Helldivers 2 Players Didn’t Let Sony Get Away With It
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- Опубліковано 5 тра 2024
- Here it is in one video. What happened to Helldivers 2, the situation between Arrowhead & Playstation, and how large corporations trend towards stupidity.
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Sources:
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x.com/Pirat_Nation/status/178...
steamdb.info/app/553850/chart...
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x.com/Pilestedt/status/178645...
x.com/Pilestedt/status/178707...
x.com/Pilestedt/status/178707...
www.togeproductions.com/Steam...
x.com/SteamDB/status/17870162...
x.com/PlayStation/status/1787...
x.com/HelldiversAlert/status/...
x.com/PirateSoftware/status/1...
x.com/RAGS_Comix/status/17873... - Ігри
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Good sir please understand that this is a hollow victory. Sony has not walked back the region restrictions that are arbitrary at best. It's still a PSN account ban effectively
Good sir please understand that this is a hollow victory. Sony has not walked back the region restrictions that are arbitrary at best. It's still a PSN account ban effectively
Good sir please understand that this is a hollow victory. Sony has not walked back the region restrictions that are arbitrary at best. It's still a PSN account ban effectively
Maybe you will agree the term review bombing was a poor choice of words ..
Other them the people on those countries, how is this different them,EA, Ubisoft, Microsoft, rockstar etc…. Making you make and link their own individual accounts to steam to play their games on steam ???
Dear Sony,
Know your fucking place.
Sincerely,
The entire Helldivers 2 community.
*The PC Gaming community
@@cedricdavis513 Wouldn't count the PC community in this, they've been eating trash for years now and accepting it.
PlayStation helldivers are boot licker. They were so mean for no reason.
@@cedricdavis513 Not even, I saw a bunch of PS5 bros up in arms about this too.
Some were even canceling their Playstation+ subscriptions as a means of trying to pressure Sony specifically, not Arrowhead, since they had correctly identified Sony as the source of the problem.
No more brother wars, we're all gamers.
@@nw3413 Yo, not all of us. The majority were pulling for you guys. Just a few bad apples that made us look bad.
"We dive together or not at all" 🖤💛✊🏽
I love this
For democracy
We dive together, we die together. Helldivers for life!
If you need reinforcements. we will arrive. ✊🏻
HOORAH
You know it's because an accountant and a lawyer walked into the executive office, explain that the potential class action lawsuit, refunds, and lost sales, we're going to equal a lot more than any potential gain that PlayStation Network might have gotten. If they would have analyzed that all of our upsetness was less than their bottom line it would not have changed.
I wanna know who the brain dead exec who didn’t think this and simply thought; “more linked active users make stock price go brrr”
@@ComradeChad69Unfortunately, any idiot can point at a sheet of paper and say, "Big number good. Do big number." Which is how you get most American CEOs.
@@ComradeChad69 If I had to make a guess, the most likely candidate would be Eric Lempel who is the head of marketing and sales.
Its actualy because they lost 2% of their stock's value over the weekend entirely due to the fiasco. If you check the time of their tweet vs Japan's local time, they 180ed in the middle of the first business day. So Sony of Japan checked the books that morning, had an emergency meeting, and then AS FAST AS POSSIBLE got the US division to post a retraction.
@@MeepChangeling How much is their stock value? Either way, that's a lot of impact in 2 days.
It shows how incredibly disconnected Sony management is from the actual fanbase, how little they actually comprehend what they are doing.
I think we can say that about most of these massive companies and bot jist in gaming. Like Disney, im always blown away that they think their fan base is that faygo 2% of the population when in reality their audience is the people they've been convinced are bad. Like, have you not talked to literally anyone outside your offices smh.
Like bud light tryna appease rhe trans community. I'm like, the ONLY grown MEN, I know that has a garage fridge full of that shit, well, those MEN, probably know 1 trans person and it's probably a kids friend or something. Worked in bars almost 20 years, know who've I've never seen order bud light? Gays/trans...
Agreed. That tone In their post shows they have no regard for the effect their mandates will have on their PC players
SONY is INDEED CLUELESS about the PC community so is not far fetched. Hopefully this will make them reconsider how many countries will not buy their games if they force this everywhere.
They're based in San Fran now instead of Japan.
I STILL hate EA and Ubisoft for their shitty launchers and required logins. I don't want another useless account for maybe 1 or 2 games.
But you can't expect a monopoly from steam.
This whole thing reminded me I created a Ubisoft account upon a time, too, so I could play Asassins Creed II...
I recovered my password to login and make sure I no longer have a Ubisoft account either.
The Paradox one is the most broken one
y but atleast they offer u something while PSN offers nothing for us PC users
@@tarekben5524man that's not even the problem it's the fact we have to login in multiple times plus both EA and UBI launchers are actually useless when it comes to well anything besides hitting play.
"We're Still learning what is best for PC players, and your feedback has been invaluable" The feedback is, publish the game then go away and let the devs cook. you are not required.
The myth that psn is required for crossplay is simply not true and never was, we have been diving together with our PlayStation brothers and sisters since launch.
If it runs on Steam, we can play it and moderate it ourselves. Publishers should take out money and stfu.
@@Hellwalker3581Yeah. If hackers and harassment are issues, that’s what GameGuard and Steam IDs are supposed to be for.
it was never true ever since pso2, genshin, and a lot of other games available on their console and pc, lmao. sony has to play nice where it doesnt dance its dance, but sometimes people have to, how we say it, "brush their teeth a little with a fist", to see that people aint gonna be nice about this kind of crap
It’s true. I dived with many brothers and sisters helldivers who use ps and in many psn restricted countries. So don’t take my brothers and sisters away or i want my money back, simple logic.
It has been about CHEATING.. they can mod the game and make a better Star Wars Battlefront 2 than EA, GTAOnline has MOD lobbies so full that even ROCKSTAR knows it when they hire Trevor to star in a video with a modder flying around as Ironman and he screams "MODDER!!"
PC is the CHEATER'S CONSOLE!!
