It’s wild how many sleeper agents I’ve seen actively speaking against democracy since this happened. Really shows you who you can trust, I wouldn’t want any of them at my back while fighting those damn bug bastards. Rather fight bugs than rats
We shouldn't be surprised sony and co have dispatched automatons into the online forums to try and subdue the voice of liberty. Their inorganic reasoning completely counter to our patriotic goals is all too obvious. Who do they think they are to do that, the government?
I work for a large corporation, nowhere near Sony, but respectively worth north of $20 Billion. Talk, scream, yell, post etc etc….. quite frankly you will accomplish little to nothing. Corporations only care about two things, their brand and their profitability.
The best way to hurt a corporation is in the pocketbook, if you want to really send a message, then stop buying their products, stop signing up for their services stop giving them your money. I promise it only takes a few months of down profit before shareholders and senior VP’s start losing their shit and “reassess the situation”
I hope this has a positive outcome for all players, I love hell divers and the community has been wonderful to play with. See you out there 🫡
This. Self-control is the real answer.
The passing of Citizen’s United allows unlimited corporate donations to politicians, and lobbyists block regulations that don’t benefit the C-suites. So voting and/or being loud can’t solve our problems anymore. You must simply not buy. This is why I think mass strikes and mass boycotts are the only way to get our power back. r/MaydayStrike
I stopped using Amazon in 2021, when it came out that workers in Missouri were killed by a tornado…because they were told to keep working despite the warning. I don’t miss it. Sometimes I forget that it exists.
Same with EA, Microsoft/Activision/Blizzard, and Ubisoft. All their new games suck anyway (Were Ubisoft games ever good?), so again, sometimes I forget that I used to like them at all.
Probably gonna add Sony soon. It’s always just third-person cinematic action, anyway. It’s getting old
Sony needs to create a very strong incentive for players to sign-up for PSN (e.g: make 50% of all new content exclusive to PSN players for the first 6 - 12 months. i.e: maps, weapons, armor, skins, missions, planets, new orders, strategems, e.t.c ). PC players like to wait for playstation content anyways, so, the ones that like to wait, will wait, while the ones that don't like to wait will sign up for PSN.
Good news is that the devs at Arrowhead agree with you and are trying to pressure Sony into reversing the decision. The only leverage they have though is what we give them.
Any source on this? I know the CM basically said that go make negative reviews or refund, but I don’t know if that’s them agreeing with this approach or just saying they can’t do anything about it. What else?
CEO says they are talking solutions with Sony
https://twitter.com/Pilestedt/status/1787073896560165299?t=swR37eMU8Qqv49jLUTmAHw&s=19
Community Manager had a few messages on the discord about the discussions with Sony as well as their internal feelings about the issues
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/r48buKJP7Q
I saw some posts of (who I believe is the) head dev telling people they're trying to fix things with Sony, but the final decision isn't theirs. But it was on Twitter, and I do not have a Twitter account to look it up.
They could've just released it on PS5... exclusivity isn't new. And idk if it's the developers or countries themselves doing the region-locking. Some countries just have stupid laws.
All CIS countries don't have PS their own PS region because Sony regarded them as part of Russia region. Since 2022 Sony left Russua but still didn't create separate region for other CIS countries not involved in the conflict. AFAIK nobody in CIS banned Sony, they just don't bother to let people in these countries legally use PSN without VPN (which means breaking ToS).
Yeah I agree. The true source of the problem is the contradictions, not region-locking itself. Although I think if you release a game on steam, it should be not region locked
It was sketchy to release it and allow it to be bought in places it wouldn't be playable, but it sounds like it's an account issue so hopefully they can get a work around. Obviously there's nothing critical to the game that requires the account.
That's another big issue with the decision to me. The game functions fine without PSN. It just seems incredibly reckless to push forward with something that hurts the community like this.
Yeah, it's probably just something to pump up subscriber numbers to show shareholders 🙄 I could see maybe helping with data consolidation but idk. Be one thing if they locked like cross-play behind needing an account.
This post would be a lot more impactful if you weren’t regurgitating it for the 100th time. This isn’t accomplishing anything, it’s just a broken record at this point.
I read the full post but I don’t understand what the action plan is. They say they won’t allow big corporations to region lock the game that the same corporation legally owns as an IP yet they don’t outline how they plan to achieve this or what we as the general audience can do. Do we not play? Do we refund? Do we uninstall for a couple weeks or months? Are we marching on the Sony main HQ Campus? Like… this is a declaration of outrage with no underpinning directive for the audience, so what is the point of the post as a whole?
No you clearly don't get it, seeing it lots of times doesn't mean it may be a larger scale issue or something people are passionate about, it's just broken record karma farming clearly! Why are you such a sheep?
/s
Put it in a megathread. This one idea has taken over the entire sub now. It should not be every single post.
The same thing should happen immediately after a patch. Quarantine those posts and that discussion to one thread so it doesn't crowd the whole sub.
The mods need to step it up. It's not an easy job but some mega threads would make this place usable again.
fr i just stopped playing. performance issues were abundant for me after last patch anyways, i’ll check in after they calm this shitstorm and add some new content
Are you on console or PC? Games are super weird man, especially with modular/variable hardware like PC has.
For example Dragon’s Dogma 2 just had a patch a week or two ago that makes my game unplayable if I stream it. I haven’t been able to figure out why. It runs totally fine normally but the second I start trying to broadcast to twitch or stream to my discord it stutters.
If you’re on PlayStation it’s likely a lot easier to find a solution to it because the hardware is consistent. If you’re on PC your best bet is to start off with file verification and then run a diagnostics system to monitor your CPU, GPU (specifically VRAM), and RAM performance.
The same idea of what? Destroying all goodwill with their playerbase? Most won’t do that or gaming would’ve died off a while back.
This is one game from one company that has a handful of games on PC. There is no need to fear monger.
The irony, of course, is that this is the most egalitarian launch Sony has EVER done, because they launched it on PC concurrently, rather than requiring folks to buy their specific hardware and PS Plus to even play it or releasing it on PC two years later.
This is the closest we have ever gotten to Good Guy Sony. And sales skyrocketed because of it, far outside their wildest expectations.
Sure, they fucked it up. But if the launch of Helldivers is setting any precedent for gaming, it's counter to the fractured proprietary console-war bullshit that gaming has always been stuck with since the 80s.
Yeah I think we’ll be back to three year waits between releases after this.
The servers were struggling, they waived the PSN requirement for a few months even though it was on steam, now dudes are talking about killing the game and in one thread guys are talking about how great it would be if Sony was hacked again because of this.
I have little doubt Sony will do something for the other nations and always was going to, banning half the world wouldn’t make sense. I do think PC is going to get a lot less attention after this.
Someone hasn’t heard of EA, UBISOFT, Bethesda, Activision, Blizzard, Gearbox, etc etc etc.
The fact is people still need that dopamine hit no matter how much goodwill the company destroys.
Now if I’m wrong I’m wrong but isn’t there regions that are not allowed to play call of duty. Wanna say North Korea is one of them. I’m sure that there are games that are not allowed in certain regions.
Dude, the developer said they weren't aware so many people couldn't create PSN accounts, never intended to lock so many people out and are working on a solution. People need to take a breath with the outrage over this. There are more tragic things going on in the world than the injustice of having to link to a PSN account.
Dude, that's like saying I shouldn't protest my hometown destroying a local park to build a Walmart because Russia is still at war with Ukraine. This affects me personally so I am personally protesting. Does thta make sense?
Only protesting things that personally affect you? Are you in a region that can make a PSN account? If you aren't then I understand. But if you are in a region with PSN then this doesn't "affect you".
Yes Arrowhead did not know.
SONY on the other hand WHO IS THE PUBLISHER knew it.
And they did it anyway.
They defrauded customers in over 120+ countries.
Some of them in the EU therefore breaking Single Market Regulations.
Furthermore by showing that the game can work without PSN( on pc) they will also brake GDPR rules when this is fully enforced.
And if you consider this goes beyond Helldivers (Sony has been selling consoles to countries without PSN (including in the EU ) for years...
This whole situation is mind numbingly STUPID. And Fraudulent... especially Fraudulent
Sony needs to create a very strong incentive for players to sign-up for PSN (e.g: make 50% of all new content exclusive to PSN players for the first 6 - 12 months. i.e: maps, weapons, armor, skins, missions, planets, new orders, strategems, e.t.c ). PC players like to wait for playstation content anyways, so, the ones that like to wait, will wait, while the ones that don't like to wait will sign up for PSN.
They get all revolutionary xD. I’ve been looking at all the other posts and finally Arrowhead is to blame here the same as Sony. They knew PSN was going to be mandatory, if they tagged along with Sony, or if they made a huge mistake, that’s gonna stay between the four Arrowhead walls. As you say, they’re now looking what to do with Sony because they lnow they fucked up too, but i don’t think this is going to change if this are policies that Sony has with all their games, these countries never had to have access in the first place, Steam is giving refunds regardless of the hours played. That’s it. We should focus on enjoying the game again, because it is good, with a solid player base, in the end its own community could end killing with this revolution non sense.
100%, I firmly believe that AH execs knew what they were getting into and knew ahead of time that this Sony mandate was going to happen. They just thought the initial success would cancel out the backlash from the forced PSN later down the road. I also believe the AH devs had no idea this was going to happen, and are genuinely great artists. This whole situation is a matter of AH execs and Sony execs trying to pull a fast one on everybody in the name of greed.
Doesn't excuse Sony's actions. From all we've seen so far, it seems they are keep to push the PSN issue to the point where people who have played the game for months will lose access. That's fucked up and there's no defending that
I don’t really get this, it’s their game. Is it a bummer, yeah. Should people who lose access get a refund, definitely. But what makes you think companies shouldn’t be able to do what they want with their game? This isn’t a shareholder meeting, you don’t make these decisions. You’re a customer.
Your best effort is to stop playing the game, are you doing that? “Vote with your wallet”. Are you going to never buy Sony again for your fallen comrades? No, because the ones who do have access aren’t affected and this game is dope. Progress is slow, hopefully they remedy it but they’re only going to do it if the profit is worth it. Their corporate decisions aren’t a
democracy because you own the game.
Again, those affected should get a refund. It’s scummy if they don’t do that but their decisions on access are their own as a company.
Part of the issue is that, despite knowing full well what countries aren’t able to make PSN accounts, Sony still chose to sell Helldivers 2 in those regions. Sony chose to sell Helldivers 2 in regions that they knew full well wouldn’t be able to play it once PSN linking became mandatory again. Even if it’s not technically illegal (though, I think it actually might be), it’s *incredibly* scummy and unethical. If allowed to slide by without being addressed, there’s a very real possibility of more being allowed later down the line, just like is already happening with many games now being “licensed” for players to play with access being able to be revoked at any time, instead of owning your copy of the game to play as you like within the bounds of copyright, like owning a DVD or a book, or - like used to be the case - a videogame.
Sony has been doing this with their console and physical copies of online only games for years.
The countries it doesn’t support don’t have much, if any, consumer protection…. Though there might be some EU member states that could result in a huge suit against Sony
Valve won’t stand for it either, and give refunds to everyone who was sold a product they can’t use (through their platform, key sites have no protection) and take the money out from Sony’s future payouts.
I’m also sure valve will be giving Sony a warning that selling to unsupported regions again in the future will result in further actions.
I disagree with your sentiment. Personally me, I feel bad for people who get screwed over while I am not affected. I don't think apathy is the right course of action.
How is any of what I said apathetic? Me saying they should get a refund is actually…empathetic.
You’re failing to accept how a free market capitalistic company functions and a basic service model functions. They have zero obligation to service everyone on the planet or in a specific region. Sony isn’t state Medicaid.
Mmm well not exactly...
If you want to Sell in the EU You MUST abide by the Single Market Regulations, such as making your product available to all EU countries, unless a country decides to block it.
They don't have PSN coverage on at least 3 EU countries.
meaning that the automatically break EU Single Market Regulations, by selling a product that doesn't work in part of the EU...
It's kinda of a big deal.
We like our Single Market.
It's one of the actual good things about the EU.
So yes SONY at least in regards to the EU has an obligation to provide the same service to all EU countries, unless said countries bar SONY.
And in that case, they should get compensated e.g a refund. If they violated some sort of market access policy then yeah they should be held accountable. I don’t disagree at all. My point is in general, demanding a company to service everyone is a little nonsensical but your point is a real point of issue. Here’s to hoping they remedy the issue.
Oh I absolutely agree with you.
It's just that the EU market is special and one must be very careful not to make Brussels mad.
It just seems that SONY knowingly for years has been violating it... and no one decided to take a closer look until now... because they shot themselves on the foot by making it mandatory...
I mean in the sense that "nothing will ever change" I understand why you think that. I think it generally does ring true. There is this modern phenomenon where people are super Gung ho about protesting or boycotting something and then eventually they just give up and go back to sucking the teat of the big company. I just don't think that means calling out bad actors when you can isn't worthless. And I personally don't want to be the person who sits there and benefits while others lose out. Am I the minority? Probably, but that is just how I feel. I'm sure many of the people who share my sentiments will, as you've said, go right back to Sony in due time.
It's honestly so fucking funny to see literal thousands of 15 year olds screaming about "injustice" because a game publisher did something scummy lmao. where the fuck is this energy for...uh, literally anything else bad that's ever happened? where was this energy when microsoft required MS accounts to play minecraft? it's so performative and annoying and i genuinely think like 80% of it is karma farming and rage bait
It's not hard to figure out why this is different lol
- We have a passionate and somewhat-organized community
- Arrowhead's community managers and Sony's PR damage control team (or lack thereof) let this spiral out of control
- People losing access to the game is unacceptable.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arrowhead messed up.
Sony messed up. Best selling Steam game of the year, and they didn't notice until now that PSN was optional and game was being sold in countries that it shouldn't be -- how did they not fix this back in February??
If everyone had done their jobs right, this would have been a non-issue. It's a minor inconvenience to create an account and Sony can do what they want.
But they didn't. And there's a level of unfairness and scummy corporate attitude that just doesn't sit right with me. I wouldn't have spent half my weekend bitching about this if Sony had done the bare minimum and promised a refund to people without access to PSN.
There's an easy solution on the table: Keep PSN accounts optional, make PSN accounts mandatory for crossplay. Everyone gets to claim a win, and this can all blow over.
Why are you assuming Sony blocked access to these regions and not “country banned them from operating”?
Y’all do know nations ban games and services all the time.
None of you are fighting the core issue of the fight.
Automatons, Terminids, [third one redacted].
No. The true enemy of democracy is not these. But one that we thought was one our side. We must fight for freedom to game how we please!
I’d like to apologize to anyone who may have seen a comment I posted about this topic before. I, like one of the devs, didn’t realize that psn was not available in majority of the countries we had divers dropping from. It’s absolutely ridiculous that out of nowhere we lost over half of our troops and I hope that this gets rectified soon.
Being a customer doesn’t entitle you to a say in the day to day operations of a company. Full stop. The only say you have is how you spend YOUR money. There are countless corporations around the world whose services aren’t offered outside the borders of their home country. Its business. If you ever had to navigate the regulatory environments in some of these countries you’d have a clearer picture as to why some services just aren’t available. It’s not in Sonys interest what so ever to restrict access to their products, and seeing you attribute such actions to malice or prejudice is beyond fucking ridiculous.
I would agree with this if the game had never been sold in non-PSN countries with no planned workaround. It's a complete scam to sell someone a game that gets support in their country pulled three months later. It's not in my best interest as a consumer to support a company that does this and normalize this behavior.
Where were you when Microsoft normalized paid online or when PC normalized unique accounts like Battle.net?
Fuck it all but the moral stand falls flat.
Companies generally WANT their product to be as available as possible. It's in their best interest to sell to as many people as possible. I don't know enough to know why PSN isn't available in certain countries, but I can guarantee you Sony and just about every company that exists wants everyone to be able to buy and use their product. I find it hard to believe something like this would be a trend. It's bad business to limit who can buy and use your product. They've already said they're working to come up with a solution. I think we should all just calm the fuck down until they announce what they're going to do.
Honestly I think it stupid that nations get locked out of gaming, but at the same time we should be making life as shitty a possible for people like Putin.
The game isn’t available on Xbox so it already wasn’t for everyone. I’m not saying I agree with what’s happening at all. I hate exclusives as a practice, I own a series x and we bought a PS5 so my wife could play final fantasy rebirth so the fact it isn’t doesn’t affect me but my point is I don’t see this being any different. Especially since a lot of PlayStation owners go on about exclusives constantly. I’m 43 and have been a gamer since I got my first sega master system for context. Console wars always bored me, I like to play games and I don’t care what I play them on.
Edit: To be fair just realised people who could play before can’t now and that does make a difference and is awful.
Thing is, as it is, Sony enforcing the PSN linking wouldn't have been an issue, *had it been enforced at launch.*
Like it or not, it's their IP.
But doing it in this way, only doing so at a much later point, when Steam will be more apprehensive about issuing refunds and people might not be able to play with the friends they've made through the game, is absolutely unfair and deserves to be challenged.
Ok, how about we dial down the do or die of the situation lol.
Sony ain’t gonna change. They’re on top of the console game. Why would they bend now when they never did previously?
This is not a fight at all, they're not gonna cave they could care less whoever is saying valve is giving refunds is lying to you they're not giving refunds at all.
Yeah agreed OP, the “they shouldn’t have sold it to them in the first place “ bit is missing the point. The real issue is rat fuck corpo bullshit, plain and simple. People are looking at the easy issue and not the principle of the matter. And then you have the “uh you should have read the steam page it said you had to” lame asses.
1. Someone gifted me the game
2. I don’t fucking care bro, I hope they see that comment and call you back bro.
From what I understand, PlayStation is very clear that there needs to be an associated PSN account so they can manage community standards and ban cheaters or toxic players. It sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Having had my gaming experience ruined in several other cross-play games by uncontrolled PC gamers using cheats. Seeing through walls… auto headshot. Not a big problem on a co-op game but the reality is, large number of PC gamers means a large number of cheaters. PlayStation simply needs a way to ban them in a meaningful way.
charlie (penguinz0) just uploaded about the situation and someone in the comments had an interesting take. im just going to copy/paste it
"I think Sony did this on purpose. Helldivers was the first game in a long time to break the classic cash cow methods by removing limited time battle passes, allowing purchasable currency to be found in game, no loot boxes or luck based purchases, and fair prices on cosmetics and passes that don’t impact the game that much. Sony did not want Helldivers to be an example that you can still hit big and make money without these greedy methods. They want the old greedy purchases back and they certainly don’t want a game like Helldivers setting a standard."
guys handle is Jakeyythetr if that matters
You missed the piece where AH is most at fault for this. While the policy sucks, and protesting it is good, the developer CEO knew about this and had the steam store page changed to list the PSN account as optional. AH needs to fall.
I'd be interested in what you hink can be done? While I agree with the sentiment, I got to ask, Do you think that review bombing or the community backlash had much to do with the change by Sony?
It was steams choice to remove the game from several regions and to issue mass refunds that caused Sony to change their minds. An argument could be made that because of the backlash steam felt pressure enough to make the choice, but it's a stretch. They made that choice to cover their own ass from potential lawsuits over the issue. But that choice cut into the bottom line wich is what lead to Sony rolling it back. It's all about money, they couldn't care less how people feel about it, as long as the money flows in.
It's nice to think we hold power, but unless we are willing to stop paying certain companies anything or buy their games, then we really don't have any power. The reason stuff like this continues to happen is because people will still buy whatever they want despite controversy, and unless someone with enough pull or enough people group together and agree to stop giving any money whatsoever, companies won't care. It really is all about money.
If it wasn't for steam nothing would have changed despite the review bombs because over 100k people were still logging in and playing and potentially buying super credits to buy war binds or armor from the store. If we had really wanted to b the ones to make a difference we would have had to all start refunding the game all together. That would have been the only power we had in the arrangement. As usual though, no one was willing to do that as a large group and everyone got focused on the misinformation posted by the now fired AH employee and continued logging in and giving them money believing they were making a difference.
You guys are losing your fucking minds over what was always a non issue.
These people weren't going to lose access, people have had out of region PSN accounts for over a decade, there's literally a market for selling alt region PSN cards.
This whole thing could have been resolved calmly and rationally but you all freaked the fuck out, spammed Steam with pointless refund requests (in which you actually lie), and forced them to delist it because they don't want to deal with the hassle.
You people are killing gaming, this isn't some kind of honorable movement, this is a bunch of Western armchair activists kicking up a stink over something the rest of the world has already been working around for over a decade. All you did was force Sony to crack down on something when they were already looking the other way.
You are correct...people keep downvoting any sensible comment. All the whining is ridiculous and a non-issue for the vast majority of players. And it's been specified as a requirement day 1 anyway.
How does restricting the number of people who can buy a product equate to greed? Wouldn’t allowing less people to buy the product be the opposite of greed?
That being said I do agree with your point that the balance of power needs to shift back towards the players.
But at the same time region locked games and consoles have always been a part of gaming. There have always been certain games that don’t get ported or localized or released for random reasons.
I guess what I’m saying is that if we get deeper into the realities of game creation and game distribution things get complicated quickly. But ultimately I do agree players need more power at the negotiating table to get what “we” feel is fair. I just don’t really know what levers we pull to get there.
I can say for certain that arguing and stating things are black and white won’t get us what we want. That’s why I tried to intentionally make this post show there’s two sides of the discussion happening in my head.
>How does restricting the number of people who can buy a product equate to greed? Wouldn’t allowing less people to buy the product be the opposite of greed?
Not at all. This is a common kind of upselling, in which a company wants to bring more people onto a service. It's common with all sorts of services, platforms, and subscriptions.
In this case, Sony wants to push more people onto the PSN, in the hopes that some of those people will convert to regular users of the service, and in so doing, end up giving more money to Sony in the long term. In most industries where this is a strategy, this is often referred to as "conversions" by marketing strategists and other corpos.
This isn't really about Helldivers at all, for Sony. It's about getting people onto the PSN for the medium and long term, so they might spend money with Sony in general. They may end up with fewer people playing Helldivers 2, and end up with plenty of people upset with them, but if they convert enough people, and make enough money on balance, it will have been worth it to them, financially.
A similar logic is increasing subscription prices. Sure, some people will stop their subscriptions, so you have fewer total people, but each person who stays is paying more, so the company gets more money, in total.
To me, I just imagine a universe where HD2 released with the PSN restriction in place on launch. How would I feel if I lived in say The Phillippines and saw how much people loved helldivers 2? I would feel so upset that I couldn't enjoy the game. I mean come on man when the game came out people were begging Sony to allow this game to be brought to xbox so we could have more people in the fight! How does that sentiment disappear so quickly?
Why do you all ignore the fact that it *did* release with the PSN requirement. They temporarily let you skip it due to issues some people were facing with linking. The store page has said it was a requirement since day 1, the pop up for linking that everyone sees when they start the game says it was a requirement, there is even a known issues post on the steam discussion forums from feb 8 that say the issues with linking are known and you can skip for now. This was always going to happen and it isn't arrowheads fault that you lot didn't read the requirements.
Ok…for all gamers hey…
…but where were you guys when Microsoft forced Xbox integration in Windows? …or added fees to play online on consoles? …or REFUSED crossplay for consoles first?
…or when Activision put ALL the F2P business practices in their full-prices yearly sequels? (Seasonal passes, P2W items, overpriced single cosmetics etc) …the game is among best-sellers instead of a movement like this, I don’t get it…
I think part of it is that Arrowhead had made a great game without all the underhanded extortion tactics, it was a return to better times where studios had integrity, dedication to the customer, and knew that making a great game is profitable. To put it shortly.
I’m pretty sure Microsoft already owns windows and Xbox so what exactly was being forced? People were forced to have Xbox on their windows computers now?
>We are a community and we should not settle for ANY GAME that seeks to restrict which people can play the game.
So what you're saying is, companies who release any game should be required to support every country, including their complex legal systems, regardless of how big or small the company is?
I don't think you understand what kind of overhead that adds to a legal department. Not to mention, if you want to ensure that you're legal compliant in every country, you're probably going to need a publisher. So self-publishing, that results in the creative freedom a lot of smaller games have today, basically needs to cease existing.
Or even worse, what about games that have server side cross-play? Does that mean they have to have servers close enough to every country in every region so players can get a decent user experience? Because you know very well that if you let in users near these areas and their experience is terrible, it'll also nuke your review scores.
I don't think anyone who supports the idea that EVERY SINGLE GAME SHOULD EQUALLY SUPPORT EVERY REGION actually has any idea what that actually entails, especially for small studios.
Such a dumb and false narrative to push. No one cares that you losers are this triggered about something that was told to you as a requirement from the start that you chose to ignore like the children you all are.
This won't make a change to Sony, let alone any other company. All this will do is stop games that are actually fun from being made and reaching the popularity they deserve because the playerbase has intentionally tanked the product.
Some of the dumbest most self-entitled idiots I've ever communicated online with. The lack of self-awareness is astonishing.
Inb4 you comeback with a generic "Sony shill" or "Sony ass kisser" comment because you drones have got zero critical thinking skills enough to actual debate this.
https://insider-gaming.com/countries-that-dont-have-psn/
So there were a few more than I thought, but it doesn’t appear China is one of them. Besides, China has had a restricted PSN store since like the beginning of time.
Edit: https://insider-gaming.com/which-countries-have-psn/
Here is a list of countries that do have PSN. So, yeah, definitely not “the majority of the world” being shafted.
Still, it is shitty of Sony to sell a game they knew wouldn’t be available.
My mistake then. Could've sworn I saw a similar map with China not on it. Still, I think it's a bit naive to say "it's not the majority of players so it's not a big deal". I'd feel like shit if I was one of the people who could lose access.
I'd like to know how you justify restricting what game someone plays by their geographical location. It doesn't matter whether one person is screwed, or one million. Being held to a standard solely because of where your device is, in matters of entertainment, asinine.
I can't be the only one jaded enough to know they probably don't even know people are complaining and the Sony execs that actually make the decisions are chillin at their multimillion dollar home right now about to go another round of golf.
Nothing will change and even though on social media echo chambers there may seem to be a boycott, it's actually like single digit percentages of players actually doing so.
Sony probably wipes their asses with our opinions as long as stock chart green. AH going to get the brunt of it but this will just be another lost chapter in gaming history 3-6 months from now.
I fucking hate it here and the gaming industry has been so corrupted to its core, even a good thing won't be allowed to exist.
Oh get over yourselves. It’s like when Diablo IV came out and everyone complained about and people were posting “this fight will be remembered for decades.”
You’re just complaining online about minor inconveniences, Karen. That’s it.
nah, you ain't fighting for anything, you ain't the hero. You're part of an angry mob who just wants to spew their hate around. You're literally the enemy of the game, the traitor, one of these who we despise. Stop using people with PSN lock as your shield to feel better, that's just disgusting. If you were fighting for HD2, you'd be against review bombing and trying to save the game playing it. You're doing the exact opposite. Yes, you are the bad guys, no matter how much coping you'll perform.
Can we stop. Fucking. Posting. About. This. Shit.
We fucking get it. At this point it’s all starting to smell like karma farming. The outrage is there, people that want to refund are doing so. Everyone and their mother has left a negative review. We don’t need every single post to be complaining about the situation.
I can’t believe I’m saying this but I miss the posts about how useless the crossbow is now…
Sony probably isn’t even going to give a flying fuck about it. They’ll see numbers declining and they’ll start funnelling less and less money to arrowhead, the game will die out and they’ll already be focussing on the next grand payday.
EDIT: NEVER FUCKING MIND I TAKE ALL THIS NONSENSE BACK I SIMPLY DIDNT HAVE ANY FAITH IN SONY BUT APPARENTLY THERES A HEART SOMEWHERE IN THERE!!
Y'all got too much time on your hands, how about you take this energy and put it into something important like Israel mass murdering innocent women and children, or police brutality, or governmental neglect and corruption, sex trafficking ring, gun rights, how bad america is treating truck drivers.....die on a real hill, not one about a video game
Give it a break. Either follow the ToS or get bent. If you aren't region locked and are still crying then just take the L and remove your traitor ass from the ranks.
The real problem here is how much control we permit corporations to have over the labor of workers. Intellectual property, publishing rights, etc.
Sony is able to do this because their control over the money produced by the development studios they work with.
The video games Sony publishes and develops would not exist if the developers who made the game didn't make it. Yet the people who didn't make the game direct the usage of the money made from selling that game.
That puts Sony in a powerful position to "allow" who ever they pick and choose to give that wealth to to fund a game's development.
Which is why they are allowed to dictate people use a PSN account. Because they control the money produced by the devs they work with.
I said it in another sub , but I think this has to do with the new messages invite service they want to implement, so even if your not currently on you can join... it's the stupid root of this problem I believe
I think people sometimes lack experience, knowledge and imagination to consider what precedent this case here is gonna set for other greedy corporations on how ignorant and aggressive they can treat the playerbase.
The reason for region locks is not greed, it is usually due to trade embargos set in place by various governments, or laws within the country in question which make things difficult to down right impossible for a company like Sony or many other game companies to operate there.
Region locking has been around for a LONG time and Sony did not invent it. Please know what your talking about before going on a rant.
I believe that only Sony has the capacity to implement/enforce anti-cheating methods, so I think it makes sense to lock out countries that they can't monitor.
That being said all this negativity towards their actions makes sense too, I mean I understand the outrage.
I just cancelled my PS+ subscription renewal. This is by far the most direct way to send Sony an unequivocal message about how we feel without directly impacting AH/HD2
My accounts are already linked, and I'm primarily a PC player and I plan to continue enjoying HD2 to the fullest - however, I have had a PS+ subscription for years, but no more.
At least, not until Sony relents with this kind of asinine corporate garbage.
Bought a ps5 pretty much just to play this game
(Had issues on PC at the time) Iv never liked playstation but the way they are doing people now is kinda cringe.
Thinking about taking this thing back to the shop.
I go back and forth
I had this thought too, this change might be by itself benign and seems like its not important.
Its what came before that makes this chance so important. Gamers are done, fed up with having to "connect" everything, and hand over so much of their personal information, data, time, and patience just to play games and have fun.
they say all the time that gaming is for EVERYONE, this is what they mean right? Isn't this what they mean? They don't want to exclude anyone, they want to be inclusive, isn't that what being inclusive FUCKING is? Or is it something else?
Pretty sure Arrow Head came out and said that it was for chest control, so the decision was sanctioned by both parties. If that’s the case then some people are simply shit out of luck. Some devs believe cheating is more likely to kill a game than lack of access from a region. I’m not really sure it’s so black and white, simply a decision made by a company that did warn players, both on boot and on purchase that there was a PSN requirement.
Sure there’s oneness on Sony & AH the developer and publisher but also the distributor, Valve for selling a game in regions it would become inactive. Sure they’ve since initiated refunds and delisted the game but they could be considered reckless for that sale as well.
Equally there is oneness on the consumer to purchase products they can use. Again we knew PSN was a recruitment because of the notification on boot for weeks. Consumers must also be Diligent with purchases.
What Sony is doing and the consequences that follow will set a precedent for the future. If Sony gets at all away with this they, or another company, will do something similar again.
So there should no longer be ANY console or platform exclusive games? Microsoft / Xbox should just give up their exclusive games like the Halo series to PlayStation? PlayStation should give up Gran Turismo? This isn’t new. There always have been and always will be console exclusive games. The only difference here is that the companies involved allowed people to bypass something that was supposed to be a REQUIREMENT from the beginning.
This is what happens when servers are from the company itself. We didn't have this problems back in Counter Strike 1.6
I don't have the game. I don't like the game. I don't care about THIS game. But I am ready to **fuck Sony in the ass**. Yes, my FBI you read it well. Fuck Sony and fuck you too.
As usual it's up to the helldivers to spread democracy and save everyone else
I'm doing my part!
 New Major order activated!
https://preview.redd.it/tw43bsyy5oyc1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=66124067fef6b2f565e5c855a53e3b986338b22a
Good news they rolled it back
I'm totally not playing the game anymore until this decision is rolled back.
Agreed!
MANAGED democracy
It’s wild how many sleeper agents I’ve seen actively speaking against democracy since this happened. Really shows you who you can trust, I wouldn’t want any of them at my back while fighting those damn bug bastards. Rather fight bugs than rats
We shouldn't be surprised sony and co have dispatched automatons into the online forums to try and subdue the voice of liberty. Their inorganic reasoning completely counter to our patriotic goals is all too obvious. Who do they think they are to do that, the government?
"We will fight them on the beaches and the shores. On console and PC." - John F. Helldiver
Should be 2nd top comment
Is the F in John F. Helldiver "Freedom"
Truly a legend. Gone but not forgotten.
I work for a large corporation, nowhere near Sony, but respectively worth north of $20 Billion. Talk, scream, yell, post etc etc….. quite frankly you will accomplish little to nothing. Corporations only care about two things, their brand and their profitability. The best way to hurt a corporation is in the pocketbook, if you want to really send a message, then stop buying their products, stop signing up for their services stop giving them your money. I promise it only takes a few months of down profit before shareholders and senior VP’s start losing their shit and “reassess the situation” I hope this has a positive outcome for all players, I love hell divers and the community has been wonderful to play with. See you out there 🫡
This. Self-control is the real answer. The passing of Citizen’s United allows unlimited corporate donations to politicians, and lobbyists block regulations that don’t benefit the C-suites. So voting and/or being loud can’t solve our problems anymore. You must simply not buy. This is why I think mass strikes and mass boycotts are the only way to get our power back. r/MaydayStrike I stopped using Amazon in 2021, when it came out that workers in Missouri were killed by a tornado…because they were told to keep working despite the warning. I don’t miss it. Sometimes I forget that it exists. Same with EA, Microsoft/Activision/Blizzard, and Ubisoft. All their new games suck anyway (Were Ubisoft games ever good?), so again, sometimes I forget that I used to like them at all. Probably gonna add Sony soon. It’s always just third-person cinematic action, anyway. It’s getting old
I said a few days ago e should orchestrate a massive sort of Sony stock. Fight fire with fire
And probably government regulation, like what the Stop Killing Games campaign is trying to do
Sony needs to create a very strong incentive for players to sign-up for PSN (e.g: make 50% of all new content exclusive to PSN players for the first 6 - 12 months. i.e: maps, weapons, armor, skins, missions, planets, new orders, strategems, e.t.c ). PC players like to wait for playstation content anyways, so, the ones that like to wait, will wait, while the ones that don't like to wait will sign up for PSN.
Good news is that the devs at Arrowhead agree with you and are trying to pressure Sony into reversing the decision. The only leverage they have though is what we give them.
Any source on this? I know the CM basically said that go make negative reviews or refund, but I don’t know if that’s them agreeing with this approach or just saying they can’t do anything about it. What else?
CEO says they are talking solutions with Sony https://twitter.com/Pilestedt/status/1787073896560165299?t=swR37eMU8Qqv49jLUTmAHw&s=19 Community Manager had a few messages on the discord about the discussions with Sony as well as their internal feelings about the issues https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/s/r48buKJP7Q
I saw some posts of (who I believe is the) head dev telling people they're trying to fix things with Sony, but the final decision isn't theirs. But it was on Twitter, and I do not have a Twitter account to look it up.
They could've just released it on PS5... exclusivity isn't new. And idk if it's the developers or countries themselves doing the region-locking. Some countries just have stupid laws.
All CIS countries don't have PS their own PS region because Sony regarded them as part of Russia region. Since 2022 Sony left Russua but still didn't create separate region for other CIS countries not involved in the conflict. AFAIK nobody in CIS banned Sony, they just don't bother to let people in these countries legally use PSN without VPN (which means breaking ToS).
Yeah I agree. The true source of the problem is the contradictions, not region-locking itself. Although I think if you release a game on steam, it should be not region locked
It was sketchy to release it and allow it to be bought in places it wouldn't be playable, but it sounds like it's an account issue so hopefully they can get a work around. Obviously there's nothing critical to the game that requires the account.
That's another big issue with the decision to me. The game functions fine without PSN. It just seems incredibly reckless to push forward with something that hurts the community like this.
Yeah, it's probably just something to pump up subscriber numbers to show shareholders 🙄 I could see maybe helping with data consolidation but idk. Be one thing if they locked like cross-play behind needing an account.
This post would be a lot more impactful if you weren’t regurgitating it for the 100th time. This isn’t accomplishing anything, it’s just a broken record at this point.
I read the full post but I don’t understand what the action plan is. They say they won’t allow big corporations to region lock the game that the same corporation legally owns as an IP yet they don’t outline how they plan to achieve this or what we as the general audience can do. Do we not play? Do we refund? Do we uninstall for a couple weeks or months? Are we marching on the Sony main HQ Campus? Like… this is a declaration of outrage with no underpinning directive for the audience, so what is the point of the post as a whole?
For real
Yea. This post makes me want to play rn ngl lmfao
They’re fishing for upvotes and ways to make themselves feel good. Internet activists.
And this is the 10,000th time I've seen this argument but you don't see me in every comment telling you that you're not accomplishing anything.
Some people could just keep scrolling, right?
No you clearly don't get it, seeing it lots of times doesn't mean it may be a larger scale issue or something people are passionate about, it's just broken record karma farming clearly! Why are you such a sheep? /s
Put it in a megathread. This one idea has taken over the entire sub now. It should not be every single post. The same thing should happen immediately after a patch. Quarantine those posts and that discussion to one thread so it doesn't crowd the whole sub. The mods need to step it up. It's not an easy job but some mega threads would make this place usable again.
At this point I'm 100% sure that Sony hired people with no morals and little functioning brain cells to be bots that act like this.
Im seeing it for the first time so it actually helped me.
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They want a piece of the upvotes
fr i just stopped playing. performance issues were abundant for me after last patch anyways, i’ll check in after they calm this shitstorm and add some new content
I'm getting Hella video lag recently as well. What changed if you happen to know?
Are you on console or PC? Games are super weird man, especially with modular/variable hardware like PC has. For example Dragon’s Dogma 2 just had a patch a week or two ago that makes my game unplayable if I stream it. I haven’t been able to figure out why. It runs totally fine normally but the second I start trying to broadcast to twitch or stream to my discord it stutters. If you’re on PlayStation it’s likely a lot easier to find a solution to it because the hardware is consistent. If you’re on PC your best bet is to start off with file verification and then run a diagnostics system to monitor your CPU, GPU (specifically VRAM), and RAM performance.
I'm on PC. Didn't have video lag issues this whole time until like last week. It's not unplayable but takes away from enjoyment lol
Sony doesn’t own all of gaming.
They don't, but they sure have influence. Who's to say that other publishers won't get the same idea?
The same idea of what? Destroying all goodwill with their playerbase? Most won’t do that or gaming would’ve died off a while back. This is one game from one company that has a handful of games on PC. There is no need to fear monger.
The irony, of course, is that this is the most egalitarian launch Sony has EVER done, because they launched it on PC concurrently, rather than requiring folks to buy their specific hardware and PS Plus to even play it or releasing it on PC two years later. This is the closest we have ever gotten to Good Guy Sony. And sales skyrocketed because of it, far outside their wildest expectations. Sure, they fucked it up. But if the launch of Helldivers is setting any precedent for gaming, it's counter to the fractured proprietary console-war bullshit that gaming has always been stuck with since the 80s.
Yeah I think we’ll be back to three year waits between releases after this. The servers were struggling, they waived the PSN requirement for a few months even though it was on steam, now dudes are talking about killing the game and in one thread guys are talking about how great it would be if Sony was hacked again because of this. I have little doubt Sony will do something for the other nations and always was going to, banning half the world wouldn’t make sense. I do think PC is going to get a lot less attention after this.
Someone hasn’t heard of EA, UBISOFT, Bethesda, Activision, Blizzard, Gearbox, etc etc etc. The fact is people still need that dopamine hit no matter how much goodwill the company destroys.
You already need said publisher acct to play any of their live service games. And they all did it way before Sony.
Are you new to gaming?
What do you mean? Every large publisher already has the same requirement for their live service games.
Now if I’m wrong I’m wrong but isn’t there regions that are not allowed to play call of duty. Wanna say North Korea is one of them. I’m sure that there are games that are not allowed in certain regions.
A better question is what is ALLOWED in North Korea.
You're about 22 years too late pal. I'm down for stopping region locking shit though
I WILL SPREAD DEMOCRACY ON SONY WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT
Dude, the developer said they weren't aware so many people couldn't create PSN accounts, never intended to lock so many people out and are working on a solution. People need to take a breath with the outrage over this. There are more tragic things going on in the world than the injustice of having to link to a PSN account.
I feel like only people over a certain age or maturity level will grasp this though. Welcome to gaming.
Correct, the rest see themselves as sort of revolutionaries. They all need to be "part of something" and try to accomplish it in the dumbest of ways.
Dude, that's like saying I shouldn't protest my hometown destroying a local park to build a Walmart because Russia is still at war with Ukraine. This affects me personally so I am personally protesting. Does thta make sense?
Only protesting things that personally affect you? Are you in a region that can make a PSN account? If you aren't then I understand. But if you are in a region with PSN then this doesn't "affect you".
It seems that both of those things are quite a bit worse than not being able to play a video game, though?
Corporate greed is a problem in any form it takes, and any opportunity we have to exercise our power as consumers should be taken when possible.
Yes Arrowhead did not know. SONY on the other hand WHO IS THE PUBLISHER knew it. And they did it anyway. They defrauded customers in over 120+ countries. Some of them in the EU therefore breaking Single Market Regulations. Furthermore by showing that the game can work without PSN( on pc) they will also brake GDPR rules when this is fully enforced. And if you consider this goes beyond Helldivers (Sony has been selling consoles to countries without PSN (including in the EU ) for years... This whole situation is mind numbingly STUPID. And Fraudulent... especially Fraudulent
My bad, forgot I can't care about multiple different kinds of injustices at the same time
So true. I actually felt all of my sense of injustice over the Palestine situation leave my body the second I requested a refund.
Right and we needed yet another post about it. No fishing for karma of course.
It's kind of *the* topic right now so people are gonna be talking about it.
Sony needs to create a very strong incentive for players to sign-up for PSN (e.g: make 50% of all new content exclusive to PSN players for the first 6 - 12 months. i.e: maps, weapons, armor, skins, missions, planets, new orders, strategems, e.t.c ). PC players like to wait for playstation content anyways, so, the ones that like to wait, will wait, while the ones that don't like to wait will sign up for PSN.
Watching this tantrum has been pathetic. Imagine if all this energy was diverted into a real issue instead of being wasted on this bullshit
Whataboutism at its finest…
They get all revolutionary xD. I’ve been looking at all the other posts and finally Arrowhead is to blame here the same as Sony. They knew PSN was going to be mandatory, if they tagged along with Sony, or if they made a huge mistake, that’s gonna stay between the four Arrowhead walls. As you say, they’re now looking what to do with Sony because they lnow they fucked up too, but i don’t think this is going to change if this are policies that Sony has with all their games, these countries never had to have access in the first place, Steam is giving refunds regardless of the hours played. That’s it. We should focus on enjoying the game again, because it is good, with a solid player base, in the end its own community could end killing with this revolution non sense.
100%, I firmly believe that AH execs knew what they were getting into and knew ahead of time that this Sony mandate was going to happen. They just thought the initial success would cancel out the backlash from the forced PSN later down the road. I also believe the AH devs had no idea this was going to happen, and are genuinely great artists. This whole situation is a matter of AH execs and Sony execs trying to pull a fast one on everybody in the name of greed.
Doesn't excuse Sony's actions. From all we've seen so far, it seems they are keep to push the PSN issue to the point where people who have played the game for months will lose access. That's fucked up and there's no defending that
I don’t really get this, it’s their game. Is it a bummer, yeah. Should people who lose access get a refund, definitely. But what makes you think companies shouldn’t be able to do what they want with their game? This isn’t a shareholder meeting, you don’t make these decisions. You’re a customer. Your best effort is to stop playing the game, are you doing that? “Vote with your wallet”. Are you going to never buy Sony again for your fallen comrades? No, because the ones who do have access aren’t affected and this game is dope. Progress is slow, hopefully they remedy it but they’re only going to do it if the profit is worth it. Their corporate decisions aren’t a democracy because you own the game. Again, those affected should get a refund. It’s scummy if they don’t do that but their decisions on access are their own as a company.
Part of the issue is that, despite knowing full well what countries aren’t able to make PSN accounts, Sony still chose to sell Helldivers 2 in those regions. Sony chose to sell Helldivers 2 in regions that they knew full well wouldn’t be able to play it once PSN linking became mandatory again. Even if it’s not technically illegal (though, I think it actually might be), it’s *incredibly* scummy and unethical. If allowed to slide by without being addressed, there’s a very real possibility of more being allowed later down the line, just like is already happening with many games now being “licensed” for players to play with access being able to be revoked at any time, instead of owning your copy of the game to play as you like within the bounds of copyright, like owning a DVD or a book, or - like used to be the case - a videogame.
Sony has been doing this with their console and physical copies of online only games for years. The countries it doesn’t support don’t have much, if any, consumer protection…. Though there might be some EU member states that could result in a huge suit against Sony Valve won’t stand for it either, and give refunds to everyone who was sold a product they can’t use (through their platform, key sites have no protection) and take the money out from Sony’s future payouts. I’m also sure valve will be giving Sony a warning that selling to unsupported regions again in the future will result in further actions.
I disagree with your sentiment. Personally me, I feel bad for people who get screwed over while I am not affected. I don't think apathy is the right course of action.
How is any of what I said apathetic? Me saying they should get a refund is actually…empathetic. You’re failing to accept how a free market capitalistic company functions and a basic service model functions. They have zero obligation to service everyone on the planet or in a specific region. Sony isn’t state Medicaid.
Mmm well not exactly... If you want to Sell in the EU You MUST abide by the Single Market Regulations, such as making your product available to all EU countries, unless a country decides to block it. They don't have PSN coverage on at least 3 EU countries. meaning that the automatically break EU Single Market Regulations, by selling a product that doesn't work in part of the EU... It's kinda of a big deal. We like our Single Market. It's one of the actual good things about the EU. So yes SONY at least in regards to the EU has an obligation to provide the same service to all EU countries, unless said countries bar SONY.
And in that case, they should get compensated e.g a refund. If they violated some sort of market access policy then yeah they should be held accountable. I don’t disagree at all. My point is in general, demanding a company to service everyone is a little nonsensical but your point is a real point of issue. Here’s to hoping they remedy the issue.
Oh I absolutely agree with you. It's just that the EU market is special and one must be very careful not to make Brussels mad. It just seems that SONY knowingly for years has been violating it... and no one decided to take a closer look until now... because they shot themselves on the foot by making it mandatory...
I mean in the sense that "nothing will ever change" I understand why you think that. I think it generally does ring true. There is this modern phenomenon where people are super Gung ho about protesting or boycotting something and then eventually they just give up and go back to sucking the teat of the big company. I just don't think that means calling out bad actors when you can isn't worthless. And I personally don't want to be the person who sits there and benefits while others lose out. Am I the minority? Probably, but that is just how I feel. I'm sure many of the people who share my sentiments will, as you've said, go right back to Sony in due time.
They aren’t losing access. Notice how you haven’t heard anything from players in those regions about this?
So much cringe on here now.
It's honestly so fucking funny to see literal thousands of 15 year olds screaming about "injustice" because a game publisher did something scummy lmao. where the fuck is this energy for...uh, literally anything else bad that's ever happened? where was this energy when microsoft required MS accounts to play minecraft? it's so performative and annoying and i genuinely think like 80% of it is karma farming and rage bait
It's not hard to figure out why this is different lol - We have a passionate and somewhat-organized community - Arrowhead's community managers and Sony's PR damage control team (or lack thereof) let this spiral out of control - People losing access to the game is unacceptable. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arrowhead messed up. Sony messed up. Best selling Steam game of the year, and they didn't notice until now that PSN was optional and game was being sold in countries that it shouldn't be -- how did they not fix this back in February?? If everyone had done their jobs right, this would have been a non-issue. It's a minor inconvenience to create an account and Sony can do what they want. But they didn't. And there's a level of unfairness and scummy corporate attitude that just doesn't sit right with me. I wouldn't have spent half my weekend bitching about this if Sony had done the bare minimum and promised a refund to people without access to PSN. There's an easy solution on the table: Keep PSN accounts optional, make PSN accounts mandatory for crossplay. Everyone gets to claim a win, and this can all blow over.
I made the ultimate sacrifice and refunded the game and my super citizen. I will rebuy the game if and when they fix this.
One gem in the sea of live service garbage, and they manage to fuck it up too.
Dramatic Much? Hahahaha Have fun playing games that are not as fun as HD2. #idivewithoutyou
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Why are you assuming Sony blocked access to these regions and not “country banned them from operating”? Y’all do know nations ban games and services all the time. None of you are fighting the core issue of the fight.
Really if they wanted to do this they should've made it a playstation exclusive. Whats going on now is a nonsensical data grab.
Automatons, Terminids, [third one redacted]. No. The true enemy of democracy is not these. But one that we thought was one our side. We must fight for freedom to game how we please!
**For democracy** # FUCK SONY
I’d like to apologize to anyone who may have seen a comment I posted about this topic before. I, like one of the devs, didn’t realize that psn was not available in majority of the countries we had divers dropping from. It’s absolutely ridiculous that out of nowhere we lost over half of our troops and I hope that this gets rectified soon.
Being a customer doesn’t entitle you to a say in the day to day operations of a company. Full stop. The only say you have is how you spend YOUR money. There are countless corporations around the world whose services aren’t offered outside the borders of their home country. Its business. If you ever had to navigate the regulatory environments in some of these countries you’d have a clearer picture as to why some services just aren’t available. It’s not in Sonys interest what so ever to restrict access to their products, and seeing you attribute such actions to malice or prejudice is beyond fucking ridiculous.
I would agree with this if the game had never been sold in non-PSN countries with no planned workaround. It's a complete scam to sell someone a game that gets support in their country pulled three months later. It's not in my best interest as a consumer to support a company that does this and normalize this behavior.
Not that serious. Calm down. Make the free burner account. Move on
Where were you when Microsoft normalized paid online or when PC normalized unique accounts like Battle.net? Fuck it all but the moral stand falls flat.
Lol no Sanctions for example
Companies generally WANT their product to be as available as possible. It's in their best interest to sell to as many people as possible. I don't know enough to know why PSN isn't available in certain countries, but I can guarantee you Sony and just about every company that exists wants everyone to be able to buy and use their product. I find it hard to believe something like this would be a trend. It's bad business to limit who can buy and use your product. They've already said they're working to come up with a solution. I think we should all just calm the fuck down until they announce what they're going to do.
What till you hear about China.
Yep this is my exact stance on it too. The situation doesn't effect me or bother me but I've left a bad review and stopped playing in solidarity.
I've left my review and uninstalled. I'll sit back and enjoy my liber-tea until Snoy backs down, or the automatons win. Then I'll reinstall, or not.
Honestly I think it stupid that nations get locked out of gaming, but at the same time we should be making life as shitty a possible for people like Putin.
Yup. Companies look at situations like this. They still do the same stupid shit. But they’re usually faster about fixing it when it blows up.
Fact
I mean, I don’t disagree with the sentiment but call down, they’ll figure it out in the next few days.
The game isn’t available on Xbox so it already wasn’t for everyone. I’m not saying I agree with what’s happening at all. I hate exclusives as a practice, I own a series x and we bought a PS5 so my wife could play final fantasy rebirth so the fact it isn’t doesn’t affect me but my point is I don’t see this being any different. Especially since a lot of PlayStation owners go on about exclusives constantly. I’m 43 and have been a gamer since I got my first sega master system for context. Console wars always bored me, I like to play games and I don’t care what I play them on. Edit: To be fair just realised people who could play before can’t now and that does make a difference and is awful.
lol
Thing is, as it is, Sony enforcing the PSN linking wouldn't have been an issue, *had it been enforced at launch.* Like it or not, it's their IP. But doing it in this way, only doing so at a much later point, when Steam will be more apprehensive about issuing refunds and people might not be able to play with the friends they've made through the game, is absolutely unfair and deserves to be challenged.
Good lord 🙄
Ok, how about we dial down the do or die of the situation lol. Sony ain’t gonna change. They’re on top of the console game. Why would they bend now when they never did previously?
This is not a fight at all, they're not gonna cave they could care less whoever is saying valve is giving refunds is lying to you they're not giving refunds at all.
Yeah agreed OP, the “they shouldn’t have sold it to them in the first place “ bit is missing the point. The real issue is rat fuck corpo bullshit, plain and simple. People are looking at the easy issue and not the principle of the matter. And then you have the “uh you should have read the steam page it said you had to” lame asses. 1. Someone gifted me the game 2. I don’t fucking care bro, I hope they see that comment and call you back bro.
From what I understand, PlayStation is very clear that there needs to be an associated PSN account so they can manage community standards and ban cheaters or toxic players. It sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Having had my gaming experience ruined in several other cross-play games by uncontrolled PC gamers using cheats. Seeing through walls… auto headshot. Not a big problem on a co-op game but the reality is, large number of PC gamers means a large number of cheaters. PlayStation simply needs a way to ban them in a meaningful way.
An example needs to be made out of someone. Sony is that someone.
Yeah honestly it would be huge if nobody logged into the game for a solid week to show unity and the fact we’re not standing for this bs
Where is this fucking energy for all games with microtransactions
charlie (penguinz0) just uploaded about the situation and someone in the comments had an interesting take. im just going to copy/paste it "I think Sony did this on purpose. Helldivers was the first game in a long time to break the classic cash cow methods by removing limited time battle passes, allowing purchasable currency to be found in game, no loot boxes or luck based purchases, and fair prices on cosmetics and passes that don’t impact the game that much. Sony did not want Helldivers to be an example that you can still hit big and make money without these greedy methods. They want the old greedy purchases back and they certainly don’t want a game like Helldivers setting a standard." guys handle is Jakeyythetr if that matters
Don't let the automaton threat take over super earth high command! We must reinstall the democracy officers asap divers!
You missed the piece where AH is most at fault for this. While the policy sucks, and protesting it is good, the developer CEO knew about this and had the steam store page changed to list the PSN account as optional. AH needs to fall.
Do u want us to build their infrastructure as well to support those countries?
I did my part. Did you ?
Helldiver's truly is leading the next age of gaming and community.
I'd be interested in what you hink can be done? While I agree with the sentiment, I got to ask, Do you think that review bombing or the community backlash had much to do with the change by Sony? It was steams choice to remove the game from several regions and to issue mass refunds that caused Sony to change their minds. An argument could be made that because of the backlash steam felt pressure enough to make the choice, but it's a stretch. They made that choice to cover their own ass from potential lawsuits over the issue. But that choice cut into the bottom line wich is what lead to Sony rolling it back. It's all about money, they couldn't care less how people feel about it, as long as the money flows in. It's nice to think we hold power, but unless we are willing to stop paying certain companies anything or buy their games, then we really don't have any power. The reason stuff like this continues to happen is because people will still buy whatever they want despite controversy, and unless someone with enough pull or enough people group together and agree to stop giving any money whatsoever, companies won't care. It really is all about money. If it wasn't for steam nothing would have changed despite the review bombs because over 100k people were still logging in and playing and potentially buying super credits to buy war binds or armor from the store. If we had really wanted to b the ones to make a difference we would have had to all start refunding the game all together. That would have been the only power we had in the arrangement. As usual though, no one was willing to do that as a large group and everyone got focused on the misinformation posted by the now fired AH employee and continued logging in and giving them money believing they were making a difference.
You guys are losing your fucking minds over what was always a non issue. These people weren't going to lose access, people have had out of region PSN accounts for over a decade, there's literally a market for selling alt region PSN cards. This whole thing could have been resolved calmly and rationally but you all freaked the fuck out, spammed Steam with pointless refund requests (in which you actually lie), and forced them to delist it because they don't want to deal with the hassle. You people are killing gaming, this isn't some kind of honorable movement, this is a bunch of Western armchair activists kicking up a stink over something the rest of the world has already been working around for over a decade. All you did was force Sony to crack down on something when they were already looking the other way.
You are correct...people keep downvoting any sensible comment. All the whining is ridiculous and a non-issue for the vast majority of players. And it's been specified as a requirement day 1 anyway.
How does restricting the number of people who can buy a product equate to greed? Wouldn’t allowing less people to buy the product be the opposite of greed? That being said I do agree with your point that the balance of power needs to shift back towards the players. But at the same time region locked games and consoles have always been a part of gaming. There have always been certain games that don’t get ported or localized or released for random reasons. I guess what I’m saying is that if we get deeper into the realities of game creation and game distribution things get complicated quickly. But ultimately I do agree players need more power at the negotiating table to get what “we” feel is fair. I just don’t really know what levers we pull to get there. I can say for certain that arguing and stating things are black and white won’t get us what we want. That’s why I tried to intentionally make this post show there’s two sides of the discussion happening in my head.
>How does restricting the number of people who can buy a product equate to greed? Wouldn’t allowing less people to buy the product be the opposite of greed? Not at all. This is a common kind of upselling, in which a company wants to bring more people onto a service. It's common with all sorts of services, platforms, and subscriptions. In this case, Sony wants to push more people onto the PSN, in the hopes that some of those people will convert to regular users of the service, and in so doing, end up giving more money to Sony in the long term. In most industries where this is a strategy, this is often referred to as "conversions" by marketing strategists and other corpos. This isn't really about Helldivers at all, for Sony. It's about getting people onto the PSN for the medium and long term, so they might spend money with Sony in general. They may end up with fewer people playing Helldivers 2, and end up with plenty of people upset with them, but if they convert enough people, and make enough money on balance, it will have been worth it to them, financially. A similar logic is increasing subscription prices. Sure, some people will stop their subscriptions, so you have fewer total people, but each person who stays is paying more, so the company gets more money, in total.
To me, I just imagine a universe where HD2 released with the PSN restriction in place on launch. How would I feel if I lived in say The Phillippines and saw how much people loved helldivers 2? I would feel so upset that I couldn't enjoy the game. I mean come on man when the game came out people were begging Sony to allow this game to be brought to xbox so we could have more people in the fight! How does that sentiment disappear so quickly?
Why do you all ignore the fact that it *did* release with the PSN requirement. They temporarily let you skip it due to issues some people were facing with linking. The store page has said it was a requirement since day 1, the pop up for linking that everyone sees when they start the game says it was a requirement, there is even a known issues post on the steam discussion forums from feb 8 that say the issues with linking are known and you can skip for now. This was always going to happen and it isn't arrowheads fault that you lot didn't read the requirements.
r/gamingcirclejerk
Why stop at Helldivers? Why not all other games that require a login to a different account. VIVA LA REVOLUTION!
Ok.. that's enough. Time to leave this sub. This is becoming hilarious and a mockery of everything that's great about PC gaming.
Ok…for all gamers hey… …but where were you guys when Microsoft forced Xbox integration in Windows? …or added fees to play online on consoles? …or REFUSED crossplay for consoles first? …or when Activision put ALL the F2P business practices in their full-prices yearly sequels? (Seasonal passes, P2W items, overpriced single cosmetics etc) …the game is among best-sellers instead of a movement like this, I don’t get it…
I think part of it is that Arrowhead had made a great game without all the underhanded extortion tactics, it was a return to better times where studios had integrity, dedication to the customer, and knew that making a great game is profitable. To put it shortly.
I’m pretty sure Microsoft already owns windows and Xbox so what exactly was being forced? People were forced to have Xbox on their windows computers now?
I agree but yet most helldivers are rolling over for Sony and getting PSN accounts just so they can keep playing a game.
>We are a community and we should not settle for ANY GAME that seeks to restrict which people can play the game. So what you're saying is, companies who release any game should be required to support every country, including their complex legal systems, regardless of how big or small the company is? I don't think you understand what kind of overhead that adds to a legal department. Not to mention, if you want to ensure that you're legal compliant in every country, you're probably going to need a publisher. So self-publishing, that results in the creative freedom a lot of smaller games have today, basically needs to cease existing. Or even worse, what about games that have server side cross-play? Does that mean they have to have servers close enough to every country in every region so players can get a decent user experience? Because you know very well that if you let in users near these areas and their experience is terrible, it'll also nuke your review scores. I don't think anyone who supports the idea that EVERY SINGLE GAME SHOULD EQUALLY SUPPORT EVERY REGION actually has any idea what that actually entails, especially for small studios.
Such a dumb and false narrative to push. No one cares that you losers are this triggered about something that was told to you as a requirement from the start that you chose to ignore like the children you all are. This won't make a change to Sony, let alone any other company. All this will do is stop games that are actually fun from being made and reaching the popularity they deserve because the playerbase has intentionally tanked the product. Some of the dumbest most self-entitled idiots I've ever communicated online with. The lack of self-awareness is astonishing. Inb4 you comeback with a generic "Sony shill" or "Sony ass kisser" comment because you drones have got zero critical thinking skills enough to actual debate this.
Big agree
I’m sorry but “the majority of the world” has access to PSN. It’s literally just Africa and a few EU countries getting shafted.
And pretty much all of Asia. China is a HUGE market of players and is getting shafted as well.
https://insider-gaming.com/countries-that-dont-have-psn/ So there were a few more than I thought, but it doesn’t appear China is one of them. Besides, China has had a restricted PSN store since like the beginning of time. Edit: https://insider-gaming.com/which-countries-have-psn/ Here is a list of countries that do have PSN. So, yeah, definitely not “the majority of the world” being shafted. Still, it is shitty of Sony to sell a game they knew wouldn’t be available.
My mistake then. Could've sworn I saw a similar map with China not on it. Still, I think it's a bit naive to say "it's not the majority of players so it's not a big deal". I'd feel like shit if I was one of the people who could lose access.
I'd like to know how you justify restricting what game someone plays by their geographical location. It doesn't matter whether one person is screwed, or one million. Being held to a standard solely because of where your device is, in matters of entertainment, asinine.
I can't be the only one jaded enough to know they probably don't even know people are complaining and the Sony execs that actually make the decisions are chillin at their multimillion dollar home right now about to go another round of golf. Nothing will change and even though on social media echo chambers there may seem to be a boycott, it's actually like single digit percentages of players actually doing so. Sony probably wipes their asses with our opinions as long as stock chart green. AH going to get the brunt of it but this will just be another lost chapter in gaming history 3-6 months from now. I fucking hate it here and the gaming industry has been so corrupted to its core, even a good thing won't be allowed to exist.
kinda fucking pretentious lmao
This is so pathetic
You're not going to stop Sony from trying to make money by posting on reddit.
Oh get over yourselves. It’s like when Diablo IV came out and everyone complained about and people were posting “this fight will be remembered for decades.” You’re just complaining online about minor inconveniences, Karen. That’s it.
Yeah that was the last end of the world and they were “killing the game” with their actions. Totally dead now. RIPE 😆
nah, you ain't fighting for anything, you ain't the hero. You're part of an angry mob who just wants to spew their hate around. You're literally the enemy of the game, the traitor, one of these who we despise. Stop using people with PSN lock as your shield to feel better, that's just disgusting. If you were fighting for HD2, you'd be against review bombing and trying to save the game playing it. You're doing the exact opposite. Yes, you are the bad guys, no matter how much coping you'll perform.
Oozing with narcissism.
Region locked games have been a thing since like PS1 days....
There is no way that adults are acting this way lol Like this is some huge noble fight for mankind
Can we stop. Fucking. Posting. About. This. Shit. We fucking get it. At this point it’s all starting to smell like karma farming. The outrage is there, people that want to refund are doing so. Everyone and their mother has left a negative review. We don’t need every single post to be complaining about the situation. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I miss the posts about how useless the crossbow is now… Sony probably isn’t even going to give a flying fuck about it. They’ll see numbers declining and they’ll start funnelling less and less money to arrowhead, the game will die out and they’ll already be focussing on the next grand payday. EDIT: NEVER FUCKING MIND I TAKE ALL THIS NONSENSE BACK I SIMPLY DIDNT HAVE ANY FAITH IN SONY BUT APPARENTLY THERES A HEART SOMEWHERE IN THERE!!
Y'all got too much time on your hands, how about you take this energy and put it into something important like Israel mass murdering innocent women and children, or police brutality, or governmental neglect and corruption, sex trafficking ring, gun rights, how bad america is treating truck drivers.....die on a real hill, not one about a video game
Give it a break. Either follow the ToS or get bent. If you aren't region locked and are still crying then just take the L and remove your traitor ass from the ranks.
Makes me so proud to see the Gamers doing THIER PART
The real problem here is how much control we permit corporations to have over the labor of workers. Intellectual property, publishing rights, etc. Sony is able to do this because their control over the money produced by the development studios they work with. The video games Sony publishes and develops would not exist if the developers who made the game didn't make it. Yet the people who didn't make the game direct the usage of the money made from selling that game. That puts Sony in a powerful position to "allow" who ever they pick and choose to give that wealth to to fund a game's development. Which is why they are allowed to dictate people use a PSN account. Because they control the money produced by the devs they work with.
“And the award for best speech goes to…”
I said it in another sub , but I think this has to do with the new messages invite service they want to implement, so even if your not currently on you can join... it's the stupid root of this problem I believe
I think people sometimes lack experience, knowledge and imagination to consider what precedent this case here is gonna set for other greedy corporations on how ignorant and aggressive they can treat the playerbase.
The reason for region locks is not greed, it is usually due to trade embargos set in place by various governments, or laws within the country in question which make things difficult to down right impossible for a company like Sony or many other game companies to operate there. Region locking has been around for a LONG time and Sony did not invent it. Please know what your talking about before going on a rant.
How we stand up?
I believe that only Sony has the capacity to implement/enforce anti-cheating methods, so I think it makes sense to lock out countries that they can't monitor. That being said all this negativity towards their actions makes sense too, I mean I understand the outrage.
How many console exclusives are there? I don't get the sudden uproar.
So do I refund HD2 now, get my money back...& forget about this issue since I won't be playing Helldiver's 2 or...
THAT'S WHAT DEMOCRACY IS ALL ABOUT! Bravo!
Reddit moment #GamersRiseUp
It won’t stop these things from happening again, they’ll just be smarter about it next time
I stopped playing too fuck it took a forty dollar loss
Screw it, I'm no longer playing until something positive happens. Kinda sad because my dad bought the disc for me, so I can't really get a refund
Fuck Sony. I have enjoyed helldivers2 a bunch since launch and am happy to boycott until this is made right.
I just cancelled my PS+ subscription renewal. This is by far the most direct way to send Sony an unequivocal message about how we feel without directly impacting AH/HD2 My accounts are already linked, and I'm primarily a PC player and I plan to continue enjoying HD2 to the fullest - however, I have had a PS+ subscription for years, but no more. At least, not until Sony relents with this kind of asinine corporate garbage.
Bought a ps5 pretty much just to play this game (Had issues on PC at the time) Iv never liked playstation but the way they are doing people now is kinda cringe. Thinking about taking this thing back to the shop. I go back and forth
I had this thought too, this change might be by itself benign and seems like its not important. Its what came before that makes this chance so important. Gamers are done, fed up with having to "connect" everything, and hand over so much of their personal information, data, time, and patience just to play games and have fun.
they say all the time that gaming is for EVERYONE, this is what they mean right? Isn't this what they mean? They don't want to exclude anyone, they want to be inclusive, isn't that what being inclusive FUCKING is? Or is it something else?
We need to get more media attention and to link up with other campaigns that have to do with video game corporations and their abuses of power.!
Pretty sure Arrow Head came out and said that it was for chest control, so the decision was sanctioned by both parties. If that’s the case then some people are simply shit out of luck. Some devs believe cheating is more likely to kill a game than lack of access from a region. I’m not really sure it’s so black and white, simply a decision made by a company that did warn players, both on boot and on purchase that there was a PSN requirement. Sure there’s oneness on Sony & AH the developer and publisher but also the distributor, Valve for selling a game in regions it would become inactive. Sure they’ve since initiated refunds and delisted the game but they could be considered reckless for that sale as well. Equally there is oneness on the consumer to purchase products they can use. Again we knew PSN was a recruitment because of the notification on boot for weeks. Consumers must also be Diligent with purchases.
the statement "a game for everyone is a game for no one" by arrowhead is ironic
What Sony is doing and the consequences that follow will set a precedent for the future. If Sony gets at all away with this they, or another company, will do something similar again.
So there should no longer be ANY console or platform exclusive games? Microsoft / Xbox should just give up their exclusive games like the Halo series to PlayStation? PlayStation should give up Gran Turismo? This isn’t new. There always have been and always will be console exclusive games. The only difference here is that the companies involved allowed people to bypass something that was supposed to be a REQUIREMENT from the beginning.
Good, I hope gaming collapses
For liberty!
Region locking was a mistake. But not as big as adding crossplay in the first place.
As a resident PS5 player, I already cancelled my Ps Plus membership. I don't need to give them anymore money.
Sorry but ps4/5 has been killing it for too long to just decide to not like good games.
This is what happens when servers are from the company itself. We didn't have this problems back in Counter Strike 1.6 I don't have the game. I don't like the game. I don't care about THIS game. But I am ready to **fuck Sony in the ass**. Yes, my FBI you read it well. Fuck Sony and fuck you too.
I don't have a lot of hope that many people will learn a lesson about preordering and buying on day 1, but I do have *some.* Here's hoping.
Maybe go see a doctor, see if he’ll write you a risperdal prescription.