Sony Helldivers 2 announced for PS5/PC! - update (05/06): Managed Democracy restored!

[silentbob]

Well maybe Halo Infinite will see a jump in players as a group of programmers have used the forged tools to create their own version of the game. They seem like they’ll be ready to go in June and might become an official playset. Free online multiplayer game for everyone and Microsoft cashes in on the offered skins in their store. Be pretty funny if it happens and people jump ship to play elsewhere PC wise. 

 

 

[Paperclyp]

Holy shit this is a colossal disaster at this point. Sony needs to take the L, apologize and pray they didn’t ruin too much good faith moving forward. 

[Brian]

1 hour ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

The major mistake was on Sony's part in allowing the game to be sold on Steam in those restricted territiories to begin with in the full knowledge that the PSN integration would occur sooner or later.

 

Sony should have turned on the restriction flag on the Steamworks back end immediately once the game's Steam page went live.

Per CEO

Quote

I do have a part to play. I am not blameless in all of this - it was my decision to disable account linking at launch so that players could play the game. I did not ensure players were aware of the requirement and we didn't talk about it enough.
 

We knew for about 6 months before launch that it would be mandatory for online PS titles.

If all parties knew of this requirement, huge fuck up they allowed the game to be sold in those countries 

[skillzdadirecta]

48 minutes ago, Brian said:

Per CEO

If all parties knew of this requirement, huge fuck up they allowed the game to be sold in those countries 

Where is this original quote?

 

Edit, nevermind I found it

 

 

[Xbob42]

42 minutes ago, Brian said:

Per CEO

If all parties knew of this requirement, huge fuck up they allowed the game to be sold in those countries 

If the CEO knew of the requirement, why the fuck did they have no idea what people outside of available regions were supposed to do?

 

Further, instead of this insane nonsense, why didn't Sony just say "yeah regions with no PSN can just play" or, perhaps, "we've added these regions that we've neglected for decades for no real reason that Microsoft hits just fine." (Excluding a few that are blocked by government restrictions.)

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

The Sony restriction list goes so far beyond anything legally imposed by the US/EU/UK that it's insane.

 

It includes actual dependencies of the UK, France, the Netherlands, and Norway.

[Mercury33]

2 hours ago, Brian said:

Per CEO

If all parties knew of this requirement, huge fuck up they allowed the game to be sold in those countries 

No part of the CEO’s quote indicate he knew about the restrictions in those countries. Simply that he knew users were going to have to link to PSN down the road.

 

The Arrowhead CEO I think has done a great job trying to manage this as best he can. Sony has fucked everything 6 ways to Sunday. 

[JPDunks4]

The Arrowhead CEO said they had no control over anything sales related. 

 

Publisher decides where when and for what price the game gets sold at.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

What this entire debacle clearly indicates is that Sony/PSN is absolutely nowhere near ready to competently engage with GAAS as a global business priority.

[Keyser_Soze]

4 hours ago, silentbob said:

Well maybe Halo Infinite will see a jump in players as a group of programmers have used the forged tools to create their own version of the game. They seem like they’ll be ready to go in June and might become an official playset. Free online multiplayer game for everyone and Microsoft cashes in on the offered skins in their store. Be pretty funny if it happens and people jump ship to play elsewhere PC wise. 

 

 

This actually doesn't seem half bad. 🤔

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

From the Arrowhead Community Manager in the game's Discord server:

 

[Bacon]

58 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

GAAS

totally off topic but reading "GAAS" always makes this song pop into my head

 

[AbsolutSurgen]

You know who else requires 3rd party logins?  Microsoft, Rockstar, EA, Ubisoft

 

I hope this controversy gets Sony to make their PSN accounts less odious.  That's really the problem.

 

For 90% of the people winging, its mostly just winging.

[Jason]

19 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Because of the account linking, the game has been delisted from Steam in these countries:

 

 

The Holy See? Imagine getting teabagged by the Pope. 

[Brick]

Why isn't PSN available in all those regions? 

[Kal-El814]

2 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

You know who else requires 3rd party logins?  Microsoft, Rockstar, EA, Ubisoft

 

I hope this controversy gets Sony to make their PSN accounts less odious.  That's really the problem.

 

For 90% of the people winging, its mostly just winging.

 

Winging about this is totally fine at worst and probably for the good overall.