We need to be honest, one of the main reasons of why Sony appears to back down (but not completely, the game is still delisted in a lot of counties) is because valve doesn't have idiots in the legal team and they say to Sony "if you are doing this we are allowing refunds because this is a legal nightmare to deal if something happens" and now each refund is -40 dollars minus there cut of the original sell multiply by ten of thousands
y cause Valve will still get the 30% cut from those 69 countries that its sold but PS will get nearly nothing seens they need to cover the cost for the game and when ppls refund Valve loses nothing while PS loses a lot cause i've seen guys with 200h+ gametime doing refunds
yup
Indeed. Sony reversed itself shortly after Steam decided not to offer it in restricted countries.
@@christonchev9762, it would be a legal nightmare. For every country that doesn't support PSN, there were players who spent full price on the game, and could no longer access it due to the scummy practice. Valve recognized that the legal headache such a thing would cause would result in far more loss of money than they would make by selling it.
On top of that, they get good publicity by standing with their consumers, something most companies would be happy for.
Tldr: When you have common sense, you save money and people like you more.
Very well said.
We have carved a foothold in the long climb to liberty! That climb is not over, however. Stay vigilant, Helldiver!
Imagine picking a fight with a community that has proven its capability for community action on a mass scale
That's what I said immediately when they did this 😆
It, uh, hasn't though. The only time >80% of the community attacked the same target was when there was literally 1 planet left for the bots, and the community REPEATEDLY loses any serious gambit play for extra territory.
Bug sympathizer
@@venems24 i am
Sony's biggest mistake was moving their HQ from Tokyo to the Silicon Valley. Lots of things went downhill from there
Didn't know that. Makes total sense why they went to shit.
I did a bit of websearching and it says Sony's HQ is still in Tokyo.
💯
@@GorastMK the Sony Interactive Entertainment part what does PlayStation is in San Mateo California.
Yeah they seem to trip over themselves constantly. I think Sony would be "faceless megacorporation" no matter what. But yeah, I think most of us know what it means to follow "Japanese norms" for certain games and content and "western world" norms circa 2024. It's a thing.
1 people 1 super earth
For the 177 we must show our worth
For us all to see victory
Bringing them home must be our priority
Untill they are home we must not rest
Because fighting for whats right is what we do best
If the 177 are not home
I will not dive alone
Helldivers one and all
We dive together or not at all
I like that last one. Maybe it could also be "Helldivers stand tall, we dive together or not at all."
That is awesome
Beautiful
Noice
I am not going to lie, this made me tear up a little
15:25 I think he was referring to Blizzcon when Diablo Immortal was announced where "What? You guys don't have phones?" was the most absolute tone deaf response to the growing backlash that the game wasn't going to be on PC on release.
exactly that. surprised that our host didn’t remember this tone-deaf answer from Blizzard
He likely has bias that everyone already knows that. And he's covering story without being late to cover the story, which didn't happen in a while. So this one got rushed out.
@@Enoril31 probably he just erased it from their mind. Its probably the best thing you can do
the key word is " we'll keep you updated on future plans" they will come up with some features locked behind the subscription or something like that. Sony hasn't given up they just regrouping. It ain't over yet.
Maybe crossplay would require a PSN account or something, if they do try something along these lines again. At least then PC users could still play with other PC users, and PlayStation users can play with both other PlayStation users and those on PC who do choose to create a PSN account.
@@NukeshotMediaI personally would not be mad if that was what they did, because at that point it at least makes sense.
@@NukeshotMedia that would be up to the Playstation guys to complain about losing their friends list. We have already told soyny not to mess with PC players. I would hate to lose all those PS5 guys but I don't control their platform.
@@Dallows65 that's also how Microsoft does it with Minecraft I think. If people think making a PSN account on PC is a crazy concept, PlayStation users have to make a Microsoft account for Minecraft lol
Sony does not OWN AH and they cannot control what the company does. Sony is only their distributor. They have no say over what they do with their game.
It’s genuinely wild seeing such unity from gamers here.
Not really if you're in the community. 2 billion bugs over 6 days, done in 12 hours. Helldivers will always fight together even against the Soyny trolls.
@@syko2164 We had some traitors, but they were quashed real fast.
If you played the game you'd know lol
It's a game about making small, personal efforts as contributions for a far larger effect. It was basically just another Major Order for the community.
I would call unity standing together. Everyone who got what they wanted just up and went home, leaving the 100+ countires that lost the game to fend for themselves. I'm sure they would have loved to experience some of this solidarity and "diving together" everyone talks about.
It's not that we won, it's that they couldn't legally go with it. Stealth changing TOS is a massive breach, and Illegal move that could've resulted in a lawsuit that would've snowballed into a massive investigation that would've
"exposed" other illegal acts the company has done not only videogame-wise, but the company as a whole. So even tho we looked like we won, in reality, after getting caught, they couldn't afford to risk it.
Still, good job helldivers.
At this point there needs to be consumer protection laws against this kind of shit. They were all too happy to take payment from players in regions where they knew damned well they didn't have Playstation Network services legally available. They fully expected them to eat the full price for a game they could no longer play, and have everyone else just go along with it.
Pretty much me until they caved.
There was consumer protection. Its called Steam.
Tbh, this saga was also a great advertisement for Valve.
I mean we do in Europe.
seems like they learned i mean my account is still linked because i want crossplay and had a PlayStation account from my days on PS4 but i def dont think it should be required
This would have also be an easy lawsuit win in the US for the players too.
To quote a friend of mine "I'll change it back after the next Sony earnings call on the 14th."
> Picks a fight with a multi-billion dollar corporation.
> Wins.
The truely stupid thing that Sony is clueless about with breaking into the PC market is that if they just leave us alone, we will just endlessly print money for them. Seriously. They dont need to force PC players onto PSN in order for us to make them money. Any potential money Sony would lose by not having PC players on PSN would be completely overshadowed by the sheer amount of money we'd be spending in their games.
Yeah, and if they really want the account linking, just make it optional and provide some unique achievements for that. I bet nobody would complain that 😕
It’s not a win until 100+ countries are relished on steam.
