Helldivers 2 Removed from Purchase on Steam in over 150 Countries

https://www.thegamer.com/helldivers-2-delisted-on-steam-100-plus-countries-without-psn-due-to-psn-sign-in-requirement-controversy/

by marijnz • 2 years ago

245 223 2 years ago

thegamer.com

Caligatio3• 2 years ago

As a Helldivers 2 PC player who also owns a PS5, this new requirement doesn't bother me personally.

However, adding a requirement (it was previously optional) is boneheaded, maybe illegal. It must be terrible to be Arrowhead; they have to sit by and watch while their player base implodes because of a Sony edict.

terramex• 2 years ago

Requirement was always there, just not enforced due to „technical issues”.

https://web.archive.org/web/20231207163847/https://store.ste...

„Requires 3rd-Party Account: PlayStation Network”

However, making it purchasable from countries not supported by PSN accounts was big error on their part.

Caligatio3• 2 years ago

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

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.

zamalek• 2 years ago

Unenforced rules are a murky area. It's not as clear-cut as you suggest.

Another issue that has been raised is that Sony is notoriously incompetent with customer data.

bun_terminator2• 2 years ago

true in legal terms. But it was hidden and the reason given for the change was a blatant lie. They were deceiving users until they could no longer refund. Something like that is often called a scam or fraud

RobotToaster• 2 years ago

IANAL, but couldn't non enforcement create an implied-in-fact contract?

re-thc• 2 years ago

they have to sit by and watch while their player base implodes because of a Sony edict.

Happens all the time. Sony is the publisher. A lot of publishers "ruin" games.

junon• 2 years ago

Arrowhead has sold out before with e.g. Magicka, so I'm sure they're somewhat used to it by now.

You're not a developer that signs with a publisher like Sony without knowing the risks.

Hugsun• 2 years ago

What happened with magicka?

CaptainOfCoit• 2 years ago

It must be terrible to be Arrowhead; they have to sit by and watch while their player base implodes because of a Sony edict.

Or, you know, don't make agreements that will upset your player base? I'm sure they never were forced to do anything Sony says, except if they entered into a business agreement with Sony, which again, is their own choice, and the developer knew about these requirements from the beginning, but made the requirement optional as they didn't get the technical details right at launch to require PSN.

It must great to be Arrowhead, where players seemingly blame the publisher like the developer has no responsibility over their own game.

boesboes2• 2 years ago

This. Everyone defending AH as if they are the victim here. Smh

shkkmo8• 2 years ago

Not only this, but I am not convinced that Arrowhead are entirely on the up and up about blaming Sony. I've seen too many places where the Sony messaging is pretty clear about accounts not being required. It seems very strange that Sony decides to make the policy change with this game without updating the policy.

gambiting7• 2 years ago

It was clearly advertised on the steam page, but also on launch you had a full screen banner that said you MUST sign in with a PSN account to play this game. It's just that until now you could click cancel and the game would still launch.

So no, nothing was "added".

shkkmo8• 2 years ago

Sony was/is selling steam codes on their own store with a QA that clearly explains that PSN accounts are not required for PS games on PC

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

unpopularopp• 2 years ago

I hope one day the EU will go after Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. If iOS is a walled garden then consoles are prison.

viraptor3• 2 years ago

iOS only matters in this case, because they have close to monopoly in some areas. But at you listed, in the EU you've got Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and the whole PC market. Consoles are really not a prison in this case.

(I agree the behaviour would be regulated a bit either way. But it's not even close to "prison")

greenish_shores5• 2 years ago

They are prison, and it has nothing to do with either regulation or using the laissez-faire approach. You are being sold a computer which is controlled by someone else, even after the sale takes place. That's essentially it. Maybe it would even require no additional regulation, just interpretation of current regulation (the essential basics of civil law, that is) which would make a contract of sale of such device invalid, as you're not controlling it, treating it de-facto more like as a indefinite rent contract.

gruez3• 2 years ago

iOS only matters in this case, because they have close to monopoly in some areas

AFAIK at the country level ios market share tops out at around 60%. That's nowhere near a "monopoly".

croes4• 2 years ago

You don't need to buy from MSs, Sony's or Nintendo's store to play a game on their consoles.