 

Strapping on new requirements after launch launch is almost always bad unless there's a compelling reason to do so. None exists here and the notion that this is for security on PSN of all things is not believable. Anti consumer bullshit should always be loudly called out for what it is 

 

If there's an actual reason for this beyond Sony wanting the number of PSN accounts to go up on a PowerPoint somewhere I'll be goddamned.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

1 hour ago, Brick said:

Why isn't PSN available in all those regions? 

 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

It probably has something to do with Sony's original region-locking procedures for physical software that got translated into the digital realm.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

30 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

Winging about this is totally fine at worst and probably for the good overall.

 

Strapping on new requirements after launch launch is almost always bad unless there's a compelling reason to do so. None exists here and the notion that this is for security on PSN of all things is not believable. Anti consumer bullshit should always be loudly called out for what it is 

 

If there's an actual reason for this beyond Sony wanting the number of PSN accounts to go up on a PowerPoint somewhere I'll be goddamned.

 

In what amounts to a paltry defense of Arrowhead and Sony, the necessity of linking the game to a PSN account has always been displayed on its Steam Store page.  Furthermore, the initial log-in screen for the game displays the PSN account link button with a "Skip" button due to the temporary disablement, so it's not like absolutely no notification was provided by either Arrowhead or Sony:

 

 

The overriding issue is that the game was allowed to be distributed in regions where it's simply not "legally" possible to create a local PSN account.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

[AbsolutSurgen]

The problem is PSN itself. 
 

the requirement to have a PSN account was always there, with a temporary exemption. 
 

The small amount of people who live in Russia or a Caribbean island have a valid reason to be upset/disappointed. 
 

Those living in countries supported by PSN come off as whiners. Being a whiner is never “good”. 

[Kal-El814]

1 minute ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

In what amounts to a paltry defense of Arrowhead and Sony, the necessity of linking the game to a PSN account has always been displayed on its Steam Store page.  Furthermore, the initial log-in screen for the game displays the PSN account link button with the message that it's been temporarily disabled, so it's not like absolutely no notification was provided by either Arrowhead or Sony.

 

The overriding issue is that the game was allowed to be distributed in regions where it's simply not "legally" possible to create a local PSN account.

 

Not that you don't know this of course, just saying it aloud... but that shit is weak. The stuff on those pages is occasionally-to-often outdated or incorrect and a consumer would have every reason to assume it's wrong upon being able to purchase the game / run it even once without that requirement being mandated.

 

There are so many ways this could have been communicated and managed other than this, the possibly worst one.

 

I'm sure nobody anticipated this game being the hit that this is but here we are.

[Kal-El814]

Just now, AbsolutSurgen said:

The problem is PSN itself. 
 

the requirement to have a PSN account was always there, with a temporary exemption. 
 

The small amount of people who live in Russia or a Caribbean island have a valid reason to be upset/disappointed. 
 

Those living in countries supported by PSN come off as whiners. Being a whiner is never “good”. 

 

Calling out anti consumer nonsense is always good even if it doesn't affect an individual directly. I never used Other OS, Sony patching it out of PS3s was bad.

 

Besides, for a game like this where playing it solo is essentially pointless, the potential player pool for matchmaking getting smaller because Sony spent too much time seeing how good glue smelled over the last couple months is bad for everyone still able to purchase and play the game; this affects the whole community and everyone interested in the immediate health of the game IS right to "whine."

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

7 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

Not that you don't know this of course, just saying it aloud... but that shit is weak. The stuff on those pages is occasionally-to-often outdated or incorrect and a consumer would have every reason to assume it's wrong upon being able to purchase the game / run it even once without that requirement being mandated.

 

There are so many ways this could have been communicated and managed other than this, the possibly worst one.

 

I'm sure nobody anticipated this game being the hit that this is but here we are.

 

The Arrowhead CEO agrees that their communication on the account linking situation should've been better, but communication being "inadequate" isn't the same as being "non-existent".

 

I'm going to give the Arrowhead CEO the benefit of the doubt that he had absolutely no bloody idea that the ability to create a local PSN account isn't an option for about 2/3 of the membership of the United Nations.

 

[Paperclyp]

I’m sorry, this has almost certainly been clarified already, but why did they / were they allowed to sell this in countries where PSN is not a thing in the first place if they requirement was known to be coming?

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

21 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

I’m sorry, this has almost certainly been clarified already, but why did they / were they allowed to sell this in countries where PSN is not a thing in the first place if they requirement was known to be coming?

 

It hasn't been clarified at all by anyone.