Yeah. We'll see. If they don't, the reviews are gonna tank once again.
It's also not a win when 250k review bombs bomb this game after getting refunds and pushing others to do the same and now think they are walking W's. You know, since SONY DID THIS NOT ARROWHEAD. If this is you. Your no helldiver.
@@LazyEyePolitics The devs literally told us to. The community is in the process of reversing them. Not all will be, but a majority will likely be taken off.
@@LazyEyePolitics Given how some of the community managers behaved, the reviews deserve to remain at least a bit harmed.
Good.
I wish other communities had the cajones to pull this off to make their games better, let Helldivers be the example!
*cojones 🥸
❤🇵🇷
At first I was thinking, It doesnt take a lot of bravery to leave a bad rewiev but. it hurts. And to refund a game you love is a bloody heartbreak. Proud of Arrowhead and the community
@@joshsigned2500balls*
fun fact: "cajones" means "drawers" in spanish, you could also roughly translate it to "big boxes"
That was literal for Democracy, boys 👌
We seriously need new privacy laws to protect and give us ownership over our "data, and information". If its that valuable to these companies, we should be compensated for it and not obligated to take part. And If your information is stolen or leaked you should get further compensation, not just an email saying you should change your password.
Yup buying a video game should not require selling your soul, privacy, speech, behaviour and opinions to a corporation to meet their greedy, self-serving TOS.
Technically those are guaranteed under EU privacy Laws, but the ToS that these companies use are in a legal grey area and they kinda make you choose between playing and your Data.
@@itskyansaro Oh the pecking order goes Laws > ToS.
So, even if you sign a Tos you can still start a lawsuit if they do something that goes against the trading laws.
Just ask Blizzard and their support employee that told Australia they wouldn't refund a certain game, due to Tos.
Despite them having signed Asutralia's trading law agreements.
It did not get pretty for Blizzard.
Not out of the woods, yet, we need to make sure that they restore the game to steam in the countries they pulled it from
*Total War - Warhammer III* had a similar backlash when they under-delivered and overcharged for the _Shadows of Change_ DLC. They went from very positive to "Overwhelmingly negative" steam reviews within a few days. Since then CA games has listened to the fan base, fixed a bunch of bugs they had been ignoring, and restructured their DLC pricing with the new _Thrones of Decay._ Now their reviews are back up to very positive, and they rocked their numbers with the new content numbers as well.
Now for all the journalists posting anti consumer articles how this will "set a bad precedent" encouraging "entitlement in gamers" or similar bullshit. Just like they did with Mass Effect 3, sonic movie, etc.
Alongside the Playstation fanboys who defend Sony with more vitriol and hate than the Pinkertons.
@Hellwalker3581 you think your comments make you look any better than the group you look to generalize?
@@chrisj320ac3 yeah because he isn't shilling for a company
I think this is an AMAZING precedent and is the first step towards holding companies accountable so as to avoid allowing them to further exploit the consumers.
This event alone will not change anything in the grand scheme of things. But I believe it will be key in resolving future transgressions.
The journalists will go and call us "entitled gamers", but I say these corporations have been "entitled" for far too long.
There are many reasons why indie developers succeed so often where AAA companies fail these days. And it is certainly NOT because of "entitled gamers".
Who reads their shit other than the UA-camrs who farm it for content?
For reals though:
- I had no idea PSN was mandatory when I bought the game in the first place.
- I had no problems when it comes to signing-in to a PSN account, the real problem starts when my region is not listed in the sign-up.
- Was furious when Sony announced that a PSN account was mandatory to play the game, in a region where PSN does not have the option for in sign-up.
- For "security" reasons they say, which many people point out that was a lie where data breaches were very common, people had no trust in signing into a PSN account.
- Had a dilemma if I want to refund the game or not, without the full confidence of ever fully getting a refund where I have invested into the game with time(194hrs) and in-game purchases(30$ or 2kPHP) to ever come back. Plus, not everyone was also getting refunded over 10 times.
- Steam then ended up removing sales access to the regions without PSN for lawsuit reasons.
- I was a hard fought victory through review bombing over PSN.
- Everything went to normal, but the battle is still not yet over, because there are still some regions, who do not have the sales access to buy HD2.
- Players from the restricted regions who have already bought the game can still play no problem, I am in the Philippines for example, can still play the game, but can't seem to find the buy button in the store page, and it speaks in SteamDB that other regions have not yet been reverted from sales.
- For now, all I could do is just wait, still leaving a negative review until everything went back to normal.
- For the time being, we've won, and it was epic.
FOR DEMOCRACY!
See thats the problem. You didn't know. They put disclaimers on the store page that are highly visible so people CAN know. Gamers asked for it to be there. Its up to you to read 1 very visible sentence. Like, thats not at all unreasonable for someone to check crucial info on a purchase they are making.
@Damaged7 If you sell a product knowing it doesn't work, then you can't just get away with it by telling people it won't work before they buy. Those people are entitled to a refund by consumer protection laws.
Steam inadvertently caused a win here, Arrowhead removing psn requirements on day one caused the game to be open to the broader market, and with the huge ammount of players outside of psn leading to the mess we have, caused Sony to fold. Without the potential fallout of scaming the steam community I don't think this would have gone this way once Sony came to collect. There is talk that Sony titles going forward will still requre psn going forward, but Helldivers may have just pulled off a miracle of circumstance.
Yep, Sony/Valve not limiting sales to PSN-friendly countries from the get-go was the "small port large enough for a proton torpedo" that doomed them. They seemed to forget all about it while pouring champagne over how many sales they were pulling.
Probably won't make that mistake next time.
Arrowhead didn't cause anything - people are missing the fact that Sony shouldn't be selling it regardless of whether the PSN - Steam link exists or not. Arrowhead only disabled the requirement internally in the game, so the check can be skipped.
You shouldn't be able to buy a game just to discover that it requires PSN - it is against the law which is why Steam took action.