There was no way for iOS except Apple's App store.

flohofwoe8• 2 years ago

...unless you have an "all digital" console like the Xbox S.

johncolanduoni• 2 years ago

They get a cut of physical media sales too, and studios need their approval for each title they publish.

smallnix• 2 years ago

I vote with my wallet but I also vote at the ballot.

I want my delegates to regulate the market to make it more fun to me.

crtasm• 2 years ago

I don't think the tiny amount of games that are get a physical copy makes much of a point here. Most games you need to obtain through the online store.

s_dev• 2 years ago

I would make the case the consoles aren't essential for day to day life. They simply aren't general computing devices but have a very specific purpose. They've broaded somewhat to include more media features but few people are securing jobs or submitting government applications on their consoles.

It's the fact that modern living simply requires a phone is why the EU is so upset with Apple and Google putting up their garden walls.

ClumsyPilot6• 2 years ago

consoles aren't essential for day to day life

Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean they can defraud their users

Most the time they break their own Eula, lose customer data, change rules on the fly, etc.

VyseofArcadia• 2 years ago

I would make the case the consoles aren't essential for day to day life.

Doesn't matter. If I truly own the hardware, I should be able to run my own software.

Toasters also aren't essential to day to day life. Toaster manufacturers aren't putting sophisticated cryptographic locks on their products to keep me from toasting my own bread.

ryandrake• 2 years ago

Whenever someone brings up this nebulous "General Purpose Computer" concept, I challenge them to articulate what makes a phone a general purpose computer, but not a game console. So far I haven't heard a convincing answer. They both have CPUs and typical computer architectures, and can run a wide variety of software. Surely the intention of both smartphone makers and game console makers is that their devices are not made for a "general" purpose, and that (so far) has allowed them to justify locking them down.

"Are they essential for day to day life" is a new one. I'm not sure that makes sense either, but I'll give you points for originality! It's also debatable whether phones are essential for day to day life, but we can leave that in another thread.

xyst5• 2 years ago

Apple ecosystem is a prison as well. Just cleverly disguised as a garden :)

jojobas• 2 years ago

More like a cult farmhouse, you're free to leave but won't.

silverquiet• 2 years ago

If only the US had some sort of anti-trust laws, then perhaps we wouldn't need to rely on the EU to regulate US companies. To be clear, that is snark because that's how I communicate, however I suppose it could be argued that the laws we have have effectively been neutered through selection of right-wing justices over the last half century or so, and so we are indeed helpless against the ever consolidating megacorps.

sigmoid105• 2 years ago

This really sucks for some people, but the true impact may be overreported and is definitely blown out of proportion by the review bombing. While all this is hugely controversial on reddit, if you look at steam charts, the player count did not take any obvious hit. In fact it follows the natural trend after every content release. So at least on steam the delisting seems to have affected almost no active players. It's very possible that whoever is responsible looked at the data, saw the true player numbers from those 100 countries and decided it was worth taking the L in favour of tightening the online service to make future development easier. Especially since this "requirement" was in there already from the beginning, they just didn't enforce it (likely because they never thought the game would see this much success).

flohofwoe8• 2 years ago

...in favour of tightening the online service to make future development easier.

I really doubt that there is a single technical reason behind the decision, it's more likely that it has been enforced by Sony business peeps.

sigmoid105• 2 years ago

There is no business reason to cut down your own market unless it comes with additional expenses due to technical reasons. I'm pretty sure someone weighed these numbers again after the game's huge upgrades in infrastructure due to its unexpected success and decided differently this time.

mfost• 2 years ago

There is a good technical reason behind that. As far as I can see crossplay doesn't work well at all in the game right now. Mostly issues where inviting friends to play is broken. This isn't surprising when you do not have a common identity system to fallback on for all players.

anonymousab2• 2 years ago

Most of the reasons reported are around moderation. I think it's simply much easier for Sony to ban an account on their system (and revoke all of its content licenses as punishment) than it is to manage and wrangle steam account bans.

PSN accounts are subject to their own, malleable ToS whereas they are somewhat limited in their reprisals against a steam account, beyond simple bans.

Ferret7446• 2 years ago

Why would the player count take a hit? The game is still playable, so people want to play the game until they can't anymore, assuming the decision isn't reversed.

The impact has not even happened yet, as the news was released a few days ago, just before the weekend; the majority of players are probably not even aware of it yet. After a week or two, we will see what the true impact really is.