 

When asked that exact question on Xwitter, the Arrowhead CEO said the he doesn't know as they aren't involved in the the sales decisions.

 

@Paperclyp

 

 

[Kal-El814]

2 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

The Arrowhead CEO agrees that their communication on the account linking situation should've been better, but communication being "inadequate" isn't the same as being "non-existent".

 

I'm going to give the Arrowhead CEO the benefit of the doubt that he had absolutely no bloody idea that the ability to create a local PSN account isn't an option for about 2/3 of the membership of the United Nations.

 

Again this is all true, but in a world where the Steam Deck exists and the messaging on game store pages about compatibility is sometimes completely incorrect, it's hard to fault the consumer for thinking that some of the listed requirements might not be accurate. It's not reasonable to expect that someone do a bunch of online forensics to this extent before purchasing a game that shouldn't have even been for sale in their region to begin with.

[AbsolutSurgen]

13 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

Calling out anti consumer nonsense is always good even if it doesn't affect an individual directly. I never used Other OS, Sony patching it out of PS3s was bad.

 

Besides, for a game like this where playing it solo is essentially pointless, the potential player pool for matchmaking getting smaller because Sony spent too much time seeing how good glue smelled over the last couple months is bad for everyone still able to purchase and play the game; this affects the whole community and everyone interested in the immediate health of the game IS right to "whine."

The reality is that all of the big markets have PSN. These are all the same markets that have PS5s.  For the people who live in these markets, this change is so small, and is a similar requirement to virtually all big multiplayer games. 
 

I think it’s a bigger issue that Sony doesn’t support PS5s in those countries. That, however, is nothing new, despite all our ignorance of the issue. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

The Arrowhead CEO is "posting through this" on Xwitter to the point where it might be time for someone who cares about him to take away his phone.

 

 

[Kal-El814]

4 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

The Arrowhead CEO is "posting through this" on Xwitter to the point where it might be time for someone who cares about him to take away his phone.

 

 

 

It's time.

 

[Brian]

 

[XxEvil AshxX]

The way I'm seeing it is this:

 

Sony didn't give a shit that the game didn't have a PSN account tie-in.

 

Then the game sold millions on PC, which Sony didn't expect.

 

Then Sony realized that if they suddenly mandated PSN accounts for all those Steam copies, then PSN would see a huge upward spike in PSN accounts, which looks pretty nice at investor meetings.

 

Then Sony tried to make PC gamers do something they didn't want to do.

 

Then Sony realized that's probably not a good idea.

 

Then MS laughed and said, "Fun ain't it?"

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

There was no "suddenly" about the PSN account link requirement as it was always there.

 

Arrowhead temporarily (and unilateraly) disabled the account link function while the server situation stabilized.

[Keyser_Soze]

32 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

There was no "suddenly" about the PSN account link requirement as it was always there.

 

Arrowhead temporarily (and unilateraly) disabled the account link function while the server situation stabilized.

 

They also have mixed messaging on various websites. One website said PSN was optional, then changed it to "mandatory" on the 3rd.

 

This website in particular still says you don't need an account

 

https://direct.playstation.com/en-us/buy-games/helldivers-2-pc

 

Quote

Do I need a PSN account to play PlayStation games on PC?

No, you currently do not need a PSN account to enjoy PlayStation Studios games on PC, but you will need a Steam account to redeem your voucher code. Some of our PlayStation Studios titles also offer incentives for linking your Steam and PSN accounts.

 

[DarkStar189]

1 hour ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

The way I'm seeing it is this:

 

Sony didn't give a shit that the game didn't have a PSN account tie-in.

 

Then the game sold millions on PC, which Sony didn't expect.

 

Then Sony realized that if they suddenly mandated PSN accounts for all those Steam copies, then PSN would see a huge upward spike in PSN accounts, which looks pretty nice at investor meetings.

 

Then Sony tried to make PC gamers do something they didn't want to do.

 

Then Sony realized that's probably not a good idea.

 

Then MS laughed and said, "Fun ain't it?"

Arrowhead said they knew about the mandatory PSN accounts 6 months before launch. Arrowhead and Sony would both know this would be a problem for these select territories.  The question is why did Sony allow the game to be sold in territories that would become a problem? People inside Sony would have known this was a ticking time bomb. It's crazy to think the calls were going ignored these past few months just to make their account numbers look better. Greed, incompetent employees running the show, who knows? 

Funny this news breaks over a weekend. I'm sure they will pop up in a day or two and make everything all better again.

[Brick]