Sony also cannot require it in the future either, at least the people in the EU who bought it before the geoblock have the right to play it how it was sold to them. Or they can issue mass refunds on their own, which I don't think Sony will do.
Steam users need to boycott SPSN games...even if its Ghosts of Tsushima...they don't get to funnel us into their garden just because they made a game they want to sell on Steam...we have the money we have the power
That's the thing, PSN requirement was always going to hurt the game and its developer, artificially restricting it's reach based on PSN availability
Sony effectively sabotaged them
I wish more people talked about this.
Not everyone who bought hd2 got it from steam. I got it from humble bundle. All it says there is that you require a steam account. Sony is only mentioned as the publisher.
This is to everyone who says "everyone always knew". I never even seen the steam page. Others haven't as well. The game has been out for three months. More than enough time for sony to get everyone who sells their game on brand
Showing corpos that players have the power, remember this with every other game dudes. You have the power, not them.
Tell that to cod
As mentioned on the official discord Sony’s decision was 100% based on legalities surrounding the unsupported countries, and absolutely nothing to do with the negative reviews, or PC player feedback.
I think they painted themselves in the corner by screwing the region locks. Then didnt have much "good" options (for them).
Yes so really what won the fight was the people in the 100+ countries that lost the game. The people who were not the headline of this situation. Then, when everyone got their PSN issue sorted, they abandoned the real victims to claim they won the battle while the real victims are still fighting.
You don't get much more delusional then that.
@@Damaged7 that’s on steam at this point
Here's the thing we didn't win much. It was a small battle... where the F was everyone when pay to win is being added to games, or over monetization... I swear gamers are stupid.
I'm on PlayStation and I still way trying to do what I could to impact this decision. My review doesn't really help but I was trying to spread this as much as I could! Thats the beauty of this community. We are all helldivers. It doesn't matter what you play on! We are a team!
What still don't get, among all of these, is seeing people actually complaining that "PC Gamers are whiners because they don't want to link an account" - like, all of the reasons were explained through and through but some people still actually defend Sony saying that people just want to complain. I don't get it - if it doesn't affect you in any way, shape or form, why do they keep arguiing with people that ACTUALLY want/need this? Why do you push people to get quiet if the community is actively raising their voice to show their displease, and it worked?
its not over yet. its still restricted for sale on steam for over half the world
Give it a day or 2
That's probably going to take a few days to get fixed. Steam had to restrict the access immediately because what Sony did was pretty illegal and they sold it through Steam. Steam really got the short end of the stick here dealing with Sony's crap.
Way better that they restricted the game immediately for the customers safety. It's not a huge issue.
@@whoahanantidk what authority you have but I believe you
@@joshsigned2500 its based on the idea that if sony did always plan on making a psn account mandatory and not optional why were they selling it through steam in nations and territories where you simply can't legally make/use a psn account. That is questionable and some lawyers have said potentially illegal and atleast in any of these places odds are both steam as provider of the sale and sony the seller could be sued if they don't give out refunds.
This is really a clear case of people at the top of a business not having much clue about how a lot of that works because if they had simply communicated internally better and restricted the sale to only places where pns accounts can legally be made that potential legal issue would have existed, but odds are some of the execs that made this move didn't even know about their own companies restrictions on making a psn account.
@@joshsigned2500 because selling a product across the world then revoking the product from multiple countries because you don't offer your services there is pretty illegal lol.
Sony and Steam could have had major lawsuits coming their way but luckily Steam began refunding everyone and immediately pulled the game out of multiple countries so no one could buy it and see they can't even play it because of lack of Sony's services.
Sony is in charge of telling Steam what countries they wanted it sold in. So they knew what countries they can't sell to and still sold there anyways basically.
"How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man?"
I am certain the change ONLY came because Valve stopped selling the game in non-PSN countries and started issuing mass refunds in those regions. ONLY when Sony was faced with having to pay out all those refunds and hemmorage CASH did they change their mind.
Thank Valve for putting the boot to Sony's ass.
We served them up a steaming hot cup of liber-tea!
DO NOT CHANGE YOUR REVIEWS UNTIL THEY REMOVE THE PSN LINK REQUIREMENT FROM THE STORE PAGE.
WE WON THE BATTLE BUT THE WAR STILL GOES ON.
That's not the reason people shouldn't change their reviews. The REAL reason should be until they lift restrictions on the 170 countries Steam banned Helldivers 2 from.
You aren’t gonna win the battle of not creating a psn account. That’s standard with major publishers. Cdpr. Microsoft. Ea. Ubisoft. Etc
The funniest thing is that if Sony instead decided to leave it optional but add a reward for doing it and give steps for how. That would have gotten a grouchy reaction but many people would just do it.
“It was the f*ck-aroundest of times, it was the find-outest of times.”
~Charles Dickens, maybe
The enemy has been defeated! GOOD JOB HELLDIVERS! FOR SUPER EARTH! FOR DEMOCRACY!
They have been delayed. This is not a victory for the war but only a successful campaign. You're merely forcing Sony to rethink, regroup, and retry, the same again at a later date. Stay vigilant.
@@Lyvarious They aren't going to retry. They literally watched their currently most popular game by far go from over 80% to 30% in 3 days. Not to mention they were going to lose thousands upon thousands of players that weren't able to sign up for PSN.
@@godlygamer911 Weird that Sony aren't putting the game back for countries that can't have a PSN account. It's almost like Sony are just waiting.
the fact that Sony changed their FAQ which originally stated that it would be optional, and changed it to sometimes it will be mandatory, is appalling.
So one thing about your comment, I’m fairly sure. Steam was the one who removed access to the sales because steam was not going to sell a game that was not accessible in those countries.
Keep in mind, it was *not* just what the gamers did alone.
Part of what happened included Steam, and the laws of many countries around the world. Steam itself was doing refunds to those living in regions that made their purchases null and void. Think Steam was going to take that as a loss without complaint? Sony was about to enter a legal battle that they would not win, regardless of the monies spent on lawyers. And when "bait and switch" violations in so many countries would have all that data and evidence supplied by an existing legal opponent, they accepted the uno reverse. For now. But not for long, and I think anyone with half a brain cell knows that.