Dystakruul2• 2 years ago

the player count did not take any obvious hit
on steam the delisting seems to have affected almost no active players

in most cases, if you bought a game on steam before it got delisted, you can still play it. even if you uninstalled it in between, you can re-download it.

the actual impact won't be fully visible until May 30th or June 4th since that's when they will start blocking access to the game for players who didn't link their accounts[1].

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/553850/view/41968685...

Adverblessly• 2 years ago

review bombing

Checked out of curiosity, at the time I started writing this comment, the Steam store page lists a total of 465,340 reviews for Helldivers 2, of which 137,264 are negative reviews left in the last three days. The game was released ~3 months ago, giving us the beautiful statistic that over 3 months, 1/3rd of all reviews were negative reviews left in the last 3 days.

izzydata2• 2 years ago

Negative reviews for the legitimate grievance that you can no longer play the game you purchased is not review bombing. It is reviewing.

jebby• 2 years ago

Not if you consider the point of a review is to either alert people to an awesome game that could make them happier, or warn them that they shouldn't waste their time or money. The latter applies here.

The enforcement makes this game a waste of time and money for 170 countries.

kohbo• 2 years ago

Don't waste your time or money because of a minor inconvenience?

flohofwoe8• 2 years ago

I wonder why the number of countries doesn't add up.

PSN is available in 73 out of 195 countries, while Steam is available everywhere.

Shouldn't that put the number of countries where the game isn't available anymore at 122 instead of 177?

(not that it matters much in practice of course)

out_of_protocol4• 2 years ago

Valve says that Steam is avaible in 237 countries. there are territories that are considered countries by valve that arent recognized by the world as being their own separate country like Taiwan

From Google, 2017.

DEADMINCE• 2 years ago

I'd be curious to see their list. They have almost 40 more countries than most agencies would consider to exist.

TiredOfLife2• 2 years ago

Because a poor intern is forced to work weekend to fix the mess made by superiors

pyinstallwoes• 2 years ago

Sorry, I lack context, what happened?

flohofwoe8• 2 years ago

A multiplayer game that's very successful on Steam - but published by Sony - suddenly has a requirement to have both a Steam and PSN account in order to log into the game - a couple of months after the game was released.

As a PC gamer I would be pissed too tbh (on the other hand, it's the same bullshit that Ubisoft pulls for their games released on Steam).

Laaas2• 2 years ago

The somewhat bigger issue is that PSN doesn’t support all countries that Steam does apparently.

In the end I suspect affected players will get a refund.

It isn’t as big a deal as the gamers are making it seem.

aarroyoc• 2 years ago

And not just that. They required PSN accounts on countries where PSN is not available (and using a VPN to create it goes against the ToS, and people get banned). So in those countries they have effectively banned you from playing the game you purchased weeks ago.

Dystakruul2• 2 years ago

suddenly has a requirement

I think players were already asked to link their accounts since the game's release, but it was optional (in the sense that you could easily skip that step).

also, for further context, here's the official announcement that sparked this whole thing: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/553850/view/41968685...

hsbauauvhabzb2• 2 years ago

Does the account cost money also?

sunaurus• 2 years ago

I've always found it ridiculous that Sony is allowed to sell their consoles and games in my county without allowing me to create a PSN account. They even sell the digital PS5, which REQUIRES a PSN account to get any games.

And then, even if you break their TOS and create an account in another country, you're still constantly inconvenienced - you can't pay for games using your local payment method, for example, and a useful Playstation mobile app is not even listed in the local app store.

IMO they should either provide the same level of service in all countries, or be forced to charge significantly less when selling their hardware in unsupported countries.

Vespasian• 2 years ago

It's reasonable to ask for that and it would probably be up to a local government agency to enforce such a rule.

(In fact Meta's Quest was not available in my country for a few years until Meta changed their mind and removed the need to have a Facebook account as well).

To make Sony care about small countries it would be best for them to band together and act as a group on that. It must hurt them economically

gruez3• 2 years ago

If Sony doesn't have any presence in those countries, as evidenced by the fact that you can't create PSN accounts for those countries, do those countries even have jurisdiction over Sony? More practically, what leverage do they have to enforce compliance? Meta (Facebook) doesn't have any presence in China, so they can safely ignore any takedown requests from them, even if they are actually violating Chinese law.

