"Helldivers fans -- we’ve heard your feedback on the Helldivers 2 account linking update. The May 6 update, which would have required Steam and PlayStation Network account linking for new players and for current players beginning May 30, will not be moving forward.
We’re still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable. Thanks again for your continued support of Helldivers 2 and we’ll keep you updated on future plans."
“We realized that our stupid decision would stop people from giving us money, which is our only true motivation. We will continue to explore new ways to fuck you over in the future though, rest assured”
Maybe I'm just jaded, but I wonder how long it will be until Sony 'changes their mind' and tries to enforce contractual obligations again. I'm going to guess 6 months to wait for the negative PR to cool.
I hear you. I want to be positive about this because I want to keep playing, and the reversal (for now) makes me OK with doing so.
But Sony has a horrid track record. Edit - so does Msoft, people often forget how bad both of them are.
I also expect they'll try to work it back in somehow to capture more revenue and/or data. If it's not this again in a stealthier form, then it'll be something similar. No crossplay without PSN or no credit store without PSN, something like that.
I also expect they'll try to work it back in somehow to capture more revenue and/or data. If it's not this again in a stealthier form, then it'll be something similar. No crossplay without PSN or no credit store without PSN, something like that.
This is moreorless what I'm expecting. They will either strongly incentivize it when the publicity dies down or place restrictions on those that don't link accounts.
They might require it for crossplay or give some goodies for linking, but there's no fucking way they try to make it retroactively mandatory just to play at all again. After this statement, there would be ACTUAL grounds for a class action lawsuit if they did.
They've already announced that they'll be requiring the service again for Ghosts of Tsushima's online component. The only thing Sony learned is to never let a game launch without making sure the account service works day 1.
"How did we not see this coming?" - Some asinine executive at Sony who apparently sees Origin and UbisoftConnect as success cases. I know it's not directly related, but several games on Steam from EA and Ubi require you to also have their launcher and people complain about that all the time.
This from a company so user-toxic that it created a rootkit. And who sued some kid because he cracked the PS3 (the details of that trial really show how Sony fights its battles).
A shame those working on the actual game are thrown under the bus by Sony through all this and have to eat all that negative feedback. Sony will just walk away but the damage to that brand is substantial, and lasting. I honestly hope Helldiver's stakeholders sue them. Sony can't just brazenly destroy a game's momentum and then just say "oh well, we tried, fine we won't do that you big babies, bye."
Also, how in the actual fuck does a company institute a change worldwide when parts of that world clearly do not have a PS Network. Like I want an explanation for that one thing. That Sony made changes to account linking in parts of the world that do not have the new account we want to link it to. And never had And never will have. My guess is they probably said, "oh well, fuck those guys."
They were gonna pull helldivers from steam in all countries without PSN, and that's what they did. They didn't care for reimbursements once the game got popular.
They just didn't expect it to be very popular, which is probably why AH agreed to it in the first place
I still think they absolutely forgot that PSN is not available in tons of countries. Bunch of fucking amateurs where this kind of stuff is set up by some underpaid intern.
When they announced the PSN requirement, it took like what, a day to actually pull the game from those countries on Steam? They absolutely forgot and when people started complaining, they were like "Oh shit, we kinda forgot this is a feature".
Sony has a history with PC gaming they try to pretend never happened (SOE/Sony Online Entertainment, and the big Rootkit scandal.)
They've always shat on PC gaming, they're just coming to terms with the fact that consoles are practically just PCs at this point and they need to pivot to stay relevant.
Making a PSN account wasn't the main issue it was players that can't officially make an account no longer being able to play. If it went ahead, player numbers would've gone down substantially, hurting the game in the long run.
Exactly, Sony played bait-and-switch tactics. If the requitement had been there from launch, people just wouldn't have been able to buy it and would have stayed away.
But this forced people to throw away money, or at least try to get a refund for the base game.
Not sure if those stupid credits were refunded to people who were gonna get screwed by this but I doubt it (yet another reason never to do micro transactions).