Sony messed up. They made a move and were terrified of the result. Arrowhead's mistake was owned up to... But Sony?
No... Sony simply got caught with their hand in the cookie jar, by a community that was both large and by nature organised independently, beyond game mechanics.
What is to stop them from doing this to other, smaller, less organised dev studios and communities? They want your data. They need it to impress investors with numbers, and sell to marketing companies for side profit. Think they won't be trying for it in other ways? On other games?
Don't be naive.
Sony is scum. Owning up is NOT "oh dear I'm sorry I got caught" ...and their methods will not change. Believe them at your continuing moronic fanboi peril.
Dev studios that get in bed with the worst companies in gaming should also take note. Begging for money doesn't mean selling your soul.
Sony owns the Helldivers IP. So either Arrowhead developed HD2 or do some other title, which would likely tank and bankrupt the studio.
Everything is not a concpiracy... Do you know how a big corp work?
Sony is marshalling their lawyers and figuring out how to implement things like this in a way that can't be easily struck down in court vs National Governments. They'll keep pushing to rake in that sweet PC player pool and gather any and all data they are legally allowed to "to improve the customer experience".
Same as it ever was.
@@mkaleborn data is the new oil... Every big company needs it now... If people think sony will let all that data go to waste then pc gamers are not that smart. The reason this whole thing became a shit show with pc mob... Is because of some technical reason arrowhead asked sony to delay the psn link mandate... That was a big misstake. I think if people are scared for their data.. dont but games from big publishers... Ever.
@@pse2020 Sony asks for either our actual government issue ID, or our face. The data they wish to sell to people (the same data they lose to others each time their security fails) is beyond what PC gamers are willing to give them for their $40-70 purchases.
They are unreliable.
The *only* people they give a shit about are themselves.
Interestingly enough, now that they are in the larger market they are realizing that PC gamers are better educated in their hobby than those only willing to invest the small amounts the very insulated console ecosystem does.
So yes, Sony will still be pushing for that data. But PC gamers are also aware that they hold the actual choice in their hands. And are unwilling to give up what Sony wants. Not the data, and not the money.
*We were willing to walk away from a game we love for principle.*
And now everyone realizes that. The gamers, *and* the various corporations involved.
If I knew that a PSN account was needed for helldivers I would have refunded within the 2 hour window
I'm surprised you didnt mention this but the fact that PSN was intended to be required from the start, and Sony still put the game on sale for countries that banned PSN is almost criminal.
As a former Brand Ambassador for Sony, I can tell you first-hand that the most frustrating thing about Sony is its uncanny ability to do the most stupid and counter-productive thing at the most crucial moment.
If they're saying "we still don't quite know what our PC audience wants", then I'm going to make them a very real and earnest application to be their PC porting and launch lead. If I can tell them this was a bad idea and whoever they're currently paying didn't know that, then I'm better qualified.
I knew Helldiver's was successful but the 7th highest grossing Sony game of all time, after only one quarter? That's pretty wild numbers. No wonder why Sony caved.
Insane launch. First Sony release to sell under 50% of all sales on PlayStation. Probably first day and date PC and console for them as well.
@marciusnhasty which makes no damn sense they tried to kill their golden goose right away... the one who decided that crap must be playing 4D chess to decided that
Probs for Pilestedt for sitting in the trenches with us through this instead of hiding behind CMs and other employees, letting them take the flak.
The sad part is that the Sony shareholders' takeaway from this won't be "people don't like PSN and other added hoops to jump through." It will be "PC players are too difficult to deal with and need to be treated with a gentle hand so they don't notice the changes." I doubt any meaningful change will come from this long term.
Ghosts of Tsushima going to require it though? You know in a few weeks with a patch like SONY likes to do? Don’t trust the devs. Really don’t trust that SONY won’t pull that even for single player.
Sucker Punch themselves tweeted that the singleplayer will not require a linked PSN account, but you will need to link it to play the multiplayer mode.
Remember Windows Live! ?
A few games required us to have both Live and Steam active before playing.
Well it worked wonderfully because i don't even remember it lmao...
Oh, I remember. I fucking remember.
I also remember the clusterfuck that it caused when they shut it down.
@@furrymessiah Yup, companies rushed to get that GFWL crap out of their games before their games became inert. Capcom was close to the last dev who had to get GFWL out of Resident Evil 5.
Microsoft was totally willing to let GFWL expire and leave all the GFWL games on Steam unusable after the cut-off date.
And it sucked so damn much
Some of those games you can no longer legally access because of the DRM
I remember having to pirate RE5 even though I legally "owned" it
I believe the most important thing this entire episode has shown is how big/worldwide and well-supported Steam is over PSN. Steam is one of the few places where customers feel their voices are heard and having Sony respond just reinforces this.
I think you missed the "funny" part, that when you bought Helldivers 2 via Sony Store and you scrolled down to the FAQs, it would tell you that you wouldn't need a PSN account to play games.
I'm actually really impressed that you acknowledge how easy it is to ignore the little 3rd-party warnings on the steam page.
Corporate Bootlickers have been doing nothing but pointing at it and calling us stupid, but the simple fact is that really absolutely NOBODY pays attention to that shit, or reads the ToS for anything anymore.
It's actually crazy that a leisure hobby like a video game even NEEDS a whole "terms of service" contract and even crazier that companies KNOW you're not going to read it and are OKAY with this.
When I go out to the library and buy a book, there aren't 5 pages at the backend with a terms-of-service for purchasing and reading the book. When I buy a Transformer and shake the box a little contract doesn't slide out with the instruction manual.
We all know, to some level, that the ToS shit that comes with our video games ONLY exists for lawyers in a courtroom. It doesn't actually exist for US to read, which is why companies do genuinely FUCK-ALL to ensure that you read it.
ToS and Eulas aren't legally binding which is why no one reads them...if they were...no one would buy a game with them. The law already protects issues with trademark/copyright/distribution etc...