_heimdall2• 2 years ago

IMO they should either provide the same level of service in all countries, or be forced to charge significantly less when selling their hardware in unsupported countries.

Who would force the price change though?

It seems more reasonable for anyone in a country that doesn't have access to PSN just wouldn't bother buying a PS5 regardless if the price.

davidcbc• 2 years ago

I bet a lot of people don't know they can't create a PSN account until after they buy it

goosedragons2• 2 years ago

Is it actually Sony selling their games or consoles in your country or is it 3rd party sellers who import them from elsewhere because there's demand? It is still shitty and annoying that stuff is geoblocked, be it games, movies, books, etc. But the two are pretty different.

MichaelZuo• 2 years ago

This^ There are so many third party resellers that probably most are unauthorized.

darby_eight2• 2 years ago

If you have to distinguish this sounds like a rather twisted conception of property to begin with.

ro_bit2• 2 years ago

I'm not sure about the actual hardware, but physical copies of helldivers 2 are on sale in the Philippines, where you can't make a PSN account. You can find them on Playstation's website which makes me think they are authorized copies https://www.playstation.com/en-ph/games/helldivers-2/

concerned_user• 2 years ago

There is a screenshot of an email that someone from Ukraine sent to Sony support and their response was that you can create an account using PS5 but not from a PC.

BiteCode_dev• 2 years ago

A game is just a game. There is nothing vital to it.

It's the easiest thing in the world to boycott.

And yet, players consistently fail to make the editors pay for their bad behaviors. EA is still craping on their clients. Blizzards fails forward. Loot boxes, DRM, crippling anti-cheat mechanisms, buggy games with expensive DLC and micro payments are everywhere. Sony even infected their customers with a rootkit once.

If you keep giving them money despite this, then they have correctly noted they can charge you for their fun system despite the inconvenience.

Already more games have been created and published than a human could finish in an entire life. And that's games, not music, movies, series or books.

You could just stop buying any new game forever and have an entire life of wonderful gaming experience.

Hell, I'm still playing old snes games, or the flash version of isaac.

So not buying from an editor?

Easy.

Stop complaining.

Act.

onli3• 2 years ago

That's not how this market works. There is no homogenous group of gamers that can act together. Each year there is a new cohort of 11 years old that knows nothing of past publisher behaviour and wants the latest EA game for their birthday. For FIFA with the lootboxes etc there is the added factor that people buying those are for a big part a distinct group to other gamers, there are many guys that only play FIFA or their favorite sport game and nothing else. So bad behaviour in that area does not affect other game sales as much as it should.

thefz4• 2 years ago

Well in this case things changed AFTER the game was bought, so people got screwed.

Besides, you make one of the dumbest point I have ever read on this website. Gas prices going up? Pfeh, I heat my house with a bonfire, wake up sheeple.

ClumsyPilot6• 2 years ago

players consistently fail to make the editors pay for their bad behaviors.

This comes across as either gaslighting or refusal of evidence - you have a theory that bad players/companies will be punished by the market, and when it doesn't happen, you conclude that it's the consumer's fault.

Maybe you should consider that your theory is wrong, as it does not match the real world. It appears to me that, these days, most of the time bad players do very well in the market.

bravetraveler• 2 years ago

When I saw marketing material that looked like a carbon copy of Destiny I knew what to expect

The game that plays you, too

resource_waste• 2 years ago

Modern video games are scary like that.

They arent designed for your fun necessarily, but rather addictive mechanism that keep you coming back.

Obviously dopamine from slot machine mechanisms and winning. Oxytocin from online gaming... These companies know how to make addiction.

SXX5• 2 years ago

Let's be honest Helldivers 2 is a really good PvE game with AFAIK only cosmetics via microtransactions. It's not some addictive MMORPG to earn money from whales.

Whole issue here is not about game at all, but about Sony being player hostile company and just plain breaking some customer protection laws.

npteljes2• 2 years ago

Definitely the case with Genshin for example. Poster child for me for this new kind of game: always online (even if single player), low barrier to entry, designed to be addictive.

cess11• 2 years ago

Not sure what you mean by modern, to me modernity started in the 1600s.

