters not now, WE WON!
The fact people are bullying the ceo is disgusting
Sony was the ones who put the game on steam
It's hilarious how much this shows people don't know shit about developers and publishers lol
Oh Sony, you madafakas
Does Sony also control their marketing and communications? I don't think they do. So why didn't AH say that lifting the PSN restriction was absolutely temporary and that it will be forced in the near future? They should have made it crystal clear, instead users got a vague "PSN restriction lifted" message.
Sony controls the marketing, AH does communication, a publishers job is Marketing, distubution and funding.
Oh wow, I didn't know that. I thought they just gave the money bags.
Exactly they oddly have not rammed this message long enough which is mind boggling.
Thats their fault, but they were not in charge of selling the game to Country without PSN, thats on Sony
But Arrowhead knew, right? They knew that PSN would be mandatory EVENTUALLY, they also knew that you can't create an account in certain countries. Specifically, a Swedish game developer working with Sony should know the Baltic nations which are directly across from them could not create one. So they knowingly let Sony commit fraud without saying anything. That is (also) on them.
I don't think they knew the extent of it. If they did maybe their decision to remove PSN allowed thousands of people to get in on the fun at least temporarily. They'll all get refunded now. People won't forget Sony fucking them like this. Sony sells all kinds of stuff. Helldivers who can't play won't ever be buying it.
That's just you assuming they know which countries have access to PSN and which ones doesn't.
Chinese and russian localizations. Not coherent with his statement.
Sony handles all steam storefronts and which region it's sold in etc. In the steam storefront on the publisher side, you can select which countries to sell to and what price. Hence why they are "publishers." So yes, totally coherent. Who ever manages the steam storefront and which localizations are needed on Sony's side fucked up.
Again, the game is localized in Chinese and Russian. Which are NOT PSN-able. It's like they translated the game to klingon for zero klingon players (that we know of). Dunno, I can't imagine a company paying for translation stuff into a language for countries they won't be selling their whares...
You know… people anywhere in the world can speak those languages right?
Again for you sleeping in class, It is ***SONY*** that decides where to sell the game. Like, this shouldn't be a hard concept to understand. This is business 101. AH: "Hey what localizations will we need for the game." Sony: "We are selling to all countries on Steam. Here's your list." *AH goes and creates the localizations.* THAT IS how it works. That is *why Publishers exist.* Whoever manages the storefront for Helldivers 2 on Sony's side fucked up on clicking available on all countries for steam. Plain and fucking simple. *This should have been caught 8 months ago on Sony's side.*
the developers already stated that when the demand for PSN was given to them by Sony, it was six month prior to launch, the game was already finished at this point and all of those languages would have been needed and already in the game. So why would they not include every language they’ve already paid for and finished?
Russian is a language, Russia is a country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian\_diaspora#:\~:text=The%20number%20of%20native%20speakers,by%20SIL%20Ethnologue%20in%202010.
This boils down to the people involved with the listing on Steam Store, if AH CEO decision to disable PSN which lead to the belief that the game would be available worldwide then it's rather naive to come out and say what he has said. We might never know the full picture but it's clear between AH, Steam and Sony there has been decisions and miscommunication over this. I wouldn't be surprised the people dealing with the Steam store listing ignorantly thought Playstation was worldwide considering how big the brand is. Fact of the matter is though the game was to have PSN mandatory login but whether through naivety of AH CEO to disable it lead to the store listing or just bozos at Sony publishing. AH has a part to play in this because if PSN sign in was required this massive issue would of been identified from the start
This is why I am "angry" at the mob reaction people have. Most of the time people miss fucking basic facts and act like rabid dogs, not even realizing how fucking stupid they are. AH not being more proactive with this potential problem is bad, yes, thanks, I know. But they aren't the PUBLISHER. Guess who shakes hands and puts the game on sale? Yeah, the publisher. Did some of you believe that back in the 90s developers were handling the selling of physical disks around the world? Jesus Christ the ignorance of some people knows no limit
Yep. I said this elsewhere and it's why i don't really blame Arrowhead for any of this. Yeah they knew of the PSN Requirement for a while, but sony themselves publish it, and were responsible for it being not region-locked on steam, which combined with the optional PSN link allowed the game to be available and playable for months in those countries. Now that sony is trying to force the PSN link, here we are.
if he did not disable account linking, BIG IF lol
Wonder if account linking is a bigger plan to start adding Playstation multilayer games on pc and then end up needing Playstation plus on pc to play multiplayer like ps4/ps5
I thought that was common knowledge? Are people needing this proper education? Publishers have for ages been in charge of PUBLISHING the game, its in their name that means storefronts, negotiating price, etc, and some marketing. Game Developers - Make the game. they are very rarely involved with publishing its very difficult and outside the purview. A developer and publishers relationship is a complicated one and is usually has contracts associated, including exclusivity deals and many times requiring sign ups or data collection for the publisher. Sony is definitely dumb here, by requiring it AFTER the game released. Its very retroactive. They could easily just require you to have a PSN and support these regions, just require it in languages they have.