Fundamentally none of this would have happened if they hadn't disabled it in the first place to help the choking servers at launch.
People banded together, yes, but only circumstantially thanks to a technical glitch. Nobody would have been upset (or at least this uprising wouldn't have taken place) if it had just always stayed PSN locked from the beginning.
We need to reject these practices more broadly.
The CM's really put petrol on the fire with this one. Considering their past comments its clear that they're not on the side of the community, which really spiralled this whole situation out of control. Kudos to the CEO for doing his job and theirs for them.
I'm glad you're one of the few channels to acknowledge that Arrowhead is JUST as much to blame for this fiasco as Sony but Sony is getting 100% of the blame. Here's another quote from Johan
Pilestedt
"Thank you for the civil questions.
We signed HD2 8 years ago. It doesn't specify details such as account linking.
There are always requirements from Publishers during development. This was one of them.
We did discuss it and it was deemed as important for PS to have it for an online title. And it was implemented a couple of months before release.
When servers exploded on launch, quick decisions had to be made, such as turning off linking and Galactic war stats to be able to take the load off servers.
We couldn't enable it again because of the risk to explode the servers again (and remember the negative feedback around that)
And now, finally, the requirement to reenable came from PS (to help with moderation) - and we had to comply even though there were concerns there would be backlash.
There was backlash.
And now we're talking about it again."
5:44 PM · May 5, 2024
they still haven't changed the helldiver 2 steam store page, it still has "Requires 3rd-Party Account: PlayStation Network (Supports Linking to Steam Account)" and the 126 countries that don't have access to PSN still can't buy the game again on steam
Steam will not change this until new/updated contracts and lability is sorted, Gabe for the win.
The fact that Valve had to step in and cut sony's losses by preventing further damage is unreal
We'll truly miss Gabe when he's gone
They unfortunately can't just snap their fingers and fix it overnight like a smaller 10 person studio could.
Contracts to draw up, updates to tos and eula need to be vetted, steam needs to process the requests, it'll take a little while to fix.
@@steeltownweb well, my review stays until the change takes effect
Actions not words
All for Democracy!
You can't have a player base based on absolute democracy and freedom and not expect them to fight for their game
The only reason Spitz took such a public and VISIBLE stand against Sony is to keep his job after he killed all trust the majority of the community had for the community managers.
Not going to change my review till they bring the counties they sold the game to back. I want to know they can’t back track once the fire dies down.
Yeah I'm a little disappointed most bigger fish in the space haven't realized this, I expect most people to not get the nuance and that's fine but like the helldiver fan pages and content creators should really know this and not call it a win too early
That is 270.000 potential malicious business practice complains as Arrowhead said they knew before launch it was the plan. Sony got caught attempting to change that it is required after the fact. Steam not listing it as requirement at the time of sale. There is good chance they did not told Steam about it at all. It got soo big that non gaming media reported on it. At that point its not just PR disaster there was a serious risk attracting attention of ppl they could not ignore such as regulatory bodies or customer rights authorities.
One hell of a ride boys!
1.Sony's (changed after the sale)FAQ supersedes Steam's & AH's
2.AH sold the game in countries without PSN (177 to be precise)
3.AH CEO new 6 months before the release that PSN will be required
4.The game had a SKIP button
5.Sony've tried to add PSN link after the sale was finished
6.Ukraine and similar countries must own PS5 to create a PSN link
7.VPN is not supported by Sony. China accounts are banned because of that
8.If PSN link is created to another region some of them like UK want ID or Photo
9.Steam allowed money refund after the 2 hour period
That sentence that Sony wrote of "still learning what's best for PC players" tells me that they WILL keep enforcing it in future games and just cut their hubris with Helldivers 2. Let's see what happens with Ghost of Tsushima, I'll keep my popcorn ready, just in case.
If he is being truthful the "Almost" part was likely basically telling customers to go touch grass. He was absolutely trash to the very community he is supposed to help foster several times in the beginning. The actual DEVs and team seem good(CEO owns up and seemed sympathetic from the first), but some of Arrowhead's community people not so much.
The CMs were extremely antagonistic, rude, and condescending, not caring about the customers or our plight. Spitz first response to the problem was "it takes 120 seconds to sign up for a free thing, little maggot! Just go do it, it's no big deal, peasant!" then Misty straight up said the entire point of the mandatory PSN link was to ban players for anything they deemed "toxic" or "problematic". He got punished FAST, completely erasing and deleting his Twitter account for letting the cat out of the bag.
Then there's the other CM who falsely accused Grummz of multiple "assaults" while working at Blizzard (entirely UNTRUE) and now is personally banning ANYONE on the Discord if they defend Grummz or corrects the CM.
All the CM's, including Spitz, should be fired for their extremely poor behavior towards their customers and fans. Johan the CEO has been the only good guy in this whole fiasco, extremely kind, polite, loving, and genuine towards the fans..
Am I the only thinking the "What? Dont you guys have Phones" is a jab at the Diablo Immoral announcement, since it got booed by the crowd, and not an actual a hint at how to link?
Yeah, quite surprised that he didn't pick up there reference
We got it Helldiver ;)
It'a definitely that
Great recap of the situation. Thank you!
While I agree with bellular that on the steam page it said that psn accounts were required. You could skip this in game, and on Sonys website they said the opposite which was that psn accounts are not required. The Sony website imo trumps the steam page details.
I don't know if it's a difference of opinion but it's odd that in two videos now the failing listed is never "Properly communicated to purchasers the PSN requirement". They even had the chance with the linking page in-game to say it would be a hard requirement so that it was in the game and would be harder to say you missed, but they never did.
The bit about player safety and moderation is also complete nonsense. There is no reason for a player using PC to have to link their account so that Sony can moderate a game, you can be banned from the game with Steam just as well.
Giving the devs a lighter slap here also doesn't sit right. They had to sign Sony on as the publisher and so they either gave explicitly (as in, stated in plain english in the contract) the ability to enforce PSN linking, or gave it implicitly by signing something vague enough to give quite a lot of influence over the game. Both of those feel like red flags that at a minimum should have been addressed better in the marketing and early gameplay experience levels to mitigate damage.