If you mean something like 'contemporary', then I'd like to mention that casino-like elements where rather common in the video game boom of the 1990s. Could for example listen to how old-fashioned Sonic sounded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gsa_4s3CjmI

pawelduda2• 2 years ago

I bought it to play with friends and haven't found it as addictive compared to other titles I got sucked into in the past . If anything, there is no pay-to-win and the gameplay doesn't change a lot as you progress. It's just a fun co-op with very spectacular chaotic clashes - social media notifications have more to do with slot machines than this game's ever been close to.

d-z-m2• 2 years ago

[removed]

courseofaction• 2 years ago

Do. This is predatory, go play a different game.

leoff• 2 years ago

I find the reaction to be appropriate, a large amount of people can't play the game anymore. What else would you expect? "I paid a considerable amount of money for the game and now I can't play it anymore, but the graphics were very nice on the small amount of time I played, 5 stars"?

d-z-m2• 2 years ago

In hindsight my comment was ill-considered. I'm removing it.

Laaas2• 2 years ago

Can someone explain the logic behind not supporting all countries by default? What does Sony have to lose by letting people in tiny countries buy their games?

WhyNotHugo• 2 years ago

It sounds to me like they care more about people using a PSN account rather than just selling games.

I can't imagine they the tracking data they get from accounts is more profitable than an actual sale.

Perhaps they're convinced that forcing people to create accounts somehow leads to more future sales?

xyst5• 2 years ago

It’s likely one of the elements of requiring a PSN account.

Also apparently in some countries, Sony will verify the age and identity of users by having them upload a govt id and add selfie.

I don’t remember this step in USA based accounts though. So ymmv

xyst5• 2 years ago

Probably the complexity of differing laws of each country.

Helldivers 2 on ps5 requires at least a paid psn membership. In order to do that, a payment needs to be on file.

This is just purely a guess, but I suppose Sony doesn’t have the appropriate licenses to operate in those countries and thus cannot take payment.

They could take payment via ps gift cards but that user would have have to fraudulently claim they are located in another country and buy ps gift cards from that country to get the credits.

Depending on country, user may pay more or less than what it would retail in user country.

jokoon• 2 years ago

I wonder if it breached the contract/TOS between the game company and valve.

I guess lawyers at valve had to work extra to come up with a decision, because they're probably going to court over this.

xyst5• 2 years ago

The future “Arrowhead/Sony vs Valve Software” litigation is going to be wild

SXX5• 2 years ago

Valve is well covered here. Like any other platform they only make payouts to publishers / developers after a big delay so they'll have plenty of Sony's money to cover refunds.

Turskarama4• 2 years ago

Valve is already fully covered, they will honor refunds to the game and any loss they make will be taken out of future sales. Of course it's possible that future sales won't make up for the loss in this case, but Valve is still very unlikely to make a loss overall.

JohnMakin• 2 years ago

“Players shocked pikachu sony does something annoying.”

any older users here may remember the SOE (sony online entertainment) days. They’d do evil stuff that would make this look like a rookie move.

A4ET8a8uTh0• 2 years ago

Ain't that the truth. For me it was a reminder that the values of the company that chose to install malware on your PC[1] are alive and well. I personally dropped PSN and started boycotting them after I would not get a refund on a toddler purchased game.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

Agingcoder• 2 years ago

Are you referring to the rootkit that came with audiocds in the early 2000s ?

Degorath• 2 years ago

The problem here is also that it's not just annoying, some EU member states are not supported for PSN accounts and according the TOS you can get your PSN account banned if you sign up with the wrong country!

pezezin2• 2 years ago

How is that even legal? Don't such practices violate the Digital Single Market?

henry_viii• 2 years ago

in over 150 countries

In 177 countries to be exact. For context, there are 195 countries in the world.

Biganon2• 2 years ago

The list used by steam contains like 250 countries, because they split some countries in different regions, e. g. Mayotte is listed as a separate country despite being part of France

thefz4• 2 years ago

Same with Italy and Sardinia

miohtama• 2 years ago

I'd like to meet the person at Sony who thought this was a good idea

pawelduda2• 2 years ago

Probably their pay depends on showing cool charts with PSN account activations go up. Great success, ready to cash in bonus

Kim_Bruning• 2 years ago

On Steam: If there's little yellow boxes in the right hand column, someone somewhere is reserving the right to ruin your day in some way. Helldivers 2 has three of them: DRM, Third party account, and third party EULA.

