this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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Honestly I'm more annoyed by the rootkit "anti-cheat" the game uses, than this Sony action. It's easy enough to make a burner email account for Sony, and for better or worse, I'm not in one of the countries impacted.
They DEFINITELY need to refund all players that are from newly blocked countries - anything short of a full refund is unacceptable, but it's not like people have cared that PSN is unavailable in Nigeria before this point.
All that said, I love seeing the community putting Sony's feet on the fire for implementing even mildly anti-consumer BS. I just wish the outrage was more consistent
another one big thing is those of us who care just straight up don't buy the game, and without buying the game we can't leave a negative review, and we moved on and not talked about it anymore.
What happened here is affecting people who have spent money on this game, who can leave review and actually cannot just walk away without having your spent money thrown into the void.
Some countries require an ID verification
With face scans! What the hell Sony?!
Yeah I was actually baffled by the lack of backlash for that, as that was much worse than the PSN account requirement issue, at least data/privacy wise.
Right? This game requires users install a kernel-level anti-cheat in order to run. That's a huge privacy and security risk just to play a non-competitive video game. Nobody seemed to care about that, but signing up for PlayStation Network? That's where gamers draw the line!
I mean, I'm glad they're finally pushing back against terrible corporate decisions but what set them off is puzzling.
The difference is everyone CAN install a bad anti-cheat, or decide to not do it.
But if people who bought the game suddenly CAN'T legally play it anymore, because PSN doesn't allow accounts in their country, they don't even have a choice.
Selling the game in those regions in the first place was deeply wrong, but then taking away the ability to play AFTER they sold it to people, that's a bridge too far.
And we're not just talking about most of Africa (not that that would be less bad), we're also talking about countries like Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, those are EU members, how is there no PSN available there?
The people who cared about it never played the game.
Like me; I loved the first helldivers but noped out of this one.
This is why I bought it on my ps5 only, at least there it doesn't matter
People are already playing games with anticheat like Apex, Fortnite, Valorant, League, Genshin Impact, etc so that part is the least surprising.
It’s not about anticheat per se but about kernel-level anticheats, which are just overkill in a PvE game. I’m not sure about the other games you mentioned, but at least Apex has no kernel-level anticheat.
I think it's because PC gamers are often anti console so having to sign up to PSN and you don't even own a PlayStation feels very wrong.
It's a branding issue. If they required you to have an "Arrowhead Network" account login no-one would bat an eye... Even if it was just rebadged PSN.
Usually it's forced at launch so if people don't like it they can refund immediately. This is an odd situation where it went from being skippable to suddenly a requirement. People got used to not needing another account for the game.9
If people could play without it then it wasn't required. Especially if the majority of the time the game has been active it hasn't been. So in the eyes of consumers it wasn't required. EULAs or whatever is only something companies clutch onto.
Not everyone buys a game immediately at launch. So doesn't matter. There were enough people that could as their first play through that game wasn't even region blocked.
oh, my God.... the gamers... are rising up.....
We are after all, the most oppressed group
Oh, rise up in that sense? I thought we were just sedentary. Now, where did I last see my sunglasses?
More like fools with their money...
They targeted gamers.
Gamers.
If the gamers are pissed I am happy
They were gaming racists.
I'll have you know this is oppression worse than what people of color experienced during the antebellum south. By God it might even be worse than the Holocaust.
Yeah compared to rootkits, micro transactions, unfinished games at launch, publisher launchers, seems there's no shortage of things to whinge about in the current gaming space.
This game has a couple of those things but generally has been the best co-op shooting experience since Left for Dead 2 to me. Helldivers 1 was a blast too though.
I feel like the level of whiplash this game is getting is similar to that of Cyberpunk but I could be exaggerating. If the game wasn't so successful at checking people's boxes at the outset, I think we wouldn't be having this discussion today. It being so popular is why there are a ton of people freaking out. I'm not saying it's not warranted, just observing.
Needless to say, Sony is never going to allow an account linking grace period in any of their games going forward. It looks like they gave the kids candy and then took it away, better for them to just not give the candy in the first place.
Edit to add: I also find it hard to stomach the amount of ire to some degree because the creative devs had nothing to do with this and clearly put a ton of energy and love into the game. They even have a unique connection to the community through the bespoke game master, Joel. I'm pretty torn about it: I want the gaming industry to stop this full speed charge toward enshittification like, literally, every other aspect of life now. But I don't want developers to have to not only worry about mass layoffs and internal industry enshittification on top of reactionary blowback from the people they make the games for.
I will say I have the luxury of living in a country that's supported by PSN and already have an account, so it colors my opinions.
If it makes you feel any better, one of Arrowhead’s community managers specifically said to take the anger to steam. It makes it very public that people are unhappy, and it’s more likely to get Sony to change the policy. So the devs are aware of why this is happening, and it appears that to an extent at least, support the negative reviews
For me personally, it just got to me that Sony gave negative shits while Arrowhead was fighting an uphill battle getting their game playable in the face of overnight success, and now that everything is great and the hard work is done, Sony's seeing dollar signs and pushing their fucking corpo bullshit on a studio that sees zero benefit and suffers all the fallout. They're all too happy to shit where Arrowhead eats and it pisses me off.
Better late than never I guess.