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Negative reviews should remain until the purchase restrictions put in place on Steam for non-PSN countries have been reverted.
Until then this looks like a temporary move for damage control and they'll try this again when refunds are less likely and wont be from restricted countries.
https://steamdb.info/sub/137730/history/?changeid=23416542
Democracy has not won yet.
There was a theory that the purchase restrictions were put in place by Valve, not Sony (because those countries couldn’t make an account without violating TOS). If so, Valve might shortly remove the restrictions.
Would the publisher not have to request the game not be sold in those countries before Valve restricts the sale of it?
I believe that Valve may be the ones who do it, but just doing it without permission sounds... Illegal and out of their jurisdiction.
I know Valve controls their storefront and can absolutely pull games down, just looking for some clarification on whether this could be true or not.
Valve can remove games from sale for any reason they like - it's been a point of consumer contention when they are accused of censorship for certain risque anime games, too.
- They can completely remove a game from sale if it turns out to be bricking people's computers or function terribly. (Sony did this with Cyberpunk on PSN, without CDPR's approval)
- There may be suspicion the game is not legitimate for sale, for instance it illegally uses someone else's work.
- Going country-specific, if a game is revealed to be slightly less than universally positive to the perfectly infallible, totally-not-genocidal Chinese Communist Party, they may want to stop sales in China.
If a game lets you buy it in Tanzania, download it in Tanzania, and then to play, has you sign an agreement that says "I truthfully state that I do not live in Tanzania", then that bone-headed agreement reflects poorly on Valve, so they have almost a legal need to take it out of sale in that country.
Basically, each country has its own laws of sale. Having those switches to turn off sales in certain places is important for the store's own safety. While 60% of the blame for selling a faulty product goes to the manufacturer, 40% still goes to the storefront that chose to stock and sell that faulty good. In this case, the fault was specific to the country of play.
That's right, I have heard of some of these cases, but thank you very much for the info! I definitely didn't want Sony to have any ground to stand on here, so happy that Valve is able to step up to protect consumers however they can.
We don’t know their personal contract, but calling it illegal is ridiculous, I’m sure Valve explicitly allows for this.
That's why I said I wasn't sure and that I was asking for clarification?
Honestly I’m keeping my negative review permanent. The game is great and I enjoy it, but besides a temporary back lash I want the sting to stick around to hopefully teach companies about fucking around and finding out.
They won't learn anything. They only nulled their bullshit because it would hurt their financial quarter because their biggest cash cow game at the moment is bombing. They only way to maybe make them learn would be if every single one of the "outraged gamers" would just uninstall and never play it again, but that won't happen and Sony knows that (which is why they can try pulling that shit in the first place).
Good for the peeps in non-PSN countries tho. For them, this is a real win.