Best avoid games with little yellow boxes, especially if you prefer just playing games vs legal drama. (And of course gog.com doesn't have any little yellow boxes)

neocritter• 2 years ago

Can confirm. I bought Freespace 2 in 2009 and it's still there in my account with no DRM.

rchaud• 2 years ago

Back then, PSN was free. Bought a PS3 over an XB360 because I didn't want to pay a subscription for the occasional multiplayer game.

izzydata2• 2 years ago

If Helldivers 2 was on GOG it would still require a PSN account.

PoignardAzur• 2 years ago

I think GP's point is more "if you're on Steam, here's how you can check that info".

adamzochowski• 2 years ago

If it were on GOG, there would be no DRM or third party accounts required. With potential exception for online play. But most GOG games are single player offline games. Even online games would be more of the type where you run local server and connect with you friends by sharing IP:port combo.

boesboes2• 2 years ago

I find the support for Arrowhead surprising. They went into business with Sony and allowed this. The CEO tweeting "We just want to make gaaameeees" is such a weak ass excuse. Take some responsibility for your choices.

tietjens• 2 years ago

The economics of games are complex. I don’t understand why Arrowhead should take the blame here.

nickphx• 2 years ago

why should a company take blame for business decisions that impact their business? :D

piafraus• 2 years ago

Why shouldn't they?

Arrowhead are literally saying that requirement was always there, it was just temporary not enforced/supported. It's not Sony that suddenly introduced that new requirement.

Arrowhead were the ones having this delayed-change-of-contract. Arrowhead allowed their game to be sold in countries where you will not be able to play.

Der_Einzige2• 2 years ago

I’m very happy to hear this.

Too many good games have had their player bases gimped by the rise of stupid “one hit wonder” games like palworld or helldivers 2.

The Finals is somehow struggling to maintain a decent player base despite being objectively one of the freshest and best game releases in a decade. I can’t get my friends to play it because they’re too busy memeing about space bugs on a mediocre shooter.

Glad to see that these games time and time again shoot themselves in the foot. Good riddance!

npteljes2• 2 years ago

Helldivers 2 would be a one hit wonder, if not for the successful predecessor, Helldivers.

thefz4• 2 years ago

Your anger about The Finals does not make Helldivers 2 a bad game; instead if your friends are ghosting you to play it, it means that it is good.

Kiro• 2 years ago

You must be trolling. You're mad that people prefer something else than your own subjective opinion. Ridiculous.

Der_Einzige2• 2 years ago

Nope. It’s all Schadenfreude. I want peoples bad video game opinions to be punished, and it’s happening in this case! Yippie!

syngrog66• 2 years ago

This should not be on HN.

Biganon2• 2 years ago

This should totally be on HN, it's about technology, economics,...

tumidpandora• 2 years ago

This was known right from the launch. no surprises here.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/553850/view/41968685...

Attention Helldivers,

Due to technical issues at the launch of HELLDIVERS™ 2, we allowed the linking requirements for Steam accounts to a PlayStation Network account to be temporarily optional. That grace period will now expire. See details below in this post.

Account linking plays a critical role in protecting our players and upholding the values of safety and security provided on PlayStation and PlayStation Studios games. This is our main way to protect players from griefing and abuse by enabling the banning of players that engage in that type of behaviour. It also allows those players that have been banned the right to appeal.

As such, as of May 6th, all new HELLDIVERS 2 players on Steam will be required to connect their Steam account to a PlayStation Network account. Current players on Steam will start to see the mandatory login from May 30th and will be required to have linked a Steam and PlayStation Network account by June 4th. PlayStation Network accounts are free and easy to set up using this link https://www.playstation.com/support/account/create-account-f...

We understand that while this may be an inconvenience to some of you, this step will help us to continue to build a community that you are all proud to be a part of.

Many thanks for your continued support of HELLDIVERS 2!

Sony Interactive Entertainment

rawling• 2 years ago

This was known right from the launch.