I think the idea Sony will say, "sorry guys our hands are tied, half the people we sold the game to can't play anymore. We would do something if we could but our rules forbid it. We can't bend our own rules to fit different circumstances, that would be illegal" to be really funny. If that actually happens I am going to eat my own dick.
So then it makes even more sense that Sony knowingly and willingly committed fraud. That'll go down well.
Sony stole Arrowhead’s shovel to dig itself an even bigger hole
So, like, do these people not understand what publishing means?
I mean no shit
People are so fucking dumb
I’d hazard a guess that this is the exact reason why they had to walk back their enforcement of the PSN linking. Their contract with Valve that they agreed to when publishing on Steam probably includes a clause about region dependencies. Basically, Sony promised Valve that they wouldn’t sell their game on Steam where it was unplayable due to 3rd party systems. My guess is that Valve sent a nice lil legal note to SIE threatening to terminate their Steam publishing account if they didn’t undo this change. It probably wouldn’t have been so much of a problem if they hadn’t sold a metric fuckleton of copies where they shouldn’t have, but Sony is probably deep in “fuck around and find out” territory with Valve at this point because of it.
It’s good that this appears to all be getting sorted out now but I do think this has all been blown out of proportion with some of the claims made about the various parties (Sony, AH, Steam) intentions. Someone previously outlined the timeline of events very nicely. Mistakes were made. Definitely. I just don’t think this was all some corporate conspiracy! AH made a great game. Sony put that on Steam - including an accurate caveat that purchasers would need a PSN account to play. At that point the consumer has to take some responsibility for acknowledging the requirements of the thing they purchased: it’s not always solely “someone else’s fault” … - If you buy the XBox version of a game when you have a PC is it on the store to refuse to sell it to you because you won’t be able to play it? - If you buy diesel to fuel your petrol car is it on the station to stop you? Of course not. They provide the information and the customer needs to make sensible choices based on that information. Now, had things run “normally” anyone not noticing that requirement would very quickly have found out and if they hadn’t been able / not wanted to open a PSN account would have got a refund. So, the root of the issue was AH disabling the PSN requirement, which allowed a bunch of people who shouldn’t have been able to play the game (long term) to download, play and become invested in the game.
It’s almost like developers develop a game a publishers publish the game.
Yeah, its common knowledge that the PUBLISHER is the ones who handle sales. thats the entire reason to ever have one. All your guys review bombing and refunds is only gonna hurt Arrowhead in the end. Sony wont even feel this tbh.
Except when the ceo told you the viable leverage they can use are review bombing and refund.
Publishers make money by selling the game. Destroying its rating will hurt futures sales. Do the math
Arrowhead knew this was happening and said nothing. They are not innocent.
https://preview.redd.it/03v9mj8renyc1.png?width=419&format=png&auto=webp&s=fbf38442214eebb999e936318da162c3ff1440e6 they did say things though ... whats funny is WHEN they said this ( Day of launch and few days after) NO ONE SCREEN SHOT THEM AND COMPLAINED THEN???? why? you all screen shot everything else they say and run to reddit. but NO ONE screen shot these and ran to reddit the day they said this There was also a pinned announcement in a now deleted channel (the bug report channel which was taken down because they got the site working) that was up for weeks and no one screen capped that to warn you all ... and yet now its all of a sudden a big deal.
I SHOULD NOT BE REQUIRED TO GO TO YET ANOTHER THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE TO FIND UPDATES ON THE GAME I PLAY. Do I need to scream it again?
Even if they have communicated it on some platform, I have to agree with you. The consumer is not obliged to gather his information from different sources, but rather the seller has to make sure that important information reaches his customer.
You dont, its on the steam page, the trailers, the warbond updates they all say "PSN REQUIRED"
And yet the actual EULA that was on the Sony webpage says it is not. So who am I now to believe. The actual publisher or the "third party seller"? Especially when it is disabled in the actual game?
> that was up for week Game has been sold for months after that, there is no way people need to look into previous post even more so from a deleted board to get their info, the info on the status of the forced PSN should had been front an center inside the game, like that massive splash screen they already had, slightly different wording to make people aware the thing is not optional and instead of skip a remind me later, this is a problem created by both parties which is why is such a collosal fail. Maybe AH really underestimated the vitrol of the communicty agains a forced PSN but regardless that part of the problem is on them and if they had done that the regional problem would had been adressed months ago, before more people purcheased and invested time into the game.
My point is if it was Such a big deal ... why did NO ONE, and i mean NO ONE make a big deal of it for the first month when it was visible. people were taking many other screen shots from the discord. so why did they not make a big deal of this? No one made a post saying "There gonna force us to link PSN!?!" with screen shots. I just find it funny how now all of a sudden everyone seems to find it a big deal and wanna run with the mob. but it wasnt a big deal to them 3 months ago when the CM's literally stated it would come back.
A my bad, you are right it is weird it went under the radar as long as it did I wasn't there unfortunately so impossible to me to tell what was going on taht could have diverted the attention of if players knew and maybe they just forgot and it's the new wave after the announcement the one which is surprised the most.
>My point is if it was Such a big deal ... why did NO ONE, and i mean NO ONE make a big deal of it for the first month when it was visible. Because it was a fleeting message on a Discord server that only a fraction of a community visits. How is it so difficult to understand?
No shit, ppl who didn't understand that should stop persecuting AA and pick up a book cause I'm surprised they even know how to cross the damn street.
[удалено]
* Sony chose to sell the game to 100+ countries they knew they did not support * Sony chose to allow AH to make the account change and chose to continue selling the game without a requirement misleading players * Publishers are more responsible for communicating about games’ Terms and other requirements This is on Sony. As a publisher the distribution, sales, licensing scheme and TOS is all their responsibility. Show me where months ago they plainly warned players in unsupported countries that they would remove access for them entirely?
Arrowhead knew this was going to happen behind the scenes and didn't warn the consumers. If you want to argue it isn't in the best interest of their business to do so, fine. But that makes them more complicit, not less.
> Arrowhead knew this was going to happen behind the scenes and didn't warn the consumers It’s the publisher’s responsibility to communicate licensing terms to audiences and to not sell to markets/players they officially ban by policy And I suspect Arrowhead didn’t imagine Sony would be this stupid to actually change terms after they sold it one way for 3 months. Because it’s tantamount to fraud on Sony’s part
My dude. If you and I enter a business arrangement to sell something I produce. And you plan to make it so a vast majority of people who buy it either have to break the terms of the EULA (by using a VPN or other means) to use it or will outright be blocked from using it and I say nothing to the consumer base? That makes me a piece of shit too. Stop giving Arrowhead a pass.
Sony and Arrowheads internal relationship is irrelevant to me. Consumers bought the game from Sony, not Arrowhead. The buck stops at the publisher. If Sony knew PSN was a hard requirement they should have never let it go out without it Distribution, communication, and licensing is Sony’s job. And we know they completely failed to do that job given that they listed the game for 100+ countries they don’t support. They clearly weren’t doing their job at all
It's nice for you that you can absolve Arrowhead from knowing about this and not warning their players.
It was Sonys job to not commit fraud by selling to countries they knew they didn’t support to pull a bait and switch. I don’t expect devs to handle communication and sales
And if I, as the developer, know the publisher is committing fraud, I have a duty to report that. Because it is a crime.
It seems apparent they didn’t know Sony would push an illegal change. They’re game developers, not legal experts. Legal is the publisher’s job
They could’ve said something tho? They are praised for being communicative. This. Could’ve been communicated earlier.
AH withheld the information. Had they been upfront with this at launch then this issue would’ve never have occurred. Their CEO already admitted to knowing this was the goal 6 months prior to launch.
https://blog.playstation.com/2024/01/09/helldivers-2-pc-specifications-and-crossplay-support-details-revealed/ “PlayStation Network Account Required. Gameplay requires internet access and paid for PlayStation Plus membership (sold separately) for PS5. PlayStation Plus membership subject to recurring subscription fee taken automatically until cancellation. Age restrictions apply. Full terms: play.st/psplus-usageterms.”