The Steam page still as of writing this comment lists the PSN link as a requirement. Sony only said they won't be going through with the particular update that would enforce this, not that they would never try again (or do something else sly to try and get the same result). Until it's removed from the store page and we get an official update from the devs, or until May 30th passes and we see if it truly was gone back on, I'll have to ask; Did we actually win though?
The linking page in game did say it was required. But it also let you skip, which made it confusing.
@@steeltownweb Fair enough, I can't confirm and once you get the gist of the page and see skip nobody really reads it in detail, so I accept I may have missed that.
I'm not sure you understand how publisher-developer relationships work. Yes the publisher has the power to do whatever they want with the game. This is 100% standard. They pay for it, they get the final say on everything. This is not Arrowhead's fault, this is just how the industry works... if you do something the publisher doesn't like, they can stop paying you and refuse to publish the game, they also usually own the IP at that point, so you the only choice you have is to walk away from the project. They usually don't refuse to publish the game though, they usually just give the project to another developer. This has been done multiple times in gaming history.
There are small indie publishers who are much more hands off, but if you get in bed with the majors, they own your soul.
None of this is GOOD, but it IS how it works. If you don't want to play by those rules then you need to find some other way to fund your development team for the 3-4 (or 7 in this case) years to develop your game.
Devs have no bargaining position here, except in the extremely rare situation where they have the financials to become their own publisher. And we've seen with Paradox how that usually goes.
So, yes, Arrowhead could have decided to have not gone with Sony as publisher, or anyone else with similar powers of control. In that world, the game wouldn't have got made in the first place.
@@Ylyrra Well I'm glad you got to my point in the end lol. Yes, I understood all of that and that's a decision for the devs to make. I'm not sure I would have gone the same way.
Publishers also aren't a requirement. Sony having the rights to the Helldivers IP long before this is unfortunate, and perhaps also the result of a poor choice. Hopefully more devs in the future choose to either not go with a publisher or find better ones.
The way I see it if the Helldivers IP died it would be with Sony, not Arrowhead.
@@Boredom_Incarnate "Publishers also aren't a requirement."???
Do you think developers give up a huge slice of the profits and the IP of their hard work just for the fun of it?
Publishers not being necessary is true only in the strictest technical sense in limited circumstances.
For the vast majority of cases publishers are a practical necessity, you can tell this because the vast majority of games have a publisher.
You don't bring in a middle-man unless you need to, the fact that nearly everyone does kinda heavily proves the fact that most people need to.
Are you guys going to talk about the KSP 2 studio being sacked?
Major Order Completed!
6:00 I'm pretty sure the massive drop in player numbers didn't have time to happen since the PSN lookout wasn't slated to happen for a full month. I think many that couldn't get a refund would still play until the lockout happened to try and get some more value out of their purchase, and then drop it.
How thin are the margins on games these days? It wasn't that long ago protests like these were seen as pointless because corporations were willing to take the short term L for long term apathy/profit. Just be careful that they don't just implement this without warning.
Considering gaming companies are now having a very tough time competing for investor's money, probably quite small now.
helldivers 2 is not a full priced game it also has a way to earn the premium currency so i would say while its making good money nothing on something like GTA or fortnite
my friend gifted me it and i spent 20 upgrading to the super citizen and another 10 for a warbond my friend who gifted it also bought it and upgraded to the super citizen and may have spent more so in a way they are still making good money
Its interesting. It is a perfect case study of how Worker Unions work. You get together, make your voices heard, and make it heard until the employer changes the things you are screaming about. Many should take this as a learning on why joining the Unions even if they cost a little tiny bit, is worth it. Power and change is only achived in Numbers.
^ This is a sweet perspective to have but I don't think it's what it reflect. I think if anything it also reflects the consumers have more power than the executives, if you don't like something let them know and let them know it on mass with your reviews, with your wallets.
@@AdamAnouer Collective action is still collective action, whether it's pulling the levers with money as consumers, striking as union members, suing as a class action, or with pitchforks as a rebellion. It's all the same principle.
And yet, I imagine Valve banning the sale of the game in 177 countries and offering refunds in those countries probably weighed more on this decision than the review bomb.
Crossplay was already enabled and games like Warframe don't require it either. The simple reason is Sony wanted line go up for PSN accounts at the shareholder meeting and it blew up like a grenade in their face.
This is one of my favorites. It coulda been 5 videos but we got it all in one. A true value indeed.
I was also going to mention games for windows live. What a stupid thing. There are still some games that are hard to play in the modern day because of that garbage.
The craziest thing is that they didn't just do the "hey link to a PSN and get a free skin or whatever" thing. Bribes are effective!
The players who were allowed to buy a game that worked until it didn't in 177 countries couldn't be bribed with that though. Some of those countries were EU countries which meant the EU consumer laws were going to come into play. Refunds were the least of their worries next to potential EU fines.
@@Turamwdd I meant as a replacement for everything they did.
There was no need to make PSN mandatory when they could easily have bribed people on to it instead. If they had done that none of the other things afterwards would have occurred which means it wouldn't have been pulled from anywhere.
I’ve been watching for a while, but this sober and non-inflammatory take convinced me that you really do deserve a sub. Good coverage.
It wasn't Sony that removed the game from PSN region locked countries but Valve. I think they were trying to damage control to avoid being sued.
Waiting for the rollback on the blocked countries due to the PSN requirement and Steam to change the purchase page. Right now, I'm a little too paranoid of Sony to take a simple Twitter post as fact.
Roll back needs to be complete to where it was before they decided to play their fuck fuck corpo games. Then I will change my review and start to believe they truly saw the error of their ways.
I honestly think here that there was no failing on Arrowhead side. Sony pushed the PSN requirement to them and this is how they rebelled.
First they pushed it away, then hid it and when sony forced them, they dropped it like a sledgehammer to create player outrage. They then used that outrage to make sony backoff.
I dont see any other way to play this better to stop the PSN requirement.
Sony is also putting in a patent to have AI listen to your voice so it can moderate you if you sound angry or annoyed
I’ll rejoice when I see players do the same and get the same results with the next Ubisoft horror show. Until then, it’s just a glitch, the PC audience is not generally engaged. How many third party launcher accounts do people have without any complaint?
Also, it’s miserable that Steam took the great step to put out a bunch of notices in gold to warn people, and most just ignore it. At this point, is there any way left to get players to make informed purchases?
I like how you're comparing ubisoft, which is vastly more accessible to PSN that isn't available in 170ish countries
Probably because that gold notice barely ever matters. It's not consistent.
Even when the game is on a platform owned by the publisher of the game, they tend to allow you to just ignore it, like dunno minecraft legends oddly enough.
People got conditioned to think 3rd party account requirements, are not for just playing the game and having access to the game at all, but for additional bonuses and perks, or as an opt-in for someone to gather data from you for zero benefit but hey they at least tell you or whatever. And even AH CEO admitted they haven't communicated it well at all since it was soon after launch fully optional and a lot of people bought it since then unaware it genuinely was a requirement to play at all and that it was completely fine to skip for *three bloody months* was just temporary.
And PC players generally, hate the everloving guts out of the other triple A publishers and companies. Origins and Uplay are regarded as the *worst* storefronts and platforms on PC. Battlefront 2 pretty much died because of the backlash towards it's lootboxes getting attention of governments in europe, the one thing thatcan cause some problems to publishers cuz in US they're technically doing everything legally while fucking over consumers, while Ubisoft is laughing stock with it's own games lately, especially skull and bones the "quadruple A" standard game that was godawful.
And oh yeah Ubisoft in EU has threat of getting legally gagglefucked by governments because of the The Crew fuckery they did. There's a movement for it that should be looked into and helped, stop killing games you triple A bastards.
Bethesda with Fallout 76, they're Bugthesda for a reason and hoo boy was 76 filled with bugs, all while having really pathetic, overpriced microtransactions off to the side with some pay 2 win mechanics involved with repair kits and whatnot and general changes to the game made to encourage people to spend more money on the game they initially on release paid full price for but I guess later it was effectively free while the game was being tacked onto other products for free. Game faded out and was irrelevant even after changes that made it better and only reason it got taken out of the grave is because of the fallout tv show spiking general public's interest with fallout as a whole again.
Rockstar had their own fair share of hate thanks to them fucking over modders for red dead and gta, for the absolutely horrendous gta remasters with the login requirement for a *singleplayer game* adding fuel to the fire that fizzled out too early.
Nintendo with their power of japanese copyright lawyers striking everything and anything that wasn't made by them.
Activision Blizzard is also a laughing stock both because of their games lately being astonishingly horrid like Overwatch Too, MWIII rawmastered "dlc disguised as a full priced game" edition, diablo 4 and immortal, as well as real world controversies with their female employees having a rough as hell time and Bobby my beloathed may he burn in hell where he belongs.
Even Valve gets flak. For one because of Steam being a monopoly, mostly because it's competition sucks massive, gargantuan balls at doing anything right for the consumers only really chasing the spot of being a monopoly of Steam with exclusive and nothing more. And two just, not communicating at all with fans of their games, specifically TF2 having a hell of a time playing mann versus machine 2 aimbots and idlers edition with CS2 being a dumpster fire just like overwatch 2.
There is a lot, a metric _fuck-ton_ of hate towards those companies, but until HD2 it never blew up to this extent probably because the communiy of the game was coordinated in their efforts out of love to the game. "It's the thing the game trained us to do" is honestly pretty real.
I _hope_ it makes people look over those other companies as well and what they do, and cause some backlash to them as well.
@@nameless_stranger Gamers aren't exactly the brightest bulbs on the planet LMAO!
Providing a warning then not enforcing it means the warning isn't true. The fact that Song reserved the right to enforce it in the future just doesn't hold much weight. Consumers relied on the fact that it wasn't necessary and Sony let them. By enforcing the provision several months later, they have altered the contract (consumer relied on what actually happened vs what was told might happen). Sony must allow consumers a right to get out of this (refund).
"You don't have to understand managed democracy to spread mananged democracy" - Helldiver
you have to scroll down to see the requirement, its not visible at the top of the page w the buy button, so people legitimately couldve bought the game w.o knowing that. Also, AH/Sony knew this was planned, so why didnt they restrict ineligible countries from the start?
they also claimed it was it the trailers but they cant guarantee everyone sees the trailers, in fact all they can guarantee is the first section of the steam page (which as mentioned, omits the notice of requirement)
Some gamedevs already adressed the issue of the PSN moderation tools. Its just SONY being lazy and NOT assigning a PSN QUEST accounts (only for internal use for the moderation tool) that linked steam ID to it. When a player links a real PSN account it then replaces that PSN quest account in the system after having the guest PSN history transfered to it.
It will be interesting to see if the change sticks. "We are still learning what is best for PC players" is what you'd say to a frog that's complaining that the water is getting a little too hot, too fast, while graciously agreeing to stop turning up the heat. They also only committed to spiking the specific update that would have imposed the requirement; they said nothing about the future on any time horizon beyond that.
I'd assume that they wouldn't be dumb enough to just defer it a month and call it good; but committing only to something very narrow and specific is certainly a choice that keeps their options open.
Sony realized their anticonsumerism doesn't work on PC like it does on the Paystation.
Just need to revert the stellar blade changes now
"What? You guys don't have phones?" Was Pilestadt referencing an infamous announcement for a mobile Diablo title that got boos from the audience.
CMs of arrowhead acted the worst they could, all of them.... this also didn't help the situation
It's actually kinda crazy how much impact reviews can have. Any other platform the reviews would be turned off, censored or whatever.
Saw an image somewhere as well where their stock took a nice big dip, which likely contributed to their reversal on the requirement.
Damn, Thank you for sticking your neck out Spitz. Good man