That Sony was selling the game to 150 countries with the intention of making all of those purchases unusable?

nurple• 2 years ago

Sounds like It's not that they can't ban players without a PSN account, but the punishment of being banned from playing any of your PS games online is real motivator. I thought we realized eons ago that forced puritanism is the antithesis of humanity.

kibwen• 2 years ago

I still haven't forgotten the time that Sony deliberately and secretly infected millions of computers with a rootkit in order to enforce DRM that also introduced exploitable security vulnerabilities, and then lied about it, and then after the backlash shipped an "uninstaller" that just hid the rootkit better and introduced more exploitable security vulnerabilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

I feel bad for Arrowhead, but let it be known that if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Maybe next time they'll think twice before partnering with such a trash company.

rezonant2• 2 years ago

There's so much coverage of this from the gamer crowd that entirely ignores that a PSN account was required from the beginning but waived because of the unexpected popularity of the game and how Sony couldn't handle it. To be fair, when they had problems and added a Skip button, they should have made it more clear that a PSN account would be required in the future, but given the willful ignorance of the facts by the sensationalist reports, I don't know that it would've mattered.

Seems more like the gaming community was looking for a reason to be pissed off than this being an actual issue. I wouldn't be surprised if this was being stoked by the same folks trying to create antisemitic conspiracies about diversity consultants (check out NeverKnowsBest's Gamergate 2.0 video for context, https://youtu.be/CGmESJM6BFQ?si=RsfLWiewo7uXZY8r )

haunter• 2 years ago

entirely ignores that a PSN account was required from the beginning but waived because of the unexpected popularity of the game

They shouldn't have sold the game on Steam in countries where PSN is not available.

Zvez• 2 years ago

They shouldn't have sold the games on Steam in countries where PSN is not available

yep, as simple as that this would have made the situation much better. Game would have gotten lower scores and player base overall. Doing it now and like this leaves the feeling, that they got enough money from sales and now they want to bring some traffic to psn

rezonant2• 2 years ago

Yes this is a puzzling part of the story, for sure. The handling of the situation overall is pretty poor (also for instance the community management response was pretty stupid)

FMecha2• 2 years ago

Even if they did that at launch, I can still smell backlash.

bdw52042• 2 years ago

If you live in a country where you can't create a PSN account, just create one for another country. You can trivially find addresses to use online. To make digital purchases, you can import gift cards from the same region as your account. I believe Play-Asia sells those. If you buy games from multiple regions, you need an account for each region so you can access their DLCs.

For many years, I wouldn't connect an actual payment to my account due to security concerns and would just go to the store to buy a gift card whenever I wanted to make a digital purchase. There's no reason why you can't import the gift cards.

Basically, the whole "create an account in a different country" thing is an IQ test like the "enter an age of 13 or older to create an account" IQ test that was forced onto the internet by a stupid law the US government passed in the late 90s. Just use the obvious workaround to protect the company from legal liability over stupid laws like a normal person would.

hiimshort• 2 years ago

This is against Sony's TOS and can result in a ban. In fact, this is exactly what happened to a Chinese user who tried to do that.

bdw52042• 2 years ago

Gaming web sites publish articles on how to create PSN accounts in other regions[0] because this is common practice for gamers who care about imports (hence why Play-Asia will sell you out of region PSN gift cards). I imagine China is a special case because of the totalitarian dictatorship's restrictions on gaming and the fact that Playstation does business there which means they have to keep Winnie the Pooh[1] happy. The Chinese version of the PS5 seems to be region locked[2] which is not the case for PS5s sold in other countries.

[0] https://www.siliconera.com/how-to-make-a-japanese-ps4-and-ps...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-win...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/playstation/comments/x61kb7/ps5_chi...

mirages• 2 years ago

"Added Holy See"

I guess no Holy warriors in the crusade for defending Earth ?

thefz4• 2 years ago

As usual, corporate bullshit. Capitalism is shit.

ratsmack• 2 years ago

Greed is not a requirement of Capitalism though.

tumsfestival• 2 years ago

It actually is, capitalism wants infinite growth, if that's not greed then I shudder to think what is.

shermozle• 2 years ago

I tried to buy the game on Playstation's site a couple of weeks ago and kept getting this inscrutable error: Something went wrong.

After digging into the network tab, seems I'm failing a fraud screen somehow. No way to get around it.

Oh well, guess I won't buy your game.

    "errorCode": 3329793,
    "humanReadableCode": "failedFraudScreen",
    "humanReadableValidationErrors": [],
    "apiName": "purchase"

Helldivers 2 Removed from Purchase on Steam in over 150 